Defend the Indefensible: "A band's flaws are what makes them great!"

Deciding to leave mistakes in, rather than Pro-Tool them out, is an aesthetic choice that bespeaks a good rock and roll attitude, at least to my mind.

And playing it so safe (or being so well-rehearsed) that you never make mistakes strikes me as indicative of an attitude that could potentially be stifling of the kind of energy I like to hear on a record.

Either that or they truly believe it. Either way, it's a sure sign that you should steer the conversation to football.

The exchange about why I don't consider New Order one of my favorite bands spawned this thread for me. I do not understand having a favorite band who has put out a sgnificant amount of material you really, really hate (where, in this case, that means an entire album, or their entire lyrical corpus, depending on which part of the conversation you want to look at).

This probably comes from my classical background/neurotic overachiever personality but taking pride over making mistakes is akin to taking pride in getting straight Cs in your classes. If that's what being rock 'n roll is all about, thank God I'm not.

I think there is a line between embracing/celebrating mistakes and being tolerant of them/not being risk-averse.

This should be carved into stone tablets and given to every young artist.

The sooner you get the "But I'm expressing myself" wankery beaten out of you, the better off you'll be. I had a friend who was brutally honest about my early attempts at writing and producing music, and even though I hated him for it at the time, he was the first person to give me feedback that wasn't either a) unconditional familial support or b) sugar-coated "Oh, it's really neat and different" wishy-washy-ness. It's been a decade since then, and we now run a studio together.

"this band is totally superficial!"

"but that's what makes them great!"

it has the rhetorical value of novelty. but this sort of tactic does bother me, because it amounts to a conversation going around in endless circles.

For example, when Michael Jackson's voice cracks in "She's Out of My Life", some would say that's a flaw, but for me, it is the central moment of the song.

(x-post)

-- polyphonic (polyphoni...)

but "flat and childish" and struggling to approximate an english accent aren't inherent anything... to make a good piece of music criticism you'd have to explain WHY they were flaws *or* attributes. or rather, you'd have to explain what these aspects contribute to the overall aesthetic why you appreciate that overall aesthetic (even if it's just one song).

And do you love them because they're flaws (ie "wrong"), or because they're unique stylings?

"Most of the drums that you hear on the radio, or you hear on new band's records, have been so processed and put through the ringer and edited so that there's absolutely no mistakes, and it takes all the personality out of drumming, which is a shame, because most of my favorite drummers, legendary drummers, whether it's Keith Moon or John Bonham, Ringo Starr, whatever, all of these drummers were imperfect. That's how you could tell them apart from everyone else. Stewart Copeland from the Police was the same way. It just adds so much personality and so much of the person to their instrument."
- Swaymag.com 1999

*gasp*

Most signature sounds in rock - in most art, I'd hazard - were discovered by accident: Keith Richards imitating Chuck Berry and having it come out wrong at the dawn of the Stones is one example.

Some other endearing mistakes: Simon Le Bon's lyrics, Moe Tucker's singing, Ringo's drumming on early Beatles albums, the torpid drumming on most Neil Young/Crazy Horse albums.

Without derailing this thread into a "kids these days" rant about Pro Tools and the like, Grohl is conveniently forgetting that most of those drummers played live in the studio, WITH their bandmates, which meant that the music had a push-and-pull interplay. Today's drum tracks are edited and looped to perfection because, more often than not, the band is constructing the song a track at a time in a DAW.

Also, Stewart Copeland was one of the first drummers to incorporate drum machines into his playing.

(For the record, I make my living from digital recording technology, so I am not anti-Pro Tools by any means...)

Prince can forget to entertain his listeners from time to time ("Dolphin") but his overall brilliance means that 99 times out of 100 there is something astonishing and breathtaking in whatever for all practical intents and purposes self-indulgent material he releases.

Massive Attack's descent into droney claustrophobic dubdom strikes a deep chord in my ears; the increasing paranoia in their music thrills me to no end.

Orbital's strong sense of the catchy tune/sample elevates almost everything I've heard by them above the pedestrian and into the realm of goodness to flat-out genius.

The Prodigy is all about the beat; Liam stumbled on his last album in that he forgot to layer the immediate hooks on top of half the songs as well but living with those tracks has made many of them very appealling to me. _AONO_ is the worst Prodigy album but I still like it more than a good 75% of the other albums I've heard.

Etc etc etc. If a band had put out an album that I hated as much as some people hate _Get Ready_, they would not be my favorite band. I really have no problem at all with New ORder lyrically but there are certain albums that contain singing so horrific that, even though they also contain some of my favorite New Order tracks, I will never own them. Furthermore, as a singer it really, really, really grates on my nerves when people hold up being horrifyingly out of tune up like a virtue, as if any random jackass off the street couldn't hoot out the wrong notes vaguely off the beat. (Although perhaps there's some wish fulfillment going on there; "If Terry Tone-Deaf can do it, then so can I!")

Is your figure less than Greek
Is your mouth a little weak
When you open it to speak
Are you smart?

But don't change a hair for me
Not if you care for me
Stay, little Valentine, stay
Each day is Valentine's day

It really depends on what you measure as perfection. If you mean technical, then there are technical definitions of good and bad performance, and then "flaws" would not indicate a value judgement. Loving a band is a value judgement, and that judgement is not always determined by technical perfection.

So converse of your above statement is 'if there is something unique to a band or singer that I DISlike, I consider that quality to be a Flaw'.

So do you consider that, if the flaw was corrected e.g the singer sang at the correct pitch then the track would be BETTER? You see this is where I have a problem - isolating imperfections in songs and wishing they were different seems *wrong*. I'd rather go along with the whole thing warts and all than try and tweak everything to attain some sort of gold standard neatness. If I think about Can's Yoo Doo Right then probably Malcolm Mooney's voice is fucking horrible and WAY too loud in the mix, also you can hear Jaki's drumsticks clicking together as he semi-fluffs some of the rolls in the section with the really fast drumming - but it's what it is. It's what they DID, it's what we have and really, truly it doesn't matter - when I play it, I'm transported to another world for 20 minutes every time.

I saw this on the Technique thread. Again I think you're reducing music appreciation to component-level quality assurance. Intangibles such as feel, spirit, context, atmosphere, are what make great music. As do questions like 'what the fuck was that noise?' and ' did they mean that'?

The Raincoats - by your standards : can't sing, can't play. Yet make some of the most moving music I've heard.

OTM

I tried once to give a song a 'Lloyd Cole' vibe, and ended up with a Commotions outtake.

There's a moment at the end of Janet Jackson's "Runaway" where she goes for a note that's too low on "and I just know we'll have a good TIME" which then follows up with "ooh, didn't quite hit the note, that's not such a good time". The thing that makes that great isn't so much that she completely biffed the note as much as it is that she immediately made fun of herself for it and left it in the final studio version; the breaking of the fourth wall and endearing self-awareness overwhelms the really atrocious note and makes it a better performance than if she'd hit the note.

The thing I like there is NOT the flaw that she can't sing that note; it's the virtue that she can make fun of herself and be so ridiculously charming.

I've never heard The Raincoats and, given the descriptions I'm getting, odds are I would really, really hate them.

"A band's so-called flaws are, in fact, what makes them great" makes perfect sense. I won't always agree, but there's a logic there. That seems to be what most people are saying when they say "A band's flaws are what makes them great," but they like saying it that way because they think it's cutely contrarian.

And I assume that this phrase only gets used when talking about particular bands, because if that's a general all-purpose statement then you're saying that the worst bands are, in fact, the best.

xpost. the raincoats i mean.

I'm pretty sure I've never heard anyone say "Well, they write awful songs, but that's what's great about them!" or "They write awful songs, but I love them because they play their awful songs spot-on!"

So really what they're saying is "Excellent (in my opinion) songwriting trumps lousy playing/singing/production." Which most people, I reckon, would agree with. But people who say "A band's flaws are what makes them great!" are saying it in a way that is 1) less clear and 2) pseudo-clever. Which, as I said before, is an excellent signal that it's time to start talking about football.

anyway dan perry's occasional commentary aside, the idea of lots of people out there judging pop music by some relatively arbitrary technical standards and adducing flaws...well it's a bit of a bogeyman really. especially in the context of rock criticism. which is another reason this particular species of rhetoric is mega-annoying. again, like so much rock criticism!

Joanna Newsom to thread!

fwiw I adore Victoria Williams, but even at her cackly, scratchiest 'worst' she's still orbiting the melody. She just has a very hang loose and playful way of singing.

Joanna is just wretched at times. I've listened and tried to adjust but it's just not nice, her growling and rough spots don't seem to have any pleasurable function in the music at all. It's just like she can't actually sing very well.

Point out the flaws with the B-52's, plz

I wonder if it's a similar flaw to that shared by the Sugarcubes?

;-)

latetotheparty: Ha!

I know this was a joke, but I still don't get this opinion either way. Distortion, like most effects, is a totally different beast than non-effected sound, and as such it's almost a different instrument. I have heard people who are tremendous guitarists when playing acoustic or clean, but put distortion on their sound and they have no idea how to play to make it sound good. Uninteresting use of effects is a flaw, and it doesn't make anyone great.

If anyone uses the term "Pro-tools" to mean digital manipulation again I will personally come round to their house and piss on their paintings.

I'm gonna take this one step further and piss on the couch of anyone who uses "Pro-tools" as a verb.