what do you all think of Winger now

Wow, a Winger thread going on it's 3rd page.... and counting! Who would have thought that?

Temple of Blood wrote:

Shawn Of Fire wrote:

What's uneducated about it is saying that they were taking their talent and "slumming" in a somehow (insinuated) inferior style of music...it takes just as much talent to make good Melodic Rock as it does good Thrash and neither style is any better than the other...just different. Playing Melodic Rock isn't "slumming"...

I dunno ... Morgenstein might've been slumming ....

I have a feeling the vast majority of Winger songs are much easier to perform than what he was doing in the Dixie Dregs.

What has easy got to do with it? Maybe he liked the music...before the Winger reunion, he rated his time in Winger as some of the most fun he'd ever had playing music...

I love all this music-snobbery from "real Metal fans" towards bands like Winger, Mr. Big, Warrant, etc...

I used to be like that too...I used to make fun of the "hair bands" ( I called them "commercial Metal" back in the day) and rake them over the coals for not being heavy, or technical, or aggressive or for having silly lyrics...then as I developed as a musician I heard them with different ears and realized how talented these bands really are.

They have their cheese-moments ("Seventeen", "Cherry Pie", etc) but that was par for the course at the time. They also had some fantastic songs ("Headed For A Heartbreak", "Green-Tinted Sixties Mind", "Hungry", "Had Enough", "In The Day We'll Never See", "Mr. Rainmaker", "Uncle Tom's Cabin", "Madaleine", etc)...Warrant, Winger, Mr. Big, Firehouse...they were the Foreigner, Boston, Journey, REO Speedwagon of their day...the bands who wrote Rock songs w/ hooks and got derided by the "real Rock" fans...like being catchy is a bad thing.

But whatever...it's all about taste anyway...I can understand some people just not being into it...but to say that good musicians who play it are "slumming" is just insulting.

Steel Panther are underachievers compared to this........





Please tell me it's a bad commercial........

rattpoison - what did you post? YouTube is blocked where I work...

Shawn Of Fire wrote:

rattpoison - what did you post? YouTube is blocked where I work...

Video for Can;t Get Enuff

thejokeriv wrote:

Shawn Of Fire wrote:

rattpoison - what did you post? YouTube is blocked where I work...

Video for Can;t Get Enuff

Oh, that song is pure sex...tailor made for selling records at the time...no question. But that record more than makes up for it with the other songs. Two songs on that record fit the cheese-frame..."Can't Get Enuff" and "Dirty Blonde"...but the rest of the songs on that record are top notch Melodic Rock...even those two, if the lyrics were different, would be good.

Hey, I actually kinda LIKE "Can't Get Enuff!" They brought the frickin house down with that one when I saw'em live many years ago.

I seriously enjoyed their live set, even tho I never cared for their records much... I guess they're simply one of those bands that are better live...

I'd love to see Winger live...

Shawn Of Fire wrote:

I'd love to see Winger live...

They were opening for KISS' "Hot In the Shade" tour when I saw 'em (late '90)... Slaughter was the first band up... they were terrible. Since I was not a Winger fan in the slightest at the time I expected more of the same when they came on, but they smoked.

I saw Winger live opening for Bad Company (Brian Howe) version around the time their self titled album was first released and live they were great. I later bought the self titled debut and was disappointed that it was nowhere near as good as the live show. Also I hated their version of Jimi's 'Purple Haze'.

About a year ago I was in FYE and saw their self titled album for sale cheap so I grabbed it and enjoyed it. It is definitley a musical time capsule of its era, but it is very good, and BTW I still hate their cover of Hendrix's 'Purple Haze'.

Yeah, that rendition of "Purple Haze" was kinda odd...strong record though...

Shawn Of Fire wrote:

Yeah, that rendition of "Purple Haze" was kinda odd...strong record though...

Well Shawn I was (still am) such a Hendrix fanboy that their version could have been killer and I still would have found a reason to dislike it, at that time I felt that no one should attempt to cover a Hendrix tune, I have changed my opinion in that regard since I have ever heard killer Hendrix covers done by Concrete Blonde, The Cure, Emmylou Harris etc...

All I know is the new album is excellent and I have always loved Pull! To be fair, I am a fan of the band, however.



Arttie

Shawn Of Fire wrote:

Temple of Blood wrote:

Shawn Of Fire wrote:

What's uneducated about it is saying that they were taking their talent and "slumming" in a somehow (insinuated) inferior style of music...it takes just as much talent to make good Melodic Rock as it does good Thrash and neither style is any better than the other...just different. Playing Melodic Rock isn't "slumming"...

I dunno ... Morgenstein might've been slumming ....

I have a feeling the vast majority of Winger songs are much easier to perform than what he was doing in the Dixie Dregs.

What has easy got to do with it? Maybe he liked the music...before the Winger reunion, he rated his time in Winger as some of the most fun he'd ever had playing music...

I love all this music-snobbery from "real Metal fans" towards bands like Winger, Mr. Big, Warrant, etc...

I used to be like that too...I used to make fun of the "hair bands" ( I called them "commercial Metal" back in the day) and rake them over the coals for not being heavy, or technical, or aggressive or for having silly lyrics...then as I developed as a musician I heard them with different ears and realized how talented these bands really are.

They have their cheese-moments ("Seventeen", "Cherry Pie", etc) but that was par for the course at the time. They also had some fantastic songs ("Headed For A Heartbreak", "Green-Tinted Sixties Mind", "Hungry", "Had Enough", "In The Day We'll Never See", "Mr. Rainmaker", "Uncle Tom's Cabin", "Madaleine", etc)...Warrant, Winger, Mr. Big, Firehouse...they were the Foreigner, Boston, Journey, REO Speedwagon of their day...the bands who wrote Rock songs w/ hooks and got derided by the "real Rock" fans...like being catchy is a bad thing.

But whatever...it's all about taste anyway...I can understand some people just not being into it...but to say that good musicians who play it are "slumming" is just insulting.

Excellent point, Shawn!


Arttie

Fat Freddy wrote:

Hey, I actually kinda LIKE "Can't Get Enuff!" They brought the frickin house down with that one when I saw'em live many years ago.

I seriously enjoyed their live set, even tho I never cared for their records much... I guess they're simply one of those bands that are better live...

Yep! They impressed me when I saw them live!!!! The show I saw was Winger/Extreme/Tangier (remeber them?)

Shawn Of Fire wrote:

I love all this music-snobbery from "real Metal fans" towards bands like Winger, Mr. Big, Warrant, etc...

Huh? I certainly hope you are not lumping me in here ... You're reading a lot into my posts that I never said at all. You see what you want to see.

I know that bands like White Lion, Warrant, Winger, etc had some talent. But to say Winger songs are as hard to play on drums as Dixie Dregs ... I find that highly dubious. I was responding to what you said before about how melodic hard rock was just as hard to play as anything ... not quite.

I'm not quite sold on Kip's brilliance as a songwriter and arranger but those guys can certainly play as well as pretty much any rock band.

If those bands loved melodic hard rock so much they would've stuck with it. Funny how these commercial acts all had their tastes change in lock-step with the music trends. To me, that says a lot about what they love most of all. Same goes for the thrash bands after 90 or so.

I don't think thrash is better than hard rock, I just tend to enjoy it more personally. There is a lot of thrash that I think is garbage and a lot of hard rock that I think is brilliant.

I remember Tangier and have their two albums. Good bluesy hard rock.

TheNazgul wrote:

I remember Tangier and have their two albums. Good bluesy hard rock.

Ther weren't bad live, but couldn;t hold a candle to Extreme's set.

Oh, I can imagine. Extreme just smoked live.

thejokeriv wrote:

TheNazgul wrote:

I remember Tangier and have their two albums. Good bluesy hard rock.

Ther weren't bad live, but couldn;t hold a candle to Extreme's set.

I don't know what version of Tangier you saw, but the lead singer on their 2nd album, Mike LeCompt still plays all around the Philly/S. Jersey bar scene. A coupla of the guys in Brittney Fox played in his band on and off over the years too. We went to the same high school, although he was older than me. I've hung out with him a few times back in the day, through a mutual friend. He was kind of a douche but it could have been because of his "alledged" use of Columbian marching powder.

MetalGuy71 wrote:

thejokeriv wrote:

TheNazgul wrote:

I remember Tangier and have their two albums. Good bluesy hard rock.

Ther weren't bad live, but couldn;t hold a candle to Extreme's set.

I don't know what version of Tangier you saw, but the lead singer on their 2nd album, Mike LeCompt still plays all around the Philly/S. Jersey bar scene. A coupla of the guys in Brittney Fox played in his band on and off over the years too. We went to the same high school, although he was older than me. I've hung out with him a few times back in the day, through a mutual friend. He was kind of a douche but it could have been because of his "alledged" use of Columbian marching powder.

It was right after Extreme II/Pornografitti came out, before they hit it big

Quote :

Huh? I certainly hope you are not lumping me in here ... You're reading a lot into my posts that I never said at all. You see what you want to see.

To imply that good musicians playing Melodic Rock are "slumming", as in "playing below their means for money" is music snobbery. Implying that playing a certain style of music is somehow inferior based on how hard it is to play is music snobbery. I should know, I used to say the same thing. I just read what was said.

Quote :

I know that bands like White Lion, Warrant, Winger, etc had some talent. But to say Winger songs are as hard to play on drums as Dixie Dregs ... I find that highly dubious.

I never said that. What I said was it takes just as much talent to write GOOD Melodic Rock as it does GOOD Thrash...I made no mention on how hard something was to play.

Quote :

I was responding to what you said before about how melodic hard rock was just as hard to play as anything ... not quite.

Not what I said at all. Saying that "it takes just as much talent" to play one as the other is not the same thing as saying that one is "just as hard" (musically technical) to play as the other. To do either one correctly, it takes a good deal of talent...not just a passable ability to keep time or knowing a few chords.

Quote :

I'm not quite sold on Kip's brilliance as a songwriter and arranger but those guys can certainly play as well as pretty much any rock band.

If you ever get in the mood, check out Kip's solo stuff...sort of like a Melodic Rock version of Peter Gabriel...moody, layered & very musical. For the record, not that it really matters, Kip Winger is a classically trained composer.

Quote :

If those bands loved melodic hard rock so much they would've stuck with it. Funny how these commercial acts all had their tastes change in lock-step with the music trends. To me, that says a lot about what they love most of all. Same goes for the thrash bands after 90 or so.

Well, if you remember, those hair bands talked about growing up fans of Led Zeppelin, the Stones, Aerosmith, Thin Lizzy, Kiss, etc...but not all of them sounded like it. I can say from experience that, as much as I love Melodic Rock, I don't necessarily want to play it all the time and make it the only thing I do. Me going from K-Octave to Line Of Fire wasn't selling out, it was branching out...nothing wrong with that...just not everybody is going to like it.

Quote :

I don't think thrash is better than hard rock, I just tend to enjoy it more personally. There is a lot of thrash that I think is garbage and a lot of hard rock that I think is brilliant.

I understand totally. There is some Melodic Rock I think is awful and some Thrash I think is amazing.

thejokeriv wrote:

MetalGuy71 wrote:

thejokeriv wrote:

TheNazgul wrote:

I remember Tangier and have their two albums. Good bluesy hard rock.

Ther weren't bad live, but couldn;t hold a candle to Extreme's set.

I don't know what version of Tangier you saw, but the lead singer on their 2nd album, Mike LeCompt still plays all around the Philly/S. Jersey bar scene. A coupla of the guys in Brittney Fox played in his band on and off over the years too. We went to the same high school, although he was older than me. I've hung out with him a few times back in the day, through a mutual friend. He was kind of a douche but it could have been because of his "alledged" use of Columbian marching powder.

It was right after Extreme II/Pornografitti came out, before they hit it big

Ahhh, so it was probably the original line-up. Tangier kinda rode the coat-tails of Cinderella & Brittney, not in looks, but just that style of bluesy rock that was coming out of Philly at the time. Their debut had some push behind it, but I think they came out a little too late and their 2nd album flopped on it's tits. I did however make some decent coin selling their debut cd that I picked up at a flea market for a buck on ebay though.

kmorg wrote:

Wow, a Winger thread going on it's 3rd page.... and counting! Who would have thought that?

plus we are having a serious discussion!

MetalGuy71 wrote:

thejokeriv wrote:

MetalGuy71 wrote:

thejokeriv wrote:

TheNazgul wrote:

I remember Tangier and have their two albums. Good bluesy hard rock.

Ther weren't bad live, but couldn;t hold a candle to Extreme's set.

I don't know what version of Tangier you saw, but the lead singer on their 2nd album, Mike LeCompt still plays all around the Philly/S. Jersey bar scene. A coupla of the guys in Brittney Fox played in his band on and off over the years too. We went to the same high school, although he was older than me. I've hung out with him a few times back in the day, through a mutual friend. He was kind of a douche but it could have been because of his "alledged" use of Columbian marching powder.

It was right after Extreme II/Pornografitti came out, before they hit it big

Ahhh, so it was probably the original line-up. Tangier kinda rode the coat-tails of Cinderella & Brittney, not in looks, but just that style of bluesy rock that was coming out of Philly at the time. Their debut had some push behind it, but I think they came out a little too late and their 2nd album flopped on it's tits. I did however make some decent coin selling their debut cd that I picked up at a flea market for a buck on ebay though.

Yep - that would be the line up. I remember they sounded very cinderella/brittney-ish. I actually only wanted to see Extreme at the time, and the Winger set made me respect them more - they were just great live. My brother actually brought up the show recently - he wanted to go, I took him. They played this great venue that is no longer around - The Boathouse in Norfolk, VA. It holds 2000-2500 people or so and the place was packed. It was literally an old boathouse on the water. Imagine a rectangle with the stage in the center. Good views of the stage everywhere. The problem of going with my younger brother was that I couldn't go into the "Beer Garden" area - the had a barrier fence running between the over and under 21 sections. They would move it depending on the show. For Winger/Extreme, it was a very small beer garden area. Megadeth/Testament had a much bigger beer garden!