Just listening to Joni’s “Hejira” it strikes me that “Furry sings the blues” would be immeasurably improved by the terrible harmonica playing being dropped out. In the remix, this is gone.
What other bits do you wish weren’t there?
Musings on the byways of popular culture
The Oboe solo in REM’s Nightswimming. Turns a moving song into schmaltz. They did a voice and piano version on Jools Holland that was a great improvement.
The bursts of the wedding March on the last Pet Shop Boys album made me cringe.
Any skit on any rap record ever, particularly that one by Big Pun on Capital Punishment.
And I’m presuming there’ll be a separate thread for Yoko?
Edit the skits out of De La Soul is Dead and you’ve got a really very good album indeed. There’s about 25 minutes worth of that nonsense with yer man out of Black Sheep on the CD – unfunny and actually quite whingey and mean-spirited.
The worst skits, apart from the sound of Big Pun ‘having sex’, are those on Australian rap records. I’m not a particular fan of Hilltop Hoods anyway, but the music is sort of a mix of US style and UK style, so whilst you can make out the Aussie accents, it’s not too far away from what you’re used to rap albums sounding like. But then come the skits and the are quite jarring, because you’re suddenly listening to a sweary version of Neighbours.
Aussie rap is a circle of hell that even Dante dared not imagine.
Doynt Believe the Hoype!
Don’t tell me, don’t tell me…Ian Paisley?
Yes, I was being diplomatic!
Um.
Is “it’s not too far away from what you’re used to rap albums sounding like” supposed to be a good thing?
Any song with a rap bit, actually. I have nothing against it as a form but generally don’t like the mixture.
I still like this and I notice there’s a goat in the video.
There’s a Hejira remix! Where?
😉
With added, er, ambience?
Think of the neighbours!
PS. I’ve got Hejira on a vinly. After twenty minutes you have to turn it over. Then there’s the record…
Jaco says: BOOODOWWWWWWWW
Do you have a spy camera in my bedroom?
Bedroom?
Didn’t have you down as vanilla, Tiggs.
I’m flexible about the definition of bed and of room.
I knew it….
I would like a remix of The Rich Kids Ghosts Of Princes In Towers.
One where Mick Ronson didn’t just put the faders on full and walk away.
To paraphrase Gerald, the production on that album is … questionable
Gerald is very much a “field” man…
David bloody Attenborough etc
Oops, wrong Gerald…I keep doing that…
Isn’t that Shakey on the harmonica? It’s great!
For a moment there I harboured the unlikely notion that you meant Shakin’ Stevens.
D’oh! 🤦♂️
*They could drop that laugh at the end of Big Yellow Taxi though
I listened to that album on Tuesday night. It’s so beautiful and then that bit comes along like a dustman’s fart.
Another vote to de-laugh the taxi…
You need the version on Miles of Aisles. Smoking hot band – Tom Scott & the LA Express – and no jarring laugh:
That’s the one!
The children singing on Talk Talk’s ‘Happiness Is Easy’.
I’m not keen on the recorders* at the end of ‘Time It’s Time’, either…
*they sound like recorders, but might be mellodicas.
Wow. I always thought that they are both brilliant bits that raise the emotional impact of the respective song.
I can’t imagine what could replace them, and their being there doesn’t affect my love for the whole record.
I like the children singing – they sound tired and slightly out of tune and that works in the context of the song.
The kids singing at the end of We Are the Pigs is brilliantly scary – it’s not so much the fire crackling in the background, it’s the giggling.
The crash cymbal in ‘Hurricane’. On one studio expedition I was involved in, the engineer spotted our drummer’s and sagely instructed that he was allowed to use it twice. Per day.
Maybe Lou Reed had a point…
PJ Harvey’s This glorious land would be flawless but for the ridiculous trumpet hunting call that comes in 3 or 4 times on the record.
Also, I don’t like Coldplay but I do like their song Fix You until it decides to rock out – it’s as if they don’t have a clue if the singer is a ballad or a rocker and decide to fucking ruin it.
I genuinely looked out of the window when I first heard it, a flashback to that horrid craze about 40 years ago when people thought it was a good idea to have their car horns honking Dixieland. It was when it came on again that I realised it was from the record, and you’re right, it spoiled the album for me.
Seem to remember she was in favour of fox hunting.
@dai a bit odd considering she is a vegetarian.
May be mistaken but I remember an NME interview where she spoke out about it, caused a bit of controversy, her take being she is a country person and city types don’t understand these things
https://www.nme.com/news/music/pj-harvey-150-1385377
There y’ go
Show that article to today’s kids and say, “Ha! You think you invented being stupid?”
Why would anyone expect rock musicians to have sensible opinions about anything but rock music?
Not even then, in quite a lot of cases, but then yer average punter wouldn’t be expected to have especially sensible opinions either.
I’d go back to the 80s and confiscate every chorus pedal on every guitar pedal board in every studio. And I’d stick a fork into the digital reverb modules. And probably push over the odd Yamaha DX7 fouling the place up.
But if you want specifics, I’d boot the baby out of the studio when Stevie was recording Isn’t She Lovely, I’d mix out the crowd sounds from So You Want to be a Rock and Roll Star, and I’d digitally lube Bonzo’s kick pedal.
You heartless bastard, you’ve terrified my lovely chorus pedal. Here she is, before going into hiding, petrified she’ll be confiscated.
Dude, get more pedals. They make you a better guitarist. These are The Rules
That’s the only one I own. Or need.
You want a digital delay with that. Non more 80s.
Check out solo at 3.23. Magnificent!
Second Coming with way less guitar overdubs. Some of the bootleg recordings are much more stripped down and all the better for it.
Erm, I’d edit out the voices and the instruments from “Astral Weeks”.
Haha
Absolute Beginners (the Bowie one) is great and would be better without the sax.
Also, Blue Jean.
But all 80s pop singles had to have a cheesey sax solo. It was “The Ways”.
The one on Love Will Tear Us Apart was most incongruous.
“Where’s me washboard?”
“You’re wearing it, mate, like flattery bullet proof vest”
Wrong type of brass. Not one of them is playing a soprano sax whilst wearing a pastel-coloured jacket with sleeves rolled to the elbows. Did Kenny G die in vain?
Substitute the v in the final word above with a p and one would certainly hope it could be so.
Just a tad harsh, methinks…