How to get an awesome sounding recording

The 80's was a big black hole for me musically. First half of the 80's I was obliviously living in Hawaii. The 2nd half I was in the navy and out to sea for 85% of my life. Literally. No radio on a submarine. Whew. I'm really glad I missed out on the 80's scene. Dodged a bullet, I guess.
 
Mr Clean said:
Yeah but isn't that personal musical taste? I mean, I can't stand Steve Vai's music at all but I still appreciate that he's a great guitarist. Damn, if I could play half as good I'd be happy. :laughings:

Rory was and still is revered by the so called "greatest guitarists" the world has seen for the past 40 years or more.

Not that it matters anyway, but for me, as a guitarist, Rory wipes the floor of all of them.
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Sure, it's personal taste. I didn't mean to say that Rory couldn't play or anything. But your statement about no one in this thread being able to lick his boots was personal taste too. I haven't heard the entirety of Rory's catalog, but I've heard most of the big tunes, and I never heard him play anything on a technical level that seemed out of reach for someone like Vai, especially, much less countless others these days.

And if you're not talking about how fast someone can play (which is really silly anyway), then it pretty much all boils down to preference, right?
 
RAMI said:
Ha! These guys:

Television (band) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

All I remember about them was that they were in Creem magazine and just didn't look like all the other bands. Now, they probably wouldn't stand out at all. But, in the early 70's, a short-haired rock band was really weird to me.
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Television was part of that early NYC punk movement. Television, Ramones, Talking Heads, Richard Hell, Blondie...all big names from the early CBGB days. I'm not a big Television fan myself, but they were there.

The punk movement was originally American, and it was all about the music with the US bands. The UK counterparts were about the fashion and social/political stance. With the exception of maybe The Clash, the early UK punk bands generally didn't put as much effort into the music as the US bands did. They popularized the look though. Safety pins and disheveled hair started with Richard Hell, but the limeys took it to the extreme with the bondage attire and sex stuff.

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miroslav said:
I'm sure there's at least one on the list you know of and like. :D

Greatest Bands from the '80s - Top Ten List - TheTopTens.com
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Funny, at least half of those bands are 70s bands.
 
RAMI said:
Awesome.

I remember a band called "Television" or "TV" in the mid-70's. Never heard their music, but I remember noticing that they had short hair and I found that so weird back then. That's all I remember, they didn't have long hair. And you're right, V.U., the Stooges,etc....were around way before anything was actually called "punk". I was a pretty mainstream rocker as a teenager and I remember that we all thought punk was about purple mohawks and hating hippies. But we laughed at the music because it was so un-hard rock-ish. There were no guitar solos. :D

I always saw the 90's grunge thing as America's punk movement 20 years after the British did it. But I can totally see why it had to happen. The 80's was the absolute most horrible decade of music....ever. Whether it's the spandex hair bands, or the Duran Duran type bands, it all sucked really bad.
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I was born in 72, so I grew up with 80s music. I think I started playing guitar right after 1984 came out, so it was all hair metal for my first 4 or 5 years on the instrument. Guys like Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, and Eric Johnson helped me get into more jazzy/fusion guys like Holdsworth, Jean Luc Ponty, and Pat Metheny.

But then, in my freshman year of college, when I really discovered the Beatles for the first time after listening to my roommate's Abbey Road LP, everything quickly changed for me. I got off the guitar shredder thing and got more into the songwriting thing. And by the time I'd left college (I was studying music), I'd pretty much opened up to being able to appreciate many different styles, although I still fall predominantly under the very large "rock" umbrella. But I like some jazz, classical, blues, etc. now as well.

I still get nostalgic for some of the stuff from the 80s because of where I was in my musical development at the time, and I don't think all hair metal was total crap, but I agree that most of it was for sure. Van Halen had some fine songwriting moments, IMHO, as did Def Leppard and several other bands. You have to get past the hairspray and lipstick.

But now I'm starting to go back and get an appreciation for some of the stuff I didn't like back then, such as Devo, for instance. Now that I'm out of the decade and can look at it more objectively, I can start to appreciate the writing and production more, and I find a lot of it pretty cool. (Although I still hate the reverb-drenched hair metal drum sound almost 100% of the time.)
 
Greg_L said:
The punk movement was originally American, and it was all about the music with the US bands. The UK counterparts were about the fashion and social/political stance. With the exception of maybe The Clash, the early UK punk bands generally didn't put as much effort into the music as the US bands did. ---------- Update ----------



Funny, at least half of those bands are 70s bands.
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I concur with most of what you say there, except the idea that British bands didn't put as much effort into the music. What British Punk bands (the ones that mattered) did, was to try to break out of the Rhythm 'n' Blues Pub Rock (American influenced) straitjacket that had British music utterly stifled at the time. The earlier bands did it by seemingly taking a backwards step into less structured, possibly more naïve and simple playing which rapidly became a platform for more original and avant-garde bands to build upon. The Uk experienced a musical revolution as a result, the US far less so. It's one of those situations where earlier restrictive ideas have to be torn down in order for something different and new to grow in its place.
 
It is a universal truth that all metal sucks, by the way. Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, Yngwe Malmsteen and all others of their ilk ought to be flamethrowered and buried in a pit of quicklime. Of course, that's just my opinion. :D
 
Bubba po said:
I concur with most of what you say there, except the idea that British bands didn't put as much effort into the music. What British Punk bands (the ones that mattered) did, was to try to break out of the Rhythm 'n' Blues Pub Rock (American influenced) straitjacket that had British music utterly stifled at the time. The earlier bands did it by seemingly taking a backwards step into less structured, possibly more naïve and simple playing which rapidly became a platform for more original and avant-garde bands to build upon. The Uk experienced a musical revolution as a result, the US far less so. It's one of those situations where earlier restrictive ideas have to be torn down in order for something different and new to grow in its place.
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Yeah I get that, and I agree, but that very first wave of UK punk was mostly crap, for real. Eater, X-Ray Spex, Siouxsie, The Slits, they sucked real bad. Not even good suck. They just made noise. I can't get with sucking because you suck and calling it "punk". That's lame. People still do that shit. Simple basic playing is awesome, not knowing how to play at all is not. The US brand of punk had no virtuosos by any stretch, but many of them could actually play and write songs that broke away from the tired ass blues rock and prog shit and get back to basics or be original. The can't-play-at-all problem wasn't very common with US punk until the hardcore stuff of the 80s. But to me there was some really good UK stuff too - I don't mean to bash all of it. The Clash, Pistols, The Damned, Buzzcocks, The Jam, Stranglers, Sham 69, The Undertones, stuff like that. I love The Clash with all of my heart, and that one Pistols album is an incredible album. The Undertones - good stuff. I like that a lot of the slightly lesser known UK punk bands kind of morphed into and inspired power pop/new wave stuff of the late 70s/early 80s.

Bubba po said:
It is a universal truth that all metal sucks, by the way. Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, Yngwe Malmsteen and all others of their ilk ought to be flamethrowered and buried in a pit of quicklime. Of course, that's just my opinion. :D
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I share that opinion. Metal is shit.
 
Greg_L said:
Yeah I get that, and I agree, but that very first wave of UK punk was mostly crap, for real. Eater, X-Ray Spex, Siouxsie, The Slits, they sucked real bad.
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I absolutely disagree with that. Siouxsie and the Banshees were one of the greatest bands of all time. Siouxsie herself is an iconic female performer responsible for not only an incredible back catalogue of her and her band's own music, but also for instigating and founding some of the most fertile musical genres that still exist and have repercussions to this day. Musicians like John McGeoch, the Banshees guitarist, still appear in polls of "most influential guitarists" even now. The Slits started not knowing what the fuck they were doing but still came up with the first examples of punk rock/reggae fusion ever. In some ways, the Clash stole their thunder, because they were men. X Ray Spex rule. Their singer may not be easy to listen to, but what they were singing about meant something and counted in the era in which they started.

Punk was a complex phenomenon. Its influences are still being felt right now.
 
No doubt those people are influential, but to me that was bad punk. Banshees one of the greatest ever? No way. We're gonna have to just disagree on that one.

We can always agree that metal sucks.
 
RAMI said:
Ha! These guys:

Television (band) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

All I remember about them was that they were in Creem magazine and just didn't look like all the other bands. Now, they probably wouldn't stand out at all. But, in the early 70's, a short-haired rock band was really weird to me.
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All time favourites for moi.... and much as I hate reunion tours, when they made their way eventually, for the first time, to Australia earlier this year, I was there... I still give Marquee Moon and Adventure a spin regularly...
 
Greg_L said:
Good players vs their shitty songs..
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Exactly.... When I was a budding young guitarist, I was always the "lead" guitarist in the (covers) band because I was the best at copying other people's solos... I was pretty good. I could play them all. Couldn't improvise to save myself though.

As I got older it becames less about the guitaring and way way way more about the song, and now it's completely about the song.

Last band I was in (album in the sig) the other guitarist was always wanting me to do solos in his songs, and I'm like, "Really.... do I have to? Why? What does it add?" I talked him out of most of them... I much prefer short instrumental passages that go somewhere else to solos.
 
Yeah I don't hate guitar solos, I just hate wankery. I hate superfluous guitar masturbation. I don't like it when lead guitar is the only focus of the song, or even the whole band. Like Van Halen. If it weren't for Eddie, no one would know that band exists. He is the draw, and why? Guitar wankery. Yuck.
 
Greg_L said:
Yeah I don't hate guitar solos, I just hate wankery. I hate superfluous guitar masturbation. I don't like it when lead guitar is the only focus of the song, or even the whole band. Like Van Halen. If it weren't for Eddie, no one would know that band exists. He is the draw, and why? Guitar wankery. Yuck.
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Funny, I worked with a guy at a music store who could literally play every single Eddie solo on record, I'm not exagerating. But, he had no idea where an "A" was, he couldn't jam, he didn't really know how to play guitar is the only way to put it. But he was able to play every single thing Eddie ever did. It was the most bizarre thing.
 
Bubba po said:
I absolutely disagree with that. Siouxsie and the Banshees were one of the greatest bands of all time. Siouxsie herself is an iconic female performer responsible for not only an incredible back catalogue of her and her band's own music, but also for instigating and founding some of the most fertile musical genres that still exist and have repercussions to this day. Musicians like John McGeoch, the Banshees guitarist, still appear in polls of "most influential guitarists" even now. The Slits started not knowing what the fuck they were doing but still came up with the first examples of punk rock/reggae fusion ever. In some ways, the Clash stole their thunder, because they were men. X Ray Spex rule. Their singer may not be easy to listen to, but what they were singing about meant something and counted in the era in which they started.



Punk was a complex phenomenon. Its influences are still being felt right now.
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Always liked Siouxsie and the Banshees...though I never quite saw them as "punk"...when compared to the real iconic punk rock bands.
While they did emerge out of the punk scene at the time, they quickly went into a post-punk mode, that to me was more of the underground/avant-garde rock flavor.
 
I'll just leave this here...


Comment #2 cracked me up... "I think you'll find Slade were the pioneers of what became known as Punk Rock."

Slade? Slade? I don't think so..:laughings:
 
RAMI said:
Funny, I worked with a guy at a music store who could literally play every single Eddie solo on record, I'm not exagerating. But, he had no idea where an "A" was, he couldn't jam, he didn't really know how to play guitar is the only way to put it. But he was able to play every single thing Eddie ever did. It was the most bizarre thing.
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My own lead guitarist is kind of like that. Not quite that bad, but his rhythm playing is less than impressive. You'd think a guy that can play Randy Rhoads shit could play some basic rhythm stuff. Nope, he struggles sometimes.
 
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