Bit of a guitar nerd thing, but mid-70s Billy Gibbons may have one of the most beautiful tones, ever.
Although I was thinking more of:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b76kjd5nvMg
I think it's time to admit that my taste in music and Alameida's don't overlap a lot.
Also is it me or does the first track sound like Sam Cooke?
Actually that first song is great. And only occasionally sounds like Sam Cooke.
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Mick Jagger to become a great-grandfather at 70.
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I would think, by that standard, that Heebie is in Texas, but not from Texas.
It's amazing how the musical ability of ZZ Top contrasts with the horrible lyrics and singing voices. Kind of a Frank Zappa phenomenon.
I dunno. I like the singing, and the lyrics of "Tush" cemented its place as the #2 strip club song of all time, behind only "Pour Some Sugar on Me."
I have to admit that most Zz Top albums only have one or two tracks on them I like, and often several I don't care for at all, but when they are good, they are good.
Plus tea cosy hats and hip hop cover versions:
http://youtu.be/kaIZWjItReI
Heebie is in Texas, but not from Texas.
Heebie's kids, however, are clearly from Texas.
Which only kills me a little bit on days ending in Y.
Which is why you speak Hebrew at home!
Hmm, in fact, speaking Hebrew may not really solve the problem, as all the days of the week now start with Y. Oops.
In Hebrew it only annoys me on days beginning with Y.
Surely you can raise them to be self-hating Texans. Forget the Alamo!
Or maybe your kids are destined to become totally badass Texan-Israeli hybrids.
Moishe McClintock, fastest mohel in the West
Forget the Alamo!
Remember the Whatamo?
All Tomorrow's Kinky Friedmans!\
Praise for the plains (more northerly variety):
I had an extravagant weekend and went to Omaha. Somebody told me it was like the Portland, Ore., of the Midwest, and that's a good way to put it. It's very laid-back.
Thinking more about the issue in #9, I think it's striking that ZZ Top, a band that formed in the early 70s, didn't had a frontman. A guy who would grab the microphone. A guy who could sing at all, for goodness' sakes.
Compare to Foghat, Canned Heat, the Allman Brothers Band, I'm not sure who else would be good comparisons. Look at Robin Trower. If he had tried to be the singer on his "solo" albums, I suggest some of them might have sucked.
"If I forget you, O-maha, let my right hand's eczema get worse."
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One of the referee reports on one of my papers was entirely about statistics and seems to have been written by the editor's go-to statistics expert. This person writes "Th/ere is no goo/dness of fit test in a Bayesia/n appro/ach that I am aw/are of." That can't be true, can it?
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Using prior probabilities, I can find when people are talking about me no matter how careful they are at disguising my name.
Anyway, I don't see what a goodness of fit test would have to do with using frequentist or B/a/y/e/s/i/a/n approaches.
Or rather, why it would be any different between the two.
That said, my policy on B/a/y/e/s/i/a/n approaches is to get vaguely annoyed when someone mentions them.
Don't forget the Ry Cooder version
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2p2XvByYZk
I loved that record. And it was a record, when it came out.
Blerg. I think maybe the guy is trying to say that even though we put in a prior distribution to marginalize over parameters, that doesn't mean what we did is Bayesian? I can't tell if he's complaining about methods or just about word choice. But then he says we should maximize instead of marginalizing, which seems clearly wrong since we actually have measurements that prefer certain values of the parameters. Anyway, I can't discuss this in enough detail here to get a useful answer, so I guess I should shut up.
I wonder what the Z Z top cross section is at the LHC.
I don't even see margins, but I got stcox to work.
but I got stcox to work
Laydeez.
(There are adds plastered all over the subway here that just read "HISCOX". I keep wanting to point at them and say "really? more than one?" but then I see that everyone else is acting like a normal, serious adult.)
but then I see that everyone else is acting like a normal, serious adult
That's why I haven't renamed my variables so that my code does read something like:
stcox r huge
24: Oh sure, when Mpls. gets mentioned it's all "have breakfast at Potbelly" but Omaha gets to show off the one fancy hotel in town. Admittedly, the restaurant scene in Omaha, while not huge, does offer some really excellent choices, and not just steak, either.
3: nosflow, I'm glad you reconsidered on jimmy lewis, cuz otherwise..?? but did you even listen to pan am highway blues? he's talking to a cactus! and there are many more relevant virtues, such as: fuck, on the solo, is that a steel guitar or not? (maybe it's that weird harmonics shit normally only used for annoying metal hammering?*) when was I ever unable to discern the answer to this question in 40 milliseconds?
10: I did not know that about tush. I think it should more properly be avalon hideaway, which is i.) about a strip club and ii.) has a couple of pulls on all the strings up the neck that would really seem to encourage pole thrilling-ness.
33: I love, and own, that ry cooder record. and every other ry cooder record up to some paris, texas whatever. my family was big-time ry cooder fans because my dad plays slide guitar. the funny thing is that even though I had seen all the record covers, I thought ry cooder was black until I was like 11. he had the best back-up singers in the world, was what is was, and I figured, fuck, white people throw up photos of old-timey-looking black people on their records all the time, maybe he's a private person or something. and if ry ever wants to start commenting...
*further evidence of alameida/nosflow venn diagram overlap fail: unless such a technique is employed by randy rhoads, ozzy osbourne's genuis guitarist until he was killed in a tragic small plane accident on ozzy's ranch [secret al on the down low: I think they were all fucking wasted]. the live album 'ozzy osbourne/randy rhoads tribute' is awesome and actually makes me tear up at some of the obligatory metal "hey let's all off ourselves" moments. admittedly, I listened to the album while wasted and contemplating suicide; songs about suicide can be great at keeping you alive then. yes. you might think not! not for everyone, I guess. but for most people, obvs.
My attempted high school band might have gotten off the ground if the other guitarist and I hadn't met/bonded over our shared desire to be Randy Rhoads. You can't really have a band of two Rhoadses. (You can have fun and not die in the process, though.)
Trying and failing with ZZ Top. I wonder if this, like my lack of real appreciation for the Smiths, is a true personal defect. I did recently enjoy this brief Jimmy Bryant/Speedy West duo on video; it made me want to find and mess around with a pedal steel, which I think is not a cheap or easy prospect. A lap steel, maybe?
Wait holy shit did the conversation seriously turn to Tribute and Randy Rhoads on a day I wasn't commenting? FUCK YEAH. Though I'm a Tony I. devotee and officially prefer Dio-era Sabbath even to Rhoads era Oz.
Somebody told me it was like the Portland, Ore., of the Midwest, and that's a good way to put it. It's very laid-back.
Let me tell you what, I'm going to be really happy when the Portland thing is finally played out, because it's become such a lazy place that even I can't stand it anymore. The jobless hipsters can move to Omaha for all I care.
I keep wanting to share this with you, Halford, but there's only an infinitesimal chance that you haven't already seen it. Still, she just looks so happy.
Funnily enough, when I was in teenage rock/metal bands, Randy Rhoads was the player I copied most, as well. I think that was pretty common because* it's actually pretty easy to play like Rhoads. He had a style that was catchy (and innovative in his own way), and sounded pretty impressively flashy, but wasn't really that hard to do. Open string pedal tone riffs, with little choppy dyads; tapping; etc. His playing is really accurate rhythmically, but the timing isn't complicated. Lots of sextuplets -- classic 3-note-per-string scale shapes -- and fast regular single note lines, etc. His playing is incredibly un-funky. Very very 'white' [for want of a better term].
It's the sort of thing where it's quite easy to see how you can get from 'here' (beginner/intermediate level rock guitar chops), to there via application. If you get better at basic technique, and learn a few simple rock guitar tricks -- tapping, palm muting, etc -- you are there.
It's not like Eddie Van Halen, where the tapping stuff aside, the real stand-out feature is ridiculously tight/precise yet laid-back timing that has much more in common [in terms of rhythmic feel, if not sound] with RnB or funk (or Hendrix, or whatever). It's really really hard to play like EVH, even if you aren't trying to play fast or play the solos note-for-note. And it's much harder to see how you get from 'here' (intermediate rock chops, etc) to 'there'.
I'm with Halford's 43, too.
* guitar nerdery follows
My dreams of returning to find an active discussion of 80s hair metal guitar ... dashed.
Sorry. I had enough of 80s hair metal guitar in the 80s.
re: 48
Me too, mostly. Talking about it, yes. Listening to it [with a couple of exceptions], no.
I'm not even sure who Randy Rhoads is.
44: Omaha is really too cold in February to replace Portland for that kind of thing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfkATcv-dVY
Borderline tedious keyboard intro. Pure Ozzy cheese.
The guitar playing is pretty great, though, if you like that sort of thing. Solo from about 2:15. It sounds like a bundle of rock clichés, but they are clichés he partly invented.
I'm not even sure who Randy Rhoads is.
He hasn't been anybody for quite a while now. I only heard of him because I used to work with a grl whose partner played in that sort of band.
No real time to comment, and I'm just a fan and a moron, not a player, but I'm not even 100% sure that Rhoads is unambiguously better than Jake E. Lee just as a guitarist. I mean that Rhoads-era Ozzy songs are better but Jake E. Lee was pretty great. The truly amazing thing about Rhoads-era Ozzy is that it happened at all, as opposed to Oz just collapsing under a mountain of cocaine and bad music.
Most underrated/overrated 80s metal guitarists? For the under, it's hard to call a member of Iron Maiden underrated but I don't think Adrian Smith gets enough credit for his 80s work with Maiden, which is incredible. Another candidate is Hank Shermann of Mercyful Fate, such a good band. Overrated is and will always be Joe Sat -- who is (a) not metal and (b) a punchline for a reason.
Watching that makes me want to go home this evening and plug in my guitar, and practice.
re: 54
I always like Jake E. Lee, too. I don't think there's any doubt that Rhoads was a more innovative and influential player, though. Much of what Lee was doing was an extension of the Rhoads template. Same with Zakk Wylde, when he first joined, although he took it another direction.
I saw most of the big metal/rock bands in the 80s, often multiple times. Maiden, in fact, were my first ever gig. The one I remember being really great live, if you like that sort of thing, was Alex Skolnick, who these days has partly re-invented himself as a sort of jazzer, but when he was doing the trash metal thing, he was easily one of the best players I saw. Vai was pretty great, with DLR. Shame he has terrible terrible taste on his solo material.
My listening these days is almost entirely free of rock and metal, but listening to some of this stuff on youtube is incredibly nostalgic.
Ooooh, Skolnick is great. I never saw him or Testament live -- wish that I had.
I was curious, ttaM, what you thought of Charlie Parr in the mix in the post above.
re: 57
I saw Testament supporting Anthrax at a theatre show in about 1987. They were great. Or my 15-year old self thought so, anyway.
re: 58
It's not really to my taste, I'm afraid. The voice doesn't work for me. The guitar playing is quite nice, of that style, though.
re: 58
It also has a thing happening with the timing that you get sometimes in 'roots' styles, where the timing of the music drifts in slightly random ways against the time of the singing. I know people who really love that feel in music, but I don't.
Oh, I knew you'd hate the voice; I was curious about the guitar, because it sounded interesting to my lay ear.
Yeah, it's nice. It's quite a traditional style. There's something a bit stuttery occasionally, which isn't to my taste, but it's pretty tricky stuff to do.
That first song is supposed to be a throwback, I think (hence the title), but I thought they did some cool stuff with the Rev. JM Gates song (linked in the asterisk)--I hesitate to say "punk," because I don't really know what I'm talking about, but it seemed like a punked-out interpretation of a very old song, which was kind of cool.
Huh I definitely saw Anthrax in 1987 but Testament wasn't the opening band. Or, I don't remember an opener so it's possible that I just missed them.
re: 65
I guess UK and US tours often have different opening bands. This was at the Edinburgh Playhouse.
47: sorry! Even that much sleep was inadequate. Twenty years ago I could have furnished my own long list of underrated metal players; there's no way I could even remember their names now. I thought Satriani's real influence was as a teacher, though (Vai, Kirk Hammett, et al)... For much greater obscurity, I recently learned that Jason Becker is totally still alive, which made me happy. And I remember really loving Skolnick & Testament too.
My listening these days is almost entirely free of rock and metal, but listening to some of this stuff on youtube is incredibly nostalgic.
Yup. It's a little sad to imagine how glued to YouTube I would have been as a teenager, though.
I never stopped listening to 80s metal completely, but it's true that my listening has gone way up, relative to any time post-1992, since adopting this pseud, as I slowly get eaten by this online personna.
Eat or be eaten is the paleo way. You wanted to maintain your separate identity, you should have been posting as a folk-music-listening vegetarian.
Discovering 80s metal is the best. Somehow I was utterly shocked to find there are other bands that sound like Def Leppard. Not that those bands are good, but somehow I never imagined they emerged from a scene.
A lot of good retro-style metal bands nowadays too.
70 last -- YES. I have been playing Huntress nonstop for about two weeks now. Chick singer, best known song is "I want to fuck you to death." I'd link on YouTube but am on a phone.
re: 68
I've always listened to the first couple of VH albums, and a fair bit of more classic rock [AC/DC, etc] and, of course, Sabbath. But the proper 80s stuff, which I was heavily involved with at the time, almost never except when wallowing in nostalgia. I get a decent dose of heaviness via different less cheesy music.
That said, I listened to the first Faster Pussycat album again recently, and it holds up much better than I'd imagined it would, as a fun rock record.
I hate Def Leppard at the time, and hate them now, though. I saw them, touring Hysteria, and even though I was listening to that sort of vague kind of thing at the time, I found them strangely repugnant.
I liked their 3-song EP, but the Huntress album sucks. There's just something off about the whole project. The songs don't have enough words, for one thing.
Crystal Viper is like them but better. I like Portrait too.
The farthest beachhead of hair metal I'll defend is the forts Mötley Crüe album, which is actually non-ironically pretty OK. I'm prett sure I could have gotten murdered at the 1987 Anthrax concert for saying so, though.
(The IPhone automatically adds the umlauts to Mötley Crüe!!! Awesome)
Isn't a lot of 80s metal actually not all that heavy?
Yes. Though "hair metal" is, I think, a post 1992 derogatory term that's a little ambiguous, since there were a decent number of bands that were pretty heavy but who also had the hair. When I was a kid we called the idiots who were on MTV and who girls liked "glam" to differentiate them from bands like Anthrax or Metallica or Maiden or Testament, bands that everyone not into the scene hated. I mean, someone 100% would have thrown beer on you at that '87 Anthrax concert if you were wearing a Poison t-shirt.
And Van Halen was a tough one, because (a) undeniably glam but also (b) undeniably awesome. Fortunately they turned into Van Hagar and just unambiguously started to suck.
At least David Lee Roth's solo career went places.
79: Yeah, there was a fairly clear lyrical subject matter divide too, IIRC, which sort of corresponded to the light/heavy distinction. Poison didn't write songs about military history, not that that wouldn't have been awesome.
I believe the divide was the band "Armored Saint". They were called "Armored Saint" and had lyrics about war and dragons and stuff. But they were a hair metal band.
83: And their lead singer went on to join Anthrax.
I saw Armored Saint live back in the day. They were great. They were definitely not a glam band, though.
43: whoa, dude. you might need to back up off that crazy train you're riding now. it's not an indefensible view, so much as it is totally wrong. because sabbath is about the first sabbath album, to a very great degree.
the weird thing with anthrax et al was not their contrast with poison or their ilk but that they were explicitly punk rock and then in like 1987? or something they turned into a metal band, but everyone was like, 'nbd,' despite having hated metal before--it had been the official punk rock position that sabbath, for example, sucked. some weird switch flipped. the 'hardest' punk rockers, the non-ska ones, turned into biohazard clones. well, and biohazard itself did so, if you squint at it right. mötley crüe was more metal and less hair than they are sometimes credited with, to a large extent because they sucked at their instruments in a way that either extinguishes your damp would-be-band entirely or takes things in a happy stooges/ramones direction.
I am interested to learn that it's relatively easy (for some value of easy) to copy randy rhoads vs other ass-kicking, cut-out-neck-shredding soloists. easier, I guess. his playing is white as fuck, but I guess I just don't feel that much more funky about eddie van halen, whatever other virtues he may have. more variable...timbre? literal type of sound the guitar is making? for sure. no, I'm listening to panama, and I feel it, OK. I took my girl y to her first concert when she was a baby, just two (outdoors, and we were up at the top of an open-air amphitheater, so, not hellishly loud. we also waited till the end of the day, so it was cool.) the cops near the entrance said, as we walked in, "taking a baby to ozzfest? that's just wrong." reunion tour! hahahaha.
I guess I just don't feel that much more funky about eddie van halen
I think the Van Halen sound is the contrast between the bass and drums, which are very straight [almost plodding], and unsyncopated with his guitar playing, which is much more slippery and syncopated.
yeah, like I say, re-considering I do find the guitar comparatively rhythmically loose.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bg1UG0GwIKc
Hilarious vid, but the guitar is doing lots of percussive syncopated things with the little palm muted, bits and his lead fills aren't straight 8th or 16th notes, or sextuplets, in the way that, say, Rhoads, would be.
Or, even:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwiZxdTzz7o
or
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuyvT8nFMLY
The timing of what he's playing isn't 'straight'. Especially when he switches back and forth between rhythm and lead fills.
Many years ago, when I bought a convertible with my first law firm paycheck, one of the first things I did was blast "Unchained" while driving 75 on surface streets. Because, really, what's the point of having a convertible if you can't do that. I don't know that Van Halen is the best band generally but it's the best band for doing that with. I was pretty embarrassed by the looks of contempt but it was still worth it.