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sashime: for whaty its worth, there was nothing snippy in the post above: i just wondered about the slide between not liking a singer and dismissing what the singer does, the form in which he or she works. which is why i put the bit about bluegrass in.
redlemon: i like the idea of re-imagining rock, but dont think kronos pulls it off.
this is not to say anything about other things they do--there are pieces they perform that i quite like, though in general they are not my first choice for string quartets, in those cases where this type of choice seems relevant at all.
what i am much less sure of is why you would ascribe problems with how kronos does a particular aspect of their schtick of purism when it is possible to simply not like it on any number of grounds.
the most general problem that underpins my view of kronos doing hendrix is that i do not see the point of covers in general if they do not try to do some violence to/transformation of the original. their version of purple haze is pretty close to note-for note: the modifications they introduce into it are a straight function of hearing a string quartet do a note for note version--this is why i understand it as a novelty record. it seems to me that if you are going to bother with a cover, you should transform the piece into something else--coltranes version of my favorite things makes much more sense to me on these grounds than kq's purple haze.
and it doesnt have the bizarro goofy sustained exactitude of the primus cover of the wall either--a project i do not really understand as it too is largely note-for note--but the scale of it makes primus's version into something kinda other than the copy, somethign much goofier than a copy. for myself, though, this goofiness only puts off the collapse into tedium for a few minutes--after that, my reaction shifts back to wondering what the point of it is.
i mean, the recordings exist and are better at being themselves than a cover version could be: if you are not going to bend or transform or assault the original, why are you wasting you time doing the piece at all?
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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