Kyle: Hmm, enjoying Steely Dan… sounds unlikely for me. However, there are a number of artists whose work I respect, even if I'm not really a fan (e.g., The Beach Boys or Pink Floyd). I can certainly appreciate music for what it is, but that doesn't mean it will move me. The Dead are a perfect example: I've gone from liking them a little in college to disliking them to something like respecting them from a distance. The music doesn't do a lot for me, but I appreciate its better qualities. It's funny you mentioned "Dark Star"; I listened to the version from their live CD to help my insomnia when I was 19. It was something like 27 minutes long. Twenty-seven! Seriously, that's just for people on drugs. Hey, I'm not judging: The first time I "got" Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon was with the help of the psilocybe cubensis. (I even scribbled "It all makes sense now!" on some paper. Yikes.)
Like you, I prefer bursts of improvisation. One band that did that well was Fugazi, which was adventurous enough to experiment, but disciplined enough to keep it manageable—both live and in the studio. I think its longest song is "23 Beats Off" from In On The Kill Taker, and it clocks in at a relatively quick 6:41. Fugazi's Ian MacKaye said something interesting when I interviewed him: The songs on his records don't sound right to him. He played the "definitive" versions on some stage somewhere, and that's how he hears them in his mind's, um, ear. Like you, Noel, I generally avoid hunting down obscure live versions of songs, but hearing MacKaye say that almost sent me on a quixotic search for his "official" versions.
I, too, appreciate finality in music, but as a songwriter, I also understand the urge to change it up. You get bored. Think about The Rolling Stones shuffling through "Satisfaction" for the 8,000,000th time. So I don't begrudge bands that avoid old material when performing, or others that rework their songs live. Take, for example, TV On The Radio and The Mars Volta. Especially in the latter's case, you don't go to the shows expecting to hear the albums note for note. The albums are basically snapshots from a specific time in a process that continues after the group leaves the studio.
It isn't a matter of having the chops, necessarily, to pull it off live. I think the performances that really affect us are the ones where feeling plays as powerful a role as skill. Technique doesn't equal soul.
Noel: No, but it doesn't not equal soul, either. And it can be impressive to watch—and occasionally even to hear. The title of this discussion is "Are Guitar Solos Lame?", and while that's really just a hook for hanging a conversation about improvisation in rock and pop, the question is still worth answering, even if the answer's just "Sometimes."
True, the short list of guitarists whom I look forward to hearing solo—a list headed up by Anne McCue, Doug Martsch, and your quasi-nemesis J. Mascis—aren't technically "clean" players. They struggle, honestly and engagingly, to translate their emotions into squall. But just like it can be exciting to watch a veteran figure skater execute a jump that he's practiced until it's flawless, there's something impressive about watching a virtuoso stand on a stage and just play. And while there's a big difference between artistry and craftsmanship, both deserve their due amount of appreciation.
Nothing drives that home to me more than my yearly immersion in American Idol. About half the contestants who make it to the final 24 have a certain baseline level of technical polish that they've obviously picked up through years of training, and about half have interesting voices and enough personality quirks to woo the voters. Then there's a rare one or two with naturally strong vocal tones and the passion to connect with a song on any given night, and deliver a performance that sends genuine chills down my spine. Those are the kinds of performances that people who stubbornly refuse to watch the show can't imagine ever happen.
I admit that they don't happen that often—maybe four or five times a season at best. But I also enjoy hearing the contestants with technical skill and little originality, especially after suffering through a string of performances by wacky amateurs. Every time one these Idol contestants walk onto the stage, I tense up, worried that they're going to flame out, and when one of them steps into the spotlight and sings a song free and easy, it's a real treat.
Understand, I'm not talking about those crazy melisma-ridden vocal runs that some AI contestants build to after mumbling a song for two minutes. I'm talking about nice, full, rangy vocals that stay in tune, even if they never rise above the bloodless.
So it goes with guitar solos. They can be warm and impassioned, or self-indulgent, or crisp as a cracker. I prefer the first, I don't much like the second, and I've learned to appreciate the third. Because sometimes I need some simple competency in my aesthetic life, just to show me where the baseline is.
Let me leave with you an exercise. Go track town a copy of Steely Dan's "My Old School," and if you can make it through the laid-back boogie and cryptic Fagen lyrics about decade-old college slights, listen to Denny Dias—or maybe it's Jeff "Skunk" Baxter, I can't tell—bringing the song home with his third solo in six minutes. His first two are tight, rhythmic little solos, playing off the staccato horns and driving beat. But on the third, Dias (or maybe Baxter) pumps some pedal or another and simultaneously ratchets up the tension and provides a release. The album is called Countdown To Ecstasy. That solo is the ecstasy.
Kyle: Although that solo doesn't leave me ecstatic, I certainly found it and its two (!) predecessors intriguing, mostly because of the air Dias or Baxter gives them. The first two, in particular, have what sounds like a bit of hesitation between segments, like Dias/Baxter was still figuring out where to go. That reminded me of the "struggle" Martsch, McCue, and Mascis exhibit. (By the way, J. & I are all good after Dinosaur's performance at Lollapalooza '05.)
Coincidentally, Steely Dan falls just before Sugar in my iTunes, and if I have a personal guitar god, it's Bob Mould. I doubt anyone has affected my playing and my perceptions of guitar more than he has. He represents my ideal: a technically gifted guitarist who plays with emotion—to see that emotional squall you mentioned, Noel, check out Mould live—but doesn't wank.
You left me with a song, so I too send one your way: "Tilted" by Sugar. About halfway through it, Mould unleashes the kind of rapid-fire solo that would floor the longhairs shopping for a new Warlock at Guitar Center. Where I enjoyed your Steely Dan solos for their air, I enjoy Mould's for its suffocating density. "Tilted" shakes with relentless unease, and the solo sends it into a full-on seizure. The fretboard pyrotechnics are tethered to the song's energy and theme, so they don't sound masturbatory.
American Idol's seemingly chronic oversinging strikes me as masturbatory, but that's a discussion for another day. I don't really watch the show, so I'm not an expert, but I can understand the point you're making. Talent is always something to behold—whether it's delivered via self-indulgence, understatement, or the ideal in-between—even if the result is lame.
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