I would support a thread that is just @monochromios current listening playlists.
(thank you for taking the time to keep us updated!)
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Thank you so much for your kindness.
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Some occasional cheesy commercial inflections aside, this is very enjoyable:
Bare Trees: a sometimes overlooked Mac classic with the sublime Danny Kirwin. Love it 
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A coupe of great albums from newly discovered artists:
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Remember that time a Guns N Roses guitarist one upped the black crowes in the faces tribute band contest? With special guest appearances by Ian McLagan and Ronnie Wood themselves? And then miraculously it’s in 24/192 streaming?
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A piece compose by Bruno Duplant for double bass specialist Renato Grieco that uses a Baroque double bass in many parts of the performance.
Inspired by Perec’s “La Disparition” the alternation of deep sounds and silences through the piece is an experience to reset ears and lovely sounding.
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I’ve been on a Grateful Dead kick lately. Some of their live recordings are really fun.
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Gordi’s vocals on Can We Work It Out are breathtaking and haunting. I have never heard vocals like that before.
It sounds just like when Galadriel reveals her spooky radioactive looking evil side when she is on the presence of the Ring.
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Lol, yeah she has a rare quality to her voice for sure, I love it too, and that song in particular.
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I received the 3-CD George Harrison “50th Anniversary All Things Must Pass” little box set last Friday and I must say, I am disappointed. I had been so looking forward to this.
My first listen takeaways are as follows: Many of the tracks have indeed been “de-Spectorized”, especially bringing George’s voice way up in the mix and greatly reducing or completely getting rid of the reverb. This has the unwanted effect of showing what a fragile voice box George had. It also distances his vocal tracks from the rest of the somewhat diminished wall of sound.
The bass has been greatly brought up. Even on my bass-shy Senn HD-800S’s, the bass guitars are boomy. Drums have been muddied down and bac in the mix.
The joy of this album is the ‘Day 1 and Day 2’ demos. THEY ARE A DELIGHT! What a wealth of songs George had been building up while in the Beatles.
Harrison had told his son Dhani that he regretted the way Phil Spector reverb’ed his voice. So I reckon Dhani was following his father’s wishes. But the stark disparity between Harrison’s now bone-dry vocal tracks with the (slightly diminished) wall of sound instruments is just too jarring a disconnect.
I won’t be selling my original ATMP record anytime soon.
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That’s the norm in pop. You really don’t want to hear Bono of U2 or Madonna without reverb. The vocals on their early albums were bright, thin, and chirpy. I don’t have problems with reverb, but can’t stand the warbling of heavily autotuned vocals. Instant next track.
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Kat Eaton - Barricade has been on repeat for like 2 weeks.
It’s just the kind of music I want to be hearing with my verite open and 1266 TC.
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That story was likely written by (1) someone who was eyeball deep in mainstream pop/hair metal and oblivious to the numerous underground bands of the 1980s, or (2) someone born much later and who generated a story idea without direct experience.
From both the pop side and the metal side, many hated the 1980s mainstream as too fake, too calculated, and having too much makeup with big hair. Metallica, Slayer, and even Van Halen grew long before Nirvana despite firm radio station avoidance. Interchangeable and bland “Corporate Rock” also had become a thing 10-15 years earlier per the rise of Boston, Foreigner, Kansas, Journey, Styx, Toto, and other one-word-name bands.
True rock had moved underground long before this crowd realized it.
I mean the statement isn’t wrong. The late 80s, top 40 was playing Janet Jackson, pump up the jam along with the cure and new order. Maybe the Pixies weren’t getting air play but some new wave was. And hair rock. Pretty hate machine comes out in 89 and that was a big deal in that head like a hole somehow got mainstream radio play and I know where I grew up it was on the top 8 at 8 for months. It was clear kids wanted something like this. Then basically at the same time nevermind, Metallica the black album, and use your illusion I and II came out. You can draw a line there and mark the end of major old school rock. Throw the black crowes shake your money maker in there if you want as it sold a lot and sounds like classic rock. Nearly every major rock album after Nevermind was considered “alternative.” There is not a major event after this you could easily fit into classic rock or what hard rock was at the time. The major critical events after: The strokes, the white stripes, and then you get into indie. Yes, there were and are other rock stuff after, but I’ll buy the sentence.
A recommendation of poorly reviewed glam rock and whatever John Mayer is doing in between session gigs with the dead and being a questionable dude to another woman while listening to husker du was my beef.
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The 80s was sort of a hole filled by Depeche Mode, The Replacements, Husker Du, The Smiths, (Devo and Talking Heads, Sex Pistols and Dead Kennedys in the early 80s), heck, wasn’t INXS 80s? I don’t know. By the 80s I was sort of grown up and my head was more into Jazz. Flim and the BBs, Grover Washington Jr. Keith Jarrett, Frank Zappa.
Yes, I did watch some MTV, and listened to Dire Straits, Men at Work, and some of the other mainstream bands. Never a fan of “Yacht Rock”
sputter… sputter… I’m incoherent. I’ll be toddling off now.
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