What album turned G. Benson over to the dark side?

[AllenLowe]

it's a very rich suburb of NYC -

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

it's a very rich suburb of NYC -

Thank you. I don't think it has to be rich, just suburban.

MG

[JSngry]

Burnin' guitar, tight band, satisfying pop tune (provided you haven't heard it too many times). And one other thing: a dignified presence in the leader, dig?

I can see why people are frustrated with Benson. When someone can play that goddam well (I wish I had even half his right hand ability), you'd like the entire artistic package to be at that level, all the time. We (the musicians in my circle) might have liked it if he had jumped on the organ revival/groove music/jamband wagon when that started up in the 90's. But those were, and are, his choices to make, and make them he has. No, I don't think he's lost any sleep over it.

Larry made a good point a while back about self-respect.

Outsstanding clip, Joe. Back in the 70s, there were club bands all over the place here playing (& trying to play) this type stuff. It was all good musicians (& people trying to be good musicians), palying for people who were out for a good time that didn't involve "cheapness" (& this may or may not be the place to wonder why so many white people don't get that "slick" means different things in different places & times because it's all about the what's and why's of slick meaning slick, compared to what, what are the alternatives in any given place at any given time? We kinda tend to like our Negroes to confirm to our behavioral criteria, don't we now....). It was a good time, full of good people. Not necessarily a "complicated" scene, but none the less gratifying, just to be around the warmth of humans engaged in life in a happy-enough kind of way.

It also occurs to me that among the infinite number of "two kinds of people" that there are in "this world" that there's people who are intrinsically at peace within themselves & those who aren't. It also occurs to me that those who aren't seem to enjoy looking at those who are and declaring that there must be something wrong with anybody who is at peace with themselves enough to simply entertain people by presenting themselves with warmth, dignity, & a package that provides ambiance for those looking for same in their own lives.

I've had a good life. I've had great opportunities to explore (both within & without) * I've been blessed to have learned a lot in the process. It humbles me how infinitely complex the "human condition" is, how lives come and go and sometimes the simplest things can knock you for a loop & sometimes how attempting to explain the deepest complexities tends to ultimately end up being able to be effortlessly encapsulated in a simple gesture by somebody else, how you can knock yourself out "thinking" & somebody else can just DO IT, not just in music, but in all of life., just strike upon a fundamental truth of...life that all the "attacks" in the world by all the "thinkers" cannot obliterate. So it's in that spirit that I say this - if I ever reach the stage where I'm pissing people off because I project too much warmth & dignity, I think I'll consider it a live well-lived.

Which is not to say that "thinking" is fruitless or ill-advised. Obviously that's not the case. But thinking in the service of self-justification & thinking in the service of self-definition/creation are two very, very different things springing from two fundamentally different places as far as self-acceptance goes.

And ultimately, if we're not at peace with ourselves, if we can't accept ourself, how the hell, no - why the hell should anybody else accept us?

[danasgoodstuff]

JSngry,

Usually I'm happy to defer to your articulateness and real musician life experience, but if the foregoing is an elaborate defense/non-defence of "Turn Your Love Around", etc. then I gotta say I thinks that's the most over-thought, neo-romantic pretending to b ralist pile of BS I've read in a long while. Thinking that if something's hard to do it's gotta be good is lowbrow ignorance. Compared to 'Turn Your Love Around", "Work Me Annie" is fucking Shakespeare, and "Fever" is one of his better plays with really good actors and direction. That TYLA may be about coming in the back door might be it's most socially redeeming feature, otherwise it's nearly as big a misuse of skills as Triumph of the Will. I don't care how wonderful his audience may be/have been in other ways, the music still sucks... What happened in Ren. Florence? did they suddenly lose their skills? No, they might have actually gotten more accomplished in some technical sense but they still went from genius to crap in a generation or so. And if you think this is crumudgeonly, I'm still working on my what happened to Rock respnse.

Dana

[JSngry]

JSngry,

Usually I'm happy to defer to your articulateness and real musician life experience, but if the foregoing is an elaborate defense/non-defence of "Turn Your Love Around", etc. then I gotta say I thinks that's the most over-thought, neo-romantic pretending to b ralist pile of BS I've read in a long while. Thinking that if something's hard to do it's gotta be good is lowbrow ignorance. Compared to 'Turn Your Love Around", "Work Me Annie" is fucking Shakespeare, and "Fever" is one of his better plays with really good actors and direction. That TYLA may be about coming in the back door might be it's most socially redeeming feature, otherwise it's nearly as big a misuse of skills as Triumph of the Will. I don't care how wonderful his audience may be/have been in other ways, the music still sucks... What happened in Ren. Florence? did they suddenly lose their skills? No, they might have actually gotten more accomplished in some technical sense but they still went from genius to crap in a generation or so. And if you think this is crumudgeonly, I'm still working on my what happened to Rock respnse.

Dana

What I find strange in all this is that with more recent jazz artists it all of a sudden it is considered quite quite legitimate even by JAZZ criteria to go into pop (even if it was only for the money - let's nt make any false pretenses) whereas TO THIS VERY DAY jazz artists from earlier days see part of their output denigrated for being "R&B" although at that time (40s/50s, etc.) R&B certainly was far closer to the mainstream of jazz than black pop (so-called R&B) was/is in much more recent decades. Pretty strange, ain't it?

There's really no comparison to 50s R&B work & the jazz-pop/pop-jazz that Benson & others started making in the 70s. The 50s stuff was (mostly) limited in musical & lyrical language. Now, with those limitations often came great power, but musically, strictly speaking, if you were a "learned" musician (or an aspiring one), the idiom would only accommodate you up to a relatively likited point.

Not so the later stuff. The level of musical sophistication there is quantum levels higher, able to accommodate darn near any harmonic, melodic, or rhythmic vocabulary. Of course, some temperament of same is going to occur, but a Benson album like Breezin' is to "The Hucklebuck" like a Waldorf salad is to the back room of a grocery store.

Of course, when you get into more "pure" pop, that flexibility goes away, but for some people, players and listeners alike, that's just not too much of a problem, since things are what they are, and the only cause for alarm is if you expect them not to be. And really, whose fault would that be?

Even at that, though, something like "Turn Your Love Around" as a record, not a song or a performance, but a record, has infinitely more "sophistication" to it that any R&B record of the 50s in terms of musical production values and such. Doesn't make it any better music, far from it, but it's not something that you could get a singer and a band in a small studio & knock out in a hour either. There's some highly specific & developed skills involved in all corners. So no need to "hide" unless you're intrinsically ashamed of making a good pop/dance record, in which case, you probably shouldn't be doing it, at least not under your own name...

If simply pointing out that there is a quantum leap in the technical skills (recording and playing) needed to make a record like "Turn Your Love Around" & any 50s R&B record amounts to a "defense" of it, then this discussion is being held on a planet which I am not from.

Although, to posit the "artistry" or lack thereof of something like "Turn Your Love Around" is so far besides the point of its intent as make me think that perhaps it is not I who am not from this planet...

Look, even the greatest "artist" takes pride in their craft. And Benson, although not a "great artist" is a superb craftsman. And there is absolutely nothing shoddy about any aspect of his hits, except for the material. And since I am most assuredly not among the target audience for this work, my judgment on that is most assuredly "on the outside looking in".

The intent of those records is not too complicated to figure out - to provide a high quality (i.e. - well-played and produced) product of upbeat musical ambiance to people (most of whom are most assuredly not middle-aged white guys with acceptance issues) who are looking for same. Simple as that. Now, it is not "easy" to do that, but it is also so not relevant to whether or not there is "great art" involved. There's not. Of course there's not.

But - it's only crap if that's not what you're looking for. If you're of a certain "demographic", the notion of a man who carries himself with dignity and style who can also play the shit out of a guitar and sing pretty damn well too, hey, that notion/combination of style and competency (to put it mildly), just might seem attractive, as might the reality that it's not some garage band playing on this record. . The fact that the aforementioned middle-aged white guys with acceptance issues find it "crap" or a sellout are not particularly relevant, and in fact only add one more layer to the bullshit that you gotta put up with from their "type" every day already.

If you're even hearing all that noise, which in all likelihood, you're not.

Dude - you just compared a fucking George Benson pop record, a piece of product that aimed at and succeeded in nothing more than simply selling itself to people who found it a pleasant ditty, to Triumph Of The Will.

Please - get a grip on reality. Seriously.

Edited July 13, 2008 by JSngry

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Dude - you just compared a fucking George Benson pop record, a piece of product that aimed at and succeeded in nothing more than simply selling itself to people who found it a pleasant ditty, to Triumph Of The Will.

Please - get a grip on reality. Seriously.

MG

[JSngry]

Well yeah, I mean, really...

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

There's a difference between knowing something's right and feeling it.

I know you're right about this, but what you say doesn't reflect what I feel. Benson's music after the seventies is interesting to me as a reflection of what was happening in society but really, I can't get as enthusiastic about the way that music feels as about that of Gator Tail, for example. It's a class thing and being English, which makes that important.

So.

MG

[Sundog]

Burnin' guitar, tight band, satisfying pop tune (provided you haven't heard it too many times). And one other thing: a dignified presence in the leader, dig?

This is exactly the kind of clip that drives me crazy (not really). Great stuff! Everyone came to play, and as a result they were throughly entertaining.

[Cliff Englewood]

[Cliff Englewood]

[JSngry]

There's a difference between knowing something's right and feeling it.

I know you're right about this, but what you say doesn't reflect what I feel. Benson's music after the seventies is interesting to me as a reflection of what was happening in society but really, I can't get as enthusiastic about the way that music feels as about that of Gator Tail, for example. It's a class thing and being English, which makes that important.

So.

MG

Hey, I in no way "love" it, I just "like" it in the way that I like any Top 40 pop music from that time - as sonic wallpaper that does what it came to do. What I don't get is the blatant, quasi-violent hostility towards that type music (I gotta think there's some "issues" involved in that somehow...), and the totally irrational denial of the real skills needed to make it. It might in fact be the musical equivalent of factory work, but dammit, that don't mean that there's no difference between good and bad factory work.

As far as the "class" thing. I've been reminded on more than one occasion (both verbally and circumstantially, and hard for me to say which one was the sharer slap in the face...) that it's really easy to sneer at "middle-class aspirations" when you're doing so from the vantage point of already being there, just as it is really easy to romanticize "the hood" when that's the place you live 24-7.

Which is not to say that both the sneering and the romanticizing are nott without some grounding in truth, just that it's only one side of the story, and that that side is not the side for which the target market for Benson's pop hits and related materials would have too much empathy.

[AllenLowe]

"fucking George Benson pop record... to Triumph Of The Will."

well, as the only person here who has actually written a song about Leni Riefenstahl, let me say that she and Benson have a lot in common; both rationalize what they do as being in service to some greater sense of the world, and both are completely deluded -

[JSngry]

I rest my case.

[AllenLowe]

well, as Steve Allen said, your case needs a rest -

[JSngry]

Steve Allen, eh?

O....kay.

You realize that what you're saying is that, in this specific case, African-American aspirations & towards a middle-class lifestyle (& all that play into that) fuel whatever would-be totalitarian forces exist in the American dynamic. That if/when America completely falls into the hands of the New Nazis, it will be in part because of the desire for upward mobility by African-Americans & their pied-piper George Benson.

If that's not what you're saying, then exactly what are you saying? Why else buy into the otherwise borderline-lunatic comparison between George Benson & Leni Riefenstahl?

This is just nuts. Really.

Edited July 13, 2008 by JSngry

[RDK]

Yeah, but, Kenny G really is the Devil.

[Joe G]

Dude - you just compared a fucking George Benson pop record, a piece of product that aimed at and succeeded in nothing more than simply selling itself to people who found it a pleasant ditty, to Triumph Of The Will.

Please - get a grip on reality. Seriously.

MG

Jazz Nazis! :rsmile:

[Big Beat Steve]

Amazing how this goes on on and on on and on on and on (BTW; wasn't this the refrain of some 70s black city slicker dude pop song too? D: D:), but summing up the last dozen threads, including JSangry's interventions, all I can say (and I am a bit sorry about this) is that

a) I strongly doubt there was such a thing as a quantum leap in musical prowess of the musicians and singers concerned (after all we are not talking lowdown-gutter country blues here, and there any such criteria would be futile as well),

b) a technical quantum leap may have occurred, but SO WHAT - SO F****N WHAT if all this technical quantum leap can produce is insipid fodder like that song quoted several times here? SO MUCH effort invested and SO LITTLE achieved, and

c) I therefore feel there is a bit of truth in Danasgoodstuff's assessment of any such statements indeed.

And this has got NOTHING to do with being dissatisfied with anything in life - EXCEPT being fed up with people trying to shove down ever-increasing amounts of precalculated musical superficialities down one's throat and claiming this is "the real thing" at the same time.

BTW @ MG: I certainly would not expect the black music makers to have remained in their ghettos (and really, not all of the 50s black music was a ghetto product) and I really try not to romanticise things about music form the past too much. But come on (and I know you know this too) - if smoooothie black music was needed to satisfy those who've "made it" and did not feel like being reminded of rougher music that reeked of harder times, then really, really - CHARLES BROWN achieved much more way back with (comparatively) much sparser at least just as effective musical means when compared to this "artificial "Turn Your Love Around" slickness and blandness. So where's the progress? Is plastering on layers of sugar coating and arranging gimmicks meant to be progress in musical competence? Accommodating changing styles- yes, but superiority? Nah!

Again (and as the bottom line of all this), changing times demand changing music - OK, and if the music just serves its lowbrow aim of providing entertainment (and, above all, making the cash register of thosee purveyors of entertainment services ring :D), then that's fine too for what the music was meant to be only. BUT - claiming such insipid results of oh so intricate studio production wizardry is proof of musical SUPERIORITY is just ridiculous in the extreme.

Finally, anybody care to comment on the entire hip hop-rap thing as a musical expression of what black society at large had achieved? Could it be that this funk slickness was just a put-on or cover-up or or did the pendulum of development of society actually swing back?

Edited July 13, 2008 by Big Beat Steve

[AllenLowe]

well, maybe I overstated my point; in that case, apologies to Leni Riefenstahl -

all seriousness aside (as Steve Allen ALSO used to say) I was just responding to the insertion of Triumph of the Will into the argument (actually over-rated, I've always thought, though it uses some fascinating cinematic techniques); truth is, I just get tired of the Benson rationale, sounds too much like Kenny G; as Mad Magazine might have said in its Truth in Advertising feature (wherein people actually told the complete truth), why doesn't he just get up and say:

"Look, motherfuckers, I was tired of starving my ass off, and you morons don't come to clubs or buy enough records to buy me a piece of used dog shit; so leave me the fuck alone if I choose to make a living playing crap, it's my crap and if I wanna play crap than I'm gonna play crap, if you don't like it kiss my solid-state rectum."

Edited July 13, 2008 by AllenLowe

[Harold_Z]

I'm with Jim Sangrey on this one. George Benson is one hell of a guitarist and singer. That he has had the good fortune to achieve commercial and financial success and knows how to maintain that success in no way compromises his "purer" (just for lack of a better word) efforts - past and present...AND, as Jim points out, his commercial efforts are well produced, musically sound and very sophisticated. You can even say slick - that's ok...I dig slick. I don't really understand how anyone can seriously believe he should have played his cards any other way.

[AllenLowe]

well, I find Benson as funky as a girl scout troop in Greenwhich, Connecticut -

problem is, I'm a more funky guitarist than he is, so if I wanna hear it second hand, I just put on my own CD -

[JSngry]

I'm a more funky guitarist than he is...

Nobody's questioning that.

[JSngry]

Seriously, how funky can you really be and say "more funky" instead of "funkier".

[AllenLowe]

because I'm so funked up -