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Last Post 11/16/2004 7:35 AM by  admin
CLUAS Opinion - The Roland Massacre
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admin
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11/16/2004 7:35 AM
    Post your comments here on the latest CLUAS Opinion piece 'The Roland Massacre' by the good Doctor Binokular. Check it out here: http://www.cluas.com/opinion/roland_massacare.htm It's a one of a rarebreed: a thought-provoking laugh. eoghan
    Dromed
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    11/16/2004 10:12 AM
    "electronic battle weapons of mass destruction have fallen into the hands of the terrorists" Genius Binokular...loved your piece! As someone that has to suffer the one man band Christmas party special every year, I have experienced this repeatedly. This guy is pushing 60, 5 foot nothing, wigged to beat the band, a Casio, a guitar and a drum machine (and good jeebus I've just discovered the same guy has been booked AGAIN for this year's festivities...help) and is making a small fortune. Yet for some crazy reason (or maybe something to do with the liberal supply of alcohol?) I manage to end the night balancing dangerously on a chair with my office colleagues screaming along to The Time Warp! I thoroughly appreciated that you didn't use your op-ed to go on a rant or public display of music snobbery - but kept a sense of humour - in these situations it's either that or committ some kind of massacre yourself! So next time join in with the girls with wild abandon, you can always hang your head in shame the morning after and blame it on the drink - just make sure no one has a camera!
    WhoMe
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    11/16/2004 10:22 AM
    i think it reeeeeeeks of music snobbery, still, our parents probably look at the chemical brothers with the same confusion. What harm is it when a old fella brings his keyboard to a gig and has a good old singalong with the crowd who grew up with this kind of music. Its not as if hes playing whelans or the Hub. I know me granny would love s**te like this, whats the bleedin harm. I think what is sad is to post a review of the gig on a music website. Peace Brother
    Dromed
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    11/16/2004 10:27 AM
    eh...where does it reek of musical snobbery?
    WhoMe
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    11/16/2004 10:33 AM
    "something this cheesy" +"Something needs to be done, I'd gladly hand out pump action shotguns and assault rifles to these guys before I'd let them within fifty feet of a keyboard. Sadly however, it is too late to do anything, Frankenstein's monster has been awakened. Thanks to the unstoppable march of technology, capitalism and cheap consumer goods, these innocuous looking electronic battle weapons of mass destruction have fallen into the hands of the terrorists. Not even George W. Bush can stop the Roland Massacres now and Fatboy Slim should have thought about the consequences a little harder when he said "everybody needs a 303". "In the 3rd CLUAS Opinion piece, Doctor Binokular reflects on the not-always-positive use of modern technology by those who like to think they are entertaining us..." not always positive, tell that to the group of old folks singing along all night with big grins on their faces
    Gar
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    11/16/2004 11:03 AM
    I thought it was a very funny and well written piece. Those are the type of gigs we all try to avoid but it was interesting how the Doc explained it. Well done mate!!!
    Tombo
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    11/16/2004 11:36 AM
    I really enjoyed it. Entertaining and funny. Can completely relate to the good doctor. Why do some people insist on taking things so seriously? Fair play.
    WhoMe
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    11/16/2004 11:51 AM
    Why do some people insist on taking things so seriously? Thats my point!
    Karlito
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    11/16/2004 12:00 PM
    Man I thought it was well written. We've all been at stuff like this and cringed and laughed and danced at the same time. If you had a choice you wouldn't go, but if you end up there (as the good Doctor says) with friends of a like mind you end up having the craic and laughin yer pants off Of course old people like it, it's funny
    mutch
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    11/16/2004 12:20 PM
    having worked in a local bar for 4 years and a hotel bar for 2 of those 4 same years, i can relate to the article very much so. often the same guy was booked in the bar in the hotel on the friday night and then my local bar on the saturday night. oh i knew the setlist by then. but its about giving the crowd what they want. simple market thinking. (by the way, this site is about to get me so fired, laughing out loud at the desk is not acceptable it seems!!!) nice one dr.
    Wicker
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    11/16/2004 12:50 PM
    Excellent article, reminds me of so many occasions it hurts
    Vent My Spleen
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    11/16/2004 12:55 PM
    Top job Bonokular! It reminds me of a Peter Kay stand up gag where he talks about when we are all in our seventies at Christmas and our children say to the grandchildren "Turn that racket off and stick on a nice bit of The Prodigy for Granny".
    Binokular
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    11/17/2004 10:03 AM
    Wow! thanks everybody, I'm amazed and delighted with the positive response this piece has got. Glad so many of you found it funny and even made one or two of you laugh out loud (sorry about the job Mutch, at least this leaves you free to form that incredible chart topping rock and roll band). Dromed, yeah I probably should loosen up a bit and just have fun, the problem is that my tech savvy friends always seem to have some sort of digital camera to hand. Damn those camera phones! Whome, great to hear what you thought. Getting some kind of reaction is always good even if its negative. I can see where your coming from and will admit that maybe this article could be seen as a musical snobbery. However I do think that you might be taking it a little bit too seriously, the whole thing is pretty tongue-in-cheek. Also I think you might have slightly misinterpreted the main thrust of what the article was about. Yes, I called the act "cheesy", but so what? The guy on stage knows its cheesy, the audience knows it. Do they care? Nope, because they're too busy having fun, they enjoy it because its a good laugh. After all aren't some of todays bands loved precisely because they're cheesy, like The Darkness and Scissor Sisters? Do I have a problem with a load of old people having fun? Nope, mind you the audience weren't that old. Mainly over 50s yes, but not all pensioners either. As the title suggests (Roland being a brand of keyboard), this article is about how these guys manage to make everthing sound crap despite often having a fairly decent set of keyboards, how having an abundance of technology at their disposal sometimes makes things sound worse. The original version of a lot of the songs would have been pretty good. Part of the problem is that synths are so versatile, this is great, but its often their downfall too and the art of arranging a song to suit seems to have been lost a bit. Before the keyboard, if you wanted to play a song using only one instrument, you would have to pare things down. If you were playing the piano, you would usually be limited to just playing the melody on one hand while playing a basic accompaniment on the other. OK, it could still sound terrible if you were rubbish, but a half decent musician would be forced to think about how best to play the song. With a keyboard there is just too much choice sometimes. You can recreate every single part of the song using different instruments on multitrack auto-acompaniment and built-in drum machines, It's like "hey, this bit had had saxaphone, so we'll use the saxaphone preset, and that bit had strings so we'll use the strings preset" The musician often feels the need to use every single feature at his disposal whether it actually sounds good or not, it makes it a lot easier to totally overcook and murder a song.
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