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PrintableMrSoulpower said: theAudience said: Welllll!...  
It also might be a question of whether or not you want songs in a particular genre to sort of stay "stuck in time" sound wise. That Flowers tune for example is nice but it sounds old or "Old-School" would be more accurate. Not a judgement on whether that's bad or good, just an observation. Maybe that's part of its charm. I always saw EW&F as more of a progressive R&B/Soul group. A band that utilized the basic elements of classic R&B/Soul songwriting but incorporated the technology of its day when it came to recording techniques. tA  Tribal Disorder
http://www.soundclick.com...dID=182431 Well, in my opinion, it backfired for the most part when 1960s/1970s Funk and Soul groups walked down the progressive path of recording technology. It often resulted in highly over-produced and synthetical music. IMO, EW&F lost the warmth of their sound in the mid- to late 1970s. But I also think that by the late 1970s, most veteran groups like EW&F, Kool & The Gang and even James Brown and Stevie Wonder had long reached their creative peak and suffered from burn-out syndroms. A progressive approach in regards to recording technology couldn't cover up this weakness, in fact, it enhanced it. Which is why musicologists would always consider the earlier work of these artists as their "prime". Artists like Flowers or Family of Eve still managed to sound fresh in the late '70s and early '80s, because they hadn't really done much. So yeah, being "stuck in time" is not such a bad thing after all, unless you're a fan of James Brown's work in the 1980s and 1990s and you believe that Lover Over due is a greater album than Popcorn. 
Sounding "old" seems to be the most charming characteristic in Soul and Funk music, which is why so many new groups try to recapture this energy. 1975 1980 Nevertheless what musicologists opiniate as their gospel (which is after all about their own taste), it won't take away that Maurice and Verdine described the intense recording-sessions for their "All 'N All"-album as a high in their career because they felt this was a progessive step in creating "the concept-project" with a number of album-tracks mixed as almost a medley, which as far as i know of had not been mixed in that way before by other artists. 2 years later, Maurice and David Foster were on a tight and focussed composition-level for the "i Am"-album which absorbed most of their time. When Maurice presented the band the raw demos, they were very impressed and saw it as a serious challenge to get this next concept-album recorded. Maurice regards "i Am" as his "Abbey Road". I personally take more value to these inside-quotes than to which opinion a musicologist has, because we all have different strokes in the end, like for example i don't regard the enormous monster-worldtours of EW&F during the late 70's and early 80's as a sign of a burnt-out syndrome. I think if that was the case, then those tours wouldn't have endured long, because they got incredible response from audiences during their many sold-out shows worldwide. I've read about their personal and documented experiences that their burnt-out syndrome hitted hard around 1983/1984. Maurice gathered the band together for a discussion-meeting about their future-plans and everyone agreed that it was time to split. | |
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