good evening to everyone. steven kado and i were having a bit of a DISCUSSION about pink floyd/production values. unfortunately he hasn'y replied to the last email i sent him (hello steve, are you there?) so i thought i'd edit some highlights and get everyones opinions. S.K. said >>>>> "ok. THE FLOYD: are (to me) a bad band. they are the bad band that i always associate with low budget surrealist prints. all that bullshit and bombast makes me ill. so far as i'm concearned pink floyd is whats wrong with radiohead and spritualized and all those bands that go so far to make things GRANDIOSE and then don't fill things up with grandness. to me floyd also stands for a particularily obnoxious style of production. like why do they HAVE to make records sound that way? why? it hurts me...." to which i replied >>>>>> "but the whole thing about radiohead is not supposed to be grandiose. its just complex, like the world and peoples minds, and the reason that (many) people think they're so brilliant is cos they seem to be able to translate some parts of this complex complex world into music that is not only beautiful, but heart-rendingly so. as for over-production, i'm not sure what to say there. there are pros and cons. just look at the differences between tigermilk and fold your hands..... if anything, i think tony doogans production of B&S is not right. it's too perfect, too rounded, too balanced. there aren't enough rough edges. like the bit at the start of tigermilk when you can hear stuart zipping up his cardigan before he starts to sing. thats so nice because its so personal. so in that case, i think tight production is wrong. but for radiohead its different. they're trying to do something totally different to B&S, and i think modern production techniques add to that, heightening the effect of the music or whatever. its silly to think of music in terms of production values. its about individual bands and the individual sounds they are trying to create. thats where production can make or break a band. i could go on at length, and start on my diatribe about the beatles and that release they did a few years ago, i think it was called REAL LOVE (?), when they remodelled abbey road studios to get the right sound (changing things like the pipes in the walls, so that everything was the same as it was in the 60's, thus acheiving a true 'beatles' sound. of course, it sounded awful by modern standards, and not even that similar to stuff they actually did record in the 60's, so, a failure, in theory) sorry. bit of a tangent there. just remembered that this is really about pink floyd. their production was very relevant to what they were trying to do at the time. it was all very experimental. even non-fans have to appreciate the fact that they were pionneers of music technology, even if you dont really like the end results. i guess what i'm trying to say is that i hate to judge everything by todays standards, and that context is so important when interpreting something like music, simply because it can be taken so many ways." so i'm just interested what other sinisterees think of all this kerfuffle, especially my thoughts on tony doogan etc. but i bet i wont get any replies this weekend cos most scottish folk will be at Twho love in the park, which i simply cant afford this summer, bugger bugger bugger. i hate being a poor student. anyway. any listees live in liverpool at all? since i'm moving there in september. autumnal picnics in sefton park might be nice. +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the undead Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "tech-heads and students" +-+ +-+ "the cardie wearing biscuit nibbling belle & sebastian list" +-+ +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "peculiarly deranged fanbase" "frighteningly named +-+ +-+ Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +----------------------------------------------------------------------+