I think people are mistaking feel for “sloppiness”. But feel, that’s the important thing. Feel, to me, is about tension; the possibility that music will fall apart into chaos. Teetering on the edge of noise, which means, on occasion, what can be perceived as errors. Or even actual errors, because that’s a part of feel, too; reaching for something, not effortless achievement.
I lose interest in music if it’s too precise. Someone who can play super fast and super precise is just not interesting. There’s no tension. There’s no feel.
I’m not saying that someone with great technique is always a bad player, but that technique alone is just boring. If there’s zero chance of disaster, well, who cares?
That said, I do enjoy classical music, but even there I can hear a difference between a passionate player and a mechanical one.
I (barely) remember a review of a performance that stated that the drummer “needed to be more analog”.
Speaking of “too precise”, I took the kids to an Interpol concert. No interaction with the crowd, nothing but precise “Just Like On The CD” playing. I got so bored.
This is how I feel about Weezer’s Pinkerton. I have no idea if it uses sloppy technique, but it sounds like the entire band is drunk. Even Rivers compared the lyrics to a drunk dial, just an embarrassingly exposed, insecure rambling mess.
And man is it good.
That’s where some of the best stuff lives. In the gut.
For “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35” Bob Dylan really did get the whole band drunk and stoned, to create one of the sloppiest sides ever recorded. This glorious mess was deliberate:
Mark Knopfler. Not for the guitar playing, he’s a genius at that, but for the singing voice, which is passable but nothing special. Sounds great to me though.
Ha, that’s probably the first Dylan song I ever heard. I don’t know too many others. He’s not a very good singer and that’s always kinda put me off. But it’s a fun song and he actually doesn’t sound too bad there.
Probably not very long. Dylan was a highly prolific and fast writer in his magical years from 1962-66, he sometimes penned songs on the side in cafés on napkins. Doesn’t mean that he didn’t carefully craft songs, “Mr. Tambourine Man” definitely wasn’t written in 10 minutes, nor was “Subterranean Homesick Blues”
There’s a famous anecdote about the two songwriter geniuses Dylan and Leonard Cohen. They met shortly after Dylan’s album “Infidels” had been released, and Cohen asked him “I like your new song “I And I”. How long did it take you to write?” Dylan replied “I don’t know, 15 Minutes perhaps. I like your song “Hallelujah”. How long did you take?” Cohen: “15 years.”
