If you could bring back one great artist that has

departed our world who would it be? We have lost some incredibly talented artists, often under tragic circumstances. If it were possible to have an encore I would vote for Janis Joplin. You?

puerto08-21-2011 11:31pm

Showing 6 responses by bdp24

bdp24 Details Discussions Posts This discussion Message User 9,510 posts 06-11-2015 at 06:54am Copy Comment URL Report Comment Edit Delete It's Richard Manuel of The Band I miss the most from my lifetime, but who wouldn't want J.S. Bach walking around! By the way, if JSB were, it would be Garth Hudson he would be hanging with, not Keith Emerson.
bdp24 Details Discussions Posts This discussion Message User 9,510 posts 12-29-2015 at 12:09am Copy Comment URL Report Comment Edit Delete Buddy Holly Tammy Wynette Hank Williams NRBQ (with Al Anderson) Dave Tough, Earl Palmer, Buddy Harman
bdp24 Details Discussions Posts This discussion Message User 9,510 posts 12-31-2015 at 04:11pm Copy Comment URL Report Comment Edit Delete loomis---One thing about living in L.A. is you see artists all over the place. When I lived in Burbank a couple of blocks from both the NBC studio where the Tonight Show is filmed and where the Warner Brothers Records offices are located, there was a now-closed restaurant named Mo's, just over the border in Toluca Lake (right next to the Bob's Big Boy where David Lynch used to sit all night drinking coffee and writing Eraserhead, it is said!). One night I was my way out of Mo's front door just as another guy was on his way in. Our eyes met, and he gave me the "Hey man" nod and a hint of a smile. I nodded and smiled back, and just after we passed realized it was Elliott. He did himself in not long after that. Too bad, he was one of the cool ones of his generation.
bdp24 Details Discussions Posts This discussion Message User 9,510 posts 08-12-2019 at 06:29am Copy Comment URL Report Comment Edit Delete It does roxy54, and I don’t disagree. I was in a band with a real fine bassist who really didn’t like Baroque music, but loved 19th and 20th Century stuff (Beethoven, Wagner). JSB to him sounded too mechanical, too stiff and regimented. I can see why one would feel that way, but the composer’s chord structures, melodies, harmonies, and insane counterpoint just thrill me to death. It’s no different in Popular music. Some listeners hear a Brian Wilson song and just don’t get why Paul McCartney considers him The Master. Another listener may hear only the voices of the not-so-hot Beach Boy singers (apart from Carl Wilson), while I hear the spectacular chord progressions in his best songs, and his use of inversion (the bass not playing the root note of the chord, but up a third or fifth. James Jamerson---with whom McCartney credits opening his mind to the possibilities in bass playing---uses inversion brilliantly in "What Becomes Of The Broken Hearted". It’s unadulterated J.S. Bach!).
bdp24 Details Discussions Posts This discussion Message User 9,510 posts 08-11-2019 at 11:16pm Copy Comment URL Report Comment Edit Delete Not meaning to be argumentative, but "J.S. Bach is better than all mentioned put together" is not just "one man's narrow minded opinion." There are a great many other composers who shared that same narrow-minded opinion, as do a fair number of other music lovers, myself included. I was turned on to JSB by the smartest human I have known in my life, a music major and graduate of The University Of California at Riverside, known for it's excellent music department. He also loved Mozart and Beethoven, but put J.S. Bach on a pedestal above all others. Genius on his level comes along only once every few centuries.
bdp24 Details Discussions Posts This discussion Message User 9,510 posts 08-13-2019 at 01:25am Copy Comment URL Report Comment Edit Delete Beethoven is a very "masculine" composer. His music is unusually muscular, if you know what I mean. Bach's music sounds like it came from a source above the plane of humans imo. I sometimes feel like I am in the presence of that source while listening to his music. I consider that a spiritual experience, and it can be overwhelming. My genius friend (seriously. He was programming at Hewlett Packard in Mountain View, CA, and they wanted to find out just how smart he was. The IQ test came back genius. He wasn't the type to speak the number. They made him head of programmer training) was (RIP) what guys like Bill Maher don't understand: both really smart, and a "believer". Ya know, Einstein "believed" (knew, actually ;-) in a creator. Knowing as much about the physical universe as he did, I believe it was obvious to him that it didn't create itself. Similarly, the "rules" governing music (taught in music theory courses) are there by design. Humans didn't create them, they discovered them. And no one more than J.S. Bach. He is considered the Father of Western Music.

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