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In Topic: Oceania interviews with Mike, Jeff and Nicole

05 July 2012 - 11:16 AM

United States, on 05 July 2012 - 10:34 AM, said:
Billy is the talkative one after all, haha.

Well, it's a little more than that. It's his band, his corporation, and his profits at stake. The other people "in the band" have zero percent stake of anything beyond the wage that Billy pays them.

So, it's impossible to describe this as a band in any traditional sense of the word. It's a Manager going out on the road with his Employees. The only reason Billy would give the others any interview time at all would be to try and invent the appearance that the people in his band aren't just hired guns.

None of the others in the current lineup have any creative input whatsoever (why the hell would they?), so hearing from them would be like hearing from the tour's lighting director or the stage manager. Sure, they might have some interesting tidbits, but at the end of the day, we'd be hearing "Billy told me to do this, Billy told me to do that...yeah, he's great to work with."
In Topic: will we ever see another band like SP?

04 July 2012 - 01:45 PM

*zero*, on 04 July 2012 - 01:40 PM, said:
their personalities alone were as integral to the band's success as billy and jimmy's musical prowess.

Examples, please?

And, by the way, as for Billy and Jimmy both agreeing that James and D'Arcy were integral to the band's success, enjoy this clip:

Jimmy: "The other two members really didn't want me in the band, and I didn't really want them in the band either, because they couldn't really play..."
In Topic: will we ever see another band like SP?

04 July 2012 - 01:23 PM

*zero*, on 04 July 2012 - 11:35 AM, said:
i don't feel that i have to give examples because at this point i'm not sure you will understand their relative value and i'll be wasting my time. what you see as mundane qualities in james and d'arcy (are we still including jimmy?) i see as special qualities in a subliminal way. of course i could go into detail describing what those qualities are...

You can't even name one, can you?

See, the reason why anyone cares about Billy is because he wrote songs and sang them. He put together a band, wrote songs, published them, and produced the albums that they appeared on. Album after album. And he gave many interviews and was very outspoken in the media. His abilities as a guitarist and a songwriter were exceptional, by any standard. Jimmy is noteworthy because he is known as a worldclass drummer. So, to be a big fan of Billy and Jimmy is easy, because they've given people an easy reason to. If you wanna obsess about anyone, why not instead marvel at how lucky we are that the two of them met. Not spiritual, not cosmic, just the fact that they were put into contact with each other, the same way that most people meet (A mutual friend had to introduce them, you realize.)

James and D'Arcy are limited to the live shows that they played in, and that's it. The rest is appearing in videos and photoshoots. There is no comparison to Billy or Jimmy for either of them, because their abilities on their instruments were mediocre, and oftentimes actually pretty bad.

Obviously, you're gonna obsess about them either way, but the reality is that you're either just stuck on the novelty of their gender or their looks (wow, it's a girl on bass, how unique! - don't tell Carol Kaye or Tina Weymouth that!), or you've created some obsession with them that you've formed in your own head.

Claim "spirituality" all you want, but can you back that up either? People believe in all sorts of religions because of the things that the people in them either supposedly did or supposedly said, not just because they looked a certain way.

So, again, what exactly is so exceptional and noteworthy about James or D'Arcy? Why get all spiritual about them?

Saying that it's "subliminal" is just a cop out, which starts to take things down a creepy road. What are James and D'Arcy communicating with you?

You remind me of a scene in the John Lennon documentary "Imagine: John Lennon" where Lennon is confronted by a fan who had been trespassing on his property, and sleeping there for days. The guy finally comes up to Lennon in front of his house and Lennon lets him speak to him in front of the cameras. The fan then proceeds to tell Lennon how he has such a strong connection to him, and quotes the Beatles lyric "Boy, you're gonna carry that weight". He tells Lennon that he was convinced that the lyric was about him, and that Lennon had been singing it directly for him, the fan.

The punchline? Lennon explains to the fan that he didn't write the song or even sing that line. It was Paul's song.

Whoops!
In Topic: will we ever see another band like SP?

04 July 2012 - 10:59 AM

*zero*, on 04 July 2012 - 10:32 AM, said:
man, do you hate james and d'arcy or what? you've really got the wrong end of the stick here. the fact that they didn't make a big creative contribution doesn't make them less worthy. nomatter how i put it, you don't seem to understand that they were simply special for who they were. no, billy could not have just picked any other girl bassist or ethnic guitarist and had the same effect. did you not see the recent video clip where billy talked about the how the four original members had a kind of zen harmony together? that, whatever it is, is the cosmic event i'm talking about. either you see that connection or you don't. it goes beyond a meeting of two complimentary talents, like lennon and mccartney. way beyond. you can spend a lifetime looking for that but never find it.

So, in other words, you don't have anything to say about James and D'Arcy beyond "they were simply special for who they were."

The trouble is, you don't have a single thing to say about them to describe this "specialness", other than more generic comments about some silly stereotype you've invented.

Obviously, I don't "hate" James or D'Arcy or any other person out there for the simple reason that I don't know them (in fact, actually I've met both), just as you don't know them. I can respect them for having been in a band I like, just as I can respect anyone else involved in a band I like, but their contribution to that band was essentially as hired players, and they were both mediocre players at best. Their outfits and hairdos onstage were more noteworthy than their individual skills or personalities. Watch the footage, read the interviews, or stare at the photographs all you want. They could've been completely different people and it wouldn't have mattered. Did James make the occasional funny joke in concert? Sure, but that's not why anybody went and saw that band or listened to the music. Of course Billy is going to talk about how "special" or "zen" he thought the original lineup was. He's been saying that for 20 years as if it meant something. He has similar thoughts about himself you know. They were so special he couldn't help but boss them all around for the better part of 10 years.

If you're going to gush over people and start talking about some massive significance, at least back it up with some examples. What song did D'Arcy write? What quote can you name from her? What unique skill on the bass did she have? Did she give some amazing interview where she talked about anything about her personality, what she likes, what she's into? There is no interview, there is no record of D'Arcy doing anything else but showing up for shows and being onstage absolutely silent. So, you know absolutely nothing about her. At least you can find a dozen or so stupid jokes that James said, or some deadpan interview that he gave. But what is so special about that? Nothing.
In Topic: will we ever see another band like SP?

04 July 2012 - 10:19 AM

*zero*, on 04 July 2012 - 10:05 AM, said:
you could have made your point in about half as many words... you're generally right about marketing culture, but i think you fail to see that beyond the band's image - which is an important asset in informing the audience's perceptions about the music and is thus a legitimate artistic extension of the band's work - they really were interesting people and had what i will again call a cartoonish personal chemistry that is unlike any other band. even though they were just being dorky most of the time, that endeared them to fans. their personalities weren't "invented" in the slightest, they were totally genuine. and the argument that they "had nothing to do with the music" because billy wrote it all is ultimately an irrelevant technicality, because they felt as strongly about the music as billy did, otherwise they wouldn't have stuck with him. the music was as much a part of them as it was a part of him.

What was so interesting about D'Arcy? About James? They were run of the mill people who just happened to be in a band. Plenty of girl bass players around (and better ones, who actually knew how to sing and write songs -> Kim Deal, Juliana Hatfield, etc.), and plenty of people of various ethnicities in bands. Those qualities are about as generic and surface as you can get.

You are creating something out of nothing and giving significance to James and D'Arcy based on what, how they mimed in videos? Or how they played Billy's music note-for-note onstage? How they dressed? You can count on one hand the number of interviews that Billy let either of them do. So, where is this deep appreciation from "knowing" them coming from? There is nothing there. You're making the sidekicks out to be special, when it fact the only thing that made them noteworthy was that they knew someone who was truly special.