I think what you're getting at is a combination of 'a band playing like it/a song being performed like the players really own(s) those chords' and 'oh that chord progression is just perfect'.
For Big Star, I'd go with Back of a Car or Feel (not their best moment, but oh those chords), and for T Rex it'd be Twentieth Century Boy (although Placebo's version edges it for me)
Other contenders:
Waterboys: The Whole of the Moon
World Party: Ship of Fools (Kurt Wallinger obviously had a knack...)
The Grays: The Very Best Years
Katrina and the Waves: Walking on Sunshine
New York Dolls: Personality Crisis
The Records/Tim Moore: Rock and Roll Love Letter (Tim Moore's original is an energetic sloppy demo, the Records really nail it; a song so good even the Bay City Rollers couldn't quite kill it)
Rolling Stones: Start Me Up
The Hazey Janes: Don't Look Away (bonus point for unexpected use of xylophone)
but the list could go on a long time
Bonus listing for a song that both does it and has a lyric that comes close to talking about it:
Tentative suggestions: In ‘The Killing Moon’ the chords under ‘Fate, up against your will’ (C to Fminor?)
The sudden B minor chord in Richard Thomspon’s Cooksferry Queen under the line “… But that's where my future lies” - a change that sounds both inevitable and necessary each time…
I get bored with music genres very quickly. I've always felt this way. Ever since childhood I'll jump between chord based popular music, modal jazz, twelve tone classical, minimalism, atonal sound art, big bands, small bands, Japanese music, Indian, Chinese, Celtic, Spanish or movie soundtracks or whatever. Sometimes I love SILENCE for very extended periods.
When I was a schoolboy in the 60s I had a Pink Floyd single of "See Emily Play" and I got bored with it so I swapped it to another boy at school in exchange for his E.P. of steam train sound effects.
I've spent a lot of time listening to sound effects the way other people listen to music. I was born in the fifties so a lot of my contemporaries are rock fans or mods or hippies. They are often totally immersed in power chord based music. They scorn my listening choices. They tell me that listening to jazz and hip hop makes no sense to them.
I often like discords or sequences of individual notes.
I like György Ligeti and Duke Ellington and Yoko Kanno.
Transferring the idea of chords from music to writing, I think, courts populism and risks cliché.
In a technical sense though the equivalent concept in painting would be palette I think.
The popular song writer builds the whole palette of his work from the broad tones/chords. This is equivalent to the type of painting which relies heavily on three or four strong colours. Sets a mood. Like all the illustrations accompanying a "noir" crime novel or the bright primary and secondary colours of all the children's books about caterpillars. But as there are many different types of palette in visual art so I think music and literature also deserve more diversity of tones. More subtlety and unexpected note progressions.
I have a tremendous hatred of "smooth" jazz. I love jazz. Jazz should be rough and boisterous, seldom smooth and if ever smooth then that should be the calm before the storm.
There's that feeling of escape.
Running away from the slave owners who try to chain you and beat you.
Get away. Get away. Put a jinx upon the pursuers and a jinx upon their hunting dogs.
Take an unexpected turn on a sixpence and disappear from their infernal radar screens.
Blow with the wind and beat it.
If it isn't strange what good is it at all?
The chords are all very well but we need the shocks, the discords and the unexpected witchery glitchery.
I think what you're getting at is a combination of 'a band playing like it/a song being performed like the players really own(s) those chords' and 'oh that chord progression is just perfect'.
For Big Star, I'd go with Back of a Car or Feel (not their best moment, but oh those chords), and for T Rex it'd be Twentieth Century Boy (although Placebo's version edges it for me)
Other contenders:
Waterboys: The Whole of the Moon
World Party: Ship of Fools (Kurt Wallinger obviously had a knack...)
The Grays: The Very Best Years
Katrina and the Waves: Walking on Sunshine
New York Dolls: Personality Crisis
The Records/Tim Moore: Rock and Roll Love Letter (Tim Moore's original is an energetic sloppy demo, the Records really nail it; a song so good even the Bay City Rollers couldn't quite kill it)
Rolling Stones: Start Me Up
The Hazey Janes: Don't Look Away (bonus point for unexpected use of xylophone)
but the list could go on a long time
Bonus listing for a song that both does it and has a lyric that comes close to talking about it:
Stackridge: Dangerous Bacon
Tentative suggestions: In ‘The Killing Moon’ the chords under ‘Fate, up against your will’ (C to Fminor?)
The sudden B minor chord in Richard Thomspon’s Cooksferry Queen under the line “… But that's where my future lies” - a change that sounds both inevitable and necessary each time…
I get bored with music genres very quickly. I've always felt this way. Ever since childhood I'll jump between chord based popular music, modal jazz, twelve tone classical, minimalism, atonal sound art, big bands, small bands, Japanese music, Indian, Chinese, Celtic, Spanish or movie soundtracks or whatever. Sometimes I love SILENCE for very extended periods.
When I was a schoolboy in the 60s I had a Pink Floyd single of "See Emily Play" and I got bored with it so I swapped it to another boy at school in exchange for his E.P. of steam train sound effects.
I've spent a lot of time listening to sound effects the way other people listen to music. I was born in the fifties so a lot of my contemporaries are rock fans or mods or hippies. They are often totally immersed in power chord based music. They scorn my listening choices. They tell me that listening to jazz and hip hop makes no sense to them.
I often like discords or sequences of individual notes.
I like György Ligeti and Duke Ellington and Yoko Kanno.
Transferring the idea of chords from music to writing, I think, courts populism and risks cliché.
In a technical sense though the equivalent concept in painting would be palette I think.
The popular song writer builds the whole palette of his work from the broad tones/chords. This is equivalent to the type of painting which relies heavily on three or four strong colours. Sets a mood. Like all the illustrations accompanying a "noir" crime novel or the bright primary and secondary colours of all the children's books about caterpillars. But as there are many different types of palette in visual art so I think music and literature also deserve more diversity of tones. More subtlety and unexpected note progressions.
I have a tremendous hatred of "smooth" jazz. I love jazz. Jazz should be rough and boisterous, seldom smooth and if ever smooth then that should be the calm before the storm.
There's that feeling of escape.
Running away from the slave owners who try to chain you and beat you.
Get away. Get away. Put a jinx upon the pursuers and a jinx upon their hunting dogs.
Take an unexpected turn on a sixpence and disappear from their infernal radar screens.
Blow with the wind and beat it.
If it isn't strange what good is it at all?
The chords are all very well but we need the shocks, the discords and the unexpected witchery glitchery.