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Re: [newmellotrongroup] Singer

2008-03-16 by Mike Dickson

I would probably agree re rock in general and prog rock in particular on the basis that (1) most people cannot sing, especially those who think they can, and (2) singers generally need lyrics and lyrics generally mean some of the worst cod poetry you'll ever encounter this side of William McGonagall. The number of rock musicians who can pen even reasonable lyrics is limited to roughly the number of digits one may expect to encounter on the furthest end of your rightmost upper limb, and most of those only enjoy such a reputation on the basis of one or two things they have done, rather that on their entire canon. One might be tempted to argue against this by saying that even great poets had their off days, but I think that statistically the evidence leans towards the side of rock music lyrics having been written by what appears to be the early product of the celebrated infinite number of monkeys with a similar quantity of typrewriters.

However, I'd completely disagree about 'any musical act of any kind' as early choral music is about as good as music gets. That the libretto is voiced in Latin helps this all along somewhat as the meaning of what they are singing about is not clear. For all I know, the gallous Mr Byrd might be causing his choirsters to sing something like

Yeah God, isn't he great?
Yeah.
No but seriously. He is.
Look at what he did.
Probably.
Yeah.
Fucken great dood.

but we are all left in the dark due to the fact that on the page at least it reads like the Rosetta Stone.

Mike



steve_tebble wrote:

Mike Dickson recently said:

"I still think that my abiding fondness for King Crimson lies in the
fact that their best work was always done when the singer simply shut
up and let the rest of the band get on with it."

Surely that applies to any prog rock band, indeed any band, indeed any
musical act of any kind since primitive man first invented the art form
we call 'music.'

Discuss.







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