ROUND 19 - THE FINALS - V

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Vote for the song you like LEAST

Poll ended at 18 Jul 2019, 10:42am

Trash City
6
30%
Yalla Yalla
12
60%
Get Down Moses
2
10%
 
Total votes: 20

Flex
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ROUND 19 - THE FINALS - V

Post by Flex »

The high road is just luxury condos now for international investment bankers.
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a bowl of soup
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a rolling hoop
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a ton of lead
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matedog
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Re: ROUND 19 - THE FINALS - V

Post by matedog »

I have to think about my vote for a change. Going with YY. GDM is what I'm hoping takes it all and Trash City is funner than YY.
Look, you have to establish context for these things. And I maintain that unless you appreciate the Fall of Constantinople, the Great Fire of London, and Mickey Mantle's fatalist alcoholism, live Freddy makes no sense. If you want to half-ass it, fine, go call Simon Schama to do the appendix.

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Re: ROUND 19 - THE FINALS - V

Post by Dr. Medulla »

A bit of a coin flip between YY and TC, but I chose to vote out YY because I know I'm more likely to play TC.
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Flex
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Re: ROUND 19 - THE FINALS - V

Post by Flex »

Yikes, this is another one that's going to take some thinking. Yalla Yalla may be the more epic and well put together song, but Trash City is such a perfect distillation of its form, and GDM is Joe's last great shamanic performance. Who knows.

Anyways, I was thinking about some of the the complaints about the wrong songs making it, etc. I'd posit that this is at least in part because Joe's output hasn't really been canonized yet. The Clash's catalog is pretty well-worn territory, and while we had a couple upsets here and there we pretty much stuck to the critical and fan consensus on tunes that should have deep runs in a tournament - even when we were debating, it was all over fairly well-trod ground. Even BAD, I'd argue, reflected a sort of common knowledge about the catalog and what should rise to the top - the unimpeachable first album, the highs of the strummer/jones collaborations, the strong first half of tighten up, the minor gems of megatop, etc.

I don't think there's really a similar narrative around Joe's solo work yet - partly because the strongest material is also decades newer than everything else we've discussed. We're still getting new tracks and live material and such all these years later that the picture of what we're working with is just starting to crystallize. Add in that there's still a lot of (relatively) fresh personal attachment to his later material and I think we're doing some of the initial sorting work of what constitutes a Joe solo canon, really. I mean, with The Clash and BAD I basically knew what matchups would count as an upset if one song advance much further than another, but - apart from a couple Meskies singles - I couldn't have really told you the same thing for Joe's stuff.

Less of a roadmap to go by, so the debates can feel a bit more personal and the results can be a touch more jarring when we see what's getting voted to move forward and what gets cut and when.
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a bowl of soup
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a rolling hoop
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a ton of lead
Wiggle - you can raise the dead

Pex Lives!

matedog
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Re: ROUND 19 - THE FINALS - V

Post by matedog »

Flex wrote:
17 Jul 2019, 10:53am
Yikes, this is another one that's going to take some thinking. Yalla Yalla may be the more epic and well put together song, but Trash City is such a perfect distillation of its form, and GDM is Joe's last great shamanic performance. Who knows.

Anyways, I was thinking about some of the the complaints about the wrong songs making it, etc. I'd posit that this is at least in part because Joe's output hasn't really been canonized yet. The Clash's catalog is pretty well-worn territory, and while we had a couple upsets here and there we pretty much stuck to the critical and fan consensus on tunes that should have deep runs in a tournament - even when we were debating, it was all over fairly well-trod ground. Even BAD, I'd argue, reflected a sort of common knowledge about the catalog and what should rise to the top - the unimpeachable first album, the highs of the strummer/jones collaborations, the strong first half of tighten up, the minor gems of megatop, etc.

I don't think there's really a similar narrative around Joe's solo work yet - partly because the strongest material is also decades newer than everything else we've discussed. We're still getting new tracks and live material and such all these years later that the picture of what we're working with is just starting to crystallize. Add in that there's still a lot of (relatively) fresh personal attachment to his later material and I think we're doing some of the initial sorting work of what constitutes a Joe solo canon, really. I mean, with The Clash and BAD I basically knew what matchups would count as an upset if one song advance much further than another, but - apart from a couple Meskies singles - I couldn't have really told you the same thing for Joe's stuff.

Less of a roadmap to go by, so the debates can feel a bit more personal and the results can be a touch more jarring when we see what's getting voted to move forward and what gets cut and when.
Fair points. His output was so sporadic and erratic too. You have a ton of material 87-89, then basically nothing except a muddy bootlegged soundtrack in 93 until 99 (i'm sure I'm forgetting some stuff) and then a ton of material 99-02. Even the 87-89 material was erratic - one proper solo album, one heavily latin/folk soundtrack with three vocal tracks, another soundtrack that amounted to an EP with a new band, two basically solo tracks from another soundtrack. It's less of a straight than Mick proceeded with. With BAD, it's pretty easy to understand where he started and where he went. Far less so with Joe.

As a side note, I hold the Walker tracks in very high regard and was dumbfounded they went away so early. Same for Burning Lights.
Look, you have to establish context for these things. And I maintain that unless you appreciate the Fall of Constantinople, the Great Fire of London, and Mickey Mantle's fatalist alcoholism, live Freddy makes no sense. If you want to half-ass it, fine, go call Simon Schama to do the appendix.

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Re: ROUND 19 - THE FINALS - V

Post by Dr. Medulla »

matedog wrote:
17 Jul 2019, 11:30am
His output was so sporadic and erratic too.
That's the nut of the problem to me. Mick went in a fairly clear direction and had immediately released two stellar documents reflecting that style, then played around off that blueprint. There is no single Joe album that we can say, yup, that's what he was about after 1985. We can laud his restless creative impulses but it's next-to-impossible to summarize, especially when there's so much disagreement about which styles succeeded and which didn't. Joe's post-Clash career will always have a certain Chinese restaurant menu quality to it for fans.
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Re: ROUND 19 - THE FINALS - V

Post by Wolter »

Can’t believe I voted YY, but that’s what we’re down to, I guess.

I’ll co-sign what Flex said with the codicil that everyone who disagrees with me even slightly isn’t a True Fan and will be purged when The Revolution comes. :shifty:
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Re: ROUND 19 - THE FINALS - V

Post by matedog »

Dr. Medulla wrote:
17 Jul 2019, 11:38am
matedog wrote:
17 Jul 2019, 11:30am
His output was so sporadic and erratic too.
That's the nut of the problem to me. Mick went in a fairly clear direction and had immediately released two stellar documents reflecting that style, then played around off that blueprint. There is no single Joe album that we can say, yup, that's what he was about after 1985. We can laud his restless creative impulses but it's next-to-impossible to summarize, especially when there's so much disagreement about which styles succeeded and which didn't. Joe's post-Clash career will always have a certain Chinese restaurant menu quality to it for fans.
There is a general love of (for lack of a better term) world music that is a common theme throughout his solo work (something that you'd think he'd be cooler about by 2000 than feel the need to write Bhindi Bhagee (sorry, I can't help myself)). But the flood/drought releases is really jarring. I love the broad breadth of his work and strongly prefer it to BAD, but yeah, Walker to It's a Rockin' World to Minstrel Boy is whiplash inducing.
Look, you have to establish context for these things. And I maintain that unless you appreciate the Fall of Constantinople, the Great Fire of London, and Mickey Mantle's fatalist alcoholism, live Freddy makes no sense. If you want to half-ass it, fine, go call Simon Schama to do the appendix.

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Re: ROUND 19 - THE FINALS - V

Post by Wolter »

Honestly, I kind of wish Mick hadn’t gotten so locked into the BAD groove and had been more restless. But I’m also that outlier that thinks BAD is overall underwhelming after a fairly strong start.
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Re: ROUND 19 - THE FINALS - V

Post by Kory »

Flex wrote:
17 Jul 2019, 10:53am
Yikes, this is another one that's going to take some thinking. Yalla Yalla may be the more epic and well put together song, but Trash City is such a perfect distillation of its form, and GDM is Joe's last great shamanic performance. Who knows.

Anyways, I was thinking about some of the the complaints about the wrong songs making it, etc. I'd posit that this is at least in part because Joe's output hasn't really been canonized yet. The Clash's catalog is pretty well-worn territory, and while we had a couple upsets here and there we pretty much stuck to the critical and fan consensus on tunes that should have deep runs in a tournament - even when we were debating, it was all over fairly well-trod ground. Even BAD, I'd argue, reflected a sort of common knowledge about the catalog and what should rise to the top - the unimpeachable first album, the highs of the strummer/jones collaborations, the strong first half of tighten up, the minor gems of megatop, etc.

I don't think there's really a similar narrative around Joe's solo work yet - partly because the strongest material is also decades newer than everything else we've discussed. We're still getting new tracks and live material and such all these years later that the picture of what we're working with is just starting to crystallize. Add in that there's still a lot of (relatively) fresh personal attachment to his later material and I think we're doing some of the initial sorting work of what constitutes a Joe solo canon, really. I mean, with The Clash and BAD I basically knew what matchups would count as an upset if one song advance much further than another, but - apart from a couple Meskies singles - I couldn't have really told you the same thing for Joe's stuff.

Less of a roadmap to go by, so the debates can feel a bit more personal and the results can be a touch more jarring when we see what's getting voted to move forward and what gets cut and when.
Well said.
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Re: ROUND 19 - THE FINALS - V

Post by Kory »

Wolter wrote:
17 Jul 2019, 11:54am
Honestly, I kind of wish Mick hadn’t gotten so locked into the BAD groove and had been more restless. But I’m also that outlier that thinks BAD is overall underwhelming after a fairly strong start.
The difference between the two perhaps throws into very sharp relief who the driving force of the Clash's experimentation was. Mick was obviously the tunesmith, but I wonder how much of it was Joe saying "let's do this one as a soca tune."
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Re: ROUND 19 - THE FINALS - V

Post by Dr. Medulla »

Kory wrote:
17 Jul 2019, 12:56pm
Wolter wrote:
17 Jul 2019, 11:54am
Honestly, I kind of wish Mick hadn’t gotten so locked into the BAD groove and had been more restless. But I’m also that outlier that thinks BAD is overall underwhelming after a fairly strong start.
The difference between the two perhaps throws into very sharp relief who the driving force of the Clash's experimentation was. Mick was obviously the tunesmith, but I wonder how much of it was Joe saying "let's do this one as a soca tune."
Maybe, but it's also possible that without Mick, Joe's "wilderness years" never ended. Which is to say, Mick grounded him and gave him a confidence that he had a harder time regaining afterwards.
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Flex
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Re: ROUND 19 - THE FINALS - V

Post by Flex »

Very begrudgingly joining the crowd and voting Yalla Yalla. A top 10 Joe tune for me, but the other two are even better encapsulations of the song modes they represent.
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a bowl of soup
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a rolling hoop
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a ton of lead
Wiggle - you can raise the dead

Pex Lives!

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Re: ROUND 19 - THE FINALS - V

Post by Heston »

I've come around to Trash City a bit but was massively underwhelmed on release. VERY surprised it is going to make the last two.
There's a tiny, tiny hopeful part of me that says you guys are running a Kaufmanesque long con on the board

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Re: ROUND 19 - THE FINALS - V

Post by Marky Dread »

Heston wrote:
17 Jul 2019, 1:27pm
I've come around to Trash City a bit but was massively underwhelmed on release. VERY surprised it is going to make the last two.
Really good tune bloody awful mix.
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