Are you sure of that? None of them play instruments? At all?
Maybe not in public, or on albums, but I’ll bet a few in that list are able to play guitar or piano.
Soapbox, let me repeat to you the first rule of holes (which should be emblazoned on the front page of the Pit): When you’re already in a hole, stop digging.
I must admit that Euthanasiast was not quite fair in his ad hominem attacks on your personal sexuality, but you were the one that started it in the Pit, opening yourself up. Also, he may have evicerated only a portion of your argument, not demolished it in its grand fullness.
Still, dude, you got your ass handed to you there, both in the invective and the substance of the debate. There are some people that can come back from “you sawed-off puppy fucker”, but unless you have you really have the chops, it’s better not to even try for fear of looking more foolish.
You gave it your best try in the comeback, and I admire your gumption (if not your judgment). Once you get what you are coming to you, I would suggest you consider taking what is left of your dignity and retreating from the arena with some small shred of it intact.
Good luck.
Well, Morrissey might have tried being a drummer at one point. I’m not sure about John Lydon, but I’d be surprised if he played any instruments and even more surprised if he was able to play any during the Sex Pistols days. I’d be even more surprised if Shane MacGowan played any instruments. As for Michael Stipe, he doesn’t play guitar unless he learned recently, and I don’t think he really played the piano. I suppose Chuck D might play keyboards now or something since he’s done some work as a producer.
As for Justin Timberlake, it’s possible that he knows how to play the guitar or piano himself.
He sure did hand me my ass with the insults. But not really as far as the debate goes. And so far people in here who actually commented on the debate seem to be down the middle, and the people on his side haven’t offered any actual evidence or arguments towards my “musical ignorance and arrogance” aside from slinging more insults. Meanwhile other people have come on here agreeing with me and actually applying reasoning to their arguments.
“Once I get what’s coming to me?” It’s called apathy. You’d be amazed how easy it is to recover from something on an anonymous message board. And besides, look at when I registered, and how many posts I have. I’m far from a “regular cast member” round these parts, so it’s not like I even have a reputation to damage. C’est la vie.
Dang. That was a Mortal Kombat style beat-down, Euthanasiast.
FATALITY!
I am ashamed to know the answer to this and even more ashamed of the reason why, but I recall seeing him on a Barbara Walters/Diane Sawyer type special where he played the piano and it didn’t sound terrible — there I said it. Can I go wash my mouth out now?
So some of them do play instruments, as far as you know.
Dude, you’re talking about “the debate”. The debate has gone down the toilet. Personally speaking, I haven’t even read it. I don’t give a shit. What happened was you took the debate into the realms of personal insult, and lost.
It’s like you’re in the court of Louis XVI and someone criticized a composer you decided to defend, so you slapped them with your glove. It now no longer matters whether Chambonnieres is better than Couperin, because you challenged the insulter to a duel. You offered them out, and we’re enjoying the conflict; the original insult is now irrelevant.
Unfortunately, you happened to be bested.
Eh. It was an insult laden personal attack that utterly failed to address the main argument at hand - does technical proficiency at performance directly relate to songwriting ability – or side arguments - is John Mayer a good songwriter? compared to whom? and, what is a good song (lyrics, melody, badass guitar riffs ::does metal hands::? Other than that, it was awesome.
Then congratulations to him. I still maintain that he was an uninformed douche in his attempt to argue his point, and calling him that in Cafe Society would have got me banned.
I noticed you put the word just in parenthesis, thereby adding it to my suggestion, which confuses me since I never said that his peers are only made up of the top 100 on Billboard. I did narrow the field by asking my opponent to focus there in my posts in CS, but that was only because I wanted to avoid absurd comparisons to John Mayer’s songwriting and that of The Beatles or Jimi Hendrix from the Straight Dope Collective.
Again, confusing, but I noticed by your indicated location that confusion is all around you.
Soapbox Monkey, I get it; good songwriting is about more than talent. I got it when you originally posted it way back in the CS thread. I understand . Just don’t delude yourself into thinking that it’s magical either. Great songwriting is contained within the instruments (melody) and the artist’s ability to make something from the instrument (talent). It is also contained within the lyrics, which set the mood. It’s nothing more than that. In order to accomplish it, you should be proficient with your instrument, understand the fundamentals of the succession of single tones in musical compositions and how they interact with one another, and you should be able to paint the mood of the song with lyrics that fit the feel and rhythm of the music (if you are using lyrics).
Further, I never suggested that Mayer was a phenomenal songwriter. I happen to like a fair amount of his work, most of it outside the confines of what the radio stations play, and admittedly, because I have a weakness for his technical mastery of the guitar and what he gets from it. I do know that he writes his own music, and that automatically places him above the Timberlakes out there, who rely heavily on other people to write and express musical ideas that they otherwise would not have come up with on their own.
Songwriters and their music have suffered greatly under the current crop of the producers you seem so hell-bent on raining such adulation. They are responsible for taking the music and over processing it with remixing, compression, incorrect gating, more compression, brick wall limiting, and finally sending it out to the radio stations for even more compression and limiting. The life the music might have had originally is squeezed out just so the music can be louder. I haven’t seen a song released by the major record labels in the past ten years that didn’t clip heavily on proper studio equipment.
I only defended John Mayer in the CS thread (which turned into this clusterfuck) because you insisted on pissing all over the man like a drunken yard cat, having not heard much of anything that he has released other than what gets airplay. I never suggested that he was a better songwriter then the likes of Jack White, but I do know for certain that he’s technically a better guitar player, despite my own adulation for Jack’s live performances.
And as others have noted, you opened yourself up for the rest by dragging me into the pit with a discussion that hardly warranted pitting.
This is EXACTLY what I’ve been trying to say, but I assumed it was implied by what I was typing in CS.
Obviously you need to be able to make something good come OUT of your instrument, but let’s take a band like Dream Theater for example. The guys are all virtuosos and they’re blazing away in every direction on their instruments…but their songs sucks. They think that if they wank away on their instruments then that’s all that’s necessary; without realizing that tone, texture, melody, emotion, and in many instances restraint, is absolutely essential for making a good song.
I’d put John Mayer over pointless and tedious wankery like that for the simple fact that what he plays work as coherent songs and stories, but, short of whatever side projects he has, I still stand by my point that everything I’ve heard from him has been boring and just doesn’t seem to have any edge to it. That, to me, does not make for good songs. I want, nay, NEED songs that challenge me, and not just something that’s good to play as background music, which is something that way too many people use music for these days.
Shane MacGowan does indeed play guitar (and a bit of piano, I think) - apparently, just not nearly as well as the musicians he’s had in his bands. But he knows enough to be able to write all the songs he’s written (unlike Morrissey, who gets songwriting credit even though all he comes up with are the lyrics and vocal melodies). Michael Stipe and John Lydon can’t play shit, and neither can Chuck D., as far as I recall.
“Pull me Under” will be rocking the fuck out of folks long after Jack White is no longer considered cool.
Long Live Dream Theater!
FTR, Morrissey played piano on “Death of a Disco Dancer.” It’s at the end after the lyrics. Mostly plonking and weird-sounding runs, but it works.
Sure. That doesn’t change my point.
Well, I admit I kind of guessed on Shane MacGowan based on the fact that he only sings in all of the concert videos I’ve seen, and he doesn’t seem the type to put an effort into learning an instrument.
I need to dig out my copy of Strangeways and listen to that now. Sounds interesting.
Now there’s a songwriter:
I congeal the songs that make the whole world sing.
I congeal the songs of love and special things.
I congeal the songs that make the young girls cry.
I congeal the songs, I congeal the songs.
This is an opinion which I see frequently repeated, which reeks of ignorance. Did Frank Sinatra write his own material? How about Bilie Holiday? What about great songwriters who cannot perform their material to it’s potential? Would you prefer if we only heard the Cole Porter version of his songs? What about Leonard Cohen? You can’t seriously be suggesting that we only hear HIS versions of his songs? Great songwriting and great performances are two distinct talents, and to dismiss an artist because they can’t combine the two is short sighted and narrow minded. Johnny Cash performed a number of songs that he never wrote, but which all became great Johnny Cash songs. You clearly have a great facility for hurling insults in an entertaining manner, just don’t fuck it up by expressing ignorant opinions in order to justify your invective. Finally, I would like to add
Where your eyes must sting and reek of ball sweat from the inverted chin ups you were doing on cock* when you should have been reading the thread and grasping the context of what is being argued.
We’ve been talking about whether or not John Mayer is a proficient/shitty songwriter, not whether or not singers who do not write songs are talented in some way. Since John Mayer does write music, logic dictates that he has the upper hand in the ability to write songs, more so than someone who does not. If you do not write songs, then you are not a songwriter! Can’t we at least fucking agree on that? Fact: According to published work, John Mayer is a much better songwriter than Elvis Presley. This is because Elvis Presley didn’t write songs. You can argue that Elvis Presley was a better singer, but so far as I know, you cannot argue that he was a more talented songwriter. Am I making sense to you now?
I’m not dismissing the artist because he cannot combine singing and songwriting, but again, since the entire subject up for debate since the first flaming post has been about whether John Mayer is a proficient/shitty songwriter, then someone who doesn’t write their own music, but sings what others have written is certainly not a fucking talented songwriter. This is why Justin Timberlake was dismissed out of hand (and to tell the truth, I am only going by what Soapbox Monkey said when he talked about producers writing with/for him in the CS thread–I have no idea what JT sings or writes).
You don’t know what I like, shitbag, unless you’ve been going through all of my old posts, in which case you are saying that Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jimi Hendrix, Henry Garza, Buddy Guy, Lonnie Mack, Albert Collins, Eric Calpton, BB King, Jack White and an assload of other artists I have named as influences suck.
- I don’t know whether you are male or female, so take that into consideration before you fly off the handle yet again, and incorrectly label me as homophobic.
Justin Timberlake vs. John Mayer??
Which is better? Putting a broken light bulb up your ass or breaking a whole one once it’s in?