SUNDAY SHOWDOWN: What Do You Want From Me? vs Smell The Roses...which artist(s) ripped themselves off the best?

[jimfisheye]

Shots fired!
... at a couple pretty big targets.

I remember all these "after the fact" albums not having any of the weird amazing surprises and odd bids of edgy music that classic Floyd albums delivered. I've tried to go back and listen a few times over the years. Thinking I was probably just being hipster with 'only the old stuff is any good' at the time. And then I reach for the skip ahead button pretty quickly and the experiment doesn't last very long!

Momentary Lapse = the sound of cocaine
Division Bell = sort of a Pink Floyd facsimile
Is This The Life We Really Want = the sound of phoning it in and laziness

I don't really listen to lyrics. Older Floyd lyrics just sound cool or something. The newer stuff doesn't do anything either direction for me. Except it sounds like the 'formula' where people make songs that are some lyric and vocal with music as secondary background. I just don't find that very interesting like weird old Floyd.

Anyway, yeah those are targets for calling out recycled bits! Speaking of later career recycling, any Hawkwind fans here?

[stonytokes]

I'd tend to agree with your assessment of those albums. Do you have any opinion on the rest of Roger's solo work (P&C, KAOS, ATD) if you've listened to it?

[YASHA]

I am a fan of Hawkwind and I like this band for its variety of styles✌️

[YASHA]

From the "magnificent clang" era of Hawkwind, my favorite is the album version of "Space Is Deep"

[aybesea]

No contest... What Do You Want

[stonytokes]

Well...it sure has been a spirited discussion so far this week, R&D! Hopefully I won't offend anyone by doing so, but I'm going to vote for Smell The Roses. I love both songs, and consider WDYWFM to be a pretty decent forgery, but in my SUBJECTIVE opinion, I can't help but FEEL that Smell The Roses, even as an obvious pastiche of Floyd tropes, succeeds wildly at doing so, and blows WDYWFM out of the water with regards to how effectively it mines that classic 70s Floyd sound. So much so that...if I may be just the tiniest bit unkind to suggest...Rog on his own decades later sounds more Floydian in that one song that anything else the other three cobbled together after he left.

[jimfisheye]

For Hawkwind, Electric Teepee was one of the last ones that sounded 'real'. Some of the Ron Tree stuff after that had moments though. The Alien album and the live ones around the same time. It's after this that the more pronounced recycling started and creativity dulled. I still check them out. Get as far as possible through their new albums. (Sometimes not very far!)

What do you do... All this stuff is head and shoulders above the corporate click track drivel! Just second class next to their heyday.

P&C = Great sounding music and playing in general. No songs or pieces of music stand out. It's just jamming that sounds good.
When the Wind Blows = Some almost Floyd-like moments. Mostly disturbing. (As intended.)
KAOS = My favorite Waters solo. Important tip though: Treat track one as part of the lead-in groove. Side 1 starting with track 2 is a great album side!
ATD = Some great moments. The insufferable element is starting to creep in though. Roger is probably salty that the Floyd fans aren't following him and understanding him and only know the popular bits of Floyd. A tour with Jeff Beck in tow would have been really great, I think. So this album is the one that's a little off and had the tour cancelled. Then Roger turned to the retrospective tour thing. The 5.1 remix has some strong elements! Classic modern day Guthrie: Phenomenal attention to fidelity! Some of the mix is wonky though. The original sounds shrill next to it and fully put to shame but the more 'rock' songs like WGWpt1 sound more proper in the original mix.

[beeco]

I think Rog really messed up not touring Amused to Death. I get that his ego had taken a beating in the 80's but even a small tour would have kept him relevant. He had his best album to tour and would have ridden that floyd wave from 87-89. Its a shame that he then fell back on the retrospective style tour. As much as I liked the DSOTM tour, my highlights were his solo stuff.

[Son of Nothing]

Heh. In this thread I also want to be a bit provocative, and say the only What Do You Want From Me I'll vote for, and would vote for over both the choices here, is this one from an offshoot from a band where the bass player and guitarist had a massive falling out and are still feuding after the bass player left the band and felt they shouldn't have continued using the band name without him:

(Only in this case it's the bass guitarist with a song called What Do You Want From Me.)

What is it about bass players anyway? Oh, and for the record, my favourite instrument to play is... bass guitar.

[stonytokes]

I really dug that tune. I just got into playing bass last year and thoroughly enjoy it. As someone who play drums primarily, all those years of tapping my fingers on surfaces that drove my parents, teachers, and SOs crazy really helped with two finger technique once I leaned to pull through the string.

[stonytokes]

Being that this thread is kind of about songs that sound pretty similar...here's a pair that I didn't know about until just yesterday:

[Floydophile]

Nice find 👍 Sampling at it's best and even before it was invented!

However: Only the Bowie 'thang' has Lennon inside!

[penguinzzz]

Don't forget the Bowie one was first though! JB thought he could do better

[thespitwasduringmoney]

Smell The Roses is very derivative but it’s one of the only tracks on ITTLWRW that has any sort of drive or energy behind it. Godrich did a good thing by forcing Rog to play bass on this track. lyrics are just okay on this one. the middle bit with the sound effects drags on for a bit too long but i like the wailing girls part they added when they performed it live.

WDYWFM suffers a lot from “Gilmour Guitar Overload” where there’s so much going on in the mix between the rhythm guitar and the keys and the lead guitar and David’s vocals and the backing singers and it all kinda gets mushy. i agree with those who’ve said the bassline is a bit “porno” sounding and the lyrics are mediocre here. i do love the bridge section though.

[daemonspudguy]

When Roger breaks out the bass, I think it brings out some of his best moments. I really like his bass playing and think it's a shame he doesn't do it as much.

[stonytokes]

Nice find 👍 Sampling at it's best and even before it was invented!

However: Only the Bowie 'thang' has Lennon inside!

I do enjoy some Lennon from time to time (Cold Turkey is a masterpiece, monstrous riff) but he certainly wasn't above stealing even in the most egregious ways. Like when he stole Zappa's King Kong performance from their collaboration at the Fillmore, mixed out Kaylan and Volman's vocals, retitled it Jamrag, and stuck it on Some Time In NYC without any credit to the composer or the performers, thereby cheating Zappa out of the publishing and royalties.

The blues jam they did (Yoko excepted) before moving on to more avant garde territory is a ripping jam...

...but I can do without some of the caterwauling that followed...

The audience was appreciative, though, so I suppose that's all that matters.

[jimfisheye]

Frank somehow managed to showcase the absurd and funny in Yoko at that Fillmore show. She should have had some kind of thing with that primal scream energy. The truth was she wasn't even good enough to pull off being bad on her own. Just a really special kind of lack of talent. Copyright violating and essentially bootlegging King Kong was equal parts intentional theft with laziness and ineptness. Lennon lost major points on that one. Did he intentionally mix the vocals out or did Phil Spector miss the meters moving and just screw up again? He's done this a few times and made some truly botched mixes. How about that mutilated Across The Universe on the Let It Be album? (All the iconic backing vocals are missing.)

What were we talking about again? I don't want to say that... thing from the Fillmore was better than the Dave or the Roger song mentioned but it sure is more interesting!