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PaperclipPerfector  12hr ago (text post)   558 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for September 11, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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An acquaintance is temporarily losing his band's bassist and has asked me to fill for several shows over the next two months. I said yes as a personal favor to him, and now I'm ass-deep in an entirely new repertoire which mostly consists of 1970s - 1980s rock and pop.

It's really interesting to see how musical composition has developed over the last 50 years.

Take Warren Zevon's "Splendid Isolation": it has a lot going on. The track contains harmonica, multi-voice vocals, guitar, bass, piano all in the same piece. Despite that, it feels noticeably more "open" and than a lot of modern music. Rather than anchoring the song on guitar riffs, Zevon anchors it on a simple backbeat and a repetitive bass riff on the bottom end. Once he establishes the groove, he uses the harmonica and piano sparingly on the high end, but leaves a space in the sonic environment for vocals that's big enough to drive a truck through.

It's not a style you really see anymore. Like a a few other things, Phil Spector killed it.

That punchline was so good I suspect the rest of the post of being a setup!

I'm actually being earnest in the post. The evolution of music composition is something I find fascinating.

I'm also never going to pass up a tasteless joke, though.

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