The Last Bass Outpost
Main Forums => The Outpost Cafe => Topic started by: uwe on November 26, 2010, 05:47:52 PM
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I know Yoko is making money off it and she split The Beatles as well as bearing some responsibility for Pearl Harbor in a roundabout way (she could have certainly sunk a few battleships with her voice), but ... I still bought it. And like it.
I always thought the original mix of Woman syrupy, this I like:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z69qOwINXOg
Those more austere mixes really bring out what a gifted (and accurate) singer he was:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hc-sCo9yfZ8&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOLWrtfxJRI&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hKSXqefccg&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4C5_JQtkrc&feature=related
Health warning: You also hear Yoko more distinctly too, though I never found her voice anything less than, errm, distinct even at lesser volumes ... Alas, he must have loved her a lot.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcuosQ7xi5g&feature=related
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The only problem I have with Yoko (If I had a problem) is the early howling era and if she wanted to do that she could have chosen her spots a little better.
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I have some mixed feelings about the de-mixed Double Fantasy. I appreciate it on the same level as when I got the separated 4 tracks from Sgt Pepper - great to hear, but only as a twisted Beatle freak getting yet another bootleg. That is most true for Starting Over, which really was envisioned as it was released - Elvis echo, girl background singers, etc. I even miss the "Eastern Airlines" voice. Hearing the distorted guitar up front just makes me wish he had gone whole hog and gotten Brian Setzer in on it. I think some of it feels like Yoko wishes he had been using the drier Plastic Ono Band/Imagine vibe on it, which is interesting. And maybe it would be a better endeavor if they had done this to Mind Games and Walls And Bridges, which have way too much gunk on there, and horrible Elephants Memory all over it. That guy sucked for a bass player. Still, I will buy it and it is a nice bookend to Let It Be Naked. I will maybe search for it on vinyl!
If Yoko had quit at Don't Worry Kyoko, she would have been amusingly irritating. Speaking of which, I will have to google that kid to see if she ever turned up.
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Interesting that you bring that up, Yoko says exactly that in the liner notes, she was in search of that old Plastic Ono sound where she found John at his truest.
I'm surprised you dislike the bass player. It's that bald EBMM NY guy with the tache, his "sticks" invention, member of King Crimson and Peter Gabriel's band and also known for his stick playing - darn I can't think of his name right now!!! Anyway, on the Stripped Down version, his bass has really come to the fore with very deep frequencies you never heard on the original. I think the guy plays supple and subtly, but quirky ideas here and there and he had me smiling a couple of times when he did overtly McCartney'esque runs, albeit through the ears of a NYC sessioneer.
Tony Levin, now I remember. I think he has a style.
With the exception of Double Fantasy (even in its old version) all Lennon solo albums were hugely ill-served by a production that sounds tinny, dated, middish, with cavernous echo and unpleasant distortion. He did not learn the lesson he should have from Phil Spector's mangling of Let it Be. In contrast, his old bass playing mate even mamage to elicit a good production from a makeshift Third World studio. Lennon did not seem to have an ear for that.
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Kyoko did turn up. Tony Cox resurfaced in the mid 80s, Kyoko was grown by this time. She eventually reunited with Yoko.
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I remember Tony Levin doing a oddball solo during a gabriel tour with the "stick" and a short way in the lead dropped out - got a better applause than the solo...
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=im3AUiCGqnk
I've had this on various bootlegs for 15 years and it always made me wish I could hear what else was possible from John in that era. I didn't like much the newer Let It Be that was done like this, but I'm liking this version of Double Fantasy a lot.
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John's voice was simply amazing.
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Tony Levin has his own horrid lapses in taste and tone, but I don't believe he is responsible for the horrid farty toned mess of Elephants Memory. Seems to be a New Yorker named Arthur Kaplan. I believe it is one of these TWO bass players (and two drummers, God help me). I don't recall Tony Levin having a lot of hair or dressing like a lost apostle. I actually like Sometime In New York City, but the lame ShaNaNa wannabes really had vibe issues. And they could have used some work in tuning up.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urNQG6yrC00
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Now I get it, Jim, you were talking about the bass playing on a single track, namely Elephant's Memory (I didn't know that song)! My bad. Levin didn't play with Lennon prior to Double Fantasy - he is innocent.
And solos here at 1.27 on Rundgren's Bang on your drum in a version rerecorded by Todd a few years back ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rf0NM9458cE
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"I didn't like much the newer Let It Be that was done like this, but I'm liking this version of Double Fantasy a lot."
I feel the same. Let it Be was one unhappy and uninspired album by The Beatles. Even de-Spector-ing it couldn't save it from its inherent mediocrity and flaccidness. Even The Beatles could be going through the motions sometimes. To their honor, they revitalized with the brilliant Abbey Road which in public perception is forever The Beatles penultimate album when it was actually their last and recorded after Let it Be (which was just released belatedly).
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Poor Let It Be suffers from being viewed as an album. George Martin figured it out well in advance - there was a single in there. Let It Be/Get Back was as far as you could go with it. And Let It Be got the overdubbed strings right from the get go. The rest of it - maybe I Me Mine excepted - was demo quality at best. One After 909 was done and dumped several years prior. The fact that the only thing from the movie/tapes that made it onto Abbey Road was Octopus's Garden says a lot. As a band they never finished Teddy Boy, Jealous Guy, or All Things Must Pass, which all got played during that but never finished. So compare those with what they were working on (I Dig A Pony, I Got A Feeling, etc) and that they never were completely in tune with each other, or Billy Preston, and Let It Be is not completely painful, but it is a lot of the time.
If they had distilled the Anthology stuff down to what Let It Be was, that would have been a nicer deal too.
I just don't dig Tony Levin. But the Elephants Memory period for Lennon was horrible, bass-wise.