Of course, my approval comes from someone whose been deeply taken by the cult of 100 gecs the last week.

There is something almost like black magic in how this is a band that takes some of my most hated sub genres (nu metal, frat boy ska, pop punk, novelty songs, saccharine pop melodies) and makes it into a life affirming sound of joy and sonic discovery.

Now, I feel there is a likely early burnout on their sound as one gets used to it, but over the course of my last few miserable weeks, it has been a great beacon of not taking the world or anything seriously.

I love it. And I think my girlfriend is losing a little more respect for me every time she sees me playing it.

Jinnistan wrote:

crumbsroom wrote:

Of course, my approval comes from someone whose been deeply taken by the cult of 100 gecs the last week.

OK.  I'll take it!

I wouldn't consider the original recording "overworked".  It's one of those Harrisongs that should have been the 'A' side.  But, sure, "stripped down" is about what I can do with it.  The simplicity is less of an aesthetic choice than a necessity of skill.  I've said it before.  I'm not a very good musician, I'm a competent musician, and so as long as I strip a song down to its bare competency level, then I guess it sounds alright.  But it's fun, and for about five hours work total, over two days, it serves a certain purpose.  And I like it too.

When I say it's overworked, it's not that I don't think it sounds great. Because it does. But what I generally like about Harrison's songs the most is their delicate almost trembling nature. They have an instinctive vulnerability to them, and Shoe plays as this immaculately grooving sonic assault. Which is great. But it disguises that frailty that I gravitate towards in his work.

The same argument could be made against a number of songs on All Things Must Pass, which doesn't stop it from being one of my favorite albums of all time. But, there is something that gets lost when a Harrison song is turned into a wall of sound

Jinnistan wrote:

crumbsroom wrote:

The same argument could be made against a number of songs on All Things Must Pass, which doesn't stop it from being one of my favorite albums of all time. But, there is something that gets lost when a Harrison song is turned into a wall of sound

Sometimes it cuts both ways.  There's a lot of production that I don't like (including most of his other 70s albums), and there's some tracks, like "All Things Must Pass" or "Awaiting on You All" that are pure saccharine overkill, and then there's some wall-of-sound ("Wah-Wah", "Art of Dying") that are just about perfect for those particular songs.  And then there's the softer touches that finds that ideal middle ground ("My Sweet Lord", "Apple Scruffs", "Hear Me Lord").

I agree with all of this.

But in the case of Shoe, there is an emotional center to the song I only grasp once it has been stripped down. And I think Harrison was very much about the emotional cores of his songs.

This doesn't mean I would want a different version than the original. I dig it. But, I feel the song is more than it lets on.

I'd never heard of him; I was looking into him last night/this morning after a repeat viewing of Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, in which Dr. Demento mentions both Wild Man Fischer and Nervous Norvus. "Circles" makes me laugh, and there's something special about "In My Room." I could imagine a trippy cover version.
Then I discovered there's a documentary about him from 2005 called Derailroaded: Inside the Mind of Wild Man Fischer and instantly knew, here comes the sobering part of my little exploration where I learn the tragic true story. It's an absolutely excellent doc, featuring tons of interview footage strictly with people intimately connected to him including Frank and Gail Zappa, Dr. Demento, Barnes & Barnes, Al Yankovic, Solomon Burke, plus family members and tons of footage of Fischer himself. The doc confirmed my fears: what I'm hearing is no mere novelty music. It's the agonized voice of someone thoroughly decimated by crippling bipolar disorder and paranoid schizophrenia. The film makes that clear right away. When we first see him, we see a man exhibiting all the physical and verbal signs of one gripped with unrelenting terror. It was not beyond my imagination that the man I was seeing might actually die of fright. Shunned by family, did a couple stints in mental institutions (seemingly the Titicut/Cuckoo's nest kind), spent a lot of time living in rags on the streets. He blends in with the San Francisco freak scene, gets discovered by Zappa, ...anyway it's an excellent doc, crap I've run out of time. It's tinged with a teensy sense of indelicate voyeurism I'll add, but still worthwhile.

... Oh and it becomes clear that the makers of Weird absolutely nailed Dr. Demento. In fact, was that Dr. Demento? The interview with him is a trip.