Like or dislike: Rooms on Fire
 

They're baaaaaaaaaack. :D:

I stopped doing these for a while, but it's been pretty slow around here so I thought I'd start again. I really want to know what people think about songs & why. Saying "I like it" or "it sucks" is OK, but I'd prefer if you could be more descriptive & specific so we can get a good discussion going. WHY do you like it? What really annoys you about it? Etcetera, etcetera...

As I'm writing this, I'm realizing that I can't help but contrast the albums RAL & TOSOTM. Probably since ROF is the first track on TOSOTM & it must have sounded so different to what people had been hearing from her for so many years when they first bought the album in 1989. I didn't have the album then (although I vividly remember loving ROF the song AND the video) so I'd love to hear what some of you recall thinking when you first heard it after a 3 year solo break. David? :cool:

I think this song is fantastic, both on the album and live. The tempo is cool, because it's not a slow ballad, but it's a departure from the fast paced pop-rock-synth-dance tunes of the RAL album. This entire album sounds more mature musically to me than RAL. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with the RAL album, but they're very different & I like that. And I think this is a great opener for TOSOTM, it kind of sets the mood for the rest of the songs on the album -it's a magical, fairy tale feel. LOVE the opening keyboards. :nod: And the guitar break before "she had trusted many."

Her vocal performance is definitely in a lower register than it had been in the past...not as crazy & all over the place. First solo album after her first rehab stint, and she seems calm & cool & in control vocally on ROF. Some may have found it a bit dull after the RAL album back in the day - I personally like it. Her voice sounds richer to me. It's not a difficult song to sing, yet it's still not boring. The harmonies are a bit understated for my taste, but they're not bad.

Now, lyrically, I think this song is one of her best. It's cowritten with Rick Knowels - does anyone know if they collaborated on the lyrics AND music? Or are the lyrics hers & he put them to music? Just wondering. Anyway, the words are very descriptive, dreamy, ethereal; they really create a beautiful, magical aura when I listen to it. Like I'm dreaming or something.

I love the way the line: "and then there would be someone who would enter into her presence" is delivered. It's very monotone, but I like it for some reason.

My favorite lyrics, by far: "Long nets of white cloud my memory." Beautiful.

OK, have at it. Tear it apart or build it up. :angel:

EDIT - I forgot to discuss LIVE! I think it translates extremely well to the stage, and there's not a version that I've heard that I didn't like. I was a bit surprised and disappointed that it didn't show up in the setlist last year. I think she could still do a fantastic job with Rooms on Fire, and I hope we'll get to hear it again.

My feelings on this song are very mixed, but I can't bring myself to call it "mediocre." Perhaps because, while the finished product isn't especially great, I can feel a really great song lurking beneath the surface.

The things I don't like:
~The lyrics to the chorus. They just seem a bit silly, a bit cliche, and a bit poorly constructed, in contrast to the rest of the song.
~The production/engineering/mixing all seem very muddled. I like David's suggestion in another thread that whoever was engineering and producing this album must have had a head cold. That's exactly how I feel when I listen to most of these TOSOTM songs - like I have a cold that's clogging up my sinuses, or like I just took off in an airplane and my ears haven't popped yet. It seems as though everything should be a lot clearer, a lot more layered, but I just can't hear it. It's just this big chunky sound.

Things I do like:
~This is an instance where Stevie's notorious non-melody really works. Her talk-singing really fits in well with the long, conversational lines of the verses.
~The lyrics are coherent and tell a good story about a believable character while still managing to retain all of Stevie's airy-fairy magic.
~That guitar sounds very Buckingham to me.

(To answer your question about co-writing: I would guess that Stevie wrote the words and Rick provided the music. That usually seems to be how it works out, and that's usually what leads to these kinds of non-melody songs.)

I don't understand much about production, so I usually don't mention it. I can definitely understand what you mean, though. But I kind of like it. :laugh: Like I'm sleeping & can't hear things clearly, or maybe I've had too much Nyquil...

And you've described her "talk-singing" perfectly. :nod:

Exactly. I don't know much of anything about the ins and outs of music production or engineering, either, but I know what I hear, and on this album I just hear a lot of mud. Part of it is the reliance on synthesizers, which are generally just something of a muddy instrument - they give you a big blob of pre-fab sound, instead of something singular and distinctive.

Obviously instrumentation and such are not Stevie's forte, which is why she's always at her best working with someone like Lindsey, who seems to know everything about how to create the specific sounds and sonic spaces he wants. Compare anything on TOSTOTM to "Welcome To The Room...Sara" - the music on the latter is just so crisp and clear. You can actually hear everything that's going on.

Love this song. It's a perfect opener to her very best album -- cool, sultry, very far removed from the all-outness of Rock a Little. She's calmed down a little [or is that just the Klonopin?] ...

And the video? Don't talk to me about the video. Sheer perfection. I really want that long red satin duster thing. Not to mention the hair. Sweet Lord, that hair. :thumbsup:

My memories of first hearing this song ... having just bought TimeSpace, I was slowly working my way through the songs and was sitting up in my classroom after school doing my homework -- accountancy homework, at that -- and this song came on. And it was raining outside. That memory sticks with me for some reason. I remember people coming in and out of the room and me there thinking "Will you all just shut up?! Leave me with this fabulous new song I've just discovered!!"

So there you go. Satin dusters and accountancy homework. :o

Why have I never seen this before? She looks thin in this dress (I saw her on this tour and she was fat. Wasn't this her fat era?) . Her face looks fat and her eyes look weird. And WTF is Top of the Pops? :confused: I'm confused. Please splain.

Top of the Pops = a British pop music show, with charts and 'live' performances, that's been around since God knows when.

EDIT AFTER WATCHING THE CLIP: Add, "totally unsuited to Stevie Nicks" to that description. It just doesn't seem to be her sort of thing .... She seems out of place somehow.

That said, red is definitely good on her. :thumbsup:

Notorious for these kinds of "live" performances, too. I'm a little disappointed that they cut it before the last chorus. I would have loved to see how they would have handled the layered vocals...

Awesome category titles as usual, Paula.

I hear the fuzzy nature of this album too. It doesn't bother me much.
I think this song has enough sweeping and dynamic vocals to partially make up for a slightly dragging midtemponess that bugs me. I love the part after long nets where it builds to my very favorite part, when she really busts out the "WELL MAYBE I'M JUST THINKIN THAT..." and the whole sound gets very swoopy and dramatic.

I think the vocal is a bit more tuneful (not nonmelody) and less speaky than others have described above. If you actually go to sing it, it's more complex/varied/less monotone than it might sound. A case of the vocal sounding more simple than it really is. And the phrases are more monotone than the chorus, and a bit difficult to get a handle on while singing.
Of course I love the layering at the end, often the best part of Stevie's songs. And the wail.
The words are about usual Stevie - not great, not her worst. I like the imagery of the chorus (describing the effect of someone's energy feeling like a room on fire, knowing the magic of them longer than you've known them. uh, okay, I don't know what that last one means, but I like it) but a lot of the other words are pretty clunky, and kind of lame. Again, not super lamest, but still. The only other phrase I really like in the song is "she dreamed of a wanton luxury and she laughed when she cried and she tried to taunt him".
But lyrics problems aren't a big thing for me, they rarely detract from my enjoyment of a stevie song (if ever). It is fun to point them out though.
So I voted "I'd hate to be separated from this song".

And I DO NOT like to see Stevie lipsynching. Blergh.

I remember I bought the cassette single. It had Rooms on one side & Alice on the other. Basically I liked Rooms--I had the same problem with it that I did with the whole album when they finally released it--but I really loved Alice. I played the B side of the cassette single a lot more than the A side in those few weeks before the album was out.

Also, it wasn't a real surprise to me stylistically. Even though it was only 1989, the Rock a Little era was already even by that point long gone. Lots of things paved the way in 1987 & 1988 to the Mirror look & feel. The Tango Tour & video, the new song on the Greatest Hits, the Very Special Christmas album & TV show, etc. I had already been well exposed to Stevie's new self by the time I got the Rooms on Fire cassette. Rock a Little stuff was only a distant memory at that point. (Time seemed to pass slower in those days than it does today in terms of Stevie changing.)

I remember liking the song but not getting terrifically excited about it. I also remember thinking "Where is the kick drum?" The B side, Alice, was much more interesting to me, with its evocative opening image, the arc of the melody line, & the keyboard arrangement. I was also listening to Reich's "Variations" right at that time, & "Alice" was like mixing Stevie with Reich, like looping Stevie over a pedal point. I was just very fascinated with "Alice" & I got hooked on "Alice." "Rooms on Fire" was just a song, but "Alice" was a whole world. It really has nothing to do with the corrosive Lewis Carroll, but it does have everything to do with the childhood atmosphere of Disneyland--to me.

Sorry to hijack off the subject of Rooms!
Yes I enjoyed it too onstage. The arrangement was opened up (as were many songs on that tour), with lead-ins & lead-outs composed that were very specific & that often made for interesting through-song transitions--for example, the way the final chord of Dreams metamorphosed into some pretty abstract chord progressions that signaled the entry of the Rooms on Fire opening. And then Stevie would enter in the dark & sing a mysterious, well-rounded "Somewhere . . . somewhere . . . "

All that to me is emblematic of that whole tour. That whole medley--Outside the Rain + Dreams + Rooms on Fire--is probably the longest that any stevie solo band has played straight through.

She sings elsewhere in the song: "Then there would be someone who would enter into her presence / That she could sense for miles." This person has such a commanding, magnetic personality, such a powerful aura, that the speaker sensed this person's "magic" look before she ever actually knew him. Or perhaps she fantasized about such a person long before she actually met him.

The structure of the lyrics in this song may be a bit clunky at times, but she really paints a pretty complex picture of how memory and fantasy can affect real life.

As far as her eyes go, I think her eye make up is much softer in this video than it usually is...she usually has liner and dark shadows on, and it doesn't really look like she has much eye make up on at all....which makes her eyes stand out less ..........

Yes. I often think what her lyrics paint are better than the way she organizes the words of the painting.

I've always LOVED that song.....

But I remember when that was first broadcast and it was pretty special seeing Stevie, not just on TOTP (which was at that time the premier music show, and has been going since the mid 60s on the BBC), but on British TV (and you have to remember we didn't have the internet or access to US performances back then)! I believe that's her one and only TV performance in the UK.