Vocals

Since I'm bored and think this way pretty near constantly, I thought it would be interesting to break down different categories of vocals in music. Basically, I'm trying to figure out which of my favorite bands have:
A.) Better lyrics than vocals- that is, singers who sing worse than they write;
B.) Better vocals than lyrics- singers who sing better than they write; or
C.) Vocals and lyrics that are about the same. This does not necessarily comprise an elite group, theoretically you could have a terrible singer/songwriter who would fit this category very neatly.

That being said, let's begin.

A.) Better Lyrics Than Vocals

James LaBrie- The lead singer for Dream Theater doesn't have a bad voice, per se, but he isn't exactly Freddie Mercury (who is coming later). He also happens to have a pretty good knack for writing lyrics- he did very well on Dream Theater's best album, Metropolis Part II: Scenes from a Memory, which is more or less the only one of theirs that I can completely recommend. He also has a couple of well-written songs on Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence, although I'm fairly sure that Mike Portnoy wrote a good number of those, as the album was his idea and is named after his own experiences with a twelve-step program. I would consider him above average as a pure vocalist, but a solid-to-good songwriter, so he fits this one on the lower end.

Dustin Kensrue- Both a solo artist and the singer and second guitarist of the post-hardcore band Thrice, Kensrue has a very odd vocal style. He has a certain rasping quality that still remains distinct from mere shouting or the vocal shredding common to similar acts, but he does flirt with both. However, like Thrice itself, his body of work is highly variable, ranging from aggressive, intense punkery to soft, lilting understatement. As with LaBrie, he does have a decent voice, but his lyrics (especially if you are, as I am, a Christian) are often very, very, very good. His vocal ability in itself is nothing special, but his lyrics are excellent.

Eddie Argos- Art Brut, an excellent Brit-punk/pop/rock'n'roll band that I previously mentioned in passing, sometimes comes dangerously close to simply being a vehicle for Argos' self-deprecation. To be perfectly frank, his voice is basically just an average, pleasant-sounding one. Were it not for the sheer brilliance and humor of his lyrics, he would be completely unremarkable as a musician. However, his lyrics are that good, and so is Art Brut as a whole. It takes a more careful listening to appreciate the instrumentals, but the words are up-front and hilarious.

Tom Petty- Do I even have to explain this one? He writes catchy lyrics (and catchy songs, as well) despite his irritating, nasal whine. He hovers only a few notches above Tom DeLonge in terms of sheer annoyance.

Bob Dylan- See above.

Paul Simon- Because Art Garfunkel was a better singer and hardly ever wrote lyrics.

B.) Better Vocals Than Lyrics

This one is a surprisingly fruitful one, so I tried to limit myself to just a few choices here.

Freddie Mercury- I told you it was coming. Queen does have some decently written tunes, but who even needs lyrics with a voice like Freddie's? Possibly the best vocalist in rock history, he had an impossibly high tenor, great sustain, and a very smooth delivery. My only knock against him is that his style didn't particularly lend itself to certain genres, including my favorite, blues. In terms of sheer vocal talent, though, he is light-years ahead of practically everybody else.

Robert Plant- Another of my favorite vocalists who doesn't really have a flair for writing. Plant had a voice like a wolf (and not Howlin' Wolf, either) and a banshee shriek that was a perfect fit for the hard, wailing music that Zeppelin reveled in. He also had pretty decent chops as a softer, folky singer, and despite the sheer weirdness and oddball-ity of his sound, he remains one of the most distinctive and accomplished singers of rock music. And- he wrote mostly flat, uninspiring lyrics. Many songs, like "Whole Lotta Love," "How Many More Times," and "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You" either borrowed heavily or were direct covers of previous work. Plant's original material, such as "Achilles Last Stand" (which isn't even punctuated correctly), or "What Is and What Should Never Be" devolve into either cliche or meaninglessness with great regularity. His best composition was probably "Thank You," which is a great song, but not much better than passable in its lyrics. Still, he was a bluesman at heart, and the blues and its derivative forms have almost always had more to say with the music than with the lyrics.

Joe Cocker- I love his gritty blues voice, but his best song was written by the Beatles (that would be "With A Little Help From My Friends," a track on which Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page played during his session days). His other most famous tune is "Feelin' Alright," which is decent but nothing exceptional in terms of the lyrics.


C.) Equally Good Lyrics and Vocals

Bono- U2 has neither the best lyrics (Dylan, among others, had better ones) nor the best vocals (Queen and Zeppelin are better in my book) but they do have some of the best of each. Bono has a good, clear tenor and a strong social conscience. Often, he is not the most subtle of songwriters, but there really are some issues that deserve to be addressed with a sledgehammer instead of a tap on the shoulder- for instance, the failure of the UN to support Bishop Desmond Tutu against the apartheid state of South Africa (which Bono addressed in a live cut off of "Rattle and Hum"). Bono probably exemplifies the best of this category: insightful lyrics combined with genuine vocal talent.

John Fogerty- Better-than-average lyrics along with a better-than-average voice, a gritty and distinctively American sound. But his solo career was pretty crappy.

Sting- With The Police, that is. His solo career was awful, and he can't really hit the high notes anymore. I think he was probably about two octaves lower on "Roxanne" when I saw The Police a while back. While, with The Police, he had some creepy-but-interesting compositions about personal life, his solo material sees him dipping into the hippy-environmentalist cliche well far too often.

Umm... that's it, I guess.

What I Think Of Arturo Gatti

Arturo Gatti is dead, an apparent suicide in Rio de Janeiro, a broken man, physically and otherwise. But that's not what I want to talk about.

Nor do I want to talk about his life, his behavior, or anything like that. I did not know the man, and I do not want to judge. I simply want to talk about who he was as a fighter. Above all else, he was that: he was a fighter.

Gatti was a man. His offense was fluid but angry, quick hands and hard, with a heavy left hook. He could slug, and he learned to box. There is no doubt that he could hurt a man. But his offense was not him, and he was not his offense. Gatti had paper skin and eyes that swelled so often and so badly that they were permanently beady by the time he fought Micky Ward. And yet he would brawl. He would wade in to trade with his opponents, even as his face tore and bled. A fight in which Gatti did not look disfigured was a rare occurrence.

And, speaking of Ward, it is of course that epic, famous, bloody, brutal trilogy that must be spoken of. Gatti was more than his fights with Ward, but there is no other thing that one could start with in discussing him.

Gatti's strategy in the first fight was to box, and he was winning. But Ward popped him, and boxing was gone. Gatti was never as comfortable in that role, and he seemed to shed it gladly. It was as though he knew what was happening, knew he was being drawn in, but didn't care. He was a man, he was Thunder, and he was going to beat Irish Micky Ward by punching him, and no other way.

The key moment in the fight and, I believe, in his entire career, was the knockdown scored by Ward in the 9th (out of 10). Gatti was caught in the body, right around the kidneys, and all the strength went out of him. It was less of a knockdown than it was a man succumbing to the ludicrous amount of punishment he had taken to that point. And Gatti, the man, went to his knees.

And then Gatti, the man, climbed back to his feet. And on uncertain and unsteady legs, he retreated from Ward, ducking and weaving as he could. And then Gatti, the man, started to fight. Weak and exhausted, he threw everything he had into the punched-out Ward, short jabs followed by wide swinging rights. And he very nearly chopped Ward down, half-paralyzed and wholly spent, before his last efforts wound down. Then Gatti was helpless before Ward, who had a rally of his own, before wearing out exactly as Gatti had. The Arturo Gatti he made his way to his stool before the final round looked dead. His left eye was swollen very nearly shut, his face purple and distorted by nine rounds of reckless combat.

To me, the tenth round of Ward-Gatti I will always be Gatti's crowning achievement. As the round started, he tried to fool Ward and his own body into believing he was fresh- and he succeeded. He came out with the same sort of dancing footwork that had utterly confused Ward in the first third of the fight. After that, he started to swing. He was dead, but he was alive again. What Gatti found on that stool between those rounds was redemption- not for his spirit, and not for the fight, which he lost (unfairly, I think, but boxing often goes that way). He found redemption of his courage. The broken, defeated man who had collapsed onto his stool after dropping from a body blow was now a man fighting with borrowed strength. If it killed him, Arturo Gatti was going to finish the fight. It is no coincidence that, after he won that round, Gatti won the next two fights.

Much as I dislike Hemingway, I have to admit that if one was to use a quote for Gatti's epigram, it would be the statement of the fisherman in The Old Man and the Sea: "I will show you what a man can do, and what a man endures."

Arturo Gatti may not have been a great man; he may not have been even a good man- but he was a man, and that is a thing worthy of respect.