rlr@pyuxn.UUCP (Rich Rosen) (12/02/83)
Q: What sounds like the Police and looks like U2? (Hint: The answer to the above question is the same as the answer to the question "Does a bear sh*t in the woods?") Seriously, I always thought Bono Vox of U2 was Jon Anderson's twin brother, especially the way he pranced around the stage and clapped. With JA's new haircut it's impossible to tell the difference. When I first heard "Owner of a Lonely Heart", I easily mistook it for the Police (the chop-chop guitar and Anderson's singing helped give that mistaken impression). My friend thought Anderson was sounding like Sting, but he was really in much the same vocal style as before. It was Rabin's chop-chop guitar playing that gave the song its Policesque feel. (perhaps Sting really sounds like Anderson???) As I stated in an earlier article, these guys are in a real bind: if they do something original and interesting they won't make any money; if they sell out they'll be boring but they'll make a mint. Which option will they choose? Sorry, kids, it ain't Yes without Howe, Wakeman, and Bruford (if I hear them refer to Alan White as an original member of Yes one more time, I'll blow up the MTV studio!!!!!). And Yes ain't gonna happen again because it ain't 1972 anymore. (And you laugh at your parents for having liked Rudy Vallee???) P.S. Does anyone remember that best-selling pop psych self-help book from the mid-'70s, "Don't Say Yes When You Want to Say Emerson, Lake & Palmer". It changed my life... [If you want to flame at someone who saw Yes six times in seven years (once going 500 miles out of my way to do so), who cried as he watched them shrivel up and die as a musical force, flame away...] -- Rich Rosen pyuxn!rlr
nxs@fluke.UUCP (Bruce Golub) (12/09/83)
Come on, Anderson sounds like Sting!? You have got to be kidding. Aside form the obvious differences in diction (you can usually discern the words Jon is singing, with Sting, alias mush-mouth, you get a lot of good material for the "mis-understood lyrics fans") there is an obvious difference in vocal melodic style between Anderson and Sting. Saying that Trevor's chop-chop guitar style is just like Andy Sommers' is like saying 90% of the current pop guitarists sound like the Police's (well maybe you have something there). I don't know what Bono Vox looks like, nor do I care, or care if he looks like Anderson (he surely doesn't sound like him either).