My dad has this attachment to 50s rock and roll and he rightly believes everything in pop music was invented in the 50s and possibly the 60s.

I remember most of these songs (the british ones) coming out and me being fascinated by what could be done differently to what was then the mainstream. However pop quickly devolved through the 80s and I found myself meandering back in time, from late to early Talking Heads, from late to early Genesis and Floyd and Yes and Jethro Tull and Mike Oldfield and Fleetwood Mac, discovering the Beatles and the Beach Boys were actually good at some point, finding out Frank Zappa was a thing and discovering that yes, the guy who made late 20th century pop music up in his garage, with his searches for new sounds and writing his own music and lyrics was indeed one Buddy Holly in the 50s.

Anyway I found myself listening to a rather childish track by Basement Jaxx years later and could not quite put my finger on what made that one track work for me. All these bands that only have one really good track... Anyway what was going on was a Gary Numan sample.

So I went back and listened to some of this old stuff and I was really surpised that some of it still works.

But back in 1980 if you heard Numan, early Midge Ure Ultravox minus the ubiquitous title track of the album, Visage, or a couple of years later the Eurythmics you would hear a sound that was strikingly new and different.

Thinking back Peter Gabriels 3rd solo album (although itself very electronic) took me out of the electronic pop bandcamp and more into alternative rock. That and lucking into a friend who had an older brother who had all the old Genesis records also as sheet music including lyrics. That or David Byrne.

The main point is the music you like is the music you liked when you were 13.

Measurably less intelligent. Nice summary. Starts as a rant but gets deeper.

Mercury at 4:00 and 5:33. Gold.

Also appearing: Frank Zappa.

I could not care less about "pop music" as such, but why cant there be even just one radio station run by someone competent to pick music?

Disclaimer: I like the first Coldplay album.

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I do also think it's effing awesome-There's after-market fits for other guitars beside a Gibson, unless you just want a Les Paul or SG (personally, love the action and tone and fretboard on a classic SG because it's wide and smooth all the way up the neck, and because Zappa played hardly anything else).

If you play a lot though and on an axe you know, and I tend to tune a lot between hammerins', you get really fast at getting the thing back in tune becasue you sense the one or two strings that need attention and are always tuning them back between bending the hell out of em.

I DO dig these for the variety of tunings over the perfect pitchitude aspect of it, especially for a go-to rock guitar. It's got like what, five standard tunings plugged-in??

ME and my roommate were discussing the lack of 'soul' in some musicians, and were using examples like Steve Vai vs. Frank Zappa and say, Yngwie Malmsteen vs. Buckethead, etc (for guitarists) and he brought up the whole Japanese fascination with jazz vs. a lot of her practitioner's technical skills relative to their lack of 'soul' and I was trying to think of an example of a Japanese musician WITH some soul, and could not remember this woman's name as I used her as an exception to the 'soulless', technical performer-

Thanks again Kulpims (pretty sure you first turned me on to this artist here), this woman has the whole soul + technical prowess package²

frank zappa already covered this... the radio is full of songs about love and feeling good, and thats not the pattern we see

Moon Unit Zappa has to be the greatest self-aware child naming in the history of the sport.

If you wanna see about 45 minutes of Bruce Bickford's schizophrenic claymation interspersed with some great concert footage of the Sheik Yerbouti tour (Terry Bozio/Adrian Belew) , check out Zappa's film, "Baby Snakes."

I've met a few heavyweight jazz musicians-Dizzy Gillespie, Marcus Roberts, Sonny Rollins, McCoy Tyner, Herbie Mann, uhhh...Met B.B. KIng after a show (all these are in passing after shows) Partied with Ike Willis a couple times in different states (guitar player for Zappa for years)
Played 3 holes of golf onna photo shoot with Nolan Ryan when he pitched for the Astros.
Met a few rock stars, Met and spoke with Roger Daltrey when I was 11 years old atta Mall record shop in Dallas(1976 NA Tour, last with Kieth Moon) , my mom was standing in line to get her albums autographed, and then when it was her turn, she grabbed Daltrey by his head and hi-jacked him with a wet one, got a picture of that one...Daltrey looked overwhelmed and looked over at me and asked, "That your mum?!"

Most impressive star-saturation came Labor Day weekend, 1975 in Atoka Oklahoma atta 3-day outdoor concert event...camp out-I was 10, found a backstage pass onna chain, and wandered around backstage and on buses with a fuckload of country stars.
Waylon Jennings, Jerry Jeff Walker, can't remember em all, I was a little kid but i remember a lotta musicians tripping on me running around backstage-Some thought I was just a roadie's kid.
Met Jerry Lee Lewis backstage there....

Thanks for the promote, Zappa! It's too bad your will to practice was crushed by your teachers. At least you have great musical taste!

*quality zappa

*promote zappa

And here all this time I thought you looked like Frank Zappa.