Paul McCartney Archive Collection - Flowers In The Dirt*

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Sean Murdock, Sep 18, 2015.

  1. Darrin L.

    Darrin L. Forum Resident

    Location:
    Golden, CO
    Your analysis of MBF is what I was trying to convey...well done!!!
     
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  2. emkay

    emkay Senior Member

    Location:
    New Jersey, USA
    I remenber buying this CD on the day of release, and it had a hype sticker like so many new releases during that era. It boldly proclaimed that it "featured" Motor of Love. WTF? Who in their right might EVER considered that song would be a draw and create a sale. I want to find the consumer that walked into a record store and asked "do you have the new Paul McCartney album? The one with Motor of Love on it?" I remember thinking that track was a total piece of sh**, and generally being a little disappointed with FITD - I expected a little more after Press to Play. That, and I thought MBF was a promising preview. My feelings softened over time, and I see it as the beginning of a move in the right direction. In a lot of ways, I think Off The Ground is a much better record - though I realize that is a minority opinion. But then again, that is only because you are all WRONG about it! ;-)

    Over time, my feelings toward "Motor" have softened - I think it's a nice tip of the cap to Brian Wilson... but the production sux! Too much. VERY 80s...
     
  3. czeskleba

    czeskleba Senior Member

    Location:
    Seattle
    Yep. "Say Say Say" was a huge hit, but the general perception of McCartney at my high school was that he was a middle-aged Rockwell. I can't imagine my peers were unique in feeling that way. I think in the long run, that song did more harm than good, making him look like a desperate coattail rider.
     
  4. Darrin L.

    Darrin L. Forum Resident

    Location:
    Golden, CO
    I think OTG is certainly a more cohesive album, and I like "Hope of Deliverence" as a single, more that MBF. But again, I find much of the b-side material stronger than some the tracks on the album proper. Regardless, the material from the OTG period is stronger.
     
    Last edited: Mar 20, 2017
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  5. emkay

    emkay Senior Member

    Location:
    New Jersey, USA
    Best joke I heard at the time was that McCartney was a Visine junkie - a white Lionel Richie. Yeah, there were a couple of big hits in there but McCartney became Kathie Lee Gifford for a while. Not relevent, not cool, not a rock star. The return to form I wanted from him at the time was just to forget the over the top collaborations and use a damn guitar...
     
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  6. emkay

    emkay Senior Member

    Location:
    New Jersey, USA
    Yeah - there were some good B sides. That said, OTG IS a cohesive album and the songs are very "McCartney-ish." I've said in the past, if you have a strong bias against this album, you probably really don't like him - because this record is him ALL DAY. It feels less like an effort to assume a current identity.
     
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  7. Darrin L.

    Darrin L. Forum Resident

    Location:
    Golden, CO
    It was a difficult time to be a McCartney fan. dePRESSed TO PLAY was the first album I did not purchase upon release. But then, the eighties were a difficult time for many of my sixties/seventies heroes.
     
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  8. Darrin L.

    Darrin L. Forum Resident

    Location:
    Golden, CO
    Best joke I heard at the time was the line in one critics review of "Broadstreet".
    "You don't have to play this movie backwards to know that Paul is dead".
     
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  9. Claudio Dirani

    Claudio Dirani A Fly On Apple's Wall

    Location:
    São Paulo, Brazil
    My Brave Face, This One and Figure of Eight received loads of airplay here... and one cannot tell mid 80's had been kind on him.
     
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  10. Darrin L.

    Darrin L. Forum Resident

    Location:
    Golden, CO
    Plus, I had great seats for that tour...it was incredible!!!
     
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  11. gottafeelin

    gottafeelin Forum Resident

    Location:
    Georgia
    As a kid, I remember listening to Thriller and wondering why the old guy with the boring voice was ruining a great Michael Jackson record. Seriously.
     
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  12. MsMaclen

    MsMaclen Forum Resident

    Location:
    New York
    And many of my favorite albums are 80s albums by 60s artists. :) But there have been other times when I too shunned current music in favor of older or more obscure stuff.

    Yup, I like that version and the other solo versions he's done, but none of them top Paul's for me. I wouldn't call Paul's version "underproduced," it just didn't pop out at me right away like some of the more upbeat and layered tracks on the album. Songs with a strong rhythm and/or hook(s) tend to catch my attention right away, while ballads can take me longer to warm up to, as in this case. However, the production on the track doesn't stand out for me strongly either way -- it always sounded basically normal to me, though I can hear how it might annoy someone who is sensitive to 80s production. What does stand out to me are the song & lyrics, and Paul's singing, both of which I think are amazing. What to your ears sounds like histrionic oversinging sounds to me like one of the best vocal performances of Paul's career, providing exactly the right emotional feel while showcasing his expert abilities. However, I've heard others have the same opinion as you comparing the two approaches, so to each his own.

    Well I do agree with you about FITD seeming disjointed. I've always felt like there is an inconsistency to it that keeps it from being my favorite. I'd say I agree with the (your?) earlier point that it might have been a better album if he'd focused more exclusively on the Elvis collaborations. I feel like OTG is much more cohesive, and that's one reason it's my favorite. However, I've also always felt like Revolver is slightly all over the place, and that's the main reason it doesn't sit atop my Beatles list, but obviously plenty of people don't have the same issue. :)

    As for MBF, it certainly has the trademark Elvis wordiness -- there's no question who was primarily responsible for the lyrics. It might have been a bit too esoteric for the time. Yet Billy, also part of the "older" crowd, had a hit with We Didn't Start the Fire that year, and it's hard to get more dense lyrically than that! I don't know. I'm sure everything mentioned so far contributed in some way, but some of these things are a bit unpredictable.

    Going back to the broader question of Paul trying to sound modern, or just doing his own thing, I think he's very much done both throughout his career, especially from the 80s on, and he seems to enjoy doing both. Most generally though, it seems like everyone is happier when Paul is being himself and doing what he wants to do rather than trying to fit a particular image, whether that's experimenting with modern styles and techniques, or doing something without any external referencing. There is a lot of evidence that he knows this himself and has for quite some time (e.g., discussions on the Get Back sessions), so I'd say the best thing is for him to go with his gut and not overthink things. :cool:
     
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  13. Darrin L.

    Darrin L. Forum Resident

    Location:
    Golden, CO
    Kids today probably had a similar reaction when watching the "FourFive Seconds" video.
     
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  14. theMess

    theMess Forum Resident

    Location:
    Kent, UK
    Some, but most of the comments that I have seen regarding that song on Youtube praise or compliment Paul, and at least with 'Four Five Seconds', Paul was actually involved with the writing, whereas with 'The Girl Is Mine' he simply sang on Michael's composition.
     
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  15. paulmccartneyistheman

    paulmccartneyistheman Forum Resident

    FourFiveSeconds was a fun song, and a fun time to see Paul in a "relevant" song for the first time in my lifetime, but I can't imagine what other younger folks thought(folks that haven't been Beatles fans forever)
     
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  16. Brian from Canada

    Brian from Canada Forum Resident

    Location:
    Great White North
    The film may have been a disaster — for reasons far beyond Paul's reach — but the album went gold and had a hit single.
    As for Michael Jackson's participation being polarizing, for me that happens more with the purchase of ATV than anything else; Stevie Wonder's duets are equally outside the McCartney frame, but nothing on Tug Of War is anywhere as polarizing.
     
  17. gottafeelin

    gottafeelin Forum Resident

    Location:
    Georgia
    Except Ebony and Ivory...
     
  18. Brian from Canada

    Brian from Canada Forum Resident

    Location:
    Great White North
    To be fair, though, the early 80s was an explosion of new acts and new sounds — and for the first time, they are quite absent on the albums of the period… because George Martin wanted Paul to go back to his Beatles-style song construction. (Remember that Martin told Paul some of the demos from 1980 were below standard.)

    But it also didn't help that the media was pushing him into irrelevancy at the same time. That has to be underscored. The idea that Paul McCartney was the melodic, safe voice behind John Lennon's political, daring, experimental, true rocker voice was wholly supported by a Pipes Of Peace that was even worse than, to borrow a phrase, 'silly love songs.' Had Pipes Of Peace gone more to what was going on at the time — in the way Wings had done — it would have been much better for Paul.

    Just as connecting Broadstreet to A Hard Day's Night was a gross misstep because the film lacked any of the kinetic energy that goes with The Beatles. The blame on that one, though, goes wholly to 20th Century Fox: how anyone greenlit a 20-page concept script with a director who has never been behind the camera on a feature film — and then treat it as a blockbuster — is beyond me.
     
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  19. Brian from Canada

    Brian from Canada Forum Resident

    Location:
    Great White North
    At the time, it was beloved by a lot of people.
    By the mid-80s, it was disliked — as was everything else Paul did.
    I think that, now, it gets a better view but hasn't quite been elevated back… in much the same way that much of his Wings material hasn't.
    But it will change – likely after Paul's death when, if the other two late Beatles are anything to go by, we will see a whole elevation of the catalogue and the full attachment of 'genius' to the whole thing.
     
  20. Brian from Canada

    Brian from Canada Forum Resident

    Location:
    Great White North
    Off The Ground is more cohesive because he started with the same band and used the same producer. The only other voices that seem to have a play in the LP are Carl Davis and George Martin, but they are for string arrangements. Plus, reviews at the time noted that Paul was reaching back to a more classic sound on purpose (likely do the classic feel he was getting from the stage shows), which would have tied Paul back to his roots. Where the album falls down to me is the b-sides; yes, there are one or two stronger ones, but for the most part they stress the same old problem of: he has a melody, he plays the melody, he doesn't evolve the melody because he's got sappy lyrics for the top.

    Press To Play was the first LP I can distinctly remember hearing the guy behind the cash telling me NOT to buy the album. While the album has problems, it was certainly a major step forward after Pipes Of Peace and Broadstreet and has some good songs on it.

    I wasn't embarrassed to be a McCartney fan. In the early 90s, though, that was much worse: Off The Ground was so bad that the record store couldn't give tickets to his show away — two free tickets with a copy of the CD ($13.99) and no one was buying — and people would joke you wore the t-shirt from the concert because your parents took you (and made you buy it). His videos didn't get any airplay here at all, and there were lame plant jokes about his last visit (look: a flower in dirt… how, um, different). The fact that Liverpool Oratorio was celebrated but incredibly weak didn't help either, nor did it help that he looked super stiff and relied on jokes nearly 15 years old on Saturday Night Live. The music industry had shifted so far away that younger people were having their tastes determined by TRL soon after.
     
  21. longdist01

    longdist01 Senior Member

    Location:
    Chicago, IL USA
    is there a "Coming Up" card w/ the next titles in Archives Collection?
     
  22. kevintee

    kevintee I’d rather be listening to McCartney

    Location:
    St. Louis, MO
    :doh:
     
  23. klaatuhf

    klaatuhf Forum Resident

    Location:
    Sydney, Australia
    Go back about 150 pages and you will find out..short answer is "No" hence why there's a 150 pages after that :)
     
  24. SixOClockBoos

    SixOClockBoos The Man On The Flaming Pie

    It went something like this.
    [​IMG]
     
  25. Thrillington

    Thrillington McCartney Scholar

    Location:
    Cardiff, Wales, UK
    Take these with a large pinch of salt! Not all of these were genuine.

    Popular twitter kids love to copy and paste other's funny jokes just to acquire more followers. Sad really.
     

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