Re: Shel Talmy

[kirkh@indirect.com (Kirk Hawley)]

At 08:13 PM 7/22/94 DST), svm@kozmix.hacktic.nl wrote:
>> >> similarities between "I Can't Explain" and "All of the Day and All
>> >> of the Night", [...]
>> >
>> >Am I the only person that _doesn't_ find any obvious similarity to
>> >these two songs?  I mean, sure there are the common guitar riffs, but
>> >isn't every rock song pretty much a variant on a theme from this
>> >period anyway?
>> 
>> I agree that they don't seem real similar at first.  The melodies
>> don't seem the same at all.  But as I run them through my head I
>> can see similiarities in the rhythm.  And the tempo has got to be
>> almost dead-on the same.  They both rely on that variation of the
>> standard R-n-R/Surf music beat one-TWO-three-FOUR-AND, but so does
>> a gazillion other songs of the era.  Someone with a better ear for
>> chords then me would have to comment on whether they have the same
>> chord changes.  But again, it's not like you could go copyright
>> the I-IV-V progression!
>
>Right, especially since AD&AofN isn't I-VI-V. :) If you play both
>songs in the same key, let's say E, you get E-D-A-E for ICE and
>E-D-G-E for AD&AofN. Also, ICE's rhythm is really
>ONE-two-THREE-AND-four of course (no matter what Keith plays, when
>dealing with the Who I usually listen to PT for rhythm... Same could
>be said for AD&AofN, or any pre-heavy-distortion guitar band I
>guess. Perhaps the fact that I'm a no-distortion electric guitar
>player myself has something to do with it? ;)
>
>Cheers,
>Sander
>-- 
>Sander van Malssen
>svm@kozmix.hacktic.nl
>
>

The problem is you're listening for a similarity NOW. If you listened for
a similarity back then, you would have noticed this really wierd thing
happening - the rhythm guitar was louder than you'd ever heard before, and
these big huge (it seemed like at the time) chunky chords had this incredibly
powerful sound. Nobody had ever played guitar like that before. Of course,
thirty years later, after ever permutation of a power chord has been
heard ad infinitum for years (especially by Who fans) it's pretty hard
to really appreciate this as a revolutionary approach to guitar. 

Music: Fairport at Cropredy 92