Re: Thought Greg Might or Should Know Chords / RE: (TV) WTF, Tom?

[grntg <grntg@yahoo.com>]

Hey all, still here and sort of posting.  I subscribe thru yahoo and it's new
format drives me nuts so I rarely tend to log on to that account and so I miss
out on a lot of happenings here.  By the time I get to them, they are really
outdated so I usually skip responding.
 
Rex is correct, I did a
re-interpretation and put into a key more suitable to my vocals if I recall,
that was a long time ago.
 
I could never figure those out and I think the
chords Rex is looking for are more a result of studio magic (the notes Leo
sent from dreamtime sad Verlaine was doing a lot of tape splicing, awesome
notes and I enjoyed the background of the making of dreamtime).  I guess the
real test would be to listen to some boots of theres a reason live and see if
those special chords made their way to the stage.
 
 

 
________________________________
From: Rex Broome <rexbroome@gmail.com>
To:
tv@obbard.com 
Sent: Saturday, February 11, 2012 3:16:52 PM
Subject: Re:
Thought Greg Might or Should Know Chords / RE: (TV) WTF, Tom?

On Sat, Feb 11,
2012 at 8:53 AM, Leo Casey <LeoCasey@comcast.net> wrote:

> Hi Greg,
>
> Glad
you're still posting.
>
> I thought that if anyone could answer Rex's original
question [see below in
> case you missed it] about the mysterious, wonderful
[thunderous?] opening
> chords to 'There's A Reason" it might be Greg Grant
since you covered this
> very song on one of the Marquee Moon List's infamous
Television/Verlaine
> Tribute cds.


I just took a listen to that and it's
interesting, Greg actually not only
didn't include those weird screaming
"chords on 3" in his version but he
also plays a completely different chord
progression throughout the intro
and verse.  It's not just in a different key
but a different progression
and rhythm (overall a little more "early Kinks"
and in a major key rather
than the sort of, erm, implied minor of the
original).  It's quite clever
and exactly the kind of thing you expect and
want on a "reinterpretation"
CD... and it really points to what a weirdly
complex work the original is
(another case in point being the weird
shimmery-jangly "post chorus" bit
which I love)...

Another thing which
occurred to me while thinking my way through that
record is that Tom at least
twice deploys one of my favorite song kickoff
tricks: starting the riff on a
beat other than the one so that it takes the
listener a little while,
sometimes until the chorus, to figure out where
the downbeats are, and in
essence you can wind up hearing a completely
different riff for the first
verse.  It's pleasurably disorienting.  For
comparison you might listen to the
Beatles' "Everybody's Got Something to
Hide Except Me and My Monkey" or "Dktr
Faustus" by the Fall which really
plays this trick to the hilt.

Anyway, the
first instance on Dreamtime is "There's a Reason" itself, in
which the first
two unaccompanied guitar hits are in fact on the 2 and 4,
where the snare hits
are, but it sounds as if they're a more traditional
downbeat thing in line
with where the and then the other instruments kind
of come in staggered (the
actual contruction of each measure in term of 1 -
2 - 3 - 4 is bass note -
"normal" guitar hit - other guitar "squeal" chord
- "normal" guitar hit, which
is pretty odd in itself).

The second and even weirder one is "Fragile" which
kicks off with
Fliegler's 12-string riff starting on the "and" of 4.  And then
the drum
part comes in and it's really weird, to: you don't get a snare hit on
the
verse until the 4 of each measure (which can sound, if you hear the
12-sting riff as starting on 1, as something more like the "and" of 3 and
makes the song sound maybe a little reggae than it really is).  I used to
actually hear the 12-string riff as if it were completely different on the
2nd
verse from what it is on the first... maybe some of you still do if you
stop
and thing about it.  Anyway, it's cool.

Just realized that "Mr. Blur" starts
on the "and" of four as well, but the
drums are normal enough that the
listener's ear is pretty well able to make
out that said "and" is just a
pickup note.  It should also be noted that
"Marquee Moon" itself also starts
on an offbeat that might be disorienting
for a bit, but I rarely even think
about that as the song is so massively
familiar to me.

Subconscious ripoff
confession: when I was doing my cover songs blog last
year I got assigned a
song by a friend of mine, an acoustic number that I
decided to rock up a
little bit and use this very trick in my arrangement,
although I wasn't
thinking of any of Tom's songs in particular. I came up
with this thing:
http://www.cinemelon.com/files/3940/204%20(Here's%20One%20I%20Bet%20You%20Wou
ldn't%20Want%20to%20Meet)%20In%20the%20Wild%20rx.mp3

...which featured a riff
I made up that started on the "and" of 2.  And
without intending it, I later
realized I'd come damned close to flat-out
ripping off "Fragile", and,
honestly, the whole thing has a pretty serious
Dreamtime feel to it
(excepting, maybe, the harmonies).  So, like, ooops.
The writeup about the
whole tune can be found here:
http://thirtyninefortycovers.blogspot.com/2010/10/104-heres-one-i-bet-you-wou
ldnt-want-to.html

Anyway, needless to say I've always regretted not being on
this list when
those tributes were produced and still have a sort of itch to
marshall the
musicians on this mailing list to do a song-by-song cover tribute
to
Dreamtime itself, as we idly discussed a year or so ago.

So, like, thanks
for your attention and stuff.
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