Andrew WK - RIO/Avant-Prog

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 Man Overboard wrote:

My, my.  How quickly we jump onto the outliers and forget logic in the argument, offering instead rhetoric.  How easily we long-time posters dismiss a legitimate, passionated opinion and offer up a slice of unkindness and unshielded rejection..  Ever feel bad after doing that?
No. In fact, it's what I live for.
 He made the unfortunate mistake of judging RIO/Avant by the bands represented there the most.  Between AWK's uncannily dense and unusual harmonic structures more reminiscent of orchestra-for-rock-and-other-cool-stuff and incredibly tight melodic and textural chops.

It's nice that Harry has perfect pitch and can name chord progressions from other works. That's far more than I can do. But I also have listened to quite a bit of "unusual" music, and I cannot understand how one could come to the conclusion that there is anything about Brick Walls that is unusual or uncanny in any way. Besides a few Zappa-esque moments, I don't hear a single thing that sets it apart from the pop-rock I hear on the radio all day, other than that usually major artists don't choose such an obnoxious keyboard tone. Yeah, sometimes he has overdubbed multiple vocal harmonies for the choruses, which is something people do all the time.

 He writes, performs, and records every instrument on the majority of his discography with little exception
So does Paul McCartney.

 This sort of perfectionism and orchestration reminds one of the sort of work and eccentricity of Frank Zappa and The Residents, who are in Avant-Garde for some weird reason and represent a hell of a lot of the represented material in this genre.
I've already talked about Zappa, but if you can't hear the difference in avant-ness between The Residents and Andrew WK, I really don't know what to say.

 Until recently, I had taken a very long haitus from this forum because I could feel the 'old poster' thing kicking in and my attitude becoming quite harsh.  I came back because I believed that the times had changed and I could maintain a stiff upper lip, and I feel I've done my best to do so.  It's a shame that some of you cannot, and I regret the need to open my figurative mouth in such a manner now.

Oh come on, we just said no, and Walter made a joke because that's what he does. You don't need to act like we kicked Harry in the nuts and then pissed on him. But I forgive you for voicing your opinion on a forum anyway!

 I'm not certain what sort of "accusations" you folk may have about the new bwenner user.  I hope she doesn't mind me saying this, but she's a longtime friend of Rob's who saw the thread and wondered just what necessitated the overall tone of the posts directed at the OP.  Far from the Andrew WK fanclub, I doubt she'd listened to his works in any capacity until the same time as you guys did, from the link in the OP. Some of you are mods, I imagine you've checked IPs, so this talk about 'suspicions' is absolutely unwarranted and rather rude.
We're being rude? She called us communists (and not even the good Communists, German communists!) and posted a stupid image macro (that bypassed the profanity filter!). This is hardly a thoughtful reflection on the general tendency of the internet users to jump to conclusions. What would checking IPs accomplish? We're saying that she's trolling (because she is), not that it was Harry's alt. I'll admit that I was confused enough by its sudden appearance that I thought it for a second, but I knew that Harry wouldn't do such a ridiculous thing.

 Does making an honest mistake regarding the political system that is ProgArchives' genre system really demand such a reaction from some of you guys?
It's more like making an honest mistake about what constitutes ProgArchives' acceptance at all, and again, what exactly did we say to hurt your feelings so badly? I certainly don't see anything to warrant your condescending post (and after calling us condescending!), but maybe I'm biased by my non-love of Andrew WK.

 Thanks for keeping Prog Archives classy.

I'm the classiest motherf**ker around, no problem.

Edited by Henry Plainview - March 08 2010 at 01:46