Three things have inspired me to write this post. I have been watching repeats of the Adam and Joe Show on All 4, where you will remember they had a segment in the show called ‘Vinyl Justice where they go through the record collection of a ‘famous’ musician and remove all the embarassing LPs; one of esteemed members commented that Abba weren’t cool until 1992, and finally The Police have recently been described as ‘much maligned’.
I want to know which bands were considered naff/unhip/not cool (choose whichever vernacular suits you best) while they were in the past, but have since had a resurgance of critical/commercial praise and which bands are you embarrased to admit you had posters of on your bedroom wall?
Warrabaaht Kiss ? They seem to have achieved some level of grudging respect from some quarters in recent years, but definitely a joke back in the day. And I liked them back in the days before I had taste. Can’t say I have anything of theirs now though.
I think The Police just suffered from the left overs of punk-era snobbery, which wasn’t helped when they were one of the biggest bands on the planet for a brief period. Always liked them (not loved though), but very patchy, usually not even whole songs – a chorus here, a guitar figure there…quite a lot of guitar moments actually.
Still can’t stand Abba though. Also punk-era snobbery, but mine is unlikely to pass any time soon.
Kiss’s main problem is that Gene Simmons doesn’t come across as a particularly sympathetic character. He and Paul Stanley seem to take themselves far too seriously these days.
Shame really as their 70s stuff is good fun. Double Platinum is full of good tunes.
You and me will have to agree to disagree Harold!
I can still vividly remember seeing Abba winning Eurovision with Waterloo and I’ve loved them since. Sure, if I never hear Dancing Queen again that will be fine but they have a fine fine back catalogue. The songs are so well crafted even if a few of the (especially early) lyrics are a little cheesy.
You should hear – and be able to understand – some of their early Swedish lyrics. No cheese is cheesy enough to be that cheesy.
Anyone betting that band would make it huge would be a) an idiot, and b) by now fecking rich.
After all these years no critical reappraisal of Abba for me, still irredeemably naff. Mama Mia on the other hand is, sincerely, one of the best musical movies ever.
I don’t really have a concept of “naff” around music. I like it or I don’t. (I used to, but then I also used to be 15 years old.) The whole idea seems really… old fashioned, somehow. Belongs to some stupid Charles Shaar Murray era of meaningless snobbery and notions of cool. The world would’ve been immeasurably improved if the NME had never existed and Nick Kent had been the accountant he was so clearly destined to be.
And if you can’t hear that ABBA are incredible, my only emotion is pity.
Bob, I send you a virtual drink. Right on, man. Lester Bangs also has a lot to answer for with his notion of “authenticity” in music (translated: unskilled, 4:4 rock orthodoxy and studied street cliches). That said, Fish-era “Marillion” remain even more unhip than the Hogarth-era Marillion. Hip and cool are rubbish concepts in a time when both are commodified tropes for marketeers.
I once tried to read Lester Bangs’ “Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung” and had to throw in the towel after about 100 pages. Ridiculous twaddle. It made me angry that he’d been allowed to get away with writing such utter shite and that people actually took his opinions seriously.
To be clear, my dislike of ABBA is not from peer pressure, received wisdom or fashion, now or back in the day, it’s the melodies and chord structures that I actively dislike. What I meant up-thread was that ABBA was a recipient of a lot of rock- and punk-era snobbery. I can’t stand the Carpenters, Barry Manilow, Bee Gees and so on for much the same reason. Nothing personal, just my particular tastes tending toward harder edged material. I understand why some (many) people would like (love) them, it’s just not for me.
Fish era Marillion produced some of the greatest prog rock ever made.
Seconded.
Hogarthian Marillion was good at the start – all became a bit drawn out/self indulgent for me. Good in places, but not enough places
I quite like ABBA but not enough to own anything other than Gold but I couldn’t sit through Mama Mia (the film). Mind you, I don’t seem to have much tolerance for musicals these days. I recently went to the Carol King show and despite loving the music, found the show dull.
I used naff not in a hipster NME style but sixties Aberdeen patois where naff = a musical style I personally have no affection for especially those lyrics which seemed to have been produced by a Swedish translation machine called Tweebolloxia purchased in the IKEA Market section.
No need for pity, as ever on here different strokes etc Peace, love and happy listening…
Bob, Bob, Bob, that’s all a bit mao-ist revisioning of the youth of a lot of us, fed at the teat of the NME. Of course that very meaningless snobbery has a place, a pride of place, even, to give us no-hopers all a sense of context and value. Jings, next you’ll be saying you don’t mind who buys your records. Where’s your shame, man, surely you want to remembered as a select niche cult, no money, no fame, but gloried in inky pages and midnight websites.
I blame Smash Hits.
I was fed at the teat of the NME too. There’s a lot of daft shit I probably haven’t grown out of, but that’s one thing that I have.
Lodey, I couldn’t disagree more about ABBA’s lyrics. For a start, they’re never less than perfectly fine – especially considering they’re singing in a foreign language – and if you can listen to the Beatles’ or the Stones’ words without wincing, there’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to do so with ABBA.
Most pop lyrics are absolute shit. If the songs are good, it doesn’t matter – and in this case they’re better than good. They’re responsible for some of the best popular music ever recorded: rich, sophisticated, surprising, beautifully – immaculately – produced and very rarely the sort of I-IV-V stuff that so many revered rock types trade in. Real harmonic sophistication, which is rare in pop.
S.O.S. is an incredible achievement, just by way of example. It’s melodically and harmonically really *weird*, for a start. And yet despite its musical ambition, there’s a world-beating hook about once every 20 seconds that any musician would give their right arm to have written. Literally: you can ffwd to any point in that song and press play and there’ll be a hook. And a hook based on something really musically surprising, for those with ears to hear.
And sometimes their lyrics are better than good too. The Day Before You Came is about 400% superior to anything most native English-speaking bands have ever turned out. World-weary, full of a regret and an ennui and a level of authentic detail that’s turned into something entirely other by the title line. It’s a fabulous bit of writing.
It amazes me the sort of half-arsed tedious crap that gets elevated to the pantheon just because some pseudy narcissistic hanger-on in (god help us) leather trousers said it was good in 1974, and yet we’re still having to fight the ABBA wars. Crazy.
See, I wouldn’t disagree with any of that, but I’d still rather listen to Lawnmower Deth*. All those virtues you cite make me feel a bit Top Gear, when some charmless berk (not you, obviously) is talking a “nice bit of kit” and how wonderfully it’s built. Just leaves me cold. It’s only a hop skip and a jump from there to brown leather jackets and driving gloves.
And I reckon, Abba’s naffness is not the fault of the NME, but the hideous hen party “ironic” tag they got saddled with in the early nineties.
*well, maybe
I wouldn’t sniff at Abba, but I have to admit that I’ve never really cared for them either.
I have no idea why this is the case, because I absolutely love them when played at double speed by a hairy man in white jeans. Genius.
Talking about why you like something is always hard; it’s just I sort of feel like I need to describe the accomplishment of ABBA because there’s a tendency for non-musicians to think catchy must mean simple or unsophisticated. It can do, but in ABBA’s case it really doesn’t.
(I really like simple music. I often write simple music! But ABBA often get mistaken for simple, which they’re really not.)
But honestly the reason I love them is because they fill me with excited joy. The sophistication thing is just a clapback at people who think their hookiness is a result of a lowest-common-denominator musical flatpack approach.
I may have mentioned this on the old site, but any road, I shall tell the tale. In the punk wars of 77-78, just nudging into my teens, I was a fervent foot soldier, mad keen on any band who posed against walls for photos in the NME. My favourite two albums, though, listened to in secrecy, were The Shadows’ 20 Golden Greats and Abba Arrival. And one day, in school assembly, as my bog brush haired pals and I sneered and expectorated, the headmaster boomed ‘Who is a member of the Abba fan club?’ In his hand he held a fan club membership card. Amidst the guffaws, I turned redder than Helen Reddy reading Razzle in Redditch, and silently thanked the lord that I hadn’t put my name on the thing. I’d got away with it.
Brilliant!
I think a certain Sid V was known to be an Abba fan …
I was a member of the Abba fan club. Based in Swindon it was, mum and dad must have sent off a postal order for me.
Post of the year. Thanks, Bob, for articulating the utter brilliance of ABBA as songwriters, performers, musical innovators. And the way you analyse SOS is spot-on; as you say, any random moment of it is sublime, but for me the “when you’re gone” refrain as the music builds and soars is heartstopping, every time. An absolute masterpiece, and it’s not even their best song.
See also The Day Before You Came. Imagine if The Beatles had written it. It’s impossibly good
Agreed, Dave. The Day Before You Came is one of the greatest songs ever…
Aw shucks. Thanks BT, awfully nice of you.
The Day Before You Came is one of my favourites, both musically and lyrically.
Björn really did develop as a lyricist.
I don’t recall NME being so much anti-pop as anti-prog. Maybe my memory fails me here, but I don’t think so. Witness their coverage of Blondie and Nick Lowe, for example.
I still like all the pop I always liked, whether its the early sixties beat groups or even the fifties Fats Domino, or Little Eva or Madonna. I was an avid reader of the 70s NME and I don’t recall being put off my favorite pop music at all. This ‘hipster’ meme has a lot to answer for, especially in the rewriting of the history of music criticism.
I was raised on 90s NME. If you shouted really loudly about being AMAZING and WORKING CLASS and sneered at “manufactured pop”, the NME would give you a cover feature at some point.
I wasn’t around in the 70s but punk NME has a lot to answer for. All that Year Zero balls.
After the Stone Roses, it became necessary to proclaim that you are The Greatest Rock And Roll Band In the World, and that all other bands are shite. And to have a seven-year-old’s hairstyle.
I still occasionally have a little chuckle to myself about Terris. Also that lad out of The Enemy who looked like a discarded Dark Crystal puppet but did a joint cover interview with Nicky Wire about how being working class automatically made their bands great. Bless.
Which gives me a thread idea…
Excuse me, but were Murray and Kent still there in the 90s? I don’t know, seeing as I wasn’t an NME reader then anymore. but I doubt it. How do you judge the 70s NME by the 90s version? Were you there in the 70s? Where were you / what were you?
I’ starting to smell a political issue dressed up as a musical one.
Blimey, calm down fella. I’ve read books by them.
Calm down? Who was the guy throwing around epithets like ‘stupid’ and ‘crap’?
You don’t fool me, Charles.
Mid 70s onwards was much appreciation of reggae, soul and disco. This continued through the punk years and there was still approval for the likes of Springsteen, Ry Cooder, Randy Newman and more despite supposed year zero. Nick Kent wrote many great long form pieces on the likes of Syd Barrett, Brian Wilson and Nick Drake that helped greater understanding of their acheivements. Great body of journalistic work from his heyday. The reality of the NME from then isn’t the unflattering stereotype it’s come to be reduced to by some.
Amen.
In their 1985 top 100 albums Elvis, Beatles and the Rolling Stones were all present and correct…. as were Dylan, the Beach Boys, Love and, er, Suicide.
Thank you. A respect for facts is sometimes important.
Funnily enough I’ve never seen Mamma Mia. Probably not serious enough for a “proper” fan…
I grew up with the so-called ‘beat boom’ in 1963/4 and had all the posters on the wall – the fabs, Searchers, Gerry and The Pacemakers, Fourmost, Swinging Blue Jeans, Hollies, Dave Clark Five etc. This period is almost never mentioned now. Of course, the shorcomings of bands who couldn’t write a decent song were cruelly exposed by the brilliance of the HJHs, but there are some wonderful pop records from these years. The received wisdom is that rock arrived as a serious prospect in 1965 and these preceding years are pretty much ignored.
It is interesting though that when I talk to other Searchers fans they are almost all of the opinion that these bands belong to the earlier showbizzy era of Cliff and the Shads and the like rather than the later rock band era….so maybe it’s just me!
Searchers for me were a very credible band of the late 70s who led me to their early 60s invention of jangle.
Exactly right @retropath2 – if you listen to their 60s PYE albums they are so much better than almost everybody else at the time. As an aside, George Martin produced a lot of the Epstein stable of artists and their albums aren’t nearly as good, which is surprising given his reputation as being the 5th Beatle…responsible for their success….they couldn’t have done it without him premise.
They made a decent fist of a comeback with a couple of under-the-radar albums for Sire. When they didn’t fly, they went back to the soup-in-a-basket circuit.
Back in the eighties in deepest Norfolk I was Secretary of the village school PTA. Most of our time was taken up with fund-raising. I suggested, with daring originality knowing the demographics of most of the parents, that we have a Sixties Night, £5 a ticket including buffet and a glass of wine.
I plucked a few names out of the air – Swinging Blue Jeans, The Searchers – with no idea what these guys were doing those days. Somebody else on the committee knew somebody who had a friend in the business who came back a few days later: “The Searchers are available that night – £3000 and they are yours”. This was only £2950 above our budget so regretfully we had to turn the opportunity down.
Apparently The Searchers (no idea how many of the original lineup still there) were playing around 300 gigs a year at that point and making far, far more money than ever did back in their hit-making heyday.
Until the mid 80s they still had Mike Pender and John McNally in their ranks, alongside Frank Allen who joined in 1964 replacing Tony Jackson. They have had a succession of drummers since Chris Curtis bowed out in 1967ish, but they had the same line up from 1967 to 1985, and the same front three from then until now. Probably uniquely, they have never stopped playing live and have an unbroken history going back to before the hits. Frank Allen has written a couple of books which are an interesting read – the fallout with Pender was a real pity, but he still plays too. Catch them while you can, they are terrific, but John McNally has been unwell recently and one wonders how long they will carry on now.
In the summer of 1967 (yes!) the band I was in did a gig at the Hertford College Summer Ball in Oxford. Very Brideshead, very all-nighter. Also on the bill were the Bonzos, the Action and none other than the Swinging Blue Jeans, who ran through their hits with ruthless efficiency.
This was a mere 3 years after their last top ten hit, yet they were being paid £40. We got £60, admittedly only because the Soc. Sec was a mate of mine, but still and all…
Picture or it didn’t happen.
(Hertford College? Is that the place where they teach typing skills?)
No, you’re thinking of the Ox and Cow.
If you would care to join me at my container in a field in Cornwall I can probably dig out the programme. Failing that, the only evidence I can offer an envious cynic like yourself is the following, from http://www.45cat.com/biography/the-action
27 May 1967 – Hertford Balls, Oxford with Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, Swinging Blue Jeans, Cliff Bennett & The Rebel Rousers and Hamilton & The Movement (Cherwell)
Not conclusive, I realise, but the best I can do. I’d forgotten about Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers. So I shared a bill with Chas & Dave…
We were on at the same time as the Bonzos on another stage, so we missed them, but we shared a dressing room with them. One of our singers, supposed to be either Sam or Dave, I forget which, but the short bumptious one anyway, was being a dick as usual. Viv Stanshall drew himself up to his full height, which made him about a foot taller, patted him on the head and said in best fruity Viv tones, “You’re a fine little fellow, aren’t you?” Collapse of stout soul band….
Hamilton and the Hamilton Movement….weren’t you on the Who tour I saw in 1966?
Er…no. We were too far down the bill to get a mention im that list. We were called, for 60s reasons that now escape me, The New Economic Model.
I preferred them when they were Hamilton and the Hamilton Movement.
For unhip cred:
Steve Hillage and Gong
Chick Corea’s return to Forever (and a lot of other jazz-rock bands)
Hatfield and the North/ National health
late-period Todd Rundgren/ Todd Rundgren’s Utopia
ELP
The cardiacs
smut and widdle 70s/ 80s Frank Zappa
despite this, I have had close female partners since the age of 17. They just don’t listen to my music.
Smut and Widdle… booed off at the Glasgow Empire in 1936
Dunno ’bout fashionable but it seems Cardiacs maintain a consistently good profile these days. All their albums are still in print, some tasty reissues, perhaps more popular now than they ever were. I live in hope that one day Tim Smith will be recognised as the national treasure that he clearly is.
Unfashionable to like? I remain, as always, surprised there isn’t more love for Jedward here. Given that there’s much love for Taylor Swift. And their music is the same.
That is so true. I once met John, may possibly have been Edward, in a pub in Dublin. He told me he was so upset that Harry and Taylor had split up he was going to write a song about it all. He sang me some lines, it was ace. I went to the toilet and when I came back…..fill in the dots yourself.
I grow increasingly convinced that we listen to music with anything but our ears on this site sometimes.
Cause the players gonna play, play, play, play, play
And the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate
Baby, I’m just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake
I shake it off, I shake it off.
HOORAY!*
1, 2, 3, 4, make it Jump, Jump, Jump!
Turn it Up, Up, Up!
Got the crowd going crazy,
There goes my baby, so hot, hot, hot,
I’m like what, what, what?
BOO!*
*Have I got this right? Or is it the other way round? So hard to remember.
She loves you, yeah! Yeah! Yeah!
She loves you, yeah! Yeah! Yeah!
She loves you, yeah! Yeah! Yeah!
Can I play this game too?
It would certainly seem so.
Did I tell you I once met Taylor in a bar in Brooklyn and she said “I’ve never really got into Abba, those lyrics are just so bad, none of them girls as hot as me and those guys look as they they have just been early-released from Stockholm prison with strict instructions to keep away from every school playground in Sweden. Jedward, on the other hand, are the bees-knees” (I think that’s what she said but I must admit to being a little starstruck and was too busy looking at her (snip, Ed).
Apparently she wanted to stand around and chat, but she had to sit down in the lobby and wait for the limo.
She is playing it so cool you hardly notice her slipping John (or was it Ed?) the key to her hotel room….
Re: “listen…. with anything but our ears”
Just as the largest sex organ is the brain, I think most of us sophisticatz get off on the package as much as the beeps, pokks and twangs.
– Public Enemy* sounded better because they looked like that.
Often on here someone will champion some neglected underdog with a decent catalogue, but in most cases these figures are charisma-deficient and that’s the whole reason for their failure to capture the public imagination.
I reckon the ideal balance (and here’s some free advice, Bob) is Monday to Friday working on tunes, chord progressions and middle eights yadda yadda, Saturday and Sunday “I know! – twin drummers, red indian oufits, pirate hats and anyone got Diana Dors’ phone number?”
(*pick your own example)
😀
I agree with most of that. When people on here have said “I just don’t understand why more people don’t recognise Richard Thompson as a genius”, I’m like “I bloody do!”
It’s not his music. I have no opinion on his music beyond having given it a try and found it to not be for me. It doesn’t bother me, neither do I like it much.
But regardless of what you think of his music, even if you LOVE it, it’s surely obvious why he’s not a star: he’s a boring-looking bloke with no star quality. He wears a beret the whole time. He looks like Martin from HR’s wife has left him, so he’s trying a new look, which won’t last long cos everyone will laugh when he turns up to the office party like that. No amount of blokes who can’t play the guitar themselves speaking with great authority on RT’s incredible guitar technique is going to sell him to an unbeliever. Star quality isn’t some shallow nonsense: it’s a talent of its own, and he doesn’t have a gramme of it.
I think the beret is a dealbreaker. I’m prepared to forgive his lack of star quality, but the headgear? There is no situation anywhere that is improved by some bloke wearing a beret. Inexcusable. Worse even than Elvis Costello’s “jazz” hat. In the good old days (*sigh*) we could have had oodles of harmless fun posting pictures of rock stars in hats – in fact, I’m sure we’ve done just that.
Nile Rodgers still looks pretty cool in his ‘Frank Spencer’. Presumably, he’s got a receding hairline under it.
RT is a handsome chap. In his youth he was beautiful. All he needs is a makeover. Maybe a Duran Duran sleeves-pushed-up thing? No? Boney M skin-tight satin jumpsuit and stack heels? Anything, really.
Merch opportunity! Cut out and dress up Richard Thompson doll! Come with lots of outfits!* Hours of fun!
*only one beret supplied, black.
He should do a card insert with his next album, like the Pepper insert. Someone should tell him.
But he has done all the satin pastel coloured suits with the sleeves up already.
I think the beret a distinct improvement.
Or even there’s this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hEWFsXrXv4
(Nice accordion on both, eh, @colin-H
I preferred him when he was Fairport Convention.
Raises hand – it’s actually a balmoral, not a beret.
He has a history of awful clothes. His current Sons of Anarchy look is an improvement of most he’s tried.
I think that makes him look more relatable to more of his fans, and they are fans who take comfort from that. Not me of course, at his gig on Saturday I looked like I had wandered straight off the Paris catwalk, but many others appeared to wearing old and much-washed favourites from the Tesco 2006 season. An exception was the man wearing a long, fringed, bright yellow/orange suede sleeveless jacket which look brand new. I have no idea where you can even get something like that these days (not that I’m tempted to look).
It reminds me a recent-ish Fairport gig when Simon Nicol asked how many had seen them before. After a mutter of general agreement he said, I thought I recognised many of your faces, and indeed your wardrobes.’
I believe I’ve mentioned this before but I took my son then aged 8 or 9 to see Thompson after a slight phase towards the end my son shouted out
” Take your hat off Baldy”
Luckily I don’t think Thomson quite heard him.
But without the beret he’s the proverbial coot.
http://beretandboina.blogspot.co.uk/2009/10/richard-thompson.html
It’s a revelation to learn that your enthusiasm for headgear extends beyond the sphere* of the fez, Hubes.
*well alright, cylinder
Looks like a truncated cone to me
(although I’m no expert – the only tassels I wear are the ones covering my nips *performs exaggerated gyration causing tassels to complete a full circle*)
Truncated cone = frustrum I can remember that but not where I left my keys etc.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frustum
I don’t really have any idea what’s fashionable, but this seems as good a place as any to remind everyone that this is an absolutely incredible tune.
Furthermore, Luther’s “look” on the album cover is pure style marmalade. We can but aspire.
Great voice. Very underrated.. er, apart from the millions of records he sold.
Hey – I didn’t say he was underrated!
No. I did. Because he is.
Good show!
Not by me he’s not. I rate him with clinical accuracy.
I’ve just listened to a little playlist of Lulu numbers (To Sir with Love, The Man Who Sold the World and The Man with the Golden Gun). So sue me.
Saw her 3 weeks ago at the Looe Festivel (yes, yes, I know…Lulu at Looe) and she was great!
In lieu of the loos at Lulu in Looe… I used a bucket.
No true Jedhead would compare them to Taylor. That’s like saying that a porcupine and a giraffe belong to the same species.
I will confess that I have a weakness for any band with wacky haircuts.
Is this where I can say Dr Hook and Neil Diamond without getting banned? Not posters on the wall kinda stuff but Belly Up, Bankrupt and Hot August Night got me through a Capri respray in 1978 and that’s something you just don’t forget.
Was that to do with your car or was it a dreadful incident on an Italian beach?
Dr Hook had some good songs but Neil Diamond a class above.
Hot August Night a stale in every Aussie household.
The seagull stuff was pants though.
well, there was an incident on a beach, but it didnt last for 3 albums. No, this was 3 litres of manhood extension, and you should have seen how it glistened in the sun afterwards. Fair to say it turned some heads.
The Ford Capri… for the man who likes to get about a bit…
Hang on a minute! Slipknot!
Not all their stuff, but that second album is legit great. I think it’s all the medieval chord structures they were into at the time….
I love Thommo’s hilariously ironic cover of Wait and Bleed.
I recently had an excellent conversation with someone at work about whether if Slipknot looked like Coldplay and Coldplay looked like Slipknot both bands would be improved. And the answer is clearly a resounding “Yes, enormously so”.
A mate of mine used to do the LED screens for Slipknot. He said everyone was very professional but he was the only person on the entire tour who didn’t have piercings or tattoos. He looks like an accountant.
“A mate of mine used to do the LED screens for Slipknot.”
ATS
Yeah cos when he played it on an acoustic with muted harmonium accompaniment, it showed everybody that its ACTUALLY a really good song…..
Let me add to this thread by saying I agree with Bob about ABBA, though I do not share his expert knowledge of their music. I will admit to owning 90% of the Now albums, and loving them. For me, the Spice Girls output has aged far better than the ‘cooler’ All Saints repertoire. I will also confess to thinking the artist was more important the song until I started working at a well known music retailer in the mid 2000s. Anybody who still dismisses entire genres or bands based on a predetermined opinion needs to relax their prejudices a little.
I’m sure every media outlet has a trendsetter/tastemaker that promotes their favourite musicians – only to then dump them when fashions change. For all I know, David Bowie was considered a Novelty act in the mid 70s, and Barry Manilow was on the front cover of the NME on a weekly basis. I suspect Elton John has been through peaks and troughs of popularity.
You would think that Hall and Oates had never been fash, but I have an early 1977 copy of NME – the actual height of yer actual Punk Rock phedobedob – where their gig is reviewed as “The Greatest Show On Earth.” Judging from the tapes, and Little Feat being just past their peak, this may well have been true. At least until The Lurkers got into their stride (s)
In the same mag the abovementioned CSM gives Bowie’s Low a right kicking.
It is, and has always been, unfashionable to like Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band. Having a cult following is not the same as being fashionable. People of style and taste throughout the ages have pointed out his music is just noise, and there’s many more here on the Abba-lovin’ Afterword who’d agree. It has always been more fashionable to like Abba than Beefheart. It shows how open you are in a totally unironic way to the gloriously transcendent delights of pop culture. I don’t care. I have made repeated attempts to listen to them over the years, always coming away feeling vaguely sticky. Soiled. But mostly unconvinced. They’re ghastly to watch and sickly to listen to. Beefheart, now … *cues up Trout Mask Replica, dances round room*
I first heard the ‘fheart on the Alexis Korner show when I was eight. Bat Chain Puller. I actually laughed. I thought it was fantastic. They sounded like they were trying to play backwards forwards. (Well it made sense to me. Still does)
I quite like Safe As Milk. Trout Mask Replica is impenetrable to me, and while I generally don’t do the “you’re only pretending to like it to look discerning” routine, I find it a bit hard to resist in the case of TMR.
Tripe Mask Replica.
Try Strictly Personal @DisappointmentBob – between the two albums you mention both chronologically and sonically.
I will do! Thanks @nigelt 🙂
Clear Spot I’d go for out of post-SAM albums. Not impenetrable. One of his best.
There’s just so little percentage in pretending to like something when your liking affects nobody but yourself. I instinctively liked TMR the first time a friend played it for me. Liked it so much I payed a yuge amount of my precious cash for an import copy, in which I immersed myself (decades before immersion became a thing). A private experience. There was only one other person I knew who liked it, and I didn’t much like him, so peer pressure didn’t play a part. The times I played the album for friends were complete disasters – their reactions would be along the quite brilliantly satirical lines of “Tripe Mask Replica, more like!” or the even funnier “Bee Fart!”. It’s stayed a private pleasure for me since then (along with all Beefheart’s work, every single release) for decades. Being a fan of the album has never made me look discerning to people I wanted to impress (especially girls)(only girls, now I come to think of it), only more of a twat. And why would I keep up this pretence for over four decades, for most of which my musical tastes have remained blissfully my own damn business? Nobody’s opinion – and I’ve heard them all over the years – has swayed me in either direction – I have a direct relationship with this and other music I enjoy. Fashion is aspirational and popular and shared (Abba); my tastes in music have never had much to do with it – in Beefheart’s case nothing at all.
I wasn’t actually suggesting you did. I don’t think that of anybody but teenagers; I just can’t find the door to that record.
Let’s have a fight, Bob! Right here on the internet! I could call you a name or something, you know, to get started? Whaddya think? You could call me one, if you liked. Or we could just build from a perceived disagreement?
I’ve just finished me 3:00 am cocoa and I’m in the mood for a rumble before I go back to bed. Anyone want to internet fight? Anyone? Quick!
FFS
Tahir, then? He seems reliable.
Hey, um…. fish face, you’ve got a silly,
er,
haircutnose!(Will that do?)
Also, I am given to understand that you may smell from time to time.
Goshdarnit! Now the mood’s left me.
Nah. Sorry to “disappoint” you. Heh!
I feel exactly the same way about Oi by More Fire Crew…
Believe it or not, I played a Beefheart track on the radio down here in Devon this evening! The Magic Band are touring and appearing in Exeter next month.
Apropos of ABBA Benny Andersson has a well reviewed new album of piano stuff including some ABBA songs. Haven’t listened yet.
I’ve seen a softening on this site to the early 80’s synth sound. China Crisis, Howard Jones, Tears For Fears etc. Only a softening mind. I’m still waiting for The Thompson Twins revival thread….
Still waiting…
Let Loving Start…
I’ve just been listening to a Girls Aloud hits compilation, and it helped to make doing the ironing an absolute pleasure! They had a phenomenal run of joyous, witty, life-affirming, banging pop goodness.
I really like bits and bobs of Ver Aloud but I’m not really a true believer. I always want a fatter, dirtier sound from them. If their songs had been produced by RedOne or Diplo they’d sound incredible.
The mention of Diplo calls to mind M.I.A.
She was never particularly fashionable (always looked down on by the hip hop community she was trying to make waves in), and isn’t a very nice human being from what I’ve been told, but she’s made some great records.
That is SUCH a tune, and a hilarious video.
I’m about half-way through Jimmy Webb’s recently published autobiography, The Cake and the Rain. One of the points that comes out is how he wanted to be seen as a “cool” singer-songwriter in the early seventies, along the lines of Joni Mitchell. He was the right age, born in 1946, but because his success as a songwriter had started when he was so young – he was 19 when he wrote By the time I get to Phoenix – and some of his best songs were covered by mainstream acts like the Fifth Dimension and Glenn Campbell, he never really crossed over in terms of image.
Does it matter? Cool only bothers a few people and he has written about a dozen classics, which have sold enormously. He isn’t bitter about it in the book, it’s just part of the odd mixture of his life, where he was the son of a Baptist preacher who by his early twenties was living in a mansion and socialising with people as diverse as Frank Sinatra and Little Feat. The book’s an interesting read, and he writes well and honestly. And if you want to hear him singing his best songs when both his voice and piano playing were at their best, I’d recommend Ten Easy Pieces.
Surely he has become cool though, at least in recent years or decades? A name to drop as an influence?
Glen Campbell also, partly due to the inevitable crowning as living legend with those who survive to old age. He’d done great things too of course, in the past, but cheesiness obscured that to a degree.
I think he has. The book only goes up to when he’s about 26, so he’s writing about that period, when music fans were conscious of image of one kind or another – the idea that the music you listened to said something about you. His songs have outlived all of that. I don’t know in general if music is so tribal now. It’s all so easily available, that I don’t get the impression people attach themselves to certain styles or artists much.
In their heyday, the NME certainly lorded it as arbiters of taste but they weren’t the first. In the 50s there were doubtless jazz pundits who made it their business to say what was in or out.
When the Romantic movement swept through the concert halls of Europe there must have been critics who were cheerleaders for the new style. Even in the Civil War, the Cavaliers would have had DJs enthusing about the best new bands. Of course we all know what we would have found on a Roundhead playlist.
Sod all.
It seems to be assumed that we were influenced by the music press, unquestioningly accepting and following the opinions of reviewers – this isn’t how I remember it. If a reviewer happened to share our tastes, we agreed with him. That way round. Reviewers were more likely to get laughed at than revered – Nick Kent was amusingly known as a “dodgy boiler” after a sub-ed gaffe, Chris Welch was always a twat, and so on. I don’t know where the idea sprang up that these people were arbiters of taste, but it’s a recent one.
We as usual remember it differently. Back then music rags like the NME had great power because for the vast majority of us there were very few outlets to hear new records.
If for instance, Nick Kent recommended a record and you liked it you tended, at least for a while, to think “If Nick says it’s good then it must be good”.
Today we just fire up Spotify or wander through an Eel Market and make our own minds up.
We – the sophisticated coterie of hippies using the Art School as an excuse to question societal norms – thought music journalists were entertainment. Sometimes, when they agreed with us, they were deemed authoritative. Music papers weren’t much cop as “outlets to hear new music, though” – they were some drugs you were on! John Peel was the man for that.
I can think of only one time when an NME review led me to buy an album – the first Television album. By Nick Kent, probably.
I used to get Melody Maker every week in the early ’70s and switched to NME for the late ’70s and ’80s, but I can’t think of a single instance since about 1969 when I bought an album purely on recommendation by anyone, never mind an NME scribe.
I would often listen out for something that they recommended and then buy it because I liked what I heard, but I never shelled out my hard-earned just because CSM or Nick Kent said something was amaaaazing or the future of civilisation.
I narrowly avoided embarrassing myself by actually reading your post before saying the same thing. But now I can. It was Peel, first on Radio London (Perfumed Garden) and then R1 (Top Gear) who most often sent me whizzing off to the record shop.
Music press, no – except occasionally Rolling Stone, maybe, because they gave so much space to stuff I was interested in. I used to read NME, MM etc mostly for the ads, where you could find out what was new on Sue, London American, Pye International etc.
I think this explains why the Lodestone is so named – he believed what he read in the music papers and thought reviews were scientifically accurate and reliable.
“Rock journalism is people who can’t write interviewing people who can’t talk for people who can’t read.” – Ernie Isley
Said. Enviously.
A travesty, HP, of what I was saying. I listened, as we all did, to The Perfumed Garden – bought The Incredible String Band, Loudon Wainwright etc as a direct result of that. Carried on listening to Peel when he switched to his late night programmes but there was precious little else happening on the radio to help a poor boy (and I was pretty poor – student, layabout, hippy) decide what to actually buy on the few occasions I had the readies available.
For three or four years (73 to 77 perhaps?) the NME was the only magazine I read every week (Rolling Stone every month of course). Not for one minute did I think everything the likes of Kent & Murray reported was true and not for one minute did I agree that whatever latest band currently in vogue was for me (although I must admit having moved to Norfolk by that time – getting my shit together in the country, maan – I did have some envy of their supposedly gunslinger lifestyle).
All I was trying, however feebly to say, was that for someone with limited access to live music – although West Runton was a lifesaver – and with nothing much happening on mainstream radio or TV (I was always too stoned by the time OGWT came on at five past midnight or whenever), the NME was as good a guide as I could get as to the kind of music I might end up actually liking. (If I knew how to underline “guide” without breaking the internet again I would do so). Of course I bought some turkeys, some too embarrassing to mention even 40 years later, but, as one small for instance, I can thank a long essay by Kent on Steely Dan for my continuing devotion to the second best band on the planet.
The Isley quote is (was) smart-arse and at least for a few years in the late sixties and seventies untrue.
And just to be clear, the only music reviews I read these days are right here and right here contains the correct amount of insight, bollox and just plain wrongness as the NME did back then.
Gosh. Have you got Ernie’s “Thingfish” box set?
I have arrived in The Good Place, I’ve just said hello to Ted Danson and told him this is his best gig since Cheers. I espy HP and walk nervously over and he says “Hey, Wrongness, remember that NME spat? You was Right, y’know”
Henceforth shall ye be yclept ye Lodeftone of Rightnefs.
There’s a new press-based orthodoxy these days, for them of a certain age: Guardian Music. GM is just like the Guardian proper, in that it might as well just replace all its editorial content with a list of things you’re allowed to like, with a brief explanation as to why. It might say:
– glassy-smooth jazz-inflected singer songwriter stuff by a woman with a sultry voice.
– any hip hop which references jazz or has any content that could be construed as politically liberal (ideally “angry” and “dangerously articulate”)
– any hip hop from continental Europe
– Burial
– the slightly arty one who only gets one song on Later With Jools Holland. Ideally French.
– anything on the Mercury longlist
We might invent a new genre for all these disparate elements. Couscous Groove, maybe. Tagine Party. Coriander Rock.
This is just politics on your part. Own up.
I’m just messing about, man. Chill. Why are you getting so annoyed?
No you’re not. You’re expressing your real opinions. Why don’t you have the balls to stand by them when challenged?
Haha, brilliant. Go on, give us a hug.
Sure, as soon as you stop being a prick.
Look, fella, if you’d like to sort this out via PM, let’s do that, shall we? This is all getting a trifle unseemly. I’m not sure why a series of daft posts on a subject that doesn’t really matter have boiled your piss quite so smartly, but I think you’re spoiling for a scrap and I don’t feel particularly inclined to have one. If you’d like to PM me, outlining just what it is about my posts that has annoyed you so, we can get this out of everyone else’s updates, yes?
No thanks, let’s stick with your chosen medium for expressing your opinions. A start to getting back to normal would be you admitting that you were actually expressing your opinions about stuff you weren’t ever part of. Is that so hard?
I don’t owe you anything, Tahir. I’m done with this conversation. Have a nice evening.
As an independent objective observer I can’t understand at all what Bob’s said that could possibly have annoyed you, Tahir. Your reaction seems excessive to say the least. Frankly, I haven’t a clue what Bob’s on about in his above post, but nontheless I can’t see how it could possibly warrant such a rude insult.
Sure Gary. I found Bobs earlier comments offensive. But that’s just my subjective to your ‘objective’. It must be great being up there. I wish I could join you in those celestial heights.
I think that might be the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.
I said you had a big nob last week.
Yeahbut, a compliment’s not a real compliment unless there’s at least some truth in it.
You are gorgeous, Gary
😎
Good lord what a humourless arse you are.
Coriander Rock.
Much rolf-ing here!
Calling Yewtree!
Obvious one – Status Quo
First real Rock band I ever heard/liked/chose to buy.
I wore out that cassette of 12 Gold Bars, and when it was eaten by the tape player, I bought it on vinyl.
I’m convinced there is more crackle than music on that disc, and it’s probably half the thickness it was when new.
Massive in the 70s, a bit of a joke in the 80s, easy target since then (and sometime with good reason), but would never diss ver Quo
Great minds, great minds – that’s the band that I would have put on here and 12 Gold Bars was possibly my first purchase. I bought all their 70s albums on cassette, but then junked them when I was laughed at at school for having brown cord flares and had my Quo posters burned.
Now I’m listening to loads of 70s rock and metal for my October blog, Quo has reared its hairy head a few times. Apart from Quo Live, which was probably the one album I didn’t entirely disown, the revelation has been that Parfitt was responsible for some of the more interesting songs – Rain, Living On An Island, Mystery Song, Again and Again, even though I’d veered more towards the mellower voice of Rossi before. Not just a brickie backing up his mate after all.
These are the 99 best albums (ever!!!) according to NME writers in 1985. Interesting to note The Beatles highest album is at number 11, and Sgt. Pepper isn’t even present.
1. What’s Going On – Marvin Gaye (1971)
2. Astral Weeks – Van Morrison (1968)
3. Highway 61 Revisited – Bob Dylan (1965)
4. The Clash – The Clash (1977)
5. Marquee Moon – Television (1977)
6. Swardfishtrombones – Tom Waits (1983)
7. The Band – The Band (1969)
8. Blond On Blond – Bob Dylan (1966)
9. John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band – John Lennon (1970)
10. Unknown Pleasures – Joy Division (1979)
11. Revolver – The Beatles (1966)
12. The Sun Collection – Elvis Presley (1975)
13. Never Mind The Bollocks… – The Sex Pistols (1977)
14. Forever Changes – Love (1967)
15. Low – David Bowie (1977)
16. The Velvet Underground And Nico – The Velvet Underground (1967)
17. Solid Gold – James Brown (1977)
18. Horses – Patti Smith (1975)
19. Live And Lowdown At The Apollo – James Brown (1962)
20. Pet Sounds – The Beach Boys (1966)
21. Kind Of Blue – Miles Davis (1959)
22. Bringing It All Back Home – Bob Dylan (1965)
23. Otis Blue – Otis Redding (1966)
24. The Doors – The Doors (1967)
25. Exile On Main Street – The Rolling Stones (1972)
26. Anthology – The Temptations (1974)
27. Greatest Hits – Aretha Franklin (1977)
28. Are You Experienced – The Jimi Hendrix Experience (1967)
29. The Modern Dance – Pere Ubu (1978)
30. King Of The Delta Blues Singers – Robert Johnson (1972)
31. Imperial Bedroom – Elvis Costello & The Attractions
32. Anthology – Smoky Bacon And The Miracles (1974)
33. The Beatles – The Beatles (1968)
34. Searching For The Young Soul Rebels – Dexys Midnight Runners (1980)
35. White Light/White Heat – The Velvet Underground (1968)
36. Young Americans – David Bowie (1975)
37. The Poet – Bobby Womack (1982)
38. Trans-Europe Express – Kraftwerk (1977)
39. Darkness On The Edge Of Town – Bruce Springsteen (1979)
40. This Years Model – Elvis Costello & The Attractions (1978)
41. Another Green World – Brian Eno (1975)
42. Trout Mask Replica – Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band (1969)
43. The Man Machine – Kraftwerk (1978)
44. The Mothership Connection – Parliament (1975)
45. The Cream Of Al Green – Al Green (1980)
46. Let’s Get It On – Marvin Gaye (1973)
47. There’s A Riot Going On – Sly And The Family Stone (1971)
48. Rocket To Russia – The Ramones (1977)
49. Greatest Hits – Sly And The Family Stone (1970)
50. Big 16 – The Impressions (1965)
51. Blood On The Tracks – Bob Dylan (1974)
52. Alan Vega/Martin Rev – Suicide (1980)
53. Another Music In A Different Kitchen – Buzzcocks (1978)
54. Closer – Joy Division (1980)
55. Mad Not Mad – Madness (1985)
56. For Your Pleasure – Roxy Music (1973)
57. The Scream – Siouxie & The Banshees (1980)
58. The Harder They Come – Soundtrack Featuring Jimmy Cliff
59. Entertainment! – Gang Of Four (1980)
60. The Velvet Underground – The Velvet Underground (1969)
61. 3+3 – The Isley Brothers (1973)
62. The Hissing Of Summer Lawns – Joni Mitchell (1975)
63. “Heroes” – David Bowie (1977)
64. Meat Is Murder – The Smiths (1985)
65. Station To Station – David Bowie (1976)
66. Clear Spot – Captain Beefheart And The Magic Band (1972)
67. Get Happy! – Elvis Costello & The Attractions (1980)
68. Fear Of Music – Talking Heads (1979)
69. Lust For Life – Iggy Pop (1977)
70. Berlin – Lou Reed (1973)
71. 20 Greatest Hits – Buddy Holly & The Crickets (1967)
72. Music From Big Pink – The Band (1968)
73. Hard Day’s Night – The Beatles (1964)
74. Roxy Music – Roxy Music (1972)
75. Leave Home – The Ramones (1977)
76. A Love Supreme – John Coltrane (1957)
77. Golden Decade Vol 1 – Chuck Berry (1972)
78. The Very Best Of.. – Jackie Wilson
79. In A Silent Way – Miles Davis (1969)
80. Stranded – Roxy Music (1973)
81. Talking Heads ‘77 – Talking Heads (1977)
82. The Correct Use Of Soap – Magazine (1980)
83. Born In The USA – Bruce Springsteen (1983)
84. Court And Spark – Joni Mitchell (1974)
85. Strange Days – The Doors (1967)
86. More Songs About Buildings And Food – Talking Heads (1978)
87. LA Woman – The Doors (1971)
88. Chess Masters – Howling Wolf (1981)
89. Armed Forces – Elvis Costello & The Attractions (1979)
90. Steve Mcqueen – Prefab Sprout (1985)
91. Paris 1919 – John Cale (1973)
92. Forward Onto Zion – The Abyssinians (1977)
93. My Aim Is True – Elvis Costello (1977)
94. Rattlesnakes – Lloyd Cole & The Commotions (1984)
95. Best Of – The Beach Boys (1968)
96. King Tubbys Meets The Rockers Uptown – Augustus Pablo (1976)
97. Rubber Soul – The Beatles (1965)
98. Suicide – Suicide (1977)
99. The Undertones – The Undertones (1979)
Source: http://www.rocklistmusic.co.uk/nme_writers.htm#albums
I hate lists like this*. How can e.g. a Roxy Music record be ‘one better’ than a Souxsie record, which in turn is ‘four better’ than the Isleys?
Rankers.
*most lists in fact
Oh, I don’t mind them really. I was just interested to notice that at the time there were at least 99 more albums deemed to be better than Sgt. Pepper. I’m using that as an example because I’m familiar with it and because it’s generally considered to be a masterpiece; although clearly in 1985 it had a bad press.
Oh, it is interesting to see how ‘best album’ lists change over time, for sure. I still dislike them, though.
If albums have to be compiled into lists (no they don’t) then almost every one of the above list would have appeared in somebody’s list around that time.
The order they appeared in would never be of any importance, really.
They are 1985’s tried and tested faves, aren’t they.
They’ve got the wrong Aretha collection in there, though.
“Aretha’s Gold” is the one. A superb selection, never bettered.
That’s a totally shit list. There’s nothing on it released after 1985 FFS!
Yeah!! BOOOOOO!!!! *chants* SHIT LIST SHIT LIST
I see there are Greatest Hits and Anthologies in there. The one by Smoky Bacon smells enticing.
I’ve got it! Tripe album. It’s brilliant.
Alleged rock-snob CSM’s number one choice, btw.
(Crosby Stills & Mash)
You missed my delightful deliberate mistake “tripe”. I meant triple, if course! What am I like, eh!!
You’re a proper rascal, you are, and no mistake!
Banshees The Scream – 1978 not 1980.
There is one Madness album – Mad, Not Mad there at No 55.
It has a couple of decent songs but comes nowhere near their earlier albums. But it had just been released that year, suggesting the journos had very short memories.
That 1985 NME chart certainly is fairly familiar now (although I recall studying it intently the week it came out).
A slightly less familiar chart is this one, which appeared in the Guardian yesterday (I think). It’s entitled “50 Underground Albums You’ve never Even Heard Of”, and it’s in alphabetical order.
I’d say it’s worth a quick read. There are a few albums there that sound rather intriguing, I must say,
For the record, I own two out of the 50 albums.
– The first is the 1975 Brazilian psych-rock set “Paebiru” by Lula Cortes e Zw Ramalho, which I’m afraid I’ve never managed to get into.
– The second is Connie Converse’s collected recordings, under the title “How Sad, How Lovely”
Regular readers will know that I adore these extraordinary old home recordings from the early 50s. The style of Ms Converse’s songwriting seemed to look ahead to the Greenwich Village folk wave of the 60s, but by the time that period actually arrived, Connie had got in her car, headed west, and was never seen again. It’s miraculous that we have even these tiny scraps to listen to 60 years later – evidence of a huge talent that never even got a minute of exposure at the time.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/ng-interactive/2017/oct/24/from-arsedestroyer-to-zoogz-rift-50-underground-albums-youve-never-even-heard-of
I scored two, with the rather Narrow-Field-Of-Classic-Rock Groundhogs and Twink albums, which I’m surprised to see in there. Major label outings from Ents Committee regulars? Underground? I think not.
Same two, plus a vague feeling I’ve heard of Thee Headcoatees, mostly because stupid name.
Heard of them, never heard them. There’s a handful of bands with that baffling “Thee” in their name. Tossers.
All down to Billy Childish it seems. Wikipedia:
Thirty years after Childish’s first musical releases with Thee Milkshakes and Thee Mighty Caesars, a crop of lo-fi, surf rock and punk groups with psychedelic subtexts has surfaced referencing the aesthetic established by Childish in both their band names and in various aspects of their sonic aesthetic:[4] Thee Oh Sees, Thee Open Sex,[5] Thee Tsunamis,[6] Thee Dang Dangs and many others.
Sonic aesthetic…hmmm.
See also: stylee.
Yebbut stylee is legit, isn’t it?
“Inna rub-a-dub stylee” Ernie Isley, Thingfish
(Referencing the aesthetic, now … isn’t that from a Tigger review?)
Legit or not, I reserve the right to be irritated, especially when it turns up in work emails.
Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons have never been fashionable, hugely successful but never fashionable. In the early sixties, they were stunningly brilliant. Even The Beach Boys could barely keep up. They weren’t just high-pitched bubblegum pop either. They did concept albums, were superb at Northern Soul, created a disco album before disco albums existed and invented Andy Williams.
Their biggest hit is the deeply unfashionable, but superb song, December 1963 (Oh, What A Night).
The album it’s from, Who Loves You, is also excellent.
Deeply unfashionable?? I think not, it’s fantastic!
Unfashionable? Surely it’s the Reid boys:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BDj4mr0fBc
I know. But across their career they’re aces. Great love songs; great protest songs. A phenomenally good live act. Every album has at least one great song on. They can write tear jerkers that rank right up there.
I’m not ashamed to admit it: I’ve loved The Proclaimers since day 1.
They were sort of fashionable in 1987 – partly because of the politics.
I love ’em. That second album is almost a masterpiece, and some of the stuff they’ve done since has been great too.
Unfashionable – Roy Harper.
Never liked by the music press in the 60s and early 70s because he was too political and confrontational
Hated in the punk years and after because he was an “old hippie” (Roy says he was never a hippie, as he hadn’t given up being a beatnik).
Pretty much ignored from mid 80s onward unless it was to sneer at him.
Loved when he released Man and Myth in 2013. Rave reviews all over the place and he made the Album Of The Year charts in both Mojo and Uncut. He had almost attained “national treasure” status (eugghh).
He’s the only guy I used to see live and buy his albums in the 70s and still do, on those rare occasions when he plays live or produces new music.
Apropos punk, RH appears in Jon Savage’s brilliant-if-flawed discography at the back of England’s Dreaming. Quite right too.
I was 15 when Nevermind came out, which instantly set me against any (male) artist with long hair and a fringe.
Also, any 60s or 70s legend who’d had a bad 80s, most of the line up of Band Aid and most of the Travelling Wilburys.
I gradually learned – because the NME told me – that it was ok to like 70s Bowie, which was helpful, because it was amazing. The NME also approved of Neil Young, setting me off on a long voyage of discovery through his music.
Not only would me and my college band reject bands on the NME’s say so, but we’d spend hours (and a lot of money) fruitlessly trying to enjoy the music they championed: Suicide, say, or Asian Dub Foundation. Apparently if the Beta Band released their first three EPs onto a single album it would be the album of the decade. And then they did, and well, of course it was, I just didn’t like to listen to it very often, that was all.
The rest of my band were my Vinyl Police. The band Dodgy, to me, were the perfect amalgamation of indie pop and the CSNY harmonies I enjoyed. But the guitarist in our band was horrified – and of course, I thought, he must be right, so they went out the window. And how could I possibly like the Boo Radleys? Come to think of it, it was kind of embarrassing – be gone!
And yet, like a character-forming school trip on which you hated every day, I’m not sure I’d change it. It gave us a manifesto, an identity, and it was kind of fun being curmudgeonly about music we had a sneaking admiration for.
Has caused some long term damage though. Long after casting off the notion of any such thing as a guilty pleasure, I’ve only recently come around to liking Tom Petty.
Great post.
For me, the thing that eventually put me off the music press (or the weeklies, at least), was the relentless, nose-thumbing negativity.
DISCLAIMER FOR IRRITATED ONLOOKERS: I AM TALKING ABOUT THE 1990S HERE. I CATEGORICALLY DID NOT READ THE NME IN THE 1970S. WHEREOF I DO NOT KNOW, THEREOF I CANNOT SPEAK. PLEASE DON’T GET ANGRY.
There was an awful lot of sneering, an awful lot of dismissing certain music as lacking substance. At times, NME-ism seemed to be defined more by what it was opposed to than what it actually supported, and what it actually supported tended to be this month’s fabricated scene which would inevitably become next month’s laughing stock.
It eventually struck me as quite a defensive, shuttered way to go through life; acting as if you’re somehow the grand arbiter of what is and is not “good music” (and largely based on appearances anyway). If Casey Chaos had looked like Chris Martin, Steven Wells would never have championed Amen. If King Adora hadn’t been loud and obnoxious and daft looking they’d never had made the music press at all.
Somewhere in my early 20s I realised that there’s no such thing as “good music”. There’s just what you like, and you can either let people make you feel diminished for liking it, or you can recognise that their opinions count for nothing anyway and just do you. I also realised that the most boring people in the world are the ones who mainly tell you what they hate (equally true of this site). It’s a defensive posture, and it’s no substitute for an actual personality.
I stopped reading the NME at university. Most of the other music mags fell by the wayside shortly thereafter. I always liked Word because it was about more than just music, and focused more on sharing enthusiasms than tart-mouthed put-downs of insufficiently hip artists (I can only assume that was Mark Ellen’s influence, for which I thank him).
Love is so much more interesting than hate. Scarcer too, and (perhaps most importantly) much harder to articulate.
All of that said, I do still love Buzzing and Charge by Asian Dub Foundation.
Tangent, but your Dodgy story reminded me of this, which happened about a year ago.
Me, walking along, listening to iPod.
Uber-cool friend stops me: ‘Listening to some 90s indie, are you?’
Me: ‘Dodgy’.
Him: ‘Indeed’. *raises eyebrow, archly*
“I stopped reading the NME at university.”
ATS
The entire crusty/traveller scene of the late 80s to early 90s was a definite subculture ( very noticeable in pre-hipster Brighton) that was never, ever fashionable. I didn’t much care for The Levellers, but they attracted a snarkiness from critics even as they steadily built up an audience.
My mantra was, and always has been, this:
If Paul Morley likes it, it has got to be shite.
I believe he likes Brian Jones era Stones quite a bit. Could be tricky.
If he does, he’s kept it exceedingly well hidden!
Seriously, I think I’d have seen it. Morley does an article and I’m sure to devour every syllable, and then categorically avoid all that he’s recommended.
He’s a fantastic tool for an imperious record collection.
It’s unlikely he’s got too much to say about Fats Domino, for example.
Foucalt. I believe there’s an article somewhere discussing him with reference to Rhianna and Foucalt.
Oh he’s a total twunt but he was an early champion of The Unthanks and he does give good anecdote just awful impenetrable arse gravy from his word processor.
Foucault was into The Unthanks? I saw him more as a Thompson Twins man.
Wrote a book on Bowie – loves Depeche Mode, was in the Art of Noise. He is hard work at times, but his musical preferences are OK by me.
I refer the right-honorable gentleman to the sleevenotes of the 1979 compo Junior Saw It Happen…
https://www.discogs.com/Various-Junior-Saw-It-Happen-20-Classic-Tracks/release/4656730
… a crucial album in my musical education.
As a young teenager in the late 90s, early 2000s, I made a conscious decision to avoid the Nirvana love-in that had overcome my peers. The same goes with the Nu-metal, pop-punk scene that started around that time too. Instead I chose to listen to the Beatles ‘1’ album on my Sony CD Walkman over and over again.
I’ve never bothered with NME – preferring to read Q or Mojo from the outset, until I grew bored of them too – so I think my tastes were always a little out of whack with the current trends. The White Stripes, The Strokes etc all passed me by at the time, for example.
Yes, when it was decided that The Strokes were the next big thing, I was put off by that.
I still think the first two Strokes records are really great. Hype can be very offputting but Is This It is a belter from start to finish.
Heart In A Cage off the second album is a huge favourite of mine.
I liked the Strokes, but they have to be the last significant example of a band who very carefully assembled elements that were designed to appeal to the music press (see also Birdland, Gay Dad, and – in their early phase – the Manics). I feel like Julian Casablancas should have written an indie rock version of KLF’s The Manual.
Speaking of the whole class thing, it’s interesting that the Strokes’ whole trust fund baby thing was entirely forgiven by the press because they’re from Noo Yoik. If JC had gone to Charterhouse rather than a Swiss finishing school, the NME would’ve slated them from day 1.
Heart In A Cage is off the third album. It’s one of the approx. four very good songs on it.
Oh! I missed one, even at the time.
OMG Room On Fire is the best! Listen to it IMMEDIATELY, Bob.
I just googled it. I remember the singles, now I see them
I came late to the Strokes (2nd album Room On Fire) and didn’t read the NME at the time, so I just loved them and held their music close all alone. Probably for the best by the sound of things.
Yeah, you don’t wanna mix with those NME types.
I’ll see you this and raise you FUNK METAL!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2Xvefy6-hg
From this was begat Rap Metal and Alt Metal. Frightful stuff…
And yet, as a teen in the eighties in Cumbernauld there was three types of music; Charts, Scottish (U2 pretty much counted as Scottish in my school) and Metal. By default I fell into metal, the other stuff was just unspeakable. And it’s Funk metal which introduced me to pretty much all the music I have loved since; all the soul, funk, hip hop, dance music. You needed to get there somehow. And I still love Faith No More, I think the Red Hot Chili Peppers aren’t completely wretched and a tune like this, or Mucky Pup’s “Hippies Hate Water” is still a joy…
People liked U2 in your school? You’ve never told us this…
I say “people” I mean “slack jawed yokels, inbreds, arseholes and bullies.” All the sensitive souls liked Metallica.
Ah. In my school it was the Beastie Boys who were beloved by the fey and the delicate.
*stares wistfully into the middle distance, softly singing “Shake Your Rump-Ah!”*
No RHCP are fucking wretched. FNM infinitely more interesting and inventive
RHCP are mostly wretched but had a few great moments. Mother’s Milk is a perfectly good record. Even BSSM has some good tunes on it, and you can’t really deny that Under The Bridge is a tune. Transcends their genre entirely, and is a modern classic for a reason (yes it is, yes it is).
Faith No More, on the other hand, are just ace. Always were.
I do tend to repeat myself, but I’ll always defend RHCP because thanks to them I got into Stevie Wonder (thanks to their cover of Higher Ground) and Bob Dylan (ditto their, admittedly wretched, cover of Subterranean Homesick Blues).
They kept going on about Parliament and Funkadelic in interviews so I owe hearing them to the RHCPs.
We forget in these days of every bit of music being available in a jiffy, that you had to work and discover stuff in the past. You’d take cues from bands you liked and some of the most awful bands did have actual good taste. How on earth would you even hear Funkadelic, unless your parents liked them? My dad hated Bob Dylan, there was nothing by him in our house, ditto Stevie Wonder who was tainted by I Just called To Say I Love You in them days.
So crap like Anthrax (they liked Public Enemy? I’ll give them a go), RHCP, even Simple Minds had impeccable taste, it could lead somewhere and often did.
But you need to start somewhere, is what I’m saying.
Absolutely agree with this. Parliament/Funkadelic only exist in my record collection because of RHCP, and their version of Higher Ground was the first Stevie song I knew that wasn’t I Just Called To Say I Love You. That and the sleevenote thank you to Stevie (“for being the badass that his is”) made me go, oh. Maybe IJCTSILY isn’t all there is to this bloke. And now he’s one of my all time favourite artists.
I feel I should post “Hippies Hate Water” mainly because it’s basically “I’d Rather Jack” except metal. The line “Gimme a ride to the Dead show man” I’m fairly sure would have annoyed a few people round here a while back… Like “I’d Rather Jack” it pretty much disappeared into the ether but I genuinely have a soft spot for it