Today's Guest: Spiral Beach
Spiral Beach
I’ve heard many musicians say: if a song can be played on an acoustic guitar without the backing of a full band and still sound good, then it’s a good song.
I believe that in a lot of ways though I also think that there are plenty of songs that depend on that electro rhythm or a weird synthesizer part and it doesn’t necessarily make them weak songs by any means.
Stripping a song down to its basic form certainly makes the lyrics more apparent so if you gauge a song’s merit on the words, this is one way to sort the wheat from the chaff.
I once did some co-writing with great American songwriter named Jules Shear who was actually one of the people responsible for getting a show called MTV Unplugged off the ground years ago. And though the word “unplugged” has pretty much gone out of vogue these days, there’s still an interest in artists doing acoustic versions of songs, or performing solo. Here’s a recent example involving Metric and another regarding The Weakerthans.
Now, there are those who probably find stripped down recordings and stripped down performances kind of boring. I’ve heard this complaint before too.
So I think its time for YOU to weigh in on our POLL QUESTION then:
DO YOU LIKE IT WHEN ARTISTS GO ACOUSTIC? Would you buy the record? Will you go to the show? What artist would YOU pay big money to hear “unplugged”?
comment here on the blog OR Twitter us at CBC Radio 3, OR send us an email: feedback@cbcradio3.com
We will also continue taking YOUR Bucky Nominations. Today’s categories are:
Best Vocals
Best Reason To Learn French
Post your nominations and comments at the links above, and we’ll discuss them on the show as well.
