Laurel Canyon

[IanEye]

They were then replaced by coke's partner in the 70's- disco. Game over.

[url=http://tinyurl.com/kqyezx]

I can't play my music
(They say my music's too loud)
I kept talkin' about it
(I got the big runaround)
And when I rolled with the punches
(I got knocked on the ground)
With all this bullshit going down...[/url]

[Sweejak]

If the elites had decided to put an end to the hippie movement, they couldn't have done it any better than by dropping a cocaine bomb on L.A. All of that great talent went to hell in a hand basket. They were then replaced by coke's partner in the 70's- disco. Game over.

For me, Disco was definitely the end, '76 I guess. Not to say that all of the music was bad, in fact I've come to enjoy some of it years later but it was the end of all that.

Coke was a ego stoking drug. At one time in the 80's I think that more than half of the new and cool business start ups in Austin were Coke financed.

[Fred Astaire]

At first, only rock stars had coke. They knew they had a problem, but they couldn't talk about it, since it was illegal. Then, as the supply increased, the price went down, and everyone could have it. But, since there is no cessation in the demand, bank accounts emptied, 2nd cars were sold, trust funds were raided, and health insurance tapped out with expensive surgery to treat deviated septums. Then, it was down to moving back in with mom, and back to square one with cheap Mexican pot and Rolling Rock.

The elites no doubt refer to this phenomena as downsourcing. There's only so much room at the top, so the nouveau riche are kicked back down to the bottom of the ladder. It's a shame that bags of cocaine don't come with warning labels like other medications do. "Use only while dancing", or "For the purpose of seducing the boss' daughter" may have helped to clarify the dangers inherent in this drug.

[thurnundtaxis]

New post up at McGowan's Center For an Informed America. EXCEPT its not a Laurel Canyon one its the start of a ...

'Moon Landing Was Hoaxed' series!





http://www.davesweb.cnchost.com/Apollo1.html

[bubblefunk]

Fred Astaire wrote:
They were then replaced by coke's partner in the 70's- disco. Game over.

______________________________________________________________

Fred, you make it sound like the disco just made itself: like no one wrote it, produced it, played on it, distributed it, performed it, liked it, danced to it. But it didn't make itself, it was just one group of artists and entrepreneurs replacing another in a business model.

At the time, it sounded to me like all that great talent you speak of was fresh out of ideas and fanbase. Myself, I was singer/songwiter'd out, ego'd out, one guy with a guitar (and tasteful, mellow, countrified and longhaired band) singing to his beloved left me out of the equation entirely, why would I buy that?

Wasn't this all just a redistribution of wealth?

[Fred Astaire]

Fred, you make it sound like the disco just made itself

Disco DID make itself. Ever see a drum machine?

You're right about the singer-songwriters, but the coke had a lot to do with them becoming ego-driven and out of ideas. With enough cocaine, you can play an E chord for an hour and think you're Beethoven. Artists like the brilliantly talented Stephen Stills seemingly had their best work ahead of them, but were rendered moot by their indulgence in the dreaded vitamin C.

Here's MY take on the Laurel Canyon scene, Mr. Stills in particular.

http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Stephen_Stills

[JackRiddler]

If the elites had decided to put an end to the hippie movement, they couldn't have done it any better than by dropping a cocaine bomb on L.A. All of that great talent went to hell in a hand basket. They were then replaced by coke's partner in the 70's- disco. Game over.

For me, Disco was definitely the end, '76 I guess. Not to say that all of the music was bad, in fact I've come to enjoy some of it years later but it was the end of all that.

Coke was a ego stoking drug. At one time in the 80's I think that more than half of the new and cool business start ups in Austin were Coke financed.

It also powered at least one-third of the World Series winners from 1982 to 1986 -- given that two of them were led by Keith Hernandez.

[trashman]

Fred, you make it sound like the disco just made itself

Disco DID make itself. Ever see a drum machine?

You're right about the singer-songwriters, but the coke had a lot to do with them becoming ego-driven and out of ideas. With enough cocaine, you can play an E chord for an hour and think you're Beethoven. Artists like the brilliantly talented Stephen Stills seemingly had their best work ahead of them, but were rendered moot by their indulgence in the dreaded vitamin C.

Here's MY take on the Laurel Canyon scene, Mr. Stills in particular.

http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Stephen_Stills

I sure dont recall seeing any listenable drum machines in the mid to late 70's disco era. In fact I absolutely prefer to hear (almost) any sort of 70's pop-disco-dance-RnB over any post disco garbage, for the simple reason real musicians were still playing the tunes, and one idiot with some boxes almost never could put anything interesting together. The few that can, didnt need the boxes to do it, they simply had the talent and ears that previous drug fueled commercialism had mostly destroyed by then. Give me decent analog multi-tracked recordings of live musicians to the Madonna DX-7 computerized production line MTV nightmare that ensued. MTV killed more than the radio star.

[IanEye]

"The band in Los Angeles was basically my guys from Munich. Keith Forsey, who's British, was on drums; he later produced Billy Idol and Simple Minds.
Harold Faltermeyer is a real synthesizer expert, who worked in Munich with the big Moog on 'I Feel Love' and the 'Midnight Express' soundtrack.
We added musicians in Los Angeles; Greg Mathieson is a great keyboard player, one of the top guys in town, and of course Jeff Baxter did the incredible guitar solo on 'Hot Stuff'."
- Giorgio Moroder

[IanEye]

Fred, you make it sound like the disco just made itself: like no one wrote it, produced it, played on it, distributed it, performed it, liked it, danced to it. But it didn't make itself, it was just one group of artists and entrepreneurs replacing another in a business model.

[url=http://www.globaldarkness.com/articles/giorgio_moroder_interview.htm]

"We take something from everything, then make it our own", Moroder confides with delightful candour, "although it is hard to analyse this exactly. There were obvious aspects that that we have used from the Philadelphia sound, although this was only successful in the States. We have internationalised it." 



"Myself, I liked very much the sound of Motown in the early times, up to seven or eight years ago, but now they do not have such a recognisable feel. Mind you, the actual quality of their first recordings was not good. You know, they recorded in a little building and so on. But the music was good, so very good - and that is why they succeeded."



"All this talk of machines and industry make me laugh. Even if you use synthesisers and sequencers and drum machines, you have to set them up, to choose exactly what you are going to make them do. It is nonsense to say that we make all our music automatically.
I know for myself how difficult or how easy it was to get a certain sound. Sometimes it's easy, sure, but as often as not it is at least ten times more difficult to get a good synthesiser sound than on an acoustic instrument. And of course we organise things - who does not? We have to be professional about this. There is nothing wrong with this, surely?" - Giorgio Moroder[/url] 

[JackRiddler]

Fred Astaire wrote:
They were then replaced by coke's partner in the 70's- disco. Game over.

______________________________________________________________

Fred, you make it sound like the disco just made itself: like no one wrote it, produced it, played on it, distributed it, performed it, liked it, danced to it. But it didn't make itself, it was just one group of artists and entrepreneurs replacing another in a business model.

At the time, it sounded to me like all that great talent you speak of was fresh out of ideas and fanbase. Myself, I was singer/songwiter'd out, ego'd out, one guy with a guitar (and tasteful, mellow, countrified and longhaired band) singing to his beloved left me out of the equation entirely, why would I buy that?

Wasn't this all just a redistribution of wealth?

It took me some years, but I finally realized: Disco didn't suck! In fact, at the same time I said that it did, I was listening to it! (In the form of Talking Heads albums I imagined were concept/punk.)

[trashman]

Harold Faltermeyer is a real synthesizer expert, who worked in Munich with the big Moog on 'I Feel Love' and the 'Midnight Express' soundtrack.
We added musicians in Los Angeles; Greg Mathieson is a great keyboard player, one of the top guys in town, and of course Jeff Baxter did the incredible guitar solo on 'Hot Stuff'."
- Giorgio Moroder[/quote][/quote]

friggin skunk baxter. Theres a pot smoking fascist. I digs me some sequencers I think I have four, if you dont count the goofy digital memory types.

[bubblefunk]

"Disco DID make itself. Ever see a drum machine?" said Fred.

Fred, there were no drum machines playing that stuff in the 70s. Just some seriously talented and (relatively) egoless drummers willing to subjugate themselves to the beat. Anti-Neal Pearts, if you will.

And your description of what happens when you "strum an E chord on cocaine" is so far off the mark as to make me believe you have no experience with the substance! If anything, it makes you want to write a 4-LP concept album about that E chord, an album you'll never live up to the promise of, and that you will abandon halfway through, after spending countless dollars in the studio, and countless dollars on flake trying to recreate your original idea. Steve Stills' MANASSAS album was really his high mark, I think the guy's kind of a hack, but come on. There were some really great songs on that sucker.

[IanEye]

hey everyone! here's an anecdote that features a drum machine and cocaine:

When working on Gaucho (1980), they pioneered the use of engineer Roger Nichols' freshly developed Wendel sampling drum machine and audio sampler (12.5kHz/12-bit) for drums and percussion. An indication of the amount of overdubbing, splicing, and re-recording that went into their quest for perfection was that [the engineers] used up 360 rolls of tape recording Gaucho.

The Cuervo Gold
The fine Colombian...

[bubblefunk]

That's a really interesting whole page, actually, IanEye - what it doesn't feature is Disco!