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re: Alfie Fripp
:: Posted by James999 on January 07, 2013
In the context of where my World touches yours Mr. Robert Fripp & Patricia..along the tangent of Music (and thru this website, intimacy given on your part)..I wish to express my Condolences on his passing, and your time of grieving.
Myself I am a familiar viewer, shall I say..of the Wikipedia homepage (at least), and on occasion I peruse the Recent Deaths link. And his passing is mentioned.
my weighing in --
Tempus Fugit
Peace, a Theme
Peace, an End
Something to desire, nes pa?
How to work at it? how did Alfie work at it? If peace cannot be attained perhaps it should be abandoned? I’m sorry to appear cynical ..or weak... But WW II lessons..lessons which your Uncle went thru... it never fades does it. Still violence, still capture, still imprisonment.
Bitching About Pop!
:: Posted by BenMMusTech on January 06, 2013
Quote from Robert Fripp-King Crimson to Guitar Craft by Eric Tamm "He thought of (R.Fripp) mass culture as when the music is awful and everybody goes "yea" and of popular culture when the music is great and everybody goes "yea" again" Personally using Taylor’s Shit, sorry Swift as an example, the music is simple, almost childlike and not in a good way because it does not challenge the listener to expand their own musical horizons. You might as well listen to The Wiggles. From that you can deduce, I think the whole pop scene is drowning in mass culture and everybody is going "YEA" but they know it’s shit!! Peace Ben
The Land of Make Believe
:: Posted by albemuth on January 06, 2013
OK, I have to agree about Uptown Girl. I’ve thought many times about why I cannot stand that song, despite Joel’s obvious skill. But I’ve never been able to give a satisfactory reason.
To bring this back to KC just a little, recall this: The Land of Make Believe, by Bucks Fizz, featuring lyrics by our very own Peter Sinfield.
This makes me think of what I like about certain pop songs. It has something to do with a bittersweet feeling. These happy products ("advertisements for themselves" a friend of mine once observed) often carry a weird, off-kilter charge. For example, the old song Downtown sung by Petula Clark is supposedly cheerful, but it seems to have an undertow of sadness. That’s not a bad thing; it makes the song interesting. This is one reason I like the Bucks Fizz song. And maybe it is part of the reason why I do NOT like Billy Joel’s song.
I offer my condolences regarding our old friend Alfie.
The art of pop
:: Posted by emory0 on January 06, 2013
"Dismissing everything pop doesn’t make you a noble defender of the purity of high art...more likely it just means you’re too old to notice that time’s train has left the station and you’ve been left behind"
With my musician brothers we sometimes discuss some pop (eg, Billy Joel) in its own category: As a sort of craft. In other words, the biggest Taylor Swift or pop princess may not make music that I enjoy, and I might even argue that it has little artistic merit. But purely aside from "If lots of people like it it must be good", there ARE some pop performers that have a weird, almost miraculous talent. Billy Joel, for instance, wrote countless little jewels of pop perfection: The melodies, the lyrics all sort of hit some popular little resonance. "Uptown Girl", for instance (a song I personally can’t stand listening to) has a sort of perfection to it. Elton John’s songs also have that perfect quality to them.
And I repeat that this type of "pop" is a category very different from music I might like or even believe have any real artistic merit. If you called most of those songs ’crap’, I probably wouldn’t argue, but one has to acknowledge that here is a certain type of odd ’genius’ behind the best popular songs.
:: Posted by Carnamagos on January 05, 2013
"Dismissing everything pop doesn’t make you a noble defender of the purity of high art...more likely it just means you’re too old to notice that time’s train has left the station and you’ve been left behind."
To proceed from the fact of disliking one pop star to "dismissing everything pop" requires a logical leap of considerable magnitude.
For the rest, here’s a tip, one that think I recall having made here before: When criticizing others, it’s better not to embody the qualities you are criticizing.
That's my daughter in the water...
:: Posted by albemuth on January 05, 2013
(I refer to Peter Blegvad’s great song.)
Times change, for the world, for music, and for our lives. I guess the biggest change about our perception of pop music is that many of us now have daughters. It can be a great frustration dealing with "what the girls want" but, at the same time, it has been a great blessing in my life.
I’ve listened to some of the pop divas with new ears. Part of it is accepting good (and maybe simple) pop songs, but some of it is accepting "girl power," the affirmations of strength that women make (given our culture, or maybe given our biology; who knows?). Here are some of my favorites:
Christina Aguilera, The Voice Within
Shakira, No
Lady Gaga, Papparazzi (live "acoustic" version on electric piano)
Shania Twain, Forever and for Always (live version with Alison Krauss)
Celine Dion, To Love You More (live version with Trisha Lee)
Much of the joy of this kind of thing is the power of the vocal instrument which, for whatever reason, I feel more strongly with female pop singers then with male. Sometime in the 1990s, I was clicking through TV channels and unexpectedly crossed over Dion (someone I had ignored up to this point) singing To Love You More on a live broadcast (almost "dueling" with the violinist who played obbligato). This might sound ridiculous but, by the end of the song, the gladness I felt "reduced me to tears"!
After that, we have all other kinds of "girl power," like Bjork, P.J. Harvey -- and Toyah Wilcox!
Mr Alfie Fripp
:: Posted by fishbonealice on January 05, 2013
Very surprised to hear the familiar warm burr of RF on lunchtime Radio 2 yesterday afternoon. He was talking to Jeremy Vine about the life and legacy of his recently deceased uncle Alfie Fripp. As someone with a fascination for the WW2 generation, I found the interview deeply affecting, not least because of the evident love and respect Robert has for Alfie Fripp and his contemporaries. It was clear from his slightly hesitant tone that he is missing the man very much. My heartfelt commiserations on the loss of a great man who witnessed more in his life than most of us would in a dozen.
Snobbery
:: Posted by robomusic on January 05, 2013
Lots of trash talk about Taylor Swift on the board lately. I’m going to write it off as silly prog snobbery.
I’m the father of a teenaged girl, so I hear a ton of current pop music. Taylor Swift writes tight tunes with decent melodies and lyrics that are often very funny. She also manages to sing on key with minimal pitch correction. A little overly polished for my taste, but she is an authentic, working musician.
There are several current popsters worthy of respect. Miranda Lambert has written a couple of terrific tunes. Lady Gaga is the cleverest manipulator of the celebrity format around (and maybe ever), the tunes are solid (limited, but solid), and the message assiduously positive and progressive (politically, not "prog"). Christina Aguilera has pipes to spare, and "Beautiful" is a brilliant song musically and lyrically (not her composition, but whatevs, as the daughter would say). I dare say these women work harder than most of the posters on this board could manage, because to be a successful professional musician, you don’t get to coast, ever.* And further, dismissing the hordes of young (mostly) women who experience authentic emotional resonance to these women’s music is more than a little sexist.
Sure, there’s a lot of crap out there, and I get to hear more than my share. (Something called Maroon 5 makes me want to tear my own face off.) But as at any time in the history of music, there’s always that mix of great and awful. Dismissing everything pop doesn’t make you a noble defender of the purity of high art...more likely it just means you’re too old to notice that time’s train has left the station and you’ve been left behind.
Condolences
:: Posted by jimdelaney on January 04, 2013
I am very sorry for your loss of your Uncle. I was quite touched to hear your radio interview, and it was a privelege to read the accounts of his story and to hear some of his comments in his own voice. He will forever live in your heart.
Taylor
:: Posted by Bakullama on January 04, 2013
Just would like to add that I bought Taylor swifts lp "speak now" on vinyl for my 13 year old daughter for Christmas. Very glad I did, she plays it a lot , she loves it, and now I love it. Great album. Must get RED.
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