His pictures look like mine (his are cooler of course - he was in a band) and it made me cry. Nothing important is happening in these pictures.Įverything that was ever important to me is happening in these pictures. Almost certainly taken on a garbage cheap camera, possibly 35mm film, but probably 110, and developed when we rode our garage-sale bikes to the local drugstore (high school) or begged for a ride off the one person with a car (college) with money we didn't have. I probably have on the most unflattering glasses in the world if I'm in the picture, but my hair is shiny and unrepentant and glorious the way it only is when you're less than 20 years old. And there's someone draped over a couch, and someone on the floor and someone's caught making an unattractive face.
I have SO MANY shitty vaguely blurry over or underlit physical photographs where everyone has uncorrected red-eye, and no one looks polished, and everyone's wearing dorky jeans and either a t-shirt (probably a free one from a school event) or the bulky college-style sweatshirts or maybe a flannel if it was a day we were trying extra hard to be cool. In the context of the music and the 90's, and the guy who was totally a guy I would have DREAMED about in high school, and the visceral DAMNIT KURT, the thing that skewered me was the pictures. Posted by kevinbelt at 6:25 AM on June 14 I especially love the video where he Zapruders a gig he played because someone yelled "Beato!" during his set.
With production, nearly all of this is brand new.īut yeah, Pat Finnerty is hilarious, and this series is great.
Now, if you heard me play, you could make the case that I don't know much about musicianship or songwriting either, but at least I know how little I know about those subjects.
I end up liking the ones about production the most, even though they're usually the worst actual songs, because I don't know anything about production. It helps to realize that "What Makes This Song Great" is actually three different series: one about musicianship, one about songwriting, and one about production. There's always something, no matter how small. I forget what song it was (maybe "All the Small Things"?), but on one video he's listening to the big anthemic chorus, and the thing he highlights is like, the tone of the hi-hat. One of the things that's fun about watching Beato is hearing him strain to find something nice to say about a song that's maybe not so great. Beato (IMO) makes lots of lousy no-talent songs sound more interesting and complex than they are because they became popularĪbsolutely.