i am no longer a fan of this band Options

[gotigrz]

in 1994 i heard a song and the radio that, in my mind, was one of the catchiest songs with a great back beat that i'd ever heard. my friend told me one night... "the name of that song is "selling the drama" but i don't know by who".... well, that's where it started and this is where it ends.

i've been a huge Live fan for about 12 years now, and i can't hide my feelings about this band any longer. and here's why: I am a Christian. if you are not a Christian then this band and their lyrics may not bother you, but if you are a Christian, then i don't see how they couldn't bother you. i've made excuse after excuse for Live, so that i could bring myself not to think about excatly what Ed is singing about and just enjoy the music. well, 12 years later... i can't do it any longer. i read some peoples thoughts on songs of Live's and i think a lot of people think they are singing about love between a man and a woman,..... and that is NOT what he's doin'.

i can not sit back and let some guy that cusses, drinks and i'm sure he's been drunk, and puff on doobie backstage, and anything else that is not "good"... talk about Jesus the way he does in his songs. esp. Selling the Drama, Operation Spirit, I alone, and i'm sure a bunch more cause that's all he sings about.

if anyone can tell my why i'm looking into his songs the wrong way.... please enlighten me, but if you can't, and i doubt you will...... i'm done w/ Live. and if there are any true Christians reading this... i hope you do the same.

so, before Live can be done with me.... i'm done with them.

[GvB]

I don't need to 'notate' any music to know what notes are being played or sung- I have perfect pitch. So basically you were, in your original post, talking about melody.

And accords.

No, I dont. For example, someone could like a vocal melody that is written badly- like a poprock song that had notes that unintentionally clashed with other instruments. The fact that someone likes it doesn't make it good.

That unintentially clashing can happen out of emotion (for example out of sadness or anger or enthousiasm), okay it's maybe not meant on that moment to be like that and that emotion is of course not written, but it can be so pure and real that that is the good thing about it to some listeners.

To be honest, it's kinda hard for me to understand what you're saying...
You don't seem capable of making the decision yourself.

I can decide by myself, that I don't agree with you after all these posts, proves that.
I guess that you prefer the tention in the undertones of the instruments (for example the low tones of a (bass)guitar, the lowest tones in a piano, a heavy beating drumrythm, the sound of a cello), because that is what can be felt in your body, I know that, but that's not what I prefer.
I prever to hear the subject and the emotion of the lyrics back in the melody and the feeling that the singer puts in the melody and a sound of music that fits with all that.
That counts for me for poprock and rock as well the fullband as acoustic versions (although I prever often the acoustic versions above the fullband versions, but I also like to listen to soft instrumental classical music and celtic music and then is the melody most important to me and I like a capella, soulballads and a few gospels.
And I like fusions between different styles (like Queen often did).

And a very important thing to me is that a melody of a song wether it's sung or played with an instrument can make me sing along or whistle along, but the way it's performed helps with that too.
You can come up with that you can sing along with every melody, thats right, but a melody itself and the way it's played and sung can make me sing or whitle along spontaniously and make me feel happy, when it's a happy song, sad, when it's a sad song, angry, when it's an angry song.
The way a melody is composed, can tell me a lot of the emotion in a song, but if the way it's performed and if it doesn't fit with the lyrics (if there are) or the accompaniment don't fit with it, then the whole song is screwed up according to me.
And a song can also be bad according to me if it's too angry, too sad without hope or too scary to me.
But that's the way I feel about it.
I told you before that I have a lot experience with melody.
That is because I have the experience of singing in a choir and I played recorder before, but quit doing that because of being too busy with other things.
The conduct of the choir makes very much effort to let me and the other members "feel" the melody and the miscal accompaniment and to teach us to reply on that with, singing it in a dynamic way (softer, louder, the high tones high enough, the lower tones low enough) and to tell us why a melody goes higher or lower on certain moments in a song and why to sing some words and lines louder or softer.
I have to admit that I not always agree with her interpretation and when to sing softer or louder, but I know that dynamics work in singing and playing melodies.
And Ed sings in a beautiful dynamic way, in my opinion and does that in my opinion better from TDTH an up than before TDTH, he does more with high and low and a little softer and a little louder and the musical accompaniment fits with that in my opinion, but the musical accompaniment already fit in the older songs, because the older songs where louder and more angry, so sounded Ed, in the older albums the difference between soft and loud is more in almost whispering and (almost) screaming, but I like that not as much as the dynamics in higher and lower singing and a little softer and a little louder singing in the newer albums.
And the musical accompaniment fits with that in my opinion.

And what also counts for me that the notes don't have to be sounding perfect, as long as I can feel in my soul where the song is about and if my feeling tells me that it is good emotionally, to me.
Then my physical reactions (chills, lump in my throat, tears, or a warm feeling and starting to smile) follow automaticly.

See, the fact that you listen to vocals the most, and place them above other aspects of music shows our differences in approach to music. What other bands/artists/composers do you like?

Pop/rock:
Queen, Bon Jovi, Coldplay, U2, (okay, Bono is not such a good singer technically, but he has a emotional way of singing that I like), Skunk Anansi (and Skin's solo work), Era (very soft celtic music) and a few other bands from The Netherlands and Belgium that make softrock and popballads.
And I like Cyndi Lauper, Phill Collins and Lenny Kravitz (Lenny Kravitz doesn't sing technicaly good, but has emotion in his voice and I can even appreciate his way of screaming, same counts for Jon Bon Jovi).

Classical: Vivaldi and Bach and sometimes Verdi.

And also a few soul songs like "End of the road" by Boyz II men, and "Think" by Aretha Franklin and "If I ever fall in love"by Shai.
And a few reggae songs by Bob Marley ("Redemption Song", for example).
And gospel/spirituals like: "Shine, Jesus shine" and "The last Supper".

YOU CAN LIKE IT ALL YOU WANT. I said before that music does have subjective qualites, but the point is, SFBM is not well written.

Songs From Black Mountain is TO YOU not well written, because I guess you always like a wall of sound (I guess you can appreciate Queen too?).
And I can appreciate wall of sounds too but I like acoustic too, a very thin and light kind of music with the emotion in the voice of the singer because of the words in the lyrics and the warm sound of an acoustic guitar or a piano maybe even a recorder or flute.

I love the semi-acoustic (not totally acoustic, I know, there is for example an electric guitar involved sometimes) sound of Songs From Black Mountain, the lyrics are most of all full of love, happiness, hope and sometimes a little sadness, and a light way of singing and a thin and light sound of music belong in my opinion to that feelings, and that's why it is well written in my opinion.
I think that walls of sound with for example low sounding guitars and basses, belong more to al lot of anger and personally I mostly don't like to feel so much anger.
But when I'm really angry, then I turn up Metallica, but being that angry happens about once in half a year.
And further I like the kinds of music I discribed earlier in this post.

But I'll never really mean to say loud that there is something bad about a song or a piece of music generally or that a song is bad generally, a song or a piece of music is good or bad in my opinion.

Because maybe someone else has a reason to love it from the bottom of his or her heart, and then I'll hurt that person maybe really badly.

It might be difficult for you to understand what I mean, but keep in mind that it is harder for me to express myself in English, because I'm Dutch and English isn't my natural language and there are things in music that can hardly or even not be captured in words.

GvB.

This post has been edited by GvB: Nov 25 2006, 4:17 pm