Somebody brought this up on the SuperDeluxeEdition site recently – despite being a life long fan, I have no recollection of the comments personally, but someone did respond with the following:
“The Thatcher quote was published in the NME edition dedicated to the 1987 general election.
Cover star was Neil Kinnock if you must know.
They phoned a load of people and asked them who they were voting for.
Billy said Thatcher, as she was his kind of woman.
He was taking the piss. He knew how the ne’er do well bothering him would write it up too.
I was appalled when I read it; but young and that. When I first bumped into billy, three years later, I referred to said quote.
He was joking
On a lot of levels, with a lot of things.
And he hated the bitch”
Don’t know if that helps, but it has the ring of truth about it.
Radiohead. Reasons: Yorke’s whiney voice, slappable face and sanctimonious demeanour. These have been scientifically verified, and are in no way based on irrational prejudice.
A few reasons
Chronically overexposed
Overrated songs
They feature the flute which I hate
I said they would never make it in Melbourne never contemplated anything bigger
And of course the Ex. Spotting my mate and the ex dancing with such enjoyment was the first recognition of something fishy.
I should add that I hated working there; getting attacked by drunk b*st*rds and groped by hen night women. When I hear Deacon Blue I smell stale booze/fag-smoke and feel the simmering tension once again.
UB40. First couple of albums – not bad. But a combination of factors did them for me; seeing trainee social workers dancing to them with “fierce faces” and homeopathic joints, but preferring UB40’s right-on dirges over the joyful abandon of proper bluebeat and early reggae, which was just a little TOO ethnic and upful for them; UB40 seeing the same and ruining many great old bluebeat and early reggae songs with their “Labour of Love”; an ex- who thought their “I got you babe” was also “good reggae”.
A friend told me of the exceptional musicianship, the deep and meaningful lyrics, the top notch production etc etc, and that it was on all levels far superior to the rubbish I was listening to.
Which at the time was glam, with loads of the pop nominated in the “This Is Pop” thread.
No hits to speak of….a hatful of flop 45s….until selling out to an American jeans company, that is.
Ker – andverymuch – ching.
Didn’t all their kids go to private schools as well, or did I just dream that? I’m sure I read that somewhere.
Maybe so; but The Clash were a 70s model for big-mouthed, politically-correct Jeremys, perhaps because Joe Strummer was one to start with. All the exciting/ radical BS for what was (mostly) rock ordinaire – the rock ordinaire being why they were soon supporting the Who, and were the new wave band for people who liked “Bad Company” a year before. Bernie Rhodes didn’t help, either: “Brigade Rossi” (i.e., Baader-Meinhof t-shirts, kinda like wearing ISIS gear as a statemetn of how right-on you are), “Sten guns in Knightsbridge”; oh how we laughed at such larks. I was a big fan at the time, and saw them maybe 7 times. In hindsight, they were an generic rock group with a lot of hype around them. That Tony Parsons was a big fan should have marked our cards. He loved a bit of reactionary, did Tony. Just look at his first wife.
I disagree.
The Clash’s main crime was that they didn’t obligingly split/ die in a plane crash when they were still cool.
If they’d ceased to exist after The Cost of Living EP their legacy would be pretty much impeccable.
Their flaws were myriad & some of the music they made was effing awful & sometimes live they were dross – but on the other hand they could be fantastic – seeing them live is still one of the defining musical experiences I’ve ever had.
‘ A Mott The Hoople tribute band dressed at West Ken market’ was one of the cruellest yet funniest (cos it had an element of truth) digs I herard about them.
Despite this, & Tony Parsons & St Etiene slating them as pseuds, they were brilliant at their best & turned a lot of people (on both sides of the pond) onto to great music & ideas they probably wouldn’t have had otherwise.
So, on balance a good thing & ‘Complete Control’ remains one of the greatest singles ever released.
Erm……no offence…..but if your whole philosophy is ‘suck it to the man’ and then you COMPLETELY DON’T, EVER, NOT EVEN SLIGHTLY, ‘suck it to the man’, your ‘act’ is ever-so-slightly……shite.
It absolutely matters where their kids went to school.
Inform me. Where did they go to school?
Why would any of that offend me? I’m not a member of the band.
I think the Clash made some fantastic music. I don’t find any problem with them singing about revolution and sending their kids to private schools, partly because I think people should do the right thing by their kids (which may involve a fee paying school) regardless of their politics, partly because I’m not asinine enough to look to pop stars for moral leadership. I believe it’s the latter stance that enables virtually the entire population of this blog to keep listening to records by folks who knocked women about/shagged 12 year olds/murdered people. In the grand scheme of things, I reckon a bit of private schooling is fairly small beer.
You ask where they went to school? Read my lips: don’t know, don’t care
I also have no idea what “suck it to the man” is, but it sounds fairly unpleasant.
At last, definitive proof that the ‘deram’character is an ineptly programmed robot, cunningly created by Cointelpro to discredit the ideals of the ’60s.
Gravy, boobie.
Isn’t that line aimed at the Mod revival that has started up around the time of this single? Bands like Secret Affair.
The Jam were contemporaries of The Clash not a new group, to which the first line of that verse alludes.
How did all their kids go to private school if they didn’t sell any records till the early 90s? (Totally biased here of course, because I would take even a Clash greatest hits over any, and indeed all, British records from the sixties….)
The National. The music is actually quite good, but the aesthetic of their fanbase is massively off-putting (ie. beards, plaid shirts, craft beer, Guardian-readers).
Because they were clever without being witty. Because they appropriated the imagery of death and misery and burnished them to art school insignificance. Because sentence after sentence is not the poetry they imagine, because the jangle and modality is not the music they seek. Because you can’t dance to them. Because boys who couldn’t dance got drunk on cider and cheap vodka and tried.
Sun Kil Moon and everything associated with Mark Kozelek. I know I should be able to get past the fact that he is a boorish wanker and focus on the music, but I just can’t.
I think they are fabulously talented and hopelessly deluded. The drugs didn’t help, of course. Imagining you’re Baudelaire doesn’t make you so. They could have been the Arctic Monkeys, however.
Moody Blues. The twerp on flute, tambourine, moustache and looking around lost when the others are singing. His clothes are usually shite, even for the period.
Al Stewart. He was insufferably rude when I spoke to him after a gig and said how much I ‘d enjoyed it. I was being honest, not sarcastic.
F****r hasn’t had a penny of my money since, which was probably around 1975.
Used to have a blind spot with Guns n Roses around 1988.
Reason: because every other bugger liked ’em, and contrary me had to be different
(I admitted defeat some 10 or so years later)
Ongoing Personal No:
Coldplay – they’re just so up themselves and bland
I wanted to hate Guns n Roses too. A real bitch/bully at school asked me one day what music I was into, and I answered something along the lines of Terence Trent D’arby, Roachford and Deacon Blue (I know, right?). “Deacon Blue!” she sneered. Loudly. “You should listen to Guns n Roses instead of that shit!” I’d not yet heard of them but vowed on the spot to hate them. Not long afterwards I stayed up late one night with my mum to watch the concert at the N.Y. Ritz on TV, which blew my tiny mind, and I fell hopelessly in love with them.
Happy Mondays. Some drug pushing twat bought the house next door to my first house and used to enjoy keeping us awake all night with Happy flipping Mondays music. Within the year they made the front pages of the Bolton Evening News by holding an impromptu bonfire night party in the back street and fighting with the police. Less than 2 month’s later we had done a moonlit flit (actually a house swap with a builder for a much nicer house) and the knobhead ended up in prison for a different offence.
Actually my U2 hatred is in the style of the OP. I went to a catholic comprehensive in Scotland in the 80’s and the fact that they were so beloved by, frankly, religious bigots was a huge blot in their book before I even heard a note of their music. One of the worst bullies in my school once asked my how I could possibly hate U2, because they were “Good catholics.” If their fans are so moronic that their catholicism is more important than their music, then I was fucked if I was going to like them.
Bono’s massive bellendness is obviously insurmountable. And then finally, I heard “Pride (In The Name Of Love)” and even the brackets were annoying…
Only Larry was raised in a Catholic household.
Bonio was raised in a mixed Catholic/Protestant household, The Hedge was raised a Protestant, and Adam, although from a Protestant background held no firm belief when the band started (and I don’t think that viewpoint has changed).
Led Zep – but specifically Led Zep II. Heard every day for most of my early teens via my elder brother who possessed a handful of “classic rock.” Turgid, overblown shite of the highest order – and mystifyingly popular to this day. I was reminded of all this having a cup of tea in the otherwise excellent David’s record shop in Letchworth yesterday where the beardie hipster behind the counter was playing it and probably not in an ironic way. As a modest protest, I didn’t buy anything. No cake. No records. Nothing.
Cream. Fuck ’em. Nothing to do with their music (although I dislike it): it’s just every time I see archive footage of them playing, I want to make the entire band and audience queue up for a massive kick in the bits. Twats.
East 17. I guess I’m not their target demographic, and I don’t go for that watered down urban junk, but seriously …. Brian Harvey and his hats? Breathtaking twattery
Arcade Fire. Middle aged men trying to look cool and arty in their silly loud jackets, and a woman who looks like a slimmer version of Dawn French prancing around in photos like an attention seeking child.
My dislike is totally irrational, I don’t know any of their music. They may be wonderful people, but fuck it!
I was going to say Arcade Fire as well, except I was going to use the phrase “self-righteous hipster smuggery” Every photograph I have ever seen of them exudes it, and nothing I’ve heard from them has done anything to make me change my mind on that.
Deacon Blue. There was a law in Glasgow that you had to like them (certainly in the ’80s, when I last lived in Glasgow) – I despised them, and everything they stood for….still do….
I saw Deacon Blue headline the Big Day Out, the notorious gig in Glasgow where Sheena Easton got bottled and booed. I only saw them because I fancied one of the girls I was there with and she wanted to see them. After the event I found out that REM played alongside Billy Bragg on another stage when Deacon fucking Blue were on. I wasn’t best pleased. And the girl truly did not fancy me either. So many negative associations…
Sub-Dan muso wankery with your girlfriend on stage doing backing vocals overlaid with that whole self-conscious Weegie thing that happened in the ’80s, not to mention left wing politics spouted by rich kids at Glasgow Yooni (no, wait: that was Hue & Cry….) @Jayhawk
My 80s Glass~gow was all Tiffanys, NightMoves and Bobby Gillespie (aye him) with his Splash One (spot the ref?) club. Great nights out, so many great bands: Tones On Tail, Teh Cure, Theatre of Hate, Big Country (1st tour), The Stupids, Fields of the Nephilim, Endgames, The Woodentops, Sonic Youth, TV Personalities, World Domination Enterprises, Wire, Simple Minds, Blancmange, Alien Sex Fiend, 10,000 Maniacs, Bauhaus… need I go on?
Oh and Damon Abarn. I just wanted to punch his smug face throughout the 90s. Anyone who could tolerate being in a band with Alex James is plainly an even bigger twat than Alex James.
Then he does a world music album, then he’s in a band with Paul Simonen, an actual hero of mine…
This stuff might be good but I can’t bring myself to actually listen. Cos I hate Albarn.
I haven’t heard much by them ( thank fuck) but every time I’ve seen them perform they press pretty much every prejudiced button I have.
I cannot come up with a single positive thing to say about them, they are everything I musically detest. Even their technical proficiency is a negative for me – I’d much prefer crudely played good music any day to slick puke.
Move to have post stricken from the record: music related reasons.
(I don’t like Muse either but mostly cos their weaselly little Mike Teavee singer is a stupid, stupid conspiracy theorist and so are lots of their gramme-brained fans as a result.)
Hard to separate one’s dislike of people totally from one’s dislike of their music, but thinking about it….
I hated LOTS of people in music during the 80s, and only partly was it to do with the music. Frankly, I hated the decade and couldn’t wait for all its crappy alternatively tinny or colossal (or both) drum sounds and mullets and huge shoulders and rolled-up suit sleeves to be over. I knew it would be looked back on in an ‘OMG what were we thinking?’ way – all through the whole horrible time – but it seemed that most other people I knew couldn’t see that. Maybe they do now.
With that in mind, let me throw some names out – Thompson Twins (looked like berks, no talent), Big County and Echo & Bunnymen (largely because they wore buttoned up shirts, no ties and looked po-faced akll the time), Anne Lennox and Elton John – I NEVER understood (and still don’t) this fawning reverence to these people, like they’re some kind of national treasures. They’re not. They’re bland, bloated, uninteresting and self-important. Which leads on to all those Princes Trust TV boreathons… (*continues in this vein for quite some time*)
Honestly, it would be easier if it weren’t the case, but I lived through it and it was horrendous. By way of a tiny handful of exceptions I recall buying a few Husker Du singles and Cocteau Twins 12 inches and suchlike – but not much. Mostly it was Mahavishnu Orchestra, Focus, Quintessence and Pentangle albums (mostly second hand).
I did see a couple of good live shows, though – Cocteau Twins and Long Ryders come to mind.
Funnily enough Dave, I DO have a soft spot for the Human League (though any time I see/hear them interviewed they test that patience – a bunch of dimwits), and also for John Foxx. His album The Garden was brilliant, and the odd single too.
Gormless – yes, that’s the word! Then again, when I was 13 or 14 in the early 80s, there was no finer totem of the opposite gender than Joanne Catherall.
Although I enjoyed the sound of Operation: Mindcrime, I could not bring myself to say I actually “liked” Queensryche, purely because my brother did. Likewise for Tesla (and The Great Radio Controversy is/was a fine album)
I heard a great story relating to Queensryche. Apparently someone from a record company once played Silent Lucidity to Neil Tennant and said something along the lines of “We’re breaking new ground here. It’s about six minutes long.” To which Tennant replied “That’s not how long it feels.”
My first day at college: arriving at my student house accommodation, anxiety and shyness ratcheted up to eleven, I make a tentative introduction to my new room mate, a guy called Sam from Neath. He is dressed in black and is very tall, his height enhanced by at least two feet of vertical jet black hair. I learn that he is studying mathematics and has early morning lectures for the whole of the first term.
I am awoken very early the next morning by a horrible sound on Sam’s cassette radio alarm clock. It is the most monstrous gothic cacophony my tender ears have yet to hear. I learn later that it is something by Bauhaus.
Fiddlers’s Dram.
Nobody ever in the entire unabridged history of ever had a lovely time visiting Bangor.
Ersatz Folkie Bastards is what they should have called their music bothering collective which would have been a better name than Fiddlers’s Dram. A name that is an inducement to mindless violence.
The memory of them makes me want to spit.
It is indeed a concern that Oysterband arose from such embarrassing twaddle. But I forgive them. Now if that twerp from the Moody Blues was involved, that would be the end
Steely Dan: Smuggity smug.
Brooooce: worthy plodder, incredibly vain whilst pretending not to be.
Metallica – never heard/seen anything remotely interesting said/written about them ever.
Annie Lennox – a self important dullard.
This is true. Once you get the Dan, you can never go back to liking ordinary bands the ordinary people like. It is, in a very real sense, like a private club open to everyone except people who aren’t members. We can’t even bring ourselves to feel sorry for those outside the club pressing their pasty little faces against the window. We can see you … but in the background, like texture. In here, in Danland, we have the finest wines, the most beautiful women, the funniest jokes, and the blackest coal.
And pehaps oddest of all, entry to the club is open to all.
What amuses & bemuses The Dannerati in equal measure is that the hoi polloi can’t even see the open door to the club.
Verily, they wouldn’t know a diamond if they held it in their hand.
Guns n’Roses. Axl Rose makes a truly dreadful cacophony when he “sings”, but apart from that just for being Axl Rose i.e a cnut. Slash’s stupid hat and the fact that he always looks like he could do with a wash.
Steve Harley. Apart from the fact that his voice is seriously substandard, I just don’t like him and never have.
Sting. The ultimate in pompous twattery. A twats twat.
David Ford. Wears a hat onstage and is bland. Twice I have been at gigs of his and twice I have left early, bored.
R.E.M. Everyone says they’re great. They are not. They have a handful of good songs and vast heaps of not good songs. And Stipe is just really annoying to watch.
The Clash. The Punk & Post-Punk era’s equivalent of the Dead. They couldn’t sing and their music was nothing special barring a handful of songs. The stupid Angry Brigade posturing.
Though I haven’t got a Scooby Doo who David Ford is, I heartily agree with everyone else in this list!
I mean – Harley – nice enough, but surely should have been an Estate Agent or plumber or something?
There’s a plumber from South London who should have been a singer/songwriter that we’ve all missed out on because of him.
Waxyl – tick, can’t sing. You Could be Whine, yup
Steve Harley – tick, Come Up and See Me is utter, utter pish!
Stinge – tick, up to a point, he’s great knicker removing music
David Ford – no idea who he is
REM – tick, made one album and kept making it
The Clash – no, nope I don’t think so
Any band whose bassist plays one of those guitars with no body and no machine head. Just a fret board. What’s the fucking point in being in a rock band? You may as well be a music teacher in Swindon.
Folk or country acts with far too many people on stage. Three or four guitars, a fiddle, and accordion, a banjo, a mandolin, bassist, drummer, lap steel, piano, backing vocalists, etc.
I one won some tickets to see Bellowhead at a local venue, but couldn’t be bothered to pick them up.
I don’t get the analogy between Bellowhead and the bloated backing bands you see with the country acts you have in mind. The former fuses a horn section with a fiddle quartet. Whether or not this is a good sound is a matter of opinion, but to my mind is very different to having a battery of people strumming acoustic guitars.
The Rolling Stones. Why? Because they are still going, trotting out the same set they did 40 years ago. A musical version of the Dave channel or UK Gold, we know you can’t get no satisfaction thanks, now get off….
U2. Because.
Led Zeppp. I think the phrase I’m looking for is “thieving fucking bastards”
Toby Keith and most nu Country. Keith Urban, this means you as well.
Best thread for a long time.. Can I just add David Bowie? Just irritates the fuck out of me -mannered, self-knowing, pretentious, and above all a bit of a twat.
Because they only exist because Coldplay can’t be expected to put an album out every year so some prick at a record company found another, even shitter version to force upon the public.
Because the lead singer fucked about during the whole of our GCSE drama showings but somehow got an A. He then proceeded, along with another kid, to share the two parts that I covered in the school play during lower sixth. And was shit in it.
Because we then went to university with each other and he went from being actually alright really (despite the acting based irritations) to bring an insufferable prick who thought he’d discovered ecstasy despite having been a choirboy (actual and metaphorical) for the duration of secondary school.
Because when I, for some reason, went along to the Dublin Castle, when they were showcasing for the industry two thirds of them treated me like a cunt. Until it became clear that I was there with the guy from Island, whereupon the attitude shifted somewhat.
Because what kind of wankers name their band after Roy Keane? A move that displays a level of imagination precisely commensurate with the musical output of said band.
Which brings me to the bonus answer, against the criteria of the OP though nonetheless relevant…
The insipid fucking drivel that they dribbled all over the place for a few years. Have they never listened to any other music, ever? If they had they would surely appreciate that their own is simply not good enough.
And they once supported My Morning Jacket, ruining the gig for me on two levels as I had to listen to them and I had to reacquaint myself with several people from my past who wondered why I wasn’t leaving to take coke with the band round the back rather than listen to ‘some American band’.
God may strike me down for this — it being Easter Sunday — but I’d have to say Amy Winehouse. I thought she was terribly badly behaved, rude and uncouth. I sympathise with her addictions, but when it comes to that side of her, I feel more sympathy for the poor sods who had to clean the mess she left in the bathroom.
Well, she’s brown bread, so she won’t care.
Your comment prompts another pro-Clash vote from me, though.
On a very early punk tour ( probably the Anarchy one) when some herbert suggested trashing the hotel room ( now they were proper rock stars & that) Mick Jones scotched the idea saying that people like his mum had to clean up the mess left by dickheads in hotel rooms.
The rooms were subsequently left ship shape & Bristol fashion.
Alex Harvey had the same attitude. He said it was all very well smashing up the rooms and then paying for the damage, but the hotel management weren’t the ones who had to clean up and the room cleaners got nothing extra from it but more work.
Can go one further and sing the praises of Teenage Fanclub who, on finding their band room was a disgusting toilet, went to B&Q and redecorated said room, a) for a laugh and b) to improve the world just a tiny bit. Their music may have lost its edge some time ago, but I love those guys.
I don’t *hate* the man, far from it, but the admiration and affection in the Wataya household for the work of Edwyn Collins, particularly as Orange Juice front man and on his first solo album, Hope and Despair, will forever be tempered by the recollection of him halting a solo acoustic performance of Dying Day to give me a tongue-lashing as I sought to exit the room to relieve my distended bladder. More than twenty-five years ago now, but the memory still smarts.
I’d heard them and dismissed them as ok but not really my cup of decaf tea. Then, when Elvis Costello released “The Delivery Man” there was some poncy arts programme on TV which did a short feature on EC as he’d also released “Il Sogno”, a CD of classical music he’d been comissioned to write by a theatre group who had adapted A Midsummer Night’s Dream into a ballet. Move to some ultra hip beardy right-on arts type twat who dismisses both albums with “Well I won’t be putting my Franz Ferdinand CDs away just yet”.
Since then Franz Ferdinand can just fuck off. Fuck. Right. Off.
Easy target, like shooting a shark in a bucket, but the only band I’ve ever hated is Toploader. It’s impossible to hate them for their music, because they didn’t have any. They were a bunch of brats from my home town who bought the lucky ticket and had ten minutes at the top table, and boy did the stuff themselves while they were there. What a shower of wankers. I remember one review describing the singer as a ‘curly-haired cunt’. It was the best review they ever got.
The Verve. Need I say more? Okay then; boring bastards who scrambled onto the Oasis bandwagon, despite coming from Wigan, and fell on their arses when they nicked an orchestral riff from the Stones.
According to Billboard magazine, “the group’s rise was the culmination of a long, arduous journey that began at the dawn of the decade and went on to encompass a major breakup, multiple lawsuits, and an extensive diet of narcotics”. In layman’s English it means they were a bag of turds.
I confess to feeling sorry for the Verve. True, they only really had the one decent song, but what a monster song it was and surely one of the best records of the late 90s.
They sampled an orchestral version of a Stones song which sounded absolutely NOTHING like the song in question (The Last Time) and ended up losing everything.
I guarantee if you played Bittersweet Symphony to a million people, no more than a handful would know where the sample came from. If the Verve had sampled a real Stones’ record then Jagger/Richard might have a case, but it was a shitty Woolworth’s level Stones-by-numbers orchestral recording performed by session men, with Andrew Oldham’s name added after the event.
Then Keith Richards rubbed salt in the wound in a Q (or Mojo) interview by crowing “write your own song next time lads”. He had nothing to do with the orchestral recording!
Don’t. I got free tickets to see them play the Manchester Apollo and walked out before they played the big number. For a band that hails from the land of pies they were tedious in the extreme. I probably have some of their records in my house but have had my memory erased so I cannot find them. Ever.
You make it sound like they were sued into penury by Andrew Loog Oldham.
Their subsequent single (Drugs Don’t Work) went to number one and is still regularly heard on the radio today. The third single off the album went to number 7. The album went platinum and they were playing to live crowds of over thirty thousand and doing well in the States.
I’m not a fan of Urban Hymns (by any means), but the Verve – laughable as they may have been – were an extremely successful band, and had been critical darlings before they conquered the mainstream (the previous record has some good tunes on it).
Far from being beaten to death by the Rolling Stones, the band simply split up at the height of their success because they never really got on. And when Richard Ashcroft returned with his first solo single a few months later, it duly went to number one as well.
I must admit that I never reach for their records, and that last album does contain some real tosh, but the only people who “creamed” the Verve were the Verve themselves.
All you say is true. Urban Hymns is the 17th best-selling album in UK chart history and has sold over ten million copies worldwide.
But The Verve lost every penny in royalties from their biggest song, albeit possibly due to their own stupidity (they were offered a deal at one point and refused it). But I can’t help feeling they got a raw deal.
Also it was Allen Klein who had ownership of the rights to the recording not The Stones. Klein offered 50% so the story goes but they said no so he took the lot. 50% of such a big hit would have been substantial. Why they thought they’d get away with such a blatant rip off of someone else’s record is beyond me. I can’t feel any sympathy for them.
I can’t remember what incarnation of the site I’ve already said this on, so I’ll just say it again.
It was only relatively recently that I heard the orchestral version of The Last Time. Up until that point, I’d imagined that they’d only sampled the string hook. They didn’t: they had away with the melody, chord sequence, hook: the works.
For me, sampling is about the creative splicing together of records to create something new. Bittersweet Symphony doesn’t do that: it’s pretty much just Ashcroft singing words over the top of a piece of music that already existed. It’s not the Dust Brothers or the Avalanches: it’s karaoke.
Trying to get away with singing your own words, karaoke style, over another record, albeit one that no-one remembers and then, on the verge of your moment of triumph having the rug pulled with hilarious consequences?
Sounds familiar:
I agree with Bob. I too assumed Bittersweet was”just a sample”, but they really just copied the whole thing. When i first heard The Last Time I thought it was a Verve remix. And if you don’t believe they copied the melody, try singing both songs together: “Well, I told you once if I told you twice…..”, “Well, it’s a bitter sweet symphony…”
All good points and well made. But, as a tone deaf non-musician I do have sympathy for the twangers and plinkers of the world. Your average keyboard has, what, 5 keys, humans have been making melodies since before they could speak, and tunes you heard decades ago still whirl around your mind, so accusations of plagiarism in the field are everywhere. TV shows and movies, where the only restriction is the writer’s imagination and the producer’s budget, are constantly “borrowing” (or, more kindly, paying homage to) one another’s ideas.
If Brazil was a record, at the first sign it might be making some cash, the decrepit and drug addled has-been George Orwell (played, confusingly, by John Hurt as he appears in Midnight Express rather than 1984) would be urging Mr Gilliam to write his own movie.
Another problem might be the fact that, legally, songs are defined as melodies rather than ideas. Messrs Jagger & Richards may have been scrupulously careful to ensure that the melodies credited to them were their own but I would venture that their song ideas, their structures even the band’s name have a second hand quality that is essential to their appeal.
I remember Ian McNabb, on some candid sleeve notes, commenting on one of his songs that “you could always tell what tapes we were playing in the van”; to my ears The Verve’s three big ‘uns (BSS, The Drugs, History) sound like a band straining to emulate the particular majesty of Gene Clark’s “Some Misunderstanding”. The idea, not the melody…
And when their guitarist walked out during their, by default, final US tour, they got BJ Cole in to deputise, with steel replacing bog standard guitar. That I would like to have heard, but my inter web searches, and a question here (in the old place, actually) has left me still waiting.
Clear winner is Frank Sinatra. Cowardly bully who had his goons beat the shit out of people who annoyed him. Momma’ boy, Worshipped psychopathic Mafia mobsters.
In second place, Annie Lennox. Humourless, sanctimonious prig. Joyless, cold, snobbish, right-on Puritan. Champagne socialist who you just know is hell to work for. ‘Humanitarian’ who probably doesn’t get on with her neighbours. Guardian reader made flesh.
Add Dean Martin for the Rat Pack double. Just seems like a horrible man. It doesn’t help that Frank sings flatter than a plate of piss, or maybe it does because you know you’re not missing out on much by avoiding them.
The book ‘Dino’ by Nick Tosches is a tremendous read. Though an affable man with an excellent sense of humour and inimitable comic timing, he was very much a self-absorbed loner. In his favour though is that he couldn’t even be dictated to by the Mafia, to their immense puzzlement and annoyance.
Sinatra did stand up for Sammy Davis Jr (tho he arguably did belittl him too). I got the impression from various biogs that he genuinely thought the attitude to black artists of the time was just plain wrong and he said so when he stood to gain nothing from it.
Re Annie- you would though, eh? I mean if you got the chance 🙂 I sure as wassaname would.
Sinatra was a very ardent champion of the Civil Rights movement, no doubt, and that’s very much to his credit.
As for Annie, no way. I’ve stood very, very close to her and the ice maiden vibe was too strong. Not just because I was standing near her, I hasten to add.
All these swaggering ‘I’m reet Northern and I take drugs me’ bands. Oasis, Happy Mondays, Stone Roses, The other one. They all sound like tribute bands of better 70’s outfits. Although to be fair I think they’ve all gone away now so I should probably let it go.
Also The Cure. I could never get past the porky goth look to listen to the actual music.
I agree. There’s something about that lachrymose, lethargic, lugubrious front guy where one has a compelling urge to throw him in a shower, cut his atrophied-hedge hair off and sign him up for a fitness class.
The entire Canterbury Scene. Saved myself the bother of “getting into them” by automatically assuming that they were effete, southern, public school nancy boys. To be fair, I did get to quite like Kevin Ayers and Robert Wyatt seems like a good egg.
And I did see Gong upstairs in a pub in Edgbaston.
The Who. Some fine music, of course, but Townshend has a ridiculously high and self important view of his place in the literary and musical canon; Daltrey displays a general lack of humility (and humour) and Keith Moon was clearly insufferable.
Lou Reed, I will reference his music but only to comment that I have been a fan for many years and am currently reading the Sounes bio.
He was a prick from which ever angle you choose, misogynist, violent, manipulative, liar, greedy cheat, bully, condescending, patronising, arrogant, churlish . Pick an epithet , any epithet and it will work for Louis.
Now I had pondered George Ivan Morrison but despite his contemptible behaviour on many levels, he strikes me as someone who struggles with it all, the creative muse, fame, the big questions about life. It is all pretty hard work and it is manifested in his disposition.
How could we have missed Lou? Horrible, arrogant, nasty prick. Ugliness goes all the way to the bone.
With you on Van – at worst, he could be accused of being curmudgeonl. He seems to have had good relationships with many musicians throughout his career.
And yet he was in a committed relationship with Laurie Anderson, one of my favourite artists ever, who comes across as intelligent, thoughtful, calm and fundamentally decent.
Sounes theorises re autism/aspergers, I think, haven’t got to it yet but seem to recall from the podcast.
And I don’t want to offered sufferers of these conditions or those with loved ones afflicted but from early on, even pre electric shocks , if you believe Sounes, he displays a complete lack of empathy.
Red Hot Chili Peppers. Technically gifted they may be (and I don’t mind a few of their tunes) but I just can’t explain it, there’s something there that makes me not want to dig any further.
There are so many reasons to loathe them. So, so many. They’re all absolute cliched Californian rockstar douchebags, for a start. Apart from Chad Smith, who seems alright. Just. Absolute. Wankers.
And the music is horrible too.
There’s no reason, none whatsoever, not to hate them.
Btw if anyone can find that brilliant interview with them where some guy is on tour with them and they’ve got some “nurse” injecting them with oxygen and making them eat macrobiotic broccoli diets and shit, I’d be forever in their debt.
As Nick Cave once said, “I’m forever turning the radio on and asking “What the fuck is this shit?” And the answer is always the Red Hot Chili Peppers.”
Reason: loved The Jam, bought everything that the band produced (I was that age), and was gutted when Weller decided to replace my favourite band with some blazer wearing piano tinkling nonsense.
I’ve reassessed Mr Weller’s solo stuff, but have never owned a Style Council record.
With you on that one (maybe not hate, as a recent(ish) re-appraisal proved me wrong).
Although the latter days of The Jam were a sort of pointer to The Style Council (indeed Speak Like A Child could’ve been a Jam single, and Solid Bond In Your Heart was very nearly the final Jam single), the sound lost it’s urgency for me, and went a bit too jazzy and “cocky” for my liking. Red Wedge and overt politics did it for me.
Paul Weller solo hooked me from the start, and I put SC down to “a bad few years at the office”.
I later decided to stop being so harsh and re-listened – they were still sounding a bit up themselves, but there was some fine stuff there.
Sometimes it’s not the artist themselves, it’s their fans that put you off. For such reasons I own no music by, and have no interest in listening to, Sade.
Yes, but all his neighbours are saying to him, ‘Bloody hell’an’strewth, mate! Is that not that JohnnyConcheroovygroovymeister yer’ve got sittin’ at yet barbie downin’ the tinnies an’ lookin’ as miserable as a koala in a eucalyptus free zone, listenin’ ter that ‘Best of Sadé’ for the bleedin’ tenth time in a row?!?’ Why doncha ask ‘im fer some of them Frank Zappa an’ Jimi Hendrix an’ Swingin’ London anecdotes like all ‘is mates on that blahdy Afterword site would, ya dozy swagman?!?’
That’s uncanny Colin. It’s almost as if you were there!
It’s always a problem when we visit the wife’s friends and relatives because without exception they are civilians who have no interest or knowledge of music beyond the usual Phil Collins (or these days Adele) CDs.
Which reminds me of a conversation I had a long time ago.
We arrived at the house of the FPO’s longtime best friend for dinner and the husband had clearly been briefed along the lines of “Now, Johnny is really into music, so don’t forget to engage him in conversation about concerts, records etc and the evening should go really well”
Almost immediately after we arrived I was bailed up in the kitchen by this fellow who demanded “So, been to any good concerts recently Johnny?”
“Er, just a couple” I mumbled. “Ry Cooder, Frank Zappa and maybe a few others. How about you?
The bloke looked back at me blankly. “Me? Oh, I’ve never been to a concert” he replied meekly.
How do you find these people, Johnno? Australia must be awash with beer-sozzled, battle-scarred, string-vest-wearing, beer-bellied, grizzled veterans of the 70s pub rock scene and yet you end up with a shower of bores in pressed slacks and polo shirts? Who IS this maiden from straightsville you married?
Actually the “I’ve never been to a concert” conversation took place in London, at a bijou town house in Russell Gardens Mews, Holland Park, just behind the Kensington pub, an early pub rock venue.
Pink Floyd. Because of all the weed smoking Casuals growing their hair called Kevin who I knew back in my teens who thought Floyd were the peak of human existence.
Tanita Tikaram. Because she looks just like an ex. She could be making the best music ever. I wouldn’t hear it.
Bit late to this but I have a couple which I think might have already been mentioned but I probably have different reasons.
Kasabian.
Because I had a long wait at an airport gate and they were waiting for the same flight. They killed time by reading out fan letters and ripping the piss out of them.
Snow Patrol.
I’d had a call to say that my granny was dying in hospital and I left work to drive to there. Forgot to turn my radio off so that any music I heard wasn’t associated with such a sad time.
Snow Patrol, who I didn’t think much of anyhow, were playing and now hearing one of their songs for even just a few seconds reminds me of that awful day.
Taken me ages to get to the bottom of this thread – might have been quicker if it was a list of bands we liked !
Anyway to continue the vitriol….
The Kinks – just don’t get ’em (apart from Waterloo Sunset of course) and I find Ray Davies unpleasant for no specific reason.
Duran Duran – really don’t get ’em! Why were they so big on so little talent and then even more remarkably successfully resurrected their career decades later with still no talent having developed in the meantime? Simon Le Bon must be a contender for worst lead vocalist of all time.
Chris de Burgh – I can barely type his name and keep my tea down
Bon Jovi: Reason: Ex. Even 30 years on I can’t listen to Living on a Prayer, not that I’m counting or anything…….
The Associates: pro Thatcher statements in the 80`s although later retracted I`ve never forgiven the sniveling twots.
Somebody brought this up on the SuperDeluxeEdition site recently – despite being a life long fan, I have no recollection of the comments personally, but someone did respond with the following:
“The Thatcher quote was published in the NME edition dedicated to the 1987 general election.
Cover star was Neil Kinnock if you must know.
They phoned a load of people and asked them who they were voting for.
Billy said Thatcher, as she was his kind of woman.
He was taking the piss. He knew how the ne’er do well bothering him would write it up too.
I was appalled when I read it; but young and that. When I first bumped into billy, three years later, I referred to said quote.
He was joking
On a lot of levels, with a lot of things.
And he hated the bitch”
Don’t know if that helps, but it has the ring of truth about it.
All I remember was that it was more than a who are you voting for pro-Tory comment, and it stuck.
Queen. Reason – bombastic shite, nuff said
Radiohead. Reasons: Yorke’s whiney voice, slappable face and sanctimonious demeanour. These have been scientifically verified, and are in no way based on irrational prejudice.
Indeed. I am the scientist who verified the above.
Yep, I’m with you there. Without the whining I think I’d just dislike them to the point of indifference.
Men at work
A few reasons
Chronically overexposed
Overrated songs
They feature the flute which I hate
I said they would never make it in Melbourne never contemplated anything bigger
And of course the Ex. Spotting my mate and the ex dancing with such enjoyment was the first recognition of something fishy.
Deacon blue. I worked in a club that played them relentlessly. They might be OK – I don’t know, I can’t listen to them.
I should add that I hated working there; getting attacked by drunk b*st*rds and groped by hen night women. When I hear Deacon Blue I smell stale booze/fag-smoke and feel the simmering tension once again.
Some of these posts don’t qualify, as they ignore the “nothing to do with the music” bit, i.e. the actual OP.
I should expand therefore on my hatred of Queen. Every dickhead I have ever known (and there have been many) used to say “he’s gay you know” ….
Professor Brian Cox.
Seconded – he has a face that you would never get tired of punching….
To claim that he’s not a rock band is splitting hairs. He clearly thinks he is, and that’s enough for me to unleash my signature haymaker.
A song that I cannot listen to anymore without toe curling embarrassment: Heroin by the Velvets. Reason: girls
UB40. First couple of albums – not bad. But a combination of factors did them for me; seeing trainee social workers dancing to them with “fierce faces” and homeopathic joints, but preferring UB40’s right-on dirges over the joyful abandon of proper bluebeat and early reggae, which was just a little TOO ethnic and upful for them; UB40 seeing the same and ruining many great old bluebeat and early reggae songs with their “Labour of Love”; an ex- who thought their “I got you babe” was also “good reggae”.
Supertramp, especially Crime Of The Century.
A friend told me of the exceptional musicianship, the deep and meaningful lyrics, the top notch production etc etc, and that it was on all levels far superior to the rubbish I was listening to.
Which at the time was glam, with loads of the pop nominated in the “This Is Pop” thread.
I still think I got the better deal.
Mumford and Sons – Punchable twats. Their arrival deposed Franz Ferdinand, the former holders of Most Despised band on Planet Bamber.
the clash.
No hits to speak of….a hatful of flop 45s….until selling out to an American jeans company, that is.
Ker – andverymuch – ching.
Didn’t all their kids go to private schools as well, or did I just dream that? I’m sure I read that somewhere.
You do realise that all punk bands weren’t actually anarchists living in squats? They wanted to sell some records not overturn the government.
Maybe so; but The Clash were a 70s model for big-mouthed, politically-correct Jeremys, perhaps because Joe Strummer was one to start with. All the exciting/ radical BS for what was (mostly) rock ordinaire – the rock ordinaire being why they were soon supporting the Who, and were the new wave band for people who liked “Bad Company” a year before. Bernie Rhodes didn’t help, either: “Brigade Rossi” (i.e., Baader-Meinhof t-shirts, kinda like wearing ISIS gear as a statemetn of how right-on you are), “Sten guns in Knightsbridge”; oh how we laughed at such larks. I was a big fan at the time, and saw them maybe 7 times. In hindsight, they were an generic rock group with a lot of hype around them. That Tony Parsons was a big fan should have marked our cards. He loved a bit of reactionary, did Tony. Just look at his first wife.
I disagree.
The Clash’s main crime was that they didn’t obligingly split/ die in a plane crash when they were still cool.
If they’d ceased to exist after The Cost of Living EP their legacy would be pretty much impeccable.
Their flaws were myriad & some of the music they made was effing awful & sometimes live they were dross – but on the other hand they could be fantastic – seeing them live is still one of the defining musical experiences I’ve ever had.
‘ A Mott The Hoople tribute band dressed at West Ken market’ was one of the cruellest yet funniest (cos it had an element of truth) digs I herard about them.
Despite this, & Tony Parsons & St Etiene slating them as pseuds, they were brilliant at their best & turned a lot of people (on both sides of the pond) onto to great music & ideas they probably wouldn’t have had otherwise.
So, on balance a good thing & ‘Complete Control’ remains one of the greatest singles ever released.
Agree with this, particularly re: Complete Control, which is bloody wonderful.
Couldn’t care less where their, or anyone else’s, kids went to school.
Erm……no offence…..but if your whole philosophy is ‘suck it to the man’ and then you COMPLETELY DON’T, EVER, NOT EVEN SLIGHTLY, ‘suck it to the man’, your ‘act’ is ever-so-slightly……shite.
It absolutely matters where their kids went to school.
Inform me. Where did they go to school?
Why would any of that offend me? I’m not a member of the band.
I think the Clash made some fantastic music. I don’t find any problem with them singing about revolution and sending their kids to private schools, partly because I think people should do the right thing by their kids (which may involve a fee paying school) regardless of their politics, partly because I’m not asinine enough to look to pop stars for moral leadership. I believe it’s the latter stance that enables virtually the entire population of this blog to keep listening to records by folks who knocked women about/shagged 12 year olds/murdered people. In the grand scheme of things, I reckon a bit of private schooling is fairly small beer.
You ask where they went to school? Read my lips: don’t know, don’t care
I also have no idea what “suck it to the man” is, but it sounds fairly unpleasant.
*trying to read…
…can’t seem to focus..*
Jeeziz, what full luscious lips! dreamy
Suck it to the man? You’ll be exhorting us to ‘turn up, tune out, and drop in’ next. Left on!
At last, definitive proof that the ‘deram’character is an ineptly programmed robot, cunningly created by Cointelpro to discredit the ideals of the ’60s.
Gravy, boobie.
Why didn’t they have a Top 10 hit?
I love The Clash, but this is the band, remember, who took the piss out of The Jam….
“They think it’s funny/ turning rebellion into money”
Hoist, one thinks, by their own petard?
Isn’t that line aimed at the Mod revival that has started up around the time of this single? Bands like Secret Affair.
The Jam were contemporaries of The Clash not a new group, to which the first line of that verse alludes.
How did all their kids go to private school if they didn’t sell any records till the early 90s? (Totally biased here of course, because I would take even a Clash greatest hits over any, and indeed all, British records from the sixties….)
EVEN the first Quintessence album? EVEN the first John McLaughlin album? EVEN the Very Best of Peter & Gordon…?
Even The Spinners, Colin, even The Spinners
Even The Hollies or Teh Beat-les.
The Clash were dynamic!
Even The Applejacks?
What!?! The Spinners!!!????! NO, NOOOO, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
The National. The music is actually quite good, but the aesthetic of their fanbase is massively off-putting (ie. beards, plaid shirts, craft beer, Guardian-readers).
The
Smiths
Reasons?
Because they were clever without being witty. Because they appropriated the imagery of death and misery and burnished them to art school insignificance. Because sentence after sentence is not the poetry they imagine, because the jangle and modality is not the music they seek. Because you can’t dance to them. Because boys who couldn’t dance got drunk on cider and cheap vodka and tried.
Does not having any meaningful hits count?
I hate the dire 1980s but, curiously, I have far more time for the Adam Ant/Wham end of the market than the clash/smiths no-hit end.
Teh Smith were a interesting singist with schoolboy diary words, an half decent guitarist and a dull as dishwater rhythm section.
I really hate Blur.
I mean I hate Oasis too but that’s for the music obvs.
But Blur? No, I really hate them, personally. I would like to drown damon albarn in a bathtub full of baked beans.
And I’m not being funny but I would probably get a semi lob on whilst doing it.
I don’t like him or his band at all.
The above is a mistake copy n’ paste, I meant – Dull and very avoidable.
Sun Kil Moon and everything associated with Mark Kozelek. I know I should be able to get past the fact that he is a boorish wanker and focus on the music, but I just can’t.
Dull and very avoidable.
U2. Why, well, yer man Bonio of course.
I fail to see any attraction in this band
The Libertines.
The image, the clothes, the ‘lifestyle’, the fans, those stupid hats, the media fawning, Barât/Doherty.
I do really like their music, however.
I cannot stand them either. And, luckily, also hate the music. The sixth form / Aldi Clash.
Heh heh. I think they’re mildly interesting muscially but highly irritating for other reasons.
I think they are fabulously talented and hopelessly deluded. The drugs didn’t help, of course. Imagining you’re Baudelaire doesn’t make you so. They could have been the Arctic Monkeys, however.
That is just insulting to Aldi.
Can’t sing, can’t compose, can’t play cunts.
I like the idea of an Aldi Clash. I was trying to work out who could be the Waitrose Clash, but then I realised that was probably the Clash.
At the risk of being pedantic, wouldn’t ‘Cash Converters Clash’ be better?
Moody Blues. The twerp on flute, tambourine, moustache and looking around lost when the others are singing. His clothes are usually shite, even for the period.
We always used to say that when the Moody Blues came on stage it looked like a ladies hairdressers convention
LEAVE THE MOODIES ALONE.
Leavethemalone.
“Going anywhere nice for your holidays this year?”
Al Stewart. He was insufferably rude when I spoke to him after a gig and said how much I ‘d enjoyed it. I was being honest, not sarcastic.
F****r hasn’t had a penny of my money since, which was probably around 1975.
Used to have a blind spot with Guns n Roses around 1988.
Reason: because every other bugger liked ’em, and contrary me had to be different
(I admitted defeat some 10 or so years later)
Ongoing Personal No:
Coldplay – they’re just so up themselves and bland
I wanted to hate Guns n Roses too. A real bitch/bully at school asked me one day what music I was into, and I answered something along the lines of Terence Trent D’arby, Roachford and Deacon Blue (I know, right?). “Deacon Blue!” she sneered. Loudly. “You should listen to Guns n Roses instead of that shit!” I’d not yet heard of them but vowed on the spot to hate them. Not long afterwards I stayed up late one night with my mum to watch the concert at the N.Y. Ritz on TV, which blew my tiny mind, and I fell hopelessly in love with them.
I’m still managing to resist their charms.
But yooooooo could be whiiiiine!
Happy Mondays. Some drug pushing twat bought the house next door to my first house and used to enjoy keeping us awake all night with Happy flipping Mondays music. Within the year they made the front pages of the Bolton Evening News by holding an impromptu bonfire night party in the back street and fighting with the police. Less than 2 month’s later we had done a moonlit flit (actually a house swap with a builder for a much nicer house) and the knobhead ended up in prison for a different offence.
Sound. Great.
I should say U2 but their music is hateful, so it’s not in the spirit of the OP.
So Coldplay. An inoffensive U2 and so completely offensive. U2 without the point.
Actually my U2 hatred is in the style of the OP. I went to a catholic comprehensive in Scotland in the 80’s and the fact that they were so beloved by, frankly, religious bigots was a huge blot in their book before I even heard a note of their music. One of the worst bullies in my school once asked my how I could possibly hate U2, because they were “Good catholics.” If their fans are so moronic that their catholicism is more important than their music, then I was fucked if I was going to like them.
Bono’s massive bellendness is obviously insurmountable. And then finally, I heard “Pride (In The Name Of Love)” and even the brackets were annoying…
U2 were “Good catholics”?
well 25% of them were
Only Larry was raised in a Catholic household.
Bonio was raised in a mixed Catholic/Protestant household, The Hedge was raised a Protestant, and Adam, although from a Protestant background held no firm belief when the band started (and I don’t think that viewpoint has changed).
There you go, their fans at my school were so pig shit thick they don’t even know that. Still not a recommendation…
Led Zep – but specifically Led Zep II. Heard every day for most of my early teens via my elder brother who possessed a handful of “classic rock.” Turgid, overblown shite of the highest order – and mystifyingly popular to this day. I was reminded of all this having a cup of tea in the otherwise excellent David’s record shop in Letchworth yesterday where the beardie hipster behind the counter was playing it and probably not in an ironic way. As a modest protest, I didn’t buy anything. No cake. No records. Nothing.
Queen – Finger nails slowly drawn across s blackboard.
Cream. Fuck ’em. Nothing to do with their music (although I dislike it): it’s just every time I see archive footage of them playing, I want to make the entire band and audience queue up for a massive kick in the bits. Twats.
Paging @Twang…
@johnny-concheroo shurely…
Kids today. Bless
In a very real sense, Johnny, kids today are sucking it to the man.
Yes they are, What’s more they appear to have convinced themselves that “their” music will have any lasting value or importance at all.
http://i.imgur.com/zvCvCLm.png
East 17. I guess I’m not their target demographic, and I don’t go for that watered down urban junk, but seriously …. Brian Harvey and his hats? Breathtaking twattery
Good call. Although it is like shooting blind, disabled fish in a very shallow barrel
http://i.imgur.com/0ZgpAh8.jpg
I agree. East 17 stole my fax machine. True dat.
Wasn’t that a Sun headline circa 1994?
“East 17 stole my fax machine”
Afterword t-shirt best-seller.
Arcade Fire. Middle aged men trying to look cool and arty in their silly loud jackets, and a woman who looks like a slimmer version of Dawn French prancing around in photos like an attention seeking child.
My dislike is totally irrational, I don’t know any of their music. They may be wonderful people, but fuck it!
The Wal-Mart “Talking Heads”, as they could be cruelly described.
I was going to say Arcade Fire as well, except I was going to use the phrase “self-righteous hipster smuggery” Every photograph I have ever seen of them exudes it, and nothing I’ve heard from them has done anything to make me change my mind on that.
“a slimmer version of Dawn French” you say?
I must check this out immediately.
Deacon Blue. There was a law in Glasgow that you had to like them (certainly in the ’80s, when I last lived in Glasgow) – I despised them, and everything they stood for….still do….
What did they stand for?
I saw Deacon Blue headline the Big Day Out, the notorious gig in Glasgow where Sheena Easton got bottled and booed. I only saw them because I fancied one of the girls I was there with and she wanted to see them. After the event I found out that REM played alongside Billy Bragg on another stage when Deacon fucking Blue were on. I wasn’t best pleased. And the girl truly did not fancy me either. So many negative associations…
Bollocks!
Sub-Dan muso wankery with your girlfriend on stage doing backing vocals overlaid with that whole self-conscious Weegie thing that happened in the ’80s, not to mention left wing politics spouted by rich kids at Glasgow Yooni (no, wait: that was Hue & Cry….) @Jayhawk
Oh that.
Bollocks! Not my 80s Glass~gow.
Lucky you, James – maybe it was the bad company I kept…
Jemes’s Glasgae was Edinburrrrrrrrrugh, anyway. Private school, you know.
My 80s Glass~gow was all Tiffanys, NightMoves and Bobby Gillespie (aye him) with his Splash One (spot the ref?) club. Great nights out, so many great bands: Tones On Tail, Teh Cure, Theatre of Hate, Big Country (1st tour), The Stupids, Fields of the Nephilim, Endgames, The Woodentops, Sonic Youth, TV Personalities, World Domination Enterprises, Wire, Simple Minds, Blancmange, Alien Sex Fiend, 10,000 Maniacs, Bauhaus… need I go on?
God, no.
The Beatles.
Almost every smug twonk I meet tells me they were the greatest band in history, but none of said twonks ever listen to them.
More ‘important’ than great – More tat than music.
Thumbs up for Prof. Cox too…… Creepy bastard.
The Beatles are the greatest. I listen to them all the time.
You like PROFESSOR Brian Cox, then. He is The Fifth Beatle. Him and his permasmile.
You are mistaken. He is Tony Blair’s equally evil twin. They share the same hideous rictus grin.
He always sounds stoned. Like he’s just taken a good toke and is trying his best not to breathe it out. No wonder he’s smiling.
Did I suggest I liked him?
He has all the qualities of a serial killer –
Probs isn’t one tho’,
but he might be…
Clapton. R****t MF (just in case the bastard’s lawyers are watching) r
I’m intrigued, @Poppy-Succeeds. Which member of Manic Street Preachers did you have a relationship with?
Kasabian. Everything. What music?
Oh and Damon Abarn. I just wanted to punch his smug face throughout the 90s. Anyone who could tolerate being in a band with Alex James is plainly an even bigger twat than Alex James.
Then he does a world music album, then he’s in a band with Paul Simonen, an actual hero of mine…
This stuff might be good but I can’t bring myself to actually listen. Cos I hate Albarn.
Muse
Just looking at that wanky device on the bass is enough to make me puke
The Pounland Radiohead
I haven’t heard much by them ( thank fuck) but every time I’ve seen them perform they press pretty much every prejudiced button I have.
I cannot come up with a single positive thing to say about them, they are everything I musically detest. Even their technical proficiency is a negative for me – I’d much prefer crudely played good music any day to slick puke.
Move to have post stricken from the record: music related reasons.
(I don’t like Muse either but mostly cos their weaselly little Mike Teavee singer is a stupid, stupid conspiracy theorist and so are lots of their gramme-brained fans as a result.)
Muse – crap name, look like shite, overblown pomp arserock.
But Matt Bellamy gets bonus points for having a dad who was in the Tornados (George, rhythm guitar).
Hard to separate one’s dislike of people totally from one’s dislike of their music, but thinking about it….
I hated LOTS of people in music during the 80s, and only partly was it to do with the music. Frankly, I hated the decade and couldn’t wait for all its crappy alternatively tinny or colossal (or both) drum sounds and mullets and huge shoulders and rolled-up suit sleeves to be over. I knew it would be looked back on in an ‘OMG what were we thinking?’ way – all through the whole horrible time – but it seemed that most other people I knew couldn’t see that. Maybe they do now.
With that in mind, let me throw some names out – Thompson Twins (looked like berks, no talent), Big County and Echo & Bunnymen (largely because they wore buttoned up shirts, no ties and looked po-faced akll the time), Anne Lennox and Elton John – I NEVER understood (and still don’t) this fawning reverence to these people, like they’re some kind of national treasures. They’re not. They’re bland, bloated, uninteresting and self-important. Which leads on to all those Princes Trust TV boreathons… (*continues in this vein for quite some time*)
Delighted to say that I am even now wearing a button-down shirt with the top button done up.
I’ve just eaten a goat for my dinner, too. Not a whole one, but a bit of one.
I’m also a bit pissed but then I’m in Athens and it’s 9:20pm, so I’m allowed.
Not liking Big Country is not allowed. They were a great band for three albums (like the Alarm). 1980s greats.
Hang on, what 3?
The Crossing
Steeltown
Buffalo Skinners
Why the Long face
And I maintain Driving to Damascus was – and is- wonderful.
Peace in our time? Not so much. And I’m not sure about The Seer.
I like the way you’ve diminished Big Country, Hmeister.
Annie Lennox – she was hailed almost as a living saint because she… did something…
Big Country were wearing Lumberjack Shirts while Kurt Cobain was still sh*tting in his nappy.
By association, Stuart Adamson invented Grunge
“By association, Stuart Adamson invented Grunge”
WRONG!
As usual, the answer is Donovan. Here he is in 1965 inventing grunge, in between inventing the Beatles and psychedelia…
http://i917.photobucket.com/albums/ad15/camplimp/donovan_zpszfbce5ii.jpg
Once again, how one can hate the musical output of entire decade is beyond me…..
Honestly, it would be easier if it weren’t the case, but I lived through it and it was horrendous. By way of a tiny handful of exceptions I recall buying a few Husker Du singles and Cocteau Twins 12 inches and suchlike – but not much. Mostly it was Mahavishnu Orchestra, Focus, Quintessence and Pentangle albums (mostly second hand).
I did see a couple of good live shows, though – Cocteau Twins and Long Ryders come to mind.
Colin is a closet Howard Jones fan and his collection of 12″ extended picture discs from Scritti Pollitti to Mel and Kim are the talk of the forest………
Colin hates The Thompson Twins because he only has two out of the three jigsaw style 12″ singles.
Seen EATB more times than I can remember and not one buttoned up shirts sans ties was ever in evidence. You speak with forked tongue Brer.
I’m sorry – a three piece jigsaw made from squares?
Funnily enough Dave, I DO have a soft spot for the Human League (though any time I see/hear them interviewed they test that patience – a bunch of dimwits), and also for John Foxx. His album The Garden was brilliant, and the odd single too.
Human League.
Reasons not to be cheerful.
The gormless shop girl Sheffield accents of the two backing singers
The beyond-twattish lopsided haircut affected by Phil Oakey
Gormless – yes, that’s the word! Then again, when I was 13 or 14 in the early 80s, there was no finer totem of the opposite gender than Joanne Catherall.
Conversely, I saw a film about Sheffield music recently and those girls are now attractive mature women.
Although I enjoyed the sound of Operation: Mindcrime, I could not bring myself to say I actually “liked” Queensryche, purely because my brother did. Likewise for Tesla (and The Great Radio Controversy is/was a fine album)
I heard a great story relating to Queensryche. Apparently someone from a record company once played Silent Lucidity to Neil Tennant and said something along the lines of “We’re breaking new ground here. It’s about six minutes long.” To which Tennant replied “That’s not how long it feels.”
Jameriquai. I can’t even be bothered to check the spelling.
You could have just written The Twat In The Hat. We’d have known who you meant.
Lostprophets.
Great band. What have we come to when a simple matter of egregious paedophilia is cause for writing off one of THE British nu-metal bands?
I suppose you’re right. At least none of their kids went to private school.
Thank CHRIST. That would be properly beyond the pale.
They ARE all ’60s dodgers though…
Please, please, please do not watch this video if you’re easily – or even difficultly – offended.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RleE–HDBiU
Lame, at best.
My first day at college: arriving at my student house accommodation, anxiety and shyness ratcheted up to eleven, I make a tentative introduction to my new room mate, a guy called Sam from Neath. He is dressed in black and is very tall, his height enhanced by at least two feet of vertical jet black hair. I learn that he is studying mathematics and has early morning lectures for the whole of the first term.
I am awoken very early the next morning by a horrible sound on Sam’s cassette radio alarm clock. It is the most monstrous gothic cacophony my tender ears have yet to hear. I learn later that it is something by Bauhaus.
Sam and I never got on. And I hate Bauhaus.
You loose.
Fiddlers’s Dram.
Nobody ever in the entire unabridged history of ever had a lovely time visiting Bangor.
Ersatz Folkie Bastards is what they should have called their music bothering collective which would have been a better name than Fiddlers’s Dram. A name that is an inducement to mindless violence.
The memory of them makes me want to spit.
It is indeed a concern that Oysterband arose from such embarrassing twaddle. But I forgive them. Now if that twerp from the Moody Blues was involved, that would be the end
Steely Dan: Smuggity smug.
Brooooce: worthy plodder, incredibly vain whilst pretending not to be.
Metallica – never heard/seen anything remotely interesting said/written about them ever.
Annie Lennox – a self important dullard.
Steely Dan, and their fans, have so very much to be smug about. We’re even smug about our smugness, because it’s the best. Like us.
We’re cool not smug. And smug about how cool we are.
The hatred has no effect – you know they are missing out because they just don’t get it. It only reinforces your confidence in their class.
This is true. Once you get the Dan, you can never go back to liking ordinary bands the ordinary people like. It is, in a very real sense, like a private club open to everyone except people who aren’t members. We can’t even bring ourselves to feel sorry for those outside the club pressing their pasty little faces against the window. We can see you … but in the background, like texture. In here, in Danland, we have the finest wines, the most beautiful women, the funniest jokes, and the blackest coal.
And pehaps oddest of all, entry to the club is open to all.
What amuses & bemuses The Dannerati in equal measure is that the hoi polloi can’t even see the open door to the club.
Verily, they wouldn’t know a diamond if they held it in their hand.
Do you not mean Steely Dan World in Florida? Much better rides.
The Flaming Lips.
Their supremely ersatz eccentricity. Gets right on my tit ends.
Wayne Coyne does things like this (below) while other artists are trying to perform.
https://youtu.be/f3SllG13rXI
I’d have played that song for another 45 bloody minutes
Excellent shout.
Yup! I’m in. Beck and T’lips.
Not Beck. But Lips? Flaming heck yeah.
No, not Beck. He’s singing ‘Round The Bend’ which is tip top .
Wayne Coyne is helping by swinging a light bulb around and around around. Because he f**king would. Look at me! I’m an artist too and I’m over here!
Guns n’Roses. Axl Rose makes a truly dreadful cacophony when he “sings”, but apart from that just for being Axl Rose i.e a cnut. Slash’s stupid hat and the fact that he always looks like he could do with a wash.
Steve Harley. Apart from the fact that his voice is seriously substandard, I just don’t like him and never have.
Sting. The ultimate in pompous twattery. A twats twat.
David Ford. Wears a hat onstage and is bland. Twice I have been at gigs of his and twice I have left early, bored.
R.E.M. Everyone says they’re great. They are not. They have a handful of good songs and vast heaps of not good songs. And Stipe is just really annoying to watch.
The Clash. The Punk & Post-Punk era’s equivalent of the Dead. They couldn’t sing and their music was nothing special barring a handful of songs. The stupid Angry Brigade posturing.
I could go on with this for ages but I won’t.
Nearly all music related and thus invalid.
Surely Sting is excluded from any category no matter how loosely described as ‘music’? (See also George Michael).
Though I haven’t got a Scooby Doo who David Ford is, I heartily agree with everyone else in this list!
I mean – Harley – nice enough, but surely should have been an Estate Agent or plumber or something?
There’s a plumber from South London who should have been a singer/songwriter that we’ve all missed out on because of him.
R.E.M.? *Splutters*
Waxyl – tick, can’t sing. You Could be Whine, yup
Steve Harley – tick, Come Up and See Me is utter, utter pish!
Stinge – tick, up to a point, he’s great knicker removing music
David Ford – no idea who he is
REM – tick, made one album and kept making it
The Clash – no, nope I don’t think so
but 5 outta 6 ain’t bad… Meatloaf’s shite too!
“Stinge – tick, up to a point, he’s great knicker removing music”
Your own, or someone else’s?
a laydeez
Steve Harley because he looked like the class bully.
Primal Scream because I can’t stand that pasty-faced, miserable, shit-voiced git Bobby “Boab” Gillespie.
Loaded’s alright. So’s Vanishing Point, to be fair.
I can’t imagine what anyone would have against Mr “my record collection is much better than YOUR record collection”…
wow…so much hate. Mail Online must be quiet today.
Oh fuck off.
I blame immigration.
Any band whose bassist plays one of those guitars with no body and no machine head. Just a fret board. What’s the fucking point in being in a rock band? You may as well be a music teacher in Swindon.
Hot Chip – personally, I find them visually offensive.
They were our music quiz nemesis in a Stoke Newington pub. Yeah where else, the hipster cunts
We regularly trounced them you’ll be glad to hear.
You got somethin’ about Stoke Newington you wanna git off your chest son?
*cracks knuckles menacingly*
oh yes. There is just something so very punchable about them.
Bastille.
Know nothing about them, I don’t even know what they look like. The name just irked me as soon as I heard it, I don’t even know why.
Oh, and Half Man Half Biscuit. Same reason.
Oh oh, and that band Does It Offend You Yeah?
Quite a lot of bands I hate just because of the name.
Bastille are OK, you’re thinking of the ones that sound like the Moody Blues, Django Django, which brings me tight back to that twerp with the tache.
Bastille’s drummer is a Plymouth Argyle fan, so, to completely turn the OP around, I like them but not for musical reasons.
HMBM the joke was over after your first single, chuck it please.
Folk or country acts with far too many people on stage. Three or four guitars, a fiddle, and accordion, a banjo, a mandolin, bassist, drummer, lap steel, piano, backing vocalists, etc.
I one won some tickets to see Bellowhead at a local venue, but couldn’t be bothered to pick them up.
You were taxi-ing for Bellowhead as well?!
I don’t get the analogy between Bellowhead and the bloated backing bands you see with the country acts you have in mind. The former fuses a horn section with a fiddle quartet. Whether or not this is a good sound is a matter of opinion, but to my mind is very different to having a battery of people strumming acoustic guitars.
Anything with Cock is Jarver in. He’s a dick.
The Rolling Stones. Why? Because they are still going, trotting out the same set they did 40 years ago. A musical version of the Dave channel or UK Gold, we know you can’t get no satisfaction thanks, now get off….
But remember Dave, You Can’t Always Get What You Want
(see what I did there?)
Wild horses couldn’t drag me to a Stones concert.
James Blast is Crispian Mills.
Up arrow!
Boy George for blocking me on Twitter when I criticised his homemade soup.
Splendid reason.
Ditto Cat Stevens for blocking me on Twitter after I reminded him that he vigorously supported the call to murder Salman Rushdie.
*adopts Alan Partridge voice – “Keep it light, OK?”*
Joy Division. Back in the day all of their fans were insuffarable cocks.
Might as well add Elvis Costello for the same reason.
Oh dear. At the time, I thought both were the bees knees….. Then, again, at the time, I was an insufferable cock, so fair dos.
And the Clash.
U2. Because.
Led Zeppp. I think the phrase I’m looking for is “thieving fucking bastards”
Toby Keith and most nu Country. Keith Urban, this means you as well.
Best thread for a long time.. Can I just add David Bowie? Just irritates the fuck out of me -mannered, self-knowing, pretentious, and above all a bit of a twat.
Oh you pretty thing.
Keane
Because they only exist because Coldplay can’t be expected to put an album out every year so some prick at a record company found another, even shitter version to force upon the public.
Because the lead singer fucked about during the whole of our GCSE drama showings but somehow got an A. He then proceeded, along with another kid, to share the two parts that I covered in the school play during lower sixth. And was shit in it.
Because we then went to university with each other and he went from being actually alright really (despite the acting based irritations) to bring an insufferable prick who thought he’d discovered ecstasy despite having been a choirboy (actual and metaphorical) for the duration of secondary school.
Because when I, for some reason, went along to the Dublin Castle, when they were showcasing for the industry two thirds of them treated me like a cunt. Until it became clear that I was there with the guy from Island, whereupon the attitude shifted somewhat.
Because what kind of wankers name their band after Roy Keane? A move that displays a level of imagination precisely commensurate with the musical output of said band.
Which brings me to the bonus answer, against the criteria of the OP though nonetheless relevant…
The insipid fucking drivel that they dribbled all over the place for a few years. Have they never listened to any other music, ever? If they had they would surely appreciate that their own is simply not good enough.
And they once supported My Morning Jacket, ruining the gig for me on two levels as I had to listen to them and I had to reacquaint myself with several people from my past who wondered why I wasn’t leaving to take coke with the band round the back rather than listen to ‘some American band’.
I fucking hate Keane.
Excellent work, just excellent, marred only by the passing comment about the music.
God may strike me down for this — it being Easter Sunday — but I’d have to say Amy Winehouse. I thought she was terribly badly behaved, rude and uncouth. I sympathise with her addictions, but when it comes to that side of her, I feel more sympathy for the poor sods who had to clean the mess she left in the bathroom.
Well, she’s brown bread, so she won’t care.
Your comment prompts another pro-Clash vote from me, though.
On a very early punk tour ( probably the Anarchy one) when some herbert suggested trashing the hotel room ( now they were proper rock stars & that) Mick Jones scotched the idea saying that people like his mum had to clean up the mess left by dickheads in hotel rooms.
The rooms were subsequently left ship shape & Bristol fashion.
Alex Harvey had the same attitude. He said it was all very well smashing up the rooms and then paying for the damage, but the hotel management weren’t the ones who had to clean up and the room cleaners got nothing extra from it but more work.
Can go one further and sing the praises of Teenage Fanclub who, on finding their band room was a disgusting toilet, went to B&Q and redecorated said room, a) for a laugh and b) to improve the world just a tiny bit. Their music may have lost its edge some time ago, but I love those guys.
I don’t *hate* the man, far from it, but the admiration and affection in the Wataya household for the work of Edwyn Collins, particularly as Orange Juice front man and on his first solo album, Hope and Despair, will forever be tempered by the recollection of him halting a solo acoustic performance of Dying Day to give me a tongue-lashing as I sought to exit the room to relieve my distended bladder. More than twenty-five years ago now, but the memory still smarts.
Franz Frrdinand
I’d heard them and dismissed them as ok but not really my cup of decaf tea. Then, when Elvis Costello released “The Delivery Man” there was some poncy arts programme on TV which did a short feature on EC as he’d also released “Il Sogno”, a CD of classical music he’d been comissioned to write by a theatre group who had adapted A Midsummer Night’s Dream into a ballet. Move to some ultra hip beardy right-on arts type twat who dismisses both albums with “Well I won’t be putting my Franz Ferdinand CDs away just yet”.
Since then Franz Ferdinand can just fuck off. Fuck. Right. Off.
Easy target, like shooting a shark in a bucket, but the only band I’ve ever hated is Toploader. It’s impossible to hate them for their music, because they didn’t have any. They were a bunch of brats from my home town who bought the lucky ticket and had ten minutes at the top table, and boy did the stuff themselves while they were there. What a shower of wankers. I remember one review describing the singer as a ‘curly-haired cunt’. It was the best review they ever got.
Surprised no-one has mentioned Nickelback. Condition of membership of the Afterword even if you haven’t heard them
I love them!
Sorry…I thought you said Stackridge. Carry on.
The Verve. Need I say more? Okay then; boring bastards who scrambled onto the Oasis bandwagon, despite coming from Wigan, and fell on their arses when they nicked an orchestral riff from the Stones.
According to Billboard magazine, “the group’s rise was the culmination of a long, arduous journey that began at the dawn of the decade and went on to encompass a major breakup, multiple lawsuits, and an extensive diet of narcotics”. In layman’s English it means they were a bag of turds.
I confess to feeling sorry for the Verve. True, they only really had the one decent song, but what a monster song it was and surely one of the best records of the late 90s.
They sampled an orchestral version of a Stones song which sounded absolutely NOTHING like the song in question (The Last Time) and ended up losing everything.
I guarantee if you played Bittersweet Symphony to a million people, no more than a handful would know where the sample came from. If the Verve had sampled a real Stones’ record then Jagger/Richard might have a case, but it was a shitty Woolworth’s level Stones-by-numbers orchestral recording performed by session men, with Andrew Oldham’s name added after the event.
Then Keith Richards rubbed salt in the wound in a Q (or Mojo) interview by crowing “write your own song next time lads”. He had nothing to do with the orchestral recording!
The Verve were creamed good and proper,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKC5cdGBY04
Don’t. I got free tickets to see them play the Manchester Apollo and walked out before they played the big number. For a band that hails from the land of pies they were tedious in the extreme. I probably have some of their records in my house but have had my memory erased so I cannot find them. Ever.
You make it sound like they were sued into penury by Andrew Loog Oldham.
Their subsequent single (Drugs Don’t Work) went to number one and is still regularly heard on the radio today. The third single off the album went to number 7. The album went platinum and they were playing to live crowds of over thirty thousand and doing well in the States.
I’m not a fan of Urban Hymns (by any means), but the Verve – laughable as they may have been – were an extremely successful band, and had been critical darlings before they conquered the mainstream (the previous record has some good tunes on it).
Far from being beaten to death by the Rolling Stones, the band simply split up at the height of their success because they never really got on. And when Richard Ashcroft returned with his first solo single a few months later, it duly went to number one as well.
I must admit that I never reach for their records, and that last album does contain some real tosh, but the only people who “creamed” the Verve were the Verve themselves.
All you say is true. Urban Hymns is the 17th best-selling album in UK chart history and has sold over ten million copies worldwide.
But The Verve lost every penny in royalties from their biggest song, albeit possibly due to their own stupidity (they were offered a deal at one point and refused it). But I can’t help feeling they got a raw deal.
Also it was Allen Klein who had ownership of the rights to the recording not The Stones. Klein offered 50% so the story goes but they said no so he took the lot. 50% of such a big hit would have been substantial. Why they thought they’d get away with such a blatant rip off of someone else’s record is beyond me. I can’t feel any sympathy for them.
Not even a bit of sweet sympathy?
For those devils?
I can’t remember what incarnation of the site I’ve already said this on, so I’ll just say it again.
It was only relatively recently that I heard the orchestral version of The Last Time. Up until that point, I’d imagined that they’d only sampled the string hook. They didn’t: they had away with the melody, chord sequence, hook: the works.
For me, sampling is about the creative splicing together of records to create something new. Bittersweet Symphony doesn’t do that: it’s pretty much just Ashcroft singing words over the top of a piece of music that already existed. It’s not the Dust Brothers or the Avalanches: it’s karaoke.
All true, but they took a moribund piece of music that (probably) hadn’t made a penny in 30 years and turned it into a massive hit.
That must count in their favour, surely.
Mmm. Maybe. Feels really cynical, though. Can’t find any admiration in myself for it.
Seems like if it had been handled differently, there might have been a different outcome.
Trying to get away with singing your own words, karaoke style, over another record, albeit one that no-one remembers and then, on the verge of your moment of triumph having the rug pulled with hilarious consequences?
Sounds familiar:
It’s not even the biggest rip-off on Urban Hymns. Rolling People is practically a cover of this…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_C5E9kO5rM
Only on The Afterword could you find ‘(it’s) practically a cover of ‘Aphrodites Child’.
Mods, could you please add to the Afterword T Shirt shop ‘It’s an Aphrodites Child Rip-Off’
I agree with Bob. I too assumed Bittersweet was”just a sample”, but they really just copied the whole thing. When i first heard The Last Time I thought it was a Verve remix. And if you don’t believe they copied the melody, try singing both songs together: “Well, I told you once if I told you twice…..”, “Well, it’s a bitter sweet symphony…”
I used to love ‘Don’t Die Just Yet’ by David Holmes, then heard the Gainsbourg original (‘Melody Nelson’) and had exactly the same experience.
All good points and well made. But, as a tone deaf non-musician I do have sympathy for the twangers and plinkers of the world. Your average keyboard has, what, 5 keys, humans have been making melodies since before they could speak, and tunes you heard decades ago still whirl around your mind, so accusations of plagiarism in the field are everywhere. TV shows and movies, where the only restriction is the writer’s imagination and the producer’s budget, are constantly “borrowing” (or, more kindly, paying homage to) one another’s ideas.
If Brazil was a record, at the first sign it might be making some cash, the decrepit and drug addled has-been George Orwell (played, confusingly, by John Hurt as he appears in Midnight Express rather than 1984) would be urging Mr Gilliam to write his own movie.
Another problem might be the fact that, legally, songs are defined as melodies rather than ideas. Messrs Jagger & Richards may have been scrupulously careful to ensure that the melodies credited to them were their own but I would venture that their song ideas, their structures even the band’s name have a second hand quality that is essential to their appeal.
I remember Ian McNabb, on some candid sleeve notes, commenting on one of his songs that “you could always tell what tapes we were playing in the van”; to my ears The Verve’s three big ‘uns (BSS, The Drugs, History) sound like a band straining to emulate the particular majesty of Gene Clark’s “Some Misunderstanding”. The idea, not the melody…
And when their guitarist walked out during their, by default, final US tour, they got BJ Cole in to deputise, with steel replacing bog standard guitar. That I would like to have heard, but my inter web searches, and a question here (in the old place, actually) has left me still waiting.
BJ Cole was with them when they played V98. It worked rather well, to my ears.
Nomination: Razorlight
Reason: Johnny Borrell is a twat
Read interviews, saw the bloke on TV before hearing a note of music.
When I did finally hear the music, my opinion didn’t change,
(Although Andy Burrows solo material is pretty good)
Clear winner is Frank Sinatra. Cowardly bully who had his goons beat the shit out of people who annoyed him. Momma’ boy, Worshipped psychopathic Mafia mobsters.
In second place, Annie Lennox. Humourless, sanctimonious prig. Joyless, cold, snobbish, right-on Puritan. Champagne socialist who you just know is hell to work for. ‘Humanitarian’ who probably doesn’t get on with her neighbours. Guardian reader made flesh.
Add Dean Martin for the Rat Pack double. Just seems like a horrible man. It doesn’t help that Frank sings flatter than a plate of piss, or maybe it does because you know you’re not missing out on much by avoiding them.
The book ‘Dino’ by Nick Tosches is a tremendous read. Though an affable man with an excellent sense of humour and inimitable comic timing, he was very much a self-absorbed loner. In his favour though is that he couldn’t even be dictated to by the Mafia, to their immense puzzlement and annoyance.
Sinatra did stand up for Sammy Davis Jr (tho he arguably did belittl him too). I got the impression from various biogs that he genuinely thought the attitude to black artists of the time was just plain wrong and he said so when he stood to gain nothing from it.
Re Annie- you would though, eh? I mean if you got the chance 🙂 I sure as wassaname would.
Sinatra was a very ardent champion of the Civil Rights movement, no doubt, and that’s very much to his credit.
As for Annie, no way. I’ve stood very, very close to her and the ice maiden vibe was too strong. Not just because I was standing near her, I hasten to add.
All these swaggering ‘I’m reet Northern and I take drugs me’ bands. Oasis, Happy Mondays, Stone Roses, The other one. They all sound like tribute bands of better 70’s outfits. Although to be fair I think they’ve all gone away now so I should probably let it go.
Also The Cure. I could never get past the porky goth look to listen to the actual music.
I agree. There’s something about that lachrymose, lethargic, lugubrious front guy where one has a compelling urge to throw him in a shower, cut his atrophied-hedge hair off and sign him up for a fitness class.
See the other thread on bands you love for personal reasons.
The entire Canterbury Scene. Saved myself the bother of “getting into them” by automatically assuming that they were effete, southern, public school nancy boys. To be fair, I did get to quite like Kevin Ayers and Robert Wyatt seems like a good egg.
And I did see Gong upstairs in a pub in Edgbaston.
I can imagine your pals on the ground floor of that pub in Edgbaston:
Q. ‘Where’s Finto?’
A: ‘Gong, upstairs…’
Not a band, just one person.
Liam Gallagher.
No justifiable reason, I just think he is a twat.
Having considered all the evidence, in a calm and measured process of contemplation and reflection, it is very hard to disagree with you.
Run DMC said a dj could be a band, so: Chris Evans
The Who. Some fine music, of course, but Townshend has a ridiculously high and self important view of his place in the literary and musical canon; Daltrey displays a general lack of humility (and humour) and Keith Moon was clearly insufferable.
Lou Reed, I will reference his music but only to comment that I have been a fan for many years and am currently reading the Sounes bio.
He was a prick from which ever angle you choose, misogynist, violent, manipulative, liar, greedy cheat, bully, condescending, patronising, arrogant, churlish . Pick an epithet , any epithet and it will work for Louis.
Now I had pondered George Ivan Morrison but despite his contemptible behaviour on many levels, he strikes me as someone who struggles with it all, the creative muse, fame, the big questions about life. It is all pretty hard work and it is manifested in his disposition.
But Lou is just a shit.
How could we have missed Lou? Horrible, arrogant, nasty prick. Ugliness goes all the way to the bone.
With you on Van – at worst, he could be accused of being curmudgeonl. He seems to have had good relationships with many musicians throughout his career.
And yet he was in a committed relationship with Laurie Anderson, one of my favourite artists ever, who comes across as intelligent, thoughtful, calm and fundamentally decent.
He’d have been better suited to Ian Anderson – another choleric, bad tempered, control freak.
Sounes theorises re autism/aspergers, I think, haven’t got to it yet but seem to recall from the podcast.
And I don’t want to offered sufferers of these conditions or those with loved ones afflicted but from early on, even pre electric shocks , if you believe Sounes, he displays a complete lack of empathy.
Miles Davis. Racist, thuggish, women-beating pimp. I win.
This should be in the “bands I like” thread, Shirley?
Wupes.
Red Hot Chili Peppers. Technically gifted they may be (and I don’t mind a few of their tunes) but I just can’t explain it, there’s something there that makes me not want to dig any further.
There are so many reasons to loathe them. So, so many. They’re all absolute cliched Californian rockstar douchebags, for a start. Apart from Chad Smith, who seems alright. Just. Absolute. Wankers.
And the music is horrible too.
There’s no reason, none whatsoever, not to hate them.
Btw if anyone can find that brilliant interview with them where some guy is on tour with them and they’ve got some “nurse” injecting them with oxygen and making them eat macrobiotic broccoli diets and shit, I’d be forever in their debt.
As Nick Cave once said, “I’m forever turning the radio on and asking “What the fuck is this shit?” And the answer is always the Red Hot Chili Peppers.”
The two best things the Red Hot Chili Peppers have ever contributed to are Point Break and the Big Lebowski. That tells you all you need to know.
The Style Council
Reason: loved The Jam, bought everything that the band produced (I was that age), and was gutted when Weller decided to replace my favourite band with some blazer wearing piano tinkling nonsense.
I’ve reassessed Mr Weller’s solo stuff, but have never owned a Style Council record.
With you on that one (maybe not hate, as a recent(ish) re-appraisal proved me wrong).
Although the latter days of The Jam were a sort of pointer to The Style Council (indeed Speak Like A Child could’ve been a Jam single, and Solid Bond In Your Heart was very nearly the final Jam single), the sound lost it’s urgency for me, and went a bit too jazzy and “cocky” for my liking. Red Wedge and overt politics did it for me.
Paul Weller solo hooked me from the start, and I put SC down to “a bad few years at the office”.
I later decided to stop being so harsh and re-listened – they were still sounding a bit up themselves, but there was some fine stuff there.
Sometimes it’s not the artist themselves, it’s their fans that put you off. For such reasons I own no music by, and have no interest in listening to, Sade.
Yep. My brother in law owns about three CDs. You can already guess what they are:
Dire Straits – Brothers In Arms
Fleetwood Mac – Rumours
Sade – Best Of
Those long winter evenings just fly by when we visit the wife’s sister.
Yes, but all his neighbours are saying to him, ‘Bloody hell’an’strewth, mate! Is that not that JohnnyConcheroovygroovymeister yer’ve got sittin’ at yet barbie downin’ the tinnies an’ lookin’ as miserable as a koala in a eucalyptus free zone, listenin’ ter that ‘Best of Sadé’ for the bleedin’ tenth time in a row?!?’ Why doncha ask ‘im fer some of them Frank Zappa an’ Jimi Hendrix an’ Swingin’ London anecdotes like all ‘is mates on that blahdy Afterword site would, ya dozy swagman?!?’
That’s uncanny Colin. It’s almost as if you were there!
It’s always a problem when we visit the wife’s friends and relatives because without exception they are civilians who have no interest or knowledge of music beyond the usual Phil Collins (or these days Adele) CDs.
Which reminds me of a conversation I had a long time ago.
We arrived at the house of the FPO’s longtime best friend for dinner and the husband had clearly been briefed along the lines of “Now, Johnny is really into music, so don’t forget to engage him in conversation about concerts, records etc and the evening should go really well”
Almost immediately after we arrived I was bailed up in the kitchen by this fellow who demanded “So, been to any good concerts recently Johnny?”
“Er, just a couple” I mumbled. “Ry Cooder, Frank Zappa and maybe a few others. How about you?
The bloke looked back at me blankly. “Me? Oh, I’ve never been to a concert” he replied meekly.
The evening went downhill from there.
How do you find these people, Johnno? Australia must be awash with beer-sozzled, battle-scarred, string-vest-wearing, beer-bellied, grizzled veterans of the 70s pub rock scene and yet you end up with a shower of bores in pressed slacks and polo shirts? Who IS this maiden from straightsville you married?
She was a nymphomaniac whose dad owned a pub, so have some respect.
Actually the “I’ve never been to a concert” conversation took place in London, at a bijou town house in Russell Gardens Mews, Holland Park, just behind the Kensington pub, an early pub rock venue.
…to which Mrs Conchmeister’s cronies had seemingly never been.
Exactly!
Ironically, at the time (late 70s) Dire Straits were probably one of those pub rock bands and look what happened to them
Pink Floyd. Because of all the weed smoking Casuals growing their hair called Kevin who I knew back in my teens who thought Floyd were the peak of human existence.
Tanita Tikaram. Because she looks just like an ex. She could be making the best music ever. I wouldn’t hear it.
Bit late to this but I have a couple which I think might have already been mentioned but I probably have different reasons.
Kasabian.
Because I had a long wait at an airport gate and they were waiting for the same flight. They killed time by reading out fan letters and ripping the piss out of them.
Snow Patrol.
I’d had a call to say that my granny was dying in hospital and I left work to drive to there. Forgot to turn my radio off so that any music I heard wasn’t associated with such a sad time.
Snow Patrol, who I didn’t think much of anyhow, were playing and now hearing one of their songs for even just a few seconds reminds me of that awful day.
Better late than never
The good old days, eh? Just tick off the names of The Departed…..
And as for my comment re Bowie – I must have been very drunk but I apologise anyway.
Taken me ages to get to the bottom of this thread – might have been quicker if it was a list of bands we liked !
Anyway to continue the vitriol….
The Kinks – just don’t get ’em (apart from Waterloo Sunset of course) and I find Ray Davies unpleasant for no specific reason.
Duran Duran – really don’t get ’em! Why were they so big on so little talent and then even more remarkably successfully resurrected their career decades later with still no talent having developed in the meantime? Simon Le Bon must be a contender for worst lead vocalist of all time.
Chris de Burgh – I can barely type his name and keep my tea down