The Last Bass Outpost
Main Forums => The Outpost Cafe => Topic started by: Basvarken on December 24, 2016, 08:51:46 AM
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The Grim Reaper is not done with 2016 yet...
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/dec/24/status-quo-guitarist-rick-parfitt-dies-aged-68
RIP Rick Parfitt
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wr3JO0MhFTY
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RIP
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Hard year. :sad:
RIP Rick.
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RIP. Shoulder injury becomes lethal infection? Sounds like it could be hospital malpractice.
Only a week left in a brutal year. And Carrie Fisher is in intensive care.
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I think ol' RP's ticket was booked some years back... just kept cheating it... you can only run so fast and ol' Grim Reaper can run all day and all night without taking a breath... at least he's not playing a Gibson... rip Rick... you were a key part of my childhood and teens with your buddies... :sad:
(http://www.chainimage.com/images/grim-reaper-reaper-dark-fantasy-music-other-digital-art-guitars.jpg)
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crewed for Quo last week, was just not right without Parfitt
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First concert I ever went to was Quo in 1974 or 75. RIP
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crewed for Quo last week, was just not right without Parfitt
Was it only because he was ailing? Hard to imagine the band going forward without him.
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dunno I didnt even know about it til show time
they had some young un playing and singing all his parts so the tour seemed to be planned around his absence.
Rossi just looked lost
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He suffered a severe heart attack last summer at a gig in Antalya Turkey. Narrow escape. He quit touring immediately.
Quo weren't a shadow of themselves anymore even before Parfitt had to quit.
More like a cabaret doing silly medleys.
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There's plenty of precedence for bands with little or no original members... Foreigner, with guest Mick Jones, Foghat with original rhythm section but no original singers or guitarists, Wishbone Ash with one orig, Yes have nearly run out, Thin Lizzy, Blackfoot, Heart still have their original singers, Quiet Riot, Guns and Roses, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Whitesnake and even Deep Purple, to name but a few...
The other side of the coin... U2 and ZZ Top are pretty much the only fully originals that come to mind; bound to be others...
Sing-a-long-a-Quo has been the case for many years, unfortunately...
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I saw Rick's picture on the evening news on Christmas Eve - my dad had the volume turned down in his living room - and I immediately knew what it meant, it stopped me dead in my tracks. I'm probably more emotionally attached to Quo than I am to Deep Purple or Judas Priest.
His health had been fragile since the last twenty years. His first heart attack around age 50, bypasses, throat cancer, more heart attacks (on several occasions), this year clinically dead for a couple of minutes following a gig in Turkey, loss of memory (the two months prior to his clinical death), the recent fall in Spain.
His band mate Francis Rossi saw him resusicated this summer and never one to mince words: "I saw Rick's body jump into the air from the defibrillators again and again, not a pretty sight and I wouldn't want to have it done to me, I was about to tell them to stop it and leave him."
Parfitt and Rossi were the cokeheads within Quo (which in part explains the frenzied energy they had in the 70ies), but Rick was also a drinker (Rossi turned teetotaler) and smoker (Rossi kicked that habit too). And while always the good-natured affable Quo (Rossi has a caustic, even slightly callous nature), he had hs demons since his little daughter Heidi drowned in his swimming pool in 1980 which also killed his first marriage. "Life goes on eventually", he once said, "but you never get over something like that."
In memoriam of the "most handsome Quo" (he won all the polls in the girlie mags!), the "blond rock god" and the idiosyncratic rhythm guitar heart of them:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mFt9cjcXsA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8cdGQiEtws
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dG2jj-aIl-A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pID11AfVWB4
(PS: I saw Quo without Rick this November, the new guy played all the right notes and it was an excellent gig, but then you could teach most guitarists Keith Richards' parts too, yet the Stones wouldn't sound the same without him. It's the same thing with Quo, Parfitt was a force of nature on rhythm guitar, the music was arranged around him. Anybody who plays .14 as his "light" E-String and has the low E in gauges up to .60 is almost a bass player at heart anyway. :) )
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ya6uFrr10s
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His death isn't on the news here, not surprising since Quo is almost unknown here. They're a one-hit wonder from 1968.
I emailed a local friend and asked if he had heard the news. His reply: "I saw that Rick died, but of course he was a real musician so no publicity for him."
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His death isn't on the news here, not surprising since Quo is almost unknown here. They're a one-hit wonder from 1968.
I emailed a local friend and asked if he had heard the news. His reply: "I saw that Rick died, but of course he was a real musician so no publicity for him."
That's true that Status Quo was one of those famous bands that didn't get enough attention at all in the U.S. On the other hand, millions of people all over the world know who Rick Parfitt was and are mourning his death. That's in contrast to many others who die in obscurity. That guitarist for the Outsiders comes to mind. He also died at the age of 68, but in an Ohio nursing home. (Of course the American Outsiders, not the Dutch.)
RIP Rick Parfitt
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Between my friends in the UK and my musician friends, my timeline on Facebook had plenty of announcement posts. The first time I ever heard of Quo was in '84 when I got to England, and they seemed (to me) to be more of a sentimental favorite/oldies band even then, but they were well loved, so I'm not surprised to see Rick's passing making the kind of impact (in England/Europe) that it is. RIP
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Status Quo were a real people's band, they did nothing for your brains, but there was something primal and joyous about them (aided by the fact that most of their songs were in major keys and whenever they rarely played a minor key song you could bet that Rossi's solo would be transposed and back in a major key again). You went to a Quo gig like you went to a game of your favorite soccer or football team.
For a hard rock musician that played rhythm guitar and sang perhaps a third of Quo's canon, the coverage of his death in Europe was wide - all the major newspapers covered it and generally benevolently with the remark that to build a career as long lasting as his "based on three chords" was an achievement in itself (most Quo songs have more chords, they often altered the trad 12 bar scheme with more "poppy" sounding related chords, a lot of their stuff - especially Rossi's songwriting - is even British folk music inspired). But Quo themselves played on the image given to them, they never pretended to be art.
(http://thumbs1.picclick.com/d/l400/pict/331982540924_/Status-Quo-in-Search-Of-The-Fourth-Chord.jpg)
Over the years - after the original, much loved and grittier, less poppy original line up split -, Rossi and Parfitt cultivated a sort of Abbott & Costello image for themselves, they were alsways the duo identitfied with Quo (though the "new" line up stayed stable for decades, drum stool excepted).
(http://i2.chroniclelive.co.uk/incoming/article8218827.ece/ALTERNATES/s615/JS51798092.jpg)
(https://amor1magazin.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/parfitt-und-rossi-foto-simon-cooper-kf.jpg)
(http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/04/19/10/27BC556100000578-3045528-image-m-37_1429436341335.jpg)
(http://assets.teamrock.com/image/3259baee-48da-40a4-991d-a4ef240602ad?w=800)
They became the trademark of Quo to an extent that the Queen of England asked a momentarily single Rossi at a Royal Reception: "But there is two of you, right?!"
I'm sure there were legal reasons for that image too: When Rossi and Parfitt wrestled the Status Quo name out of bassist Alan Lancaster's hands in the mid-80ies, the judge found in favor of them that the Status Quo brand was intrinsically identified with them as long as they stayed together and made music.
The ubiquity of Francis/Rick goofy, self-deprecating shots plus their incessant touring had a lot to do with Rick being remembered like he was now. I don't remember Jon Lord being in the evening news in Germany when he died though DP beat Status Quo in Germany anytime as regards media sales and concert attendance figures - not to mention acceptance as "serious musicians". But folksy Quo were well-liked and -known by people with even the most fleeting knowledge of their music.
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Between my friends in the UK and my musician friends, my timeline on Facebook had plenty of announcement posts. The first time I ever heard of Quo was in '84 when I got to England, and they seemed (to me) to be more of a sentimental favorite/oldies band even then, but they were well loved, so I'm not surprised to see Rick's passing making the kind of impact (in England/Europe) that it is. RIP
Being old and sober, I do remember Pictures of Matchstick Men in the late 60s, but had no idea the band still existed until about 1990 when the radio station playing at work aired a long story about their history.
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That's true that Status Quo was one of those famous bands that didn't get enough attention at all in the U.S...
Michael's comment is nicely to the point... oddly, from what I remember, although it is not entirely true, musically or otherwise, it was oft commented that they never broke the USofA due to Foghat (being perceived as a USofA "boogie" band) holding that niche so successfully... as a side order, it was also oft quoted that GFR didn't break here because of the Sabbs... neither sounds right to me, then or now, but that was the press...
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GFR hadly ever toured Europe, they were busy enough in the US. By the time they toured Europe, they were past their commercial (if not artistic - I like the later GFR stuff better) prime. There is a similarity in Grand Funk's and Black Sabbath early formative work - that bludgeoning, lava-style approach (Cactus had that too), but both bands left that behind and stretched their wings by their third albums. Grand Funk showed their Detroit/Motown roots more and more as they progressed as songwriters, they became really souldful by the time Craig Frost had become a permanent member and I always thought that made them stand out, but it didn't catch on in Europe where they were perceived as a singles band with more poppy tracks such as We're an American Band, Locomotion and Some Kind of Wonderful. You danced to Grand Funk songs at school discos, but you didn't ardently listen through their live double albums at home. No idea why. I knew them well from my days at the American School in Kinshasa where they were as popular as Deep Purple and Led Zep (and Sabbath).
Quo repeatedly tried to crack the US - more tours, more commercial producers, remixing their albums more "FM friendly" for the US market, none of it worked and by the late 70ies they had pretty much given up, a US remix of the Whatever You Want album being their last half-hearted attempt (it went nowhere in the US). At the same time they were hugely successful everywhere else (Europe, Japan, Australia), so eventually they did what GFR did and tour their tried and trusted markets. Noddy Holder of Slade (who also never cracked the US) once said that they shared the fate with Slade of "being too British" (together with the fact that they both shunned drawn out soloing which Holder felt was mandatory by audience expectations on the US concert circuit at the time: "We'd play 12 songs in 45 minutes and Humble Pie would play six songs in 2 1/2 hours, we'd watch them open-mouthed, it was a complete new world to us, but we just weren't that type of band."). But that theory can't account for the fact why a band so overtly Limey (and song oriented rather than solo-happy) as The Kinks always meant more in the US than in their home country.
And I really don't think that there is an American band that sounds remotely like Status Quo - that brash British, perennially throbbing and thrusting guitar sound coupled with the catchy melodies and their harmony vocals was pretty unique (if repetetive). For a band that did a lot of 12 bar influenced music, they were strangely unbluesy (as they were the first admit: they only began listening to blues in the late sixties, way after the British blues boom, the American blues greats meant nothing to them and they felt inadequate because of that). Foghat were way more bluesy than Quo, they were the white stadium version of black blues just as Rare Earth were the white stadium version of black soul.
With their penchant for songs in major keys, Quo are probably best comparable to US Southern Rock bands. Maybe the Lynyrd Skynyrds, Molly Hatchets, Outlaws, Blackfoots and 38 Specials of this world kept them out of the market, but then you could say that where there is room for a couple of bands of that type of music, shouldn't there always be room for one more?
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I'm sure there was room for Status Quo in the U.S. It just sounds like it was just circumstances working against them.
This talk of GFR got me to thinking about them for the first time in a long time. Next to Paul McCartney, I probably felt more inspired by Mel Schacher than anyone. Playing their songs on stage was a lot of fun. Still, when asked to list influences, I'm often hesitant to list Mel Schacher. Because I always had to dumb down those bass lines a little to also do the singing. I just listened to "Inside Looking Out" and "I'm Your Captain." I'd give Mel a 10 and myself a 6.5. But at least I can list him as a influence again if that ever becomes necessary. It has been discussed here before. The critics slammed GFR as being just a garage band. Maybe they weren't very complex. But I was drawn to the music anyway, especially their early music.
Nevertheless, now I'm listening to Status Quo. "Piledriver" and later "Ma Kelly's Greasy Spoon."
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Schacher is a mighty fine bassist, very natural and organic, lots of notes without ever getting in the way. Their big mouth management did them no favors with a lot of people, but both individually (yes, I liked Mark Farner's voice) and as an ensemble, GFR were always gravely underrated IMHO. Their album sleeves tended to be a bit naff (except for that black & white live shot on the 1st live album which was 70ies iconic in look).
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In the band which did the Grand Funk songs, our keyboardist looked so much like Mark Farner that it was uncanny. But he had little to do because we focused on songs from the early albums. I'll agree that, in general, GFR album covers were lacking, though. Not really very professional.
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The late sixties/seventies were the age of the iconic album sleeve. If you had a sleeve that meant or said something, it was generally an indication that your music meant something/had something to say too. I'll readily admit that I explored and got to like numerous albums via a sleeve design that attracted me - probably more than through radio airplay.
Some album covers - Sgt. Pepper, Deep Purple in Rock, Led Zep II, Uriah Heep's Very 'Eavy, Very 'Umble, the Stones' Sticky Fingers, Wishbone Ash's Argus, Tull's Aqualung, Sanatana's Abraxas (to this day what I imagine a psychedelic trip to look like, never mind I never took one!), pretty much anything by Roger Dean (Yes, Osibisa), ELP's Tarkus and Brain Salad Surgery, David Bowie's Diamond Dogs, the Sab's Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, Alice Cooper's Greatest Hits (the Warner Bros sleeve) - simply had me in awe just by their look before I even heard the first note.
The death of that art (the downsizing to CD size was a first step) is one reason why I hate what downloading music brought upon (or took away from) us ...
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I don't even have a record player that works. Still, sometimes I will buy an album. Sometimes it's just because of the album cover art. That's an art form that will definitely be missed.
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Still got a few hundred LP's (including GFR's Live Album) and so does Jackie, and a player... old school player...
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In my point of view one of the worst inventions of the 20th century is the jewelcase.
That dreadful design by Peter Doodson has been the frustration of every person on this planet who has ever bought a CD.
1. As Uwe pointed out it is too small. Photographs in the booklet or inlay are diminished to post stamp size.
2. Nobody has ever managed to get a booklet out without frantically trying to get a grip with his or her nails to get the booklet past those little plastic domes at the edge of the lid.
3. The little plastic half round lips always leave ugly dents in the booklet once you've finally managed to get the booklet back in, but not quite under those little half round lips...
4. The part of the jewel case where the booklet sits, always breaks at the hinge. Forever separating the disc and the cover. A very weak point.
5. The middle of the tray that is supposed to hold the CD always breaks after time. Causing the CD to slide around in the case.
I could go on for hours about this awful piece of industrial design.
Thanx for letting me vent...
All hail the vinyl sleeve!
:toast:
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I hate to be a killjoy, but to most, it is difficult to break or scratch an MP3 or a JPG, and when I can carry several thousand songs in a tiny scrap of silicon in an ali case when I'm nowhere near a wifi point...
I have the vinyl for the art-form it was...
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Being old and sober, I do remember Pictures of Matchstick Men in the late 60s, but had no idea the band still existed until about 1990 when the radio station playing at work aired a long story about their history.
Same here
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I agree, jewel boxes also look incredibly cheap as the plastic ages, dulls, scratches and becomes more and more brittle. Vinyl sleeves aged nicely.
The one thing I like CDs for - but it is a major issue for me as a bassist - is the quality/focus of the bass frequencies. I remember listening to the late 60ies Mk I recordings of DP for the first time on CD - albums I had listened to hundreds of times as vinyl and believed to know note for note - and I could for the first time actually hear Ian Paice's busy bass drum as it followed the music. It was a revelation.
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I lost all the info over the summer because of computer problems. But I used to have several good articles explaining why CD quality is the best. Some of it has to do with having a better bass sound. Now I've spent way more on CDs through the years than vinyl albums, too. Some people seem convinced vinyl is better, but I don't think so. Still, since like I was saying, sometimes I still buy vinyl albums despite not having a record player. Maybe there are subliminal messages somewhere. It's like I read about the guy in the 60s who said he knew there must be subliminal messages in TV commercials. Because his wife would keep buying dog food, but they had no dog.
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Ever read The Man In The High Castle, Michael...? ;)
... but it is a major issue for me as a bassist - is the quality/focus of the bass frequencies ...
I've said it before, you discuss the nuances of audio like a fine wine expert discussing the relative differences between two adjacent vineyards in the same growing region... :mrgreen:
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I haven't read that, but anything by Philip K. Dick has got to be good. Amazon has a TV series based on the book that I keep seeing being advertised, although it would be my guess it most likely differs from the book.
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I always hated how vinyl started to sound thin if you exceeded, say, more than 18 minutes playing time per side. "Short" albums - like the Ramones' debut or Kiss' Destroyer - always sounded so much better sonically. And the increasing distortion of the track grooves closer to the center drove me mad too. No track "in the middle" of an album ever sounded as good as the opening track. Vinyl had horrible inherent shortcomings - other than the larger sleeves and the division between "Side A" and "Side B" and the more conscious listening that went with it, I miss nothing.
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Here is an article typical of the ones I lost over the summer. I had some that got into more detail, but this one is still good.
http://www.mcelhearn.com/do-vinyl-records-sound-better-than-cds-spoiler-nope/
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The first time you play a vinyl record with a good turntable and good needle it sounds beautiful. Everything is there, bass included.
But it's all downhill from there. With every spin you give that record, it'll start to wear out, collect dust, get scratches.
And the needle will go blunt too.
It's fun to play old records now and again. Actually, I just did that on new years eve with a friend. And that was good fun. But most of my LPs sound like total crap because I played them to death when I was a teenager...
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Long story. Sorry. Not for squirrel aficionado
I think I posted something similar before. I had a theory and that seems to be right. Sound is not the reason for people buying records, although they say so. Maybe nostalgia counts a little bit, but not even that.
My generation bought band t-shirts (*) to support a band and to show your taste. And of course my wall of CDs was a sign of my taste too. Youngsters buy records as support, as piece of art (of course big sleeves are much prettier), to show their taste and they buy them at concerts for signatures, if possible. Most modern albums have a CD included or they have a download link. And of course there's spotify. So only 70% really play a vinyl album and 30% play it often. Most kids buy them and listen to the songs on spotify or other streaming services at their cell phones.
The people I know bought one of those cheap modern record players with a crappy built in speaker and a needle that can't handle 180gr vinyl, so the sound quality can't impossible be better than their laptop computers.
I really think vinyl sounds better. My former father in law had a Super Audio CD Player, with very expensive preamps, speakers, etc and that sounded so good... but all way too expensive. What Rob says: A new album on a decent record player has a real good sound and I think it's like a tube amp and a solid state one. A tube amp sound more organic. Your ears can handle it better. And with a good needle, a decent player and a good record it will sound well quite a while, but detoriation is a bad thing...
Having said that: I listen to spotify a lot, as a paying member. With normal, not that expensive headphones. I want to hear a song. In the past it was alright on cassette. It was alright on crappy mastered CDs. It's okay on a crappy car stereo. If the song is good, the mix is good and the sound qualitiy isn't too crappy I'm happy quite easily. My Generation used to be exciting on a crappy 60s record player with one crappy speaker and it's exciting on hand built 5000 euro speakers.
(*) A Dutch female blogger got a bit infamous after she said she had two 'Metallic' (without the A) shirts, which looked so good on her knee high boots. Of course it was a Metallica shirt bought at H&M or a similar shop. A friend wrote a CD review about the new Metallica CD which started a bit as follows:
'Of course Metallica is famous because of its clothing brand but not many people know they make CDs too.'
Not many people understod the joke...
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I've always been a bit puzzled about why people wail about the supposedly terrible quality of digital downloads, or even the inadequacies of CDs, yet didn't we all used to spend countless hours listening to cassettes? not to mention hyper-compressed radio? :mrgreen:
Tangent: Neil Young can flog his better-than-CD digital format all he wants, but 99% of us, myself included, will never be able to notice any difference worth paying extra for... and personally I never trust the audio quality beliefs promulgated by people who have spent decades destroying their hearing on stage and in studio.
I once saw a billboard ad for headphones designed to Lou Reed's specifications. Umm... thanks but no thanks. What's next? Hifi speakers with a Pete Townshend endorsement?
(http://blog.parrot.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/0012.png)
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'Of course Metallica is famous because of its clothing brand but not many people know they make CDs too.'
The same could be said for the Ramones and Misfits.
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The Misfits have to win the prize for ratio of people who can recognize a Misfits T-shirt vs. people who can recognize (or have at least knowingly heard) a Misfits song :mrgreen:
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Perhaps I've never spent the required amount of money on a stereo system to be able to hear the difference, but to my ears there has never been an audible difference between CD and vinyl. But as a former radio DJ, I know how fast vinyl goes downhill when cued up, how easy it is to scratch or mess up with fingerprints, how fragile it is when exposed to higher temperatures or later stress in storage, etc.
CDs aren't bulletproof, but their durability, smaller size, resistance to careless handling and (to my ears) equally good sound quality make it a slam-dunk to give up on vinyl. I haven't bought a vinyl record in probably 30 years, but I've bought a lot of CDs.
Good point above related to cassettes. They were invented to take dictation, and only Dolby's technical improvements made them acceptable for musical use. I sure played a lot of cassettes (once I upgraded from 8-track) over the years.
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I preferred the charm of 8-tracks switching tracks in the middle of a song.
Then again, I'm old enough to remember where the term record album came from: an actual album containing 6 sleeves with a 78 rpm record in each.
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Whoops, we've gone off the rails again, as usual. Apologies to Rick Parfitt fans, I mean no disrespect by hijacking your mourning with my snarky comments about audio!
I never knew about Status Quo, but now I do, so thanks for that.
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Then again, I'm old enough to remember where the term record album came from: an actual album containing 6 sleeves with a 78 rpm record in each.
Damn, my dad had one of those... :mrgreen: also had a 10" Marlene Dietrich "LP" with 8 tracks that ran at 33rpm... must have been one of the first LP's I presume... regret getting shot of that one...
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I'm sure Rick won't mind, he was amply celebrated and remembered here.
I liked the bulkiness of 8-track - it gave them a Tonka car-type handling feeling.
(https://hobbydb-production.s3.amazonaws.com/processed_uploads/catalog_item_photo/catalog_item_photo/image/97900/Le_10_Avril_1974._%25C3%2580_New_York_Un_Elephant_De_600_Kg_Est_Mont%25C3%25A8_Sur_Camion_Tonka%2521_Print_Ads_bbaca4b2-1197-4f31-88ec-e62bff522d9c.jpg)
And you had ten of them in the car and your beetle was full. :mrgreen:
Interesting, Dave, about the "record album" origin, I never knew!
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Interesting, Dave, about the "record album" origin, I never knew!
My folks had some.
From a quick image search
(https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/1c/03/be/1c03be11f7efab623a5dfcab4b8ad7ea.jpg)
(http://fieldwoodhs.ednet.ns.ca/slim-album-p114a.jpg)
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Très cool!
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Not only more than decent with three chords, but also more than decent with three wives - they all attended. As Marietta (no 1) once said laughing: "Of course Rick prowls on a certain type of woman!"
(https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/composite-status-quov2.jpg?strip=all&w=750&h=500&crop=1)