more commentary on KC v. JB
Posted: February 5, 2005 7:13 pm
I agree a lot with this. there are a couple songs i know of KC's that i enjoy. mostly when ihear him i immediately think of plagarism. kenny 'big chance' is like stephen king trying to write a book in the vain of hiemingway titling it 'an old man and the bay.' jimmy, in my opinionn, branched out in a unique form and has developed a legion of people who want the same things. the dream of life by the sea isnt new and neither is writing about it. beach boys, jan and dean, etc. led the way. but the way it is written is a unique stamp. i think many music stars would have liked to base some of their music in jimmys genre but he never won an award, never had major air play so who would have taken the chance to actually work to build a fan base the way jimmy did. anyway, i could write a lot more on this but no need to, i am sure i will get bashed for writing this. however, read on to others opinions...
Yes I Am a Pirate...400 years too late....
The next few minutes were tense, and by the end of that time I had two new partners and my own marine salvage business. The terms of the deal were not complex, and the spirit was deeply humane.
The captain refused to cooperate at first, screeching hoarsely from the other end of the wreck that he had silent partners in Tampa who would soon come back and kill all of us...
But you hear a lot of talk like that in The Keys, so we ignored him and drank all the beer and hammered out a three-way agreement that would give the captain until sundown to take anything he wanted, and after that the wreck would be ours.
It was the Law of the Sea, they said. Civilization ends at the waterline. Beyond that, we all enter the food chain, and not always right at the top.
The captain seemed to understand, and so did I. He would be lucky to get back to shore with anything at all, and I had come close to getting my throat slit.
It was almost dark when we dropped him off on the dock, where he quickly sold out to a Cuban for $5,000 in cash. Mother ocean had prevailed once again, and I was now in the marine salvage business.
--From Generation of Swine, by Hunter S. Thompson
From CNN.com:
"This ["Be As You Are," Chesney's new album] isn't necessarily a Kenny Chesney country album," said Butch Waugh, executive vice president of RCA Label Group Nashville. "This is a look at Kenny Chesney's life in the islands."
Waugh compares the boldness of the move to "Nebraska," Bruce Springsteen's 1982 album of bleak, demo-quality songs released during one of singer's commercial peaks. At the time, the album puzzled some fans, but today it's regarded as one of Springsteen's finest. In more recent years, Dave Matthews has taken a similar turn.
"You can only do this when you have a fan base that wants to know more about you," Waugh says.
There are many eloquent and sharp words etched into American letters and conscience about the seas South of Florida; but, Chesney's latest effort is more like the chum bucket on the shrimper that is that canon. To equate "Be As You Are" artistically with "Nebraska" is like equating the Mattel company's production of the Barbie Doll with the many castings of the works of Auguste Rodin. If you open the liner notes and begin to count--and believe me, I was conservative about this--by the time you reach the end, you find no less than 8 commercials/product placements in this masterwork of self-discovery and soulsearching. Dont' get me wrong, I'm all for country concept albums, but this disk is neither country, nor a concept album. It's a collection of 13 of the most banal, unoriginal, and slightly plagiarized thoughts on "the Caribbean" that I have ever had the displeasure of subjecting myself to. And make no mistake, after the producer of this steaming turd told me I needed to go watch monkeys ***** in a zoo, I was pretty sure the label wouldn't float me a free copy to review. So I decided to join the human race and PURCHASE a copy. Believe, it's $16 and 3 cents I'll never get back.
If I were Jimmy Buffett, I'd hire an army of lawyers and go after these guys. Don't go buy this record, but, if you have already because some f**** moron named Butch Waugh said it was the equivalent of Springsteen recording "Nebraska," then put yourself through this exercise and load the songs up in your computer's music player like this:
Song List
Old Blue Chair - then - A Pirate Looks at 40, Buffett
Be As You Are - then - A Pirate Looks at 40, Buffett
Guitars and Tiki Bars - then - Changes in Latitudes, Buffett
Island Boy - then - He Went To Paris, Buffett
Somewhere In The Sun
Boston - then - Fins, Buffett
Something Sexy About the Rain - then - Wildfire, Michael Martin Murphy
French Kissing Life - then - Come Monday, Buffett
Key Lime Pie - then - Grapefruit, Juicy Fruit, Buffet
Sherry's Living in Paradise
Magic - then - Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue, Crystal Gayle)
Soul of a Sailor - then - A Pirate Looks at 40, Buffett
Old Blue Chair (Ocean Mix)
There's a lot of hints about being an old pirate on this record, but the only thing Chesney and his "writing partners" have pirated is someone else's ideas, if not entire lines, chords, and melodies of music. If this is Chesney letting us know more about him, Buffett ought to get a restraining order, because Chesney obviously thinks he and Mr. Margaritaville are one and the same.
I mean, really, where is the shame? At the end of his liner notes, Chesney offers:
THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO IS INVOLVED IN MY CAREER FOR UNDERSTANDING THAT THIS ALBUM WAS SOMETHING I NEEDED TO DO. THANKS TO EVERYONE AT CRUZAN RUM FOR BEING A PART OF THE RIDE.
In case you're wondering, that's product placement number 8 in this brochure that was most likely sponsored and printed by the Virgin Islands Information Society, disguised as liner notes for an album. Sometimes I have to take a s***, but I don't call all my friends in the bathroom to look at it, and there certainly isn't a sponsor for the viewing.
When Buffett took on his island persona and explored what was "going on" with the whole bit, he wrote about 10 good songs on the topic, 10 fairly original songs that looked into different aspects of "the life," and left it at that. And that's stretching it. To call Chesney's album redundant and repetitive, even within itself, is an insult to the depth, complexity, and beautiful inflection of the words redundant and repetitive. At the end of the day, this record is a self-masturbatory exercise on what it's like to be dumb, but rich enough to have a boat where you can get drunk someplace tropical. Expect this whore to show up at Xcel in a month with banners for Cruzan and Foxy's Firewater Rum all over the arena and Virgin Islands brochures in the lobby, right next to the K102 banners, right next to the cash registers.
Yes I Am a Pirate...400 years too late....
The next few minutes were tense, and by the end of that time I had two new partners and my own marine salvage business. The terms of the deal were not complex, and the spirit was deeply humane.
The captain refused to cooperate at first, screeching hoarsely from the other end of the wreck that he had silent partners in Tampa who would soon come back and kill all of us...
But you hear a lot of talk like that in The Keys, so we ignored him and drank all the beer and hammered out a three-way agreement that would give the captain until sundown to take anything he wanted, and after that the wreck would be ours.
It was the Law of the Sea, they said. Civilization ends at the waterline. Beyond that, we all enter the food chain, and not always right at the top.
The captain seemed to understand, and so did I. He would be lucky to get back to shore with anything at all, and I had come close to getting my throat slit.
It was almost dark when we dropped him off on the dock, where he quickly sold out to a Cuban for $5,000 in cash. Mother ocean had prevailed once again, and I was now in the marine salvage business.
--From Generation of Swine, by Hunter S. Thompson
From CNN.com:
"This ["Be As You Are," Chesney's new album] isn't necessarily a Kenny Chesney country album," said Butch Waugh, executive vice president of RCA Label Group Nashville. "This is a look at Kenny Chesney's life in the islands."
Waugh compares the boldness of the move to "Nebraska," Bruce Springsteen's 1982 album of bleak, demo-quality songs released during one of singer's commercial peaks. At the time, the album puzzled some fans, but today it's regarded as one of Springsteen's finest. In more recent years, Dave Matthews has taken a similar turn.
"You can only do this when you have a fan base that wants to know more about you," Waugh says.
There are many eloquent and sharp words etched into American letters and conscience about the seas South of Florida; but, Chesney's latest effort is more like the chum bucket on the shrimper that is that canon. To equate "Be As You Are" artistically with "Nebraska" is like equating the Mattel company's production of the Barbie Doll with the many castings of the works of Auguste Rodin. If you open the liner notes and begin to count--and believe me, I was conservative about this--by the time you reach the end, you find no less than 8 commercials/product placements in this masterwork of self-discovery and soulsearching. Dont' get me wrong, I'm all for country concept albums, but this disk is neither country, nor a concept album. It's a collection of 13 of the most banal, unoriginal, and slightly plagiarized thoughts on "the Caribbean" that I have ever had the displeasure of subjecting myself to. And make no mistake, after the producer of this steaming turd told me I needed to go watch monkeys ***** in a zoo, I was pretty sure the label wouldn't float me a free copy to review. So I decided to join the human race and PURCHASE a copy. Believe, it's $16 and 3 cents I'll never get back.
If I were Jimmy Buffett, I'd hire an army of lawyers and go after these guys. Don't go buy this record, but, if you have already because some f**** moron named Butch Waugh said it was the equivalent of Springsteen recording "Nebraska," then put yourself through this exercise and load the songs up in your computer's music player like this:
Song List
Old Blue Chair - then - A Pirate Looks at 40, Buffett
Be As You Are - then - A Pirate Looks at 40, Buffett
Guitars and Tiki Bars - then - Changes in Latitudes, Buffett
Island Boy - then - He Went To Paris, Buffett
Somewhere In The Sun
Boston - then - Fins, Buffett
Something Sexy About the Rain - then - Wildfire, Michael Martin Murphy
French Kissing Life - then - Come Monday, Buffett
Key Lime Pie - then - Grapefruit, Juicy Fruit, Buffet
Sherry's Living in Paradise
Magic - then - Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue, Crystal Gayle)
Soul of a Sailor - then - A Pirate Looks at 40, Buffett
Old Blue Chair (Ocean Mix)
There's a lot of hints about being an old pirate on this record, but the only thing Chesney and his "writing partners" have pirated is someone else's ideas, if not entire lines, chords, and melodies of music. If this is Chesney letting us know more about him, Buffett ought to get a restraining order, because Chesney obviously thinks he and Mr. Margaritaville are one and the same.
I mean, really, where is the shame? At the end of his liner notes, Chesney offers:
THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO IS INVOLVED IN MY CAREER FOR UNDERSTANDING THAT THIS ALBUM WAS SOMETHING I NEEDED TO DO. THANKS TO EVERYONE AT CRUZAN RUM FOR BEING A PART OF THE RIDE.
In case you're wondering, that's product placement number 8 in this brochure that was most likely sponsored and printed by the Virgin Islands Information Society, disguised as liner notes for an album. Sometimes I have to take a s***, but I don't call all my friends in the bathroom to look at it, and there certainly isn't a sponsor for the viewing.
When Buffett took on his island persona and explored what was "going on" with the whole bit, he wrote about 10 good songs on the topic, 10 fairly original songs that looked into different aspects of "the life," and left it at that. And that's stretching it. To call Chesney's album redundant and repetitive, even within itself, is an insult to the depth, complexity, and beautiful inflection of the words redundant and repetitive. At the end of the day, this record is a self-masturbatory exercise on what it's like to be dumb, but rich enough to have a boat where you can get drunk someplace tropical. Expect this whore to show up at Xcel in a month with banners for Cruzan and Foxy's Firewater Rum all over the arena and Virgin Islands brochures in the lobby, right next to the K102 banners, right next to the cash registers.
