“Bands and genres that were scorned and laughable by rock snobs and the hip cognoscenti then are not the bands that are scorned and laughable by rock snobs and the hip cognoscenti now.” Discuss. Use both sides of the exam paper, with worked examples. The most egregious examples are to be named and shamed.
I’ll start: not until Steven Wells in the NME did they stop being such jerks about metal and hard rock.
It was partly the influence of Def Jam’s hip-hop stable that softened the NME’s attitude to RAWWWK.
I assume this thread us partly inspired by the Slade chat on the Cassidy thread.
Indeed. I suspect many are much broader in their tastes now than when callow youths. Can one admit to such things? Equally, can one say they liked something then and not now, or is it still “year zero”, and we always “liked their earlier stuff”?
Yes indeed. I was there at the frontline during the hip-hop wars.
1985: “Aerosmith? Bunch of washed-up 70s junkies”.
1986: “Aerosmith? The classic rock dudes who hooked up with Run-D.M.C.”
Yacht Rock appears to be a fairly startling revision of a reviled genre and period.
In the music paper wars of the early eighties remember that Sounds was around and was very much heavy metal and rock led, so part of the anti-metal (‘rockism’) crusade at the NME was of course positioning them vis a vis each other.
Rockism – I think I liked “The Cult” PRECISELY because of this odious, “peak-NME” (a GREAT name for a band) concept.
If “Rockism” led to the Cult performance I saw in Bradford in 1986 at St Georges Hall…thank you.
One of the best gigs of my life!
Suffice to say that any band or genre that warranted my derisory sneer back then deserves my derisory sneer to this day. This, not exhaustive, list includes Prog, Heavy Metal and anyone who sticks a finger in his/her ear and drones on about losing virginity to the evil Laird of Lumptown.
My only hint of fallibility is the recognition that just because a single tops the charts does not automatically mean it’s crap, more often than not it’s exactly the opposite.
What about singing of the Lumptown Races?
Doodah….
Doodah….
Queen have never not been popular, but they were despised by the “ elites” for their apartheid-appeasing, fascistic stadium rock. Increasingly, however, they are reclaimed by hip critics as an example of camp and an exhibit from rock’s decadent, Babylonian period ( the alleged dwarves with the trays of cocaine on their heads etc.). Unfortunately, I am a Puritan, and so still think they are shite.
I’m with you Pessoa. Even Queen II.
May I join you in agreeing Queen were shite.
I would also like to add Quo generally and Slade specifically.
Asking – which hip critics think that Queen was anything else than pompous, overblown fluff which was covered up by a showman of the highest order but still were irredeemably shite?
No idea why Abba are now held in such esteem but I will stop there – the bruises I got last time from Disappointment Bob still have not faded.
If ever there were a term that belongs in the dustbin of history, it’s “rock critic”, let alone “hip rock critic”. Absolute chancers, the lot of them (but then hacks often have a hugely inflated sense of importance: way too many seem to think they’re these oracular, Woodwardesque truth scalpels with a holy sense of vocation. Most of the folk on here are better, more insightful writers than many national journalists.)
Just a tad revisionist, Bob. Rock writers whether hip or not still perform a function of sorts even if their influence is around 14000 percent below what it was in the days of Kent, Burchill & Co.
Most of us still look to somebody or something for guidance when choosing what “new ” artist or genre to dip into. Whether that guidance turns out to be relevant to one’s own tastes is neither here nor over there.
We are lucky to have such fine writers on here but let’s face it we are hardly a national demographic. Not sure how a discussion on whether Van’s Cul de Sac is indeed the finest 6 minutes in pop music or if Toby Keith is actually the Bob Marley of Country fits into your critique.
Let’s just agree that Abba and Queen are shite shall we?
It’s not revisionist. I haven’t bought a record purely on the strength of a press review since I was a kid.
Let it go. These people have nothing to teach you.
What am I letting go? I’m merely trying to say that outside the AfterWord elite critics have a place, a function. If you are buying records purely on what you think you might like then more power to your elbow (and I admire the depth of your purse).
Indecisive souls like me tend to need guidance as to whether or not a movie, a book or a record from someone I have never heard of is worthy of investigation. Most of the time that guidance, for me, is wrong but without that guidance I would probably never heard of half the stuff in my collection
Bless you. I don’t generally buy records until I’ve heard them, which is what streaming is for. No deep wallet required.
As for what you’re letting go? “Elite” critics? What makes you think they know any better than you what music you might like? Why are they “elite”?
Trust your ears!
Who are the “elite critics”?
EDIT: Am I one of them? I am, aren’t I?
What you need LoW, is someone who regularly posts reviews of CDs and box sets here, to guide your purchases.
“Thinks” Can anyone suggest a suitable person with the right contacts?
Never for one second suggested most critics are “elite”. Did streaming exist when Bob was a lad? Critics like the present lot in The Guardian are often misguided posers: every so often I come across one who gently guides me into new uncharted waters – rare but true. To entirely dismiss Quietus (shiver), Mojo (gulp) et al is just plain wrong (and man do I dislike both of those publications)
But, hey, what’s so funny about peace, love and misunderstandings?
When I was a lad, I did read and set a lot of store by reviews.
I’m not a lad any more. Trust your ears, Lodey. Trust your ears. The old gods were always empty vessels. The truth will set you free.
Still none the wiser as to who the elite critics are that you’re listening to, Lodestone.
I’m just gonna assume that it’s me.
Arf! You may have paid some attention to what “Kent, Burchill & Co” said at the time, but not all of us were that gullible. Along with the other tosspots like Swells, I thought they were all a bunch of self-important self-promoting chancers back then, and I still think the same now. Kent is still at it, as are Burchill and Parsons, churning out drivel for a living. They know absolutely fuck all about music, and never have.
Oh, and PS, Queen are most definitely not shite. Neither Abba.
Applause-worthy post, Foxy.
Julie Burchill is and always has been a deeply mediocre writer, a pure troll and seemingly a pretty nasty (and odd) piece of work. I can’t for the life of me imagine why anyone would pay her any mind. (Parsehole is just Burchill with even less talent.)
Nick Kent I read after Ellen and Hepworth’s fawning on about him. I genuinely saw nothing of any real merit in his writing or his opinions.
Yay, Bob! We agree on something!
I picked up Nick Kent’s “Apathy For The Devil”, a few years ago thinking it would be quite insightful or, if not that, then at least entertaining. But it felt lazily and shoddily written, and strangely unconvincing. I mean, we know Nick was there, don’t we, but to read this shit, it really didn’t feel like it.
Still, as a sixty-year-old, I can vouch for the fact that many of us sucked up their stuff back in the Seventies and Eighties, and hung onto their [nearly] every word. They told me Big Audio Dynamite were the dog’s and I believed them.
Feels hugely amusing now, viewed through my retrospecs.
With 20/20 hindsight an awful lot of what those critics told me back then was bollox. But then again some ofwhat I held dear as a youth has similarly failed to stand the test of time.
What I am feebly trying to say is that even in these days of instant availability unless one wants to wade through oceans of dross it can be useful to have some sort of guide to point one in a hopefully correct direction.
There are still some mainstream critics writing in Culture Sections of newspapers/magazines who I know are generally on my wavelength – no guarantee of course just a fair chance I will like whatever it is they are recommending (Peter Bradshaw in Film Guardian has a pretty fair hit rate for me).
I have neither the time or inclination to let my ears do all the talking (?) I have the final decision but it’s nice to have some informed help sometimes. Good example – Taylor Swift’s new record: I am pretty certain I don’t think it’s all that good but given I have really liked most of her previous stuff I have read several in depth articles/reviews. I now know far more about the background, the production, the songs themselves than I could ever have gained from simply listening to the damn thing. In the end this info won’t make me love or hate Reputation but for a record I deem worthy of a second or even a tenth chance I am all for giving the critics a read.
I like Abba and Queen, so nah. Julie Burchill was, and still is, shite though.
Julie Burchill is a true idiot but she only came in at the tail end of the NME phenomenon, which I still maintain was all washed up by 1980.
Van’s finest six minutes. Not pop. Just a point of order… But I’ll just go back to cricket… Except to say that I am slightly sorry I placed so much stock in Rolling Stone USA and the whole ‘album’ mythology. I loved that mythology and has provided great joy and then I have gone on to discover yet more music. Interesting that the more English version of rock history is less familiar to me. I never read NME or MM.
“apartheid-appeasing, fascistic rock” – bit of a conflation of the art and the artist there, no?
I don’t really understand anyone who can’t find *something* to enjoy somewhere in Queen’s work. It’s so varied. Same with ABBA. It feels to me like it’s not really about the music – god knows the inkies’ attitude to them wasn’t.
On the money there DB. It’s not all We Are the Champions and the godawful Show Must Go On.
Well, I paraphrase the discourse of the “rock snobs.” But personally speaking, there is a triumphalist, air punching tone to much of their work that puts me off (“rockism” perhaps?) and the Sun City business was a big deal at the time, wasn’t it, although that argument may now be closed. I agree that the music weeklies had no place for them, and Freddie Mercury’s significance as a gay artist was not so apparent to everybody at the time. By the way, Simon Reynolds is much more complimentary to them now in his recent book on Glam Rock than he ever was at Melody Maker.
Ah! Fair dos – I wasn’t sure which was you and which was NME-paraphrase!
The Sun City thing still gets wheeled out regularly by people who are perfectly happy to look the other way re. Page, J; Townshend, P; Martyn, J, &c.
Literally I can think of two songs of theirs which are triumphalist: We Are The Champions and We Will Rock You, neither of which is particularly typical. They run the gamut from Noel Coward-esque to absolute balls-out thrills, and have a bunch of genuinely musically arresting pop bangers to their name too.
Some shite, but really not that much.
Brilliantly, Queen were probably the first band (perhaps even thing) that I ever considered to be “cool”.
I was on a family holiday, maybe 8 or 9 years old, and I buddied up with another kid who had an older brother, probably about 13. As is the way of these things, part of the holiday was spent listening to said older brother explain the way of the world to us, and pass down his immense wisdom and life knowledge.
After a few days of this, we were all sat around together and the below video (Queen’s “Invisible Man”) came on TV. As the song worked its magic, older brother became notably animated, and all of our attentions’ gradually drifted to the screen, until eventually we were all sat, spellbound by the magic of late 80s corporate rawk.
As the tune wound to its conclusion, perhaps motivated by Freddie M’s bodacious shades, older brother capped the effect by loudly and sagely proclaiming “these guys are DUDES”. Who, in that moment, could possibly argue with such an assessment?
I decided there and then that he must, of course, be entirely correct, and that I had caught a glimpse behind the curtain of adult cultural life; a new and exciting space in which afroed middle aged men shot lazers out of their guitars and were considered the epitome of sophistication for doing so. In many ways, this event was my own “birth of cool”, and – to this day – there’s a tiny bit of me that still insists that Queen are, in fact, pretty rad.
The balloon was, rather sadly, somewhat pricked a few months’ later when I received the accompanying “The Miracle” album for Xmas.
By this point, I had already acquired a copy of “Three Feet High and Rising” and was getting quite into De La Soul, which meant that as I sat listening to “Kashoggi’s Ship” and “My Baby Does Me” I found myself pondering whether the word “DUDE” might not, in fact, have some alternative meanings of which I was henceforth unaware.
I do still quite like Queen though. Like everything, they have their time and place.
I absolutely remember Queen being considered the height of cool when I was the same age. All the 13/14-year-old brothers reckoned they were ace, and very much felt like the same sort of stable as Guns N Rose (Appetite, of course, is the absolute pinnacle of cool-to-schoolchildren music, as well as being authentically ace in its own right).
There was a definite resurgence of Queen-cool around the time of the first Wayne’s World film, because of THAT scene in the car.
If I put my mind to it I can get an Greatest Hits EP out of Queen. It’s four more songs than I could get on my Status Quo Greatest Hits collection though.
Slade, of course, release their Greatest Hit every December.
Ah yes, that must be the biggest of the six No 1 hits they had (three of which going straight in with a bullet), which were of course included in the seventeen consecutive Top 20 hits, making them the biggest-selling singles band of the 70s.
Afterword Tshirt.
Number 1 hits. Like Clive Dunne. And Benny Hill. And St. Winifred’s. I’m not sure number 1 hits means anything. Although 3 of my 4 were number 1s I think.
Jeez, that’s such a crass analogy. You’re the one that sneeringly implied they only had the one notable song. The facts beg to differ. I get it, you don’t like them.
I’m not sure if sneeringly is accurate or how I intended it. I actually thought is was a jovial line to end my dislike of Queen and Status Quo post on. I don’t mind Slade but they do have a ubiquitous hit that overshadows all the other stuff don’t you think. I’m probably guilty of pandering to that.
But the idea that selling bucket loads of records makes for a good artist is spurious in the main. Some great artists sold lots of records but some shite artists have sold bucket loads as well. Whish was really my point,
Arguing about music and bands is a fairly deeply ingrained habit for most people here. And what makes this thread so long and rewarding. But it is like arguing what is the best colour.
Blue, duh!
See? You’ll be claiming blue based on all of the jeans sold in the last 30 years. Whereas yellow is the best as it is the colour of daffodils.
Daffodils are sellouts. Only girls like that shite. They don’t understand, as I – a middle aged man in a gardening jumper – do: that blue is actual genius. Yes, I said it: genius. Like Bach, or Newton. GENIUS.
Blue’s factual status as a colour of genius has nothing to do with a weird desperation to root my adolescent passions in cod-objective external validation, and frankly I’m offended at the suggestion.
To really understand Blue, you really need to have been there. And by “there”, I mean the dawn of Blue, which is something you wouldn’t know about.
For those of us lucky enough to have won the generational lottery and been in situ at that hallowed hour, the advent of Blue can be compared only to an armed insurrection of the very soul. Only a fool would deny that Blue will persist long after all the other colours (particularly hated, filthy green) have faded in the wash of history, leaving only a murky sludge to offset Blue’s own glory.
Don’t believe me? Just look at the following shades of Blue:
Cambridge Blue
Capri
Caribbean amber
Carolina
Cerulean
Cobalt
Color of water
Columbia
Cornflower
Cyan
And those are just the “C”s, off the top of my head – there’s plenty more where those came from.
Most of the shades on this list were made for the mass market. Formatting hadn’t yet driven people off into ghettoes where they only saw tones they already liked. Even at the snobbier end, I would guess that Jacques Grange would have used every hue on this list.
You might sit there and make an argument for your precious “Red”, or maybe try to go willfully obscure with “Amber” or such like, and I’ll let you do so. But I’ll listen with a smirk on my face, because mentally I’ll be sat here regretting that you suffered the misfortune of being born into an environment that forces you to pretend to like colours for effect, unlike me.
I’d describe Blue as the gold standard by which all other colours are judged, except even that would do it a disservice, because – let’s face it – it pisses all over gold. You can try to deny it, but I wouldn’t bother. Just sit there and bask in my rightness.
The trouble is, the blue-dodgers have all grown up and some are even sitting in Parliament. For shame!
Blue is so wonderful it has an entire musical genre named after it. Mix it with red and you get purple. Purple, the color (sic) of Rock Royalty.
Yellow:
Blue:
No more questions your honour.
There was a lot of this kind of nonsense in the Colour Weeklies back in the day. I remember Shades devoting a whole issue to Burgundy and the New Wave of British Heavy Reds, which eventually had its own spin-off magazine, CERR-ISE!! Meanwhile New Chromatic Express was banging on about student bedsit colours like Ultramarine, Viridian, Zaphre and the Blue-gazing movement.
I prefer Black. (Or Colin as his mother called him.)
I’m sorry. Did I miss a memo?
Quo aren’t very good? I might be in the wrong place, with the wrong audience, but they’re excellent. Perversely, when I were a lad, I didn’t much like ’em. Now? Ace. They may have had a limited range, but what they did, they did very well.
I drive a lot of Interstate over here. Big, 6 lane highways. Mountains to either side. There are few pleasures, on my 3+ hour drive to referee another college match, to compare to the sausage egg and cheese croissant, large coffee, and Quo blasting loudly out the Bose speakers.
Whatever you want indeed
Can’t believe you like Bose speakers…
Came with the car…
The best thing that happened to Queen was Live Aid – they weren’t exactly dead in the water, but that performance still powers them to this day. Speaking of which – and I think Brian May is a really nice fella and all – poncing around still calling themselves Queen is something which I cannot forgive.
I’m really torn – I have the first two Greatest Hits and that’s enough for me, but there are some real stonkers which always get me going – Hammer To Fall, Flash, Seven Seas of Rye, Under Pressure, Radio GA Ga, The Show Must Go On (ha!), One Vision – but I have no wish to delve further.
There are many, many bands venerated on here who don’t have a song to their name remotely as good as Under Pressure.
Tear yourself no more Nigel, just buy Night at the Opera and if you like that, work your way outwards. Some sublime songs, way more subtle, fun and experimental than their hits might suggest.
Musically often super interesting, too. Very much not I-IV-V merchants.
Night at the Opera is better than almost everything. Who else could have BoRhap on an album with Lazing On A Sunday Afternoon, or 39, or I’m In Love With My Car, or Good Company? It’s pretty dazzling stuff, regardless of whether or not you like it.
Edit: I forgot You’re My Best Friend!
It’s got everything, ANATO. Visceral thumping rock, perfect cherry-sweet pop, weird complex mental shit, bonkers psychedelia, and musicianship that most rock musicians don’t even have a vocabulary for.
Oi…you forgot The Prophet’s Song. Without which we’d have no Foo Fighters. Whether this is a good thing…
I was including it in “weird complex mental shit”. 😉
I agree with Bob for once. What’s come over me? A Night At The Opera is solid gold magic. And for those who thought Queen were all about Freddie, just listen to this to hear a truly democratic combo (well, almost… Freddie still dominates but all the band get to shine).
The famous ‘tape speeding up’ gear change bit of the guitar solo on Prophet Song brings a tear to my eye.
I nominate ABBA. When I were a lad, only girls and mums liked them. You can’t dance to them, their tunes were twee. The singers were pleasing on the eye but they looked ridiculous in their onesies and they couldn’t mime. It was a relief that the blokes hid in the shadows. In my world they were known as BLOODY ABBA. Nowadays, say one bad word against them and people jump down your throat.
(I like the very last song they did, The Day Before You Came, partly because it was their last song, putting me out of my misery, but mainly because it was about a murderer.)
I thought it was 24 hours in the life of one determined onanist.
B-side – a version of Todd Rundgren’s You Left Me Sore.
Did you ever get your hands on the 12″?
Oh, the extended version….
It goes on for another half a day. Serious chafing.
But then, as now they appeal to people who have 10 CDs. One of which is Abba Gold, then it was Greatest Hits Vols 1 and 2 on vinyl. I like some of their stuff but really they are not the greatest band ever, if you know any other bands.
Afterword t-shirt.
So you can’t dance to Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!, Voulez Vous, Lay All Your Love On Me, On And On And On…? And SOS, Knowing Me…, The Name Of The Game, Eagle, The Winner…are twee? Really Tigger, I must say I had more faith in your critical faculties. We’ve recently had the definitive ABBA debate, so I’ll just refer you back to Bob’s outstanding argument in favour of their greatness.
Like whatever you like, mate. The question is whether you liked all this at the time, or did you realise it was better than you thought (OOAA) once you cared less about received wisdom? I liked “Waterloo” and thought they went off after that. When I hear them, to paraphrase Alan Partridge, I think “Roxette are the band Abba could have been”. If I want europop, given me Serge Gainsbourg or Johnny Halliday. Though, to be fair, I only got into them in the past 15 years, and would have been snotty about them before.
I’ve liked ’em from the off. A huge fan in my teenybop Junior High days, defended their honour in the punk wars, welcomed their embracing of disco, and exulted at the sheer pop brilliance of their final albums. Whilst I always recognised the emotional qualities of their standout songs, their depth and impact have obviously increased with the (alleged) wisdom of age and experience.
ABBA music isn’t conducive to fancy footwork. It’s possible to shuffle awkwardly from one foot to another wondering what the hell to do with your hips, if that. When Dancing Queen is played at a wedding, the party shrieks with excitement, fills the floor but, within seconds, is nonplussed as to how to dance to it without looking like a dork. They resort to vaguely waving their arms about and singing at the top of their voices. Good job everyone is drunk.
Yebbut, that’s one of the big cliches, innit? People always cite DQ as evidence that you can’t dance to ABBA; all it means is yes indeed, you can’t dance to DQ. It’s like putting Ziggy Stardust on to prove that you can’t dance to Bowie.
Dance to Bowie? You can’t.
Oh I am certain that people at weddings and office parties dance to “Let’s Dance”. Largely because it’s called “Let’s Dance”.
Golden Years and Fashion are mega danceable. Warszawa and Moss Garden much less so, I find.
If you can’t pogo to Rubber Band, I think you may be deader than Dave himself.
But this is just it. Pogo is not dancing (is it?).
I have yet to see anyone ‘dance’ to the Dame. It’s more of an awkward ‘shuffle’. Even Dave shuffles to ‘Lets Dance’. In fact in the vid, apart from the predictable knowing looks, he’s got his back against a wall.
I blame Lindsay Kemp.
People dancing to Bowie. Properly with all that fancy hip swinging and arm waving business.
Proof if proof be need be.
Ditto.
Bowie records tend to feature guitars which – as I’ve previously observed – tend to clear a dancefloor faster than a bomb scare.
I’m not any sort of Bowie fan, but I’ve seen a wedding dancefloor totally go off to this…
https://youtu.be/1hDbpF4Mvkw
Forgot to add my usual caveat about guitars clearing dancefloors – “…unless wielded by Nile Rodgers”
Tigger, of course, is the last word in terpsichorean fleetness on the dancefloor. His moves have been known to make grown men cry.
Absolutely. You should see what I can do with Love Shack. 😉
Can’t dance to Bowie?
China Girl was a guaranteed floorfiller back in the days when I was a playboy of the disco world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXFUT_7925A
Herewith be Tigger’s wedding dancefloor jam. He knows all the moves and everything….
Whilst anyone can dance to certain Bowie numbers – James Brown knew a good groove when he stole – sorry hommaged ‘Fame’ with this
the man himself was the worst rock star dancer possibly ever.
There’s no such thing as a song you can’t dance to at a wedding. That’s why weddings are ace.
Yeeeeaaay! What an absolute banger! That brightened up my evening a treat. I bet Tigs gets seriously nasty when that comes on.
“There’s no such thing as a song you can’t dance to at a wedding.” I think it’s time you came and had an evening’s listening with DuCool and myself. I promise songs that not even the tipsiest of vicars could shake a tail feather to.
I’ve been singing the praises of the magnificent ECM label a lot recently. Despite releasing over thousand magnificent albums, it amazes me that I’ve not heard a single track you could even shuffle around the room to.
Manfred Eicher has probably got special clause in his contracts: “Kein Tanzi! Tanz ist Verboten.”
What about Nils-Petter Molvær’s “Khmer” Remixes that ECM put out in 1998?
Not Disco Bangers, but shuffleable to.
Thanks @Mike_H. That was a funky revelation and a very fine track too. It’s got a great dubby feel to it. Makes me wonder why Manfred did not recruit Lee Perry to his artist roster…
Only joking! That would not have worked. Spaced out Rasta and Teutonic sonic perfectionist is not a good combination.
A very short-lived experiment, I think.
There was a rather tasty album of NPM remixes called “Recoloured” released shortly after, but not on ECM but on Universal’s EMARCY imprint.
I suppose Manfred didn’t think it fitted the label’s style.
(Merciful-Ligotage (Incunabula mix by Bill Laswell))
This is probably the least ECM track on it.
(Dead Indeed (Tunnel Mix by Mind Over Midi)
It is possible to do a very good Rock Jive to ‘Does Your Mother Know’. I’ve done it myself.
Everyone has a secret skill, mine is going ballroom & latin dancing well before Strictly made it fashionable.
So’s mine. I confess I’ve never tried dancing to Does Your Mother Know.
This from someone who was trying to sell us Suzi and the Glamdads last week. You should be barred from writing reviews if you don’t appreciate the genius of ABBA.
Ok. 😘
I honestly don’t know how any grown adult who likes pop music can still hang on to snobberies about it. I love pop because it’s not high art, not despite it. The absolute worst thing ever to happen to it was people taking it seriously.
Up quiver.
You’ve come to the wrong place.
I get that a lot.
You should leave the light on – it’s easier then.
*gets coat*
Me too. Story of my life.
I’ve long since come to the conclusion that some music isn’t really “better” than other, and that you could waste your life arguing trying to make it so.
Ultimately, there’s music I like, and music I don’t. Everything beyond that generally ends up feeling like masturbation. Except bad. So, the opposite of masturbation. Servuntbation, let’s call it.
COR. Please advise.
This is a serious blog for serious people, Bob.
Try telling that to the NME or any poor soul in their employ – in any period.
I’d take genuine pleasure in doing so. 😊
To flip the question, which loved and respected bands of today will be scorned and laughable in the future? I’m voting Radiohead. If ever there was a Genesis de nos jours it’s this bunch.
Oh lord yes. Lost interest in Radiohead once Thom Yorke forgot what consonants are.
Dunno, but I’m looking forward to the day one of today’s stadium fillers has to open for Servuntbation..
Dude, Radiohead ARE Servuntbation.
Well 20 years later The Bends, OK Computer (and Kid A) seem to still be held in high esteem. I would label them as the best UK band of the last 25 years. But I like them, anyone who doesn’t should listen to this glorious song on repeat until they do (or The Bends, or Street Spirit, or Paranoid Android or Lucky or Karma Police etc etc etc) :
I can recall a time (almost certainly an unhappy one) when I legitimately liked this song.
Now, it just makes me think of a comment my father made to me, circa that period, as I cued up yet another angsty, wailing, complicated rock record on the family stereo: “Oh good, another dirge”.
I don’t see what’s not to like. Dirge? It’s a pretty wonderful tune for one thing.
One man’s meat, to use a phrase I’d not recommend Googling….
Of course
Yes, if someone thinks that Radiohead are miserablist nonsense, listening to Fake Plastic Trees on repeat will certainly dissuade them.
Or, if not, at least punish them.
Ok son, one more play of that one about iron lungs and then it’s back to Elaine Paige.
Some may say it is not the most uplifting song you will ever hear (not me), but it certainly isn’t nonsense. I find great beauty in it. You don’t, that’s fine, you don’t have to listen to it and me saying people should be forced to was naturally not really a serious threat.
Look, seriously, I really like Radiohead. Or did, anyway. Yet…. like most of the music I like, or have liked, I can very easily understand somebody hating it. And I’ve also long since come to the conclusion that trying to persuade other people to like music is a fool’s errand. It usually ends up in mutual incomprehension and embarrassment, like a Tinder hookup with someone who turns out to be your ex.
Better to enjoy – as many Afterworders no doubt do – the faces of your friends and family crumple in horror as you cheerfully inflict music on them that you know for a cast-iron fact they will hate, and then proceed carry on getting your musical jollies in private.
With the ‘Head, like a lot of AW-friendly music, many folk will simply not get past the voice (Neil Young, Dylan, Morrissey, and in my own case the PSBs)
Sure, but the original post was basically saying that those who liked it then, would hate it in the future. I still love it 20 years later and many others do. That doesn’t apply to all their albums necessarily, as after Kid A there has only been one (Like Rainbows) that was fairly universally praised. So will OK Computer, The Bends and Kid A still be highly rated in 50 years? I think so.
I tried that with Moon Shaped Pool. They loved it without realising it was Radiohead!
You played your music to… other people who aren’t us???
I’m struggling to process this. “Betrayal” is a big word, but…
….Wow.
I’ve never understood the antipathy toward’s Thom’s voice. It’s a beautiful thing. I just wish he’d use it for beauty more often these days.
Moon is a beautiful album, probably their most beautiful, and it is pretty close to these days.
Agree about the beauty of his voice and Moon. Memorable live show last year in Montreal too.
I *quite* like Moon, but the really beautiful Radiohead record for me is In Rainbows. It’s indescribably gorgeous, to my ears, with moments that properly move me (House of Cards, Reckoner, All I Need in particular). Thom’s voice on that record makes me go all swoony.
“Some may say it is not the most uplifting song you will ever hear”
I cannot tell you how much I was hoping you were gonna follow that with “go and tell it to the man who cannot SHEEEEINE”.
I absolutely prefer listening to Radiohead rather than Queen.
I’m a huge Stone Roses fan, and have watched in bemusement as they went from basically being a laughing stock post-Reading in 1996 to the reaction that greeted their return in 2011. During those years John Squire made some very dull records, Ian Brown made some passable solo records, Mani toured a lot with Primal Scream and Reni disappeared. And yet they returned with the ability to pack out huge stadium shows for nights on end. Having observed this entire period, it does make me question some of the rock ‘legends’ from earlier decades that I’ve swallowed wholesale because I’m too young to have been there.
I know exactly what you mean. The Velvet Underground, for example. I learned about them and got into them in the nineties, when they were nothing less than canonised. I do wonder how much of that was retrospective.
I bought the VU’s first album (the banana one) when it first came out, thought, well, this isn’t very good, and never gave them another thought. Did I miss anything?
Did you not form a band?
Well, I chose The Beatles for my school project in around 83 or 84 and was laughed out of town for liking such ‘old’ music. The same kids, 10 years later with their Oasis t-shirts and Paul Weller haircuts (which are still very much in abundance today and look stupid on anybody who isn’t Paul Weller) will have been professing their love for them. So I wasn’t 20 years behind the times, I was 10 years ahead!
I have to laugh at the ‘heritage’ acts that get wheeled out at festivals. Some are okay, but many are best leaving where they were. Similar with the superduperdeluxe re-releases. I can certainly see the merits of the Pet Shop Boys ones, and REM and even U2, but was there really a market for the T’Pau boxed set and the Sam Fox reissues?
I also get fed up of the genius tag that only ever gets applied to Brian Wilson. Purely because he went a bit bonkers. There are loads of better songwriters than him, but only Wilson ever gets called a genius. If he’s such a genius why has he only done one great album? I find it difficult to get through other Beach Boys albums and the Smile sessions, when they came out, were two good songs, that we already knew about, and the rest was awful.
But Wild Honey is the work of an absolute genius.
Hmm. I bought the new Wild Honey 2CD after you raved about it here, and I have to say it was my biggest musical disappointment of 2017; I could hear nothing special, let alone ‘genius’ about it. I’d almost say it’s a bit crap.
Oh dear.
*puts on sack-cloth & ashes and locks self away in coalshed*
It’s okay. You redeemed yourself with the Vijay Iyer Sextet, and we’ll always have Lemonade. 💜
Sail on Sailor, Funky Pretty, All I Wanna Do and any number of songs he contributed during his pickled years all pretty genius-tastic.
Mini as usual says it concisely and 100% rightly
Sail On Sailor is indeed the nuts.
One album?
Today!
Summer Days
Pet Sounds
SMiLE (or Smiley Smile)
Friends
Surf’s Up
Sunflower
The last 2 are more band efforts.
Wild Honey and 20/20 are borderline great too. The 10 (TEN!!) albums that came before Pet Sounds contain plenty of filler, but also a lot of great stuff too. Understandable when you are writing (and co-writing), singing on, arranging and producing up to 3 albums a year (and a total of 17 albums between 1962 and 71). No wonder he went “a bit bonkers”, and having an extremely abusive father didn’t help.
The Beatles had 2 (or 3) main songwriters and singers plus another guy doing arrangements and production.
I don’t have Summer Days, but I have all the others and, a few great tracks aside, I find it all to be mediocre and pretty ghastly at times. I bought Pet Sounds and a greatest hits compilation as a teenager and liked them. I then bought a couple in my early twenties (Smiley Smile and Friends I think) and flogged them shortly after, as I found them bland. I bought the Smile box set and flogged it days later whilst I could still make my money back, as I thought it was awful. But then I got a few more a year or so ago and made an effort to see what others see in them, but I just couldn’t. Some of the songs were as trivial and horrible as some of the filler you get on Elvis soundtrack albums.
I like Pet Sounds (mainly 4 of the songs – Wouldn’t It Be Nice, God Only Knows, Don’t Talk and Caroline No), but wouldn’t put it in my top 20 sixties albums and some of their songs are fab – I Get Around, Darlin’, Good Vibrations, Surfin’ Safari, Do It Again. But, I’m sorry, I just find the rest of it bland, whimsical for the sake of it and I cringe at some of the songs, the lyrics especially.
But it’s not just the Beach Boys. There are lots of other 60s bands with a dozen songs as good as anybody’s best songs, but whose albums are a let down – The Turtles and The Hollies spring to mind. I just don’t get why Brian Wilson is the only pop star that routinely gets called a genius.
Leonard Bernstein praised him on a TV show then he started believing his own hype! That’s about it.
Because he is one. If there are geniuses in pop music that is. You don’t like The Beach Boys very much that’s all.
I basically grew up not knowing who The Beatles were.
I was aware of Paul McCartney (due primarily to Mull Of Kintyre), and became slightly more aware of The Beatles music when Lennon was shot.
It was the Beatles Movie Medley in 1982 that was the first time I’d knowingly heard The Beatles.
Hey .. they were 20 years old – no one listens to music that old.
3 years later I discovered Marc Bolan and T.Rex – always been bang up to date me
There’s old wave, there’s new wave, there’s cool, and there is naff kitsch. And there is Todd Rundgren, who is all of them, sometimes in the same song. Liked him at school, like him now, and whatever received wisdom is, is quite irrelevant. His bad is bad, his good is good, but I always want to hear the new album, even if it’s disappointing (which it mostly is). His new is better than Yes’s new, if that’s any consolation.
The Stone Roses: “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend”
Here’s Ian Brown in fine vocal form:
[audio src="http://www.bigozine2.com/TRKS2/SRStokyo/SRStokyo205.mp3" /]
recorded at the Budokan earlier this year apparently.
Jesus, that’s bad. Linda McCartney bad.
Reading ’96 bad, surely?
That was less Foghat, and more Fog-Horn.
I don’t really accept the premise of the original statement. No one ever listened to rock snobs and cognoscenti, except each other. Everyone else just listened to music they liked.
Well, that’s what I thought too, but see my conversation with Lodey above. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Nah I don’t agree. Call me naive, but I think writing about music can be an art when done properly.
I say it all the time here, but I just love Iain MacDonald’s analyses of Beatles songs. Makes me hear them through new ears.
Pink Floyd. The Syd stuff is fun, but they became the most boring, unemotional, uninteresting, whining band ever. They now seem to have been critically re-evaluated mainly because they sold shitloads of records. I can only imagine that the extremely weak Dark Side of The Moon was bought more as a kind of 70s accessory to nicely furnished pads, than to actually be listened to.
Hm, not sure. I feel like they’ve occupied the same place in the public consciousness for the 30 years I’ve listened to them. Always revered, never trendy, a bit blokey.
And to be honest I sort of liked them as a teenager in the 70s (some of Wish You Were Here), then went off them and like them again somewhat now (Meddle), but the mass appeal of Dark Side remains a mystery to me.
DSotM was the Must Have stereo demonstration record of the early ’70s.
Released just in time for all those late-’60s freaks to ditch their old Dansettes and buy stereos.
And headphones, maaaan.
Actually, I still rather like it.
Quo – simple 3 chords, heads down boogie merchants that no one likes … but almost every really does (possibly, even if only begrudgingly)
Perhaps not the later years – In The Army Now is probably the last true Quo album before they became a cabaret act.
As a direct opposite to Queen, it was Live Aid that finished ’em.
Lancaster left soon after and without him (an John Coghlan who left 3 years before) the writing was on the wall.
They deserved to become a cabaret act for repeating the phrase “You’re in the army now” 267 times in the same song. Terrible!
I watched the Frantic Four Wembley concert on YouTube recently (sadly I never got to see them when they came to Germany). It straightaway reminded me of the enjoyment I got out of them in the seventies, mainly because they started off with a set of songs sung by Alan Lancaster – who was more at the rock/blues end of things than Rossi (Margherita Time, anyone?).
I think my enjoyment of Loop/Swans/ Thee Hypnotics/etc is down to the love of the intense repetitive noise that Quo used to generate.
See below. I love Quo, without reservation. Mind you, I adore Big Country as well….
I think the effect of Live Aid on Queen is overrated. They came into the concert on the back of a very successful album with 4 Top 20 singles, two of which they played in their 20 minute set. It certainly gave their sales a boost in the UK, but it didn’t give them a comeback in the place where they needed it, i.e. the US.
An original 1985 review of Dexy’s Don’t Stand Me Down:
“What the f*ck is this?”
20 years later:
“Kevin Rowland is a genius, and DSMD is the best thing he ever did”
Original reaction to the cover of My Beauty: Aaaagh!!! My eyes! Please, merciful ravens, swoop down and pluck out my eyes!
Now: I would.
By amazing coincidence that’s what I’m listening to right now!
It was given to me last year by my secret Vinyl Santa (along with a Herb Alpert record).
Secret Vinyl Santa! What an amazing idea!
Just listening to Allman Brothers’ Eat a Peach. Damn, I’d forgotten how good it is. Just like I was discovering it all over again in ’72.
Greil Marcus on Dylan’s Self Portrait: “What is this shit?”
My reaction to the recent Another Self Portrait: “What is this revisionist shit. Give me the original thanks. And stop messing with New Morning”
Oh. I really liked Another, preferring it to the original pair of albums. It’s easily in my top five of the Bootleg series.
I find the revisionist stripping of all the gloss and fun a bit joyless and reverential. Tattle O’Day, Days of 49 and some of the other tripe are better as raucous nonsense, not embalmed as tablets of stone. And absent Quinn and Boxer, it really does feel like a joy-sucking exercise.
“joyless and reverential.” – a phrase which nails why I find Dylanology and Dylanists* quite tiring, however much I might enjoy the Zimster’s works themselves.
(*with a few notable exceptions)
I found that Another Self Portrait made a case for Dylan’s work during this time as the equal but very different to the 65-66 period. It’s the most joyful of his music and very easy to enjoy his singing which is loose, inspired and free of self-consciousness. Self-Portrait I think is self-conscious and harder to enjoy. So I don’t think that there should be a revision of SP but perhaps of that period.
Put like that, I sort of get it. But I always enjoyed SP – and New Morning, drawn from the same sessions. ASP didn’t reveal anything that I didn’t already appreciate, merely arrange a few songs in a stark way to try and make them sound similar to earlier glories. Making “If Dogs Could Talk” or whatever it’s called, sound like a John Wesley Harding offcut doesn’t transform it into a better song.
Some guy called henpetsig wrote a simply brilliant critique of ASP in which he used the words “magnificent, eye-opening, best of all the Bootleg Series, second only to Blonde on Blonde in the Dylan canon” – boy, that henpetsig sure can tell it like it is!!!
Is that your Amazon nom-de-plumage?
Was my former name on here before I was named Dark Lord of the Wrongness
Not very catchy is it? Was it an anagram?
Wrong Lord of The Darkness was taken by yer man with the frilly hair and the high voice.
I really liked Queen when I was 13. Would never listen to them now. People who still listen to them as adults tend to also read comic books and like superhero movies. Oh yes.
Agreed. Their albums have not stood the test of time really (Queen 2 and NATO maybe) perhaps because they are all over the place stylistically. But it was never cool to like Queen and that’s where Live Aid made a difference. Freddie camped it up for the cameras and we were all suddenly aware of how good they were as performers (or him anyway), compared to the majority of acts who didn’t project beyond the first few rows of the crowd.
I still listen to them. I don’t read comic books, and detest superhero movies. So there.
As vanishingly rare as it may be that Count J and I agree on matters cultural, this is one of those times. I haven’t read a comic book since I was a kid, and I still like Queen.
I like the good superhero movies. I don’t like the bad ones. I’m iconoclastic like that.
Nice to know there is at least one entry on our Venn diagram, Bob!
🙂
Visionist/revisionist yada yada yada. Isn’t the lobby decrying critics and validating balderdash just another lobby to slouch hiply in? I love old skool rock journos, but only when I agree with them. Otherwise they are wrong. But when they are right, the naysayers are wrong. More than happy to read reviews and make (some) purchases blind (deaf?) on the strength. If I am pleased with the outcome it’s good, if not I will point out the new clothes I suddenly appreciate they display.
Spot on. If someone tells you that a certain food is delicious and you try it but don’t like it, do you pretend that you do like it and carry on eating it? Of course not. But if you do like it you might listen to that person’s recommendations again, if not you probably won’t.
If anyone was paying attention they would have realised that the music press did not have party lines, but a bunch of individuals opinions. The rock critics views of the 2000s have not necessarily been transplanted to rock critics of the 1970s and 1980s. I’m sure lots of the bands that were scorned and laughed at back in the day are still scorned and laughed at by the same people if of course they still care about music that they don’t like.
I agree with you both. The cliche of the trend-jumping critic snob has been overstated.
I roomed at St Cakes with Tarquin Slouch-Hiply.
Frightful oik.
There’s an interesting review by John Harris in Prospect magazine of Dylan Jones’ book about Bowie. He admires Bowie and puts up the case for him as primarily a gifted songwriter, and “grafter” as a musician. But in the course of the review he also points out the ups and downs of Bowie’s reputation. For example,
“But for those of us who came of age a decade later (than Jones), Bowie appeared to be much more earthly and accident-prone. Our first regular acquaintance with him involved a run of pretty disastrous music and gauche rock-star behaviour—from his cringe-inducing recitation of the Lord’s Prayer at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert in 1992, through the awful cover of Martha and The Vandellas’ “Dancing in the Street” he recorded with Mick Jagger for Live Aid.”
This view of Bowie which I think was quite widespread, got obscured by his late renaissance and unexpected death. I don’t think it was limited to any sort of cognoscenti – it was held by most music fans I knew.
https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/grounding-the-starman-why-its-time-to-bring-david-bowie-down-to-earth
As this is essentially a thread about self-important journos, I might as well say that I won’t be lectured on music by a man who continued to have a toddler’s haircut deep into his 40s so that we wouldn’t forget that he’s Mr Britpop.
Oooooooh. (Lifts handbag to chest).
I can be quite the firebreather when my dander is up. So think on.
yes, he’s such a weller clone
Aka a ‘Wellend’.
I read that Dylan jones book. I wish I hadn’t. Thankfully I borrowed it from the library and didn’t buy it. Awful book. Just awful.
You should try the Paul Morley book instead. Far more cogent.
*tiptoes away, snickering in the manner of a pantomime villain*
Thanks for that explanation of Dylan Jones’ haircut. For an awful moment I thought this was an intemperate outburst against one of our own younger members.
John Harris’s former haircut (TMFTL)
I am most surprised, Bri, so I am indeed. “How come you didn’t like it?” is what I’m wondering. I absolutely loved it. Engrossing, t’was. I got all engrossed, so I did.
….mmm, as we can see.
Just too gossipy for me Gary. It just seemed like everyone had their own agenda. Oh and David Bailey can fuck right off too! Arrogant twat.
I’ll tell you who I’m all revisionist about. Leo Sayer, that’s who. Back in the day I thought he was a total daytime-telly loser. Either poncing about in his silly clown costume or, worse, looking like a Richard Simmons looky-likey. But I’ve come to realise he was actually not that bad-ish sort of, really. Even ‘When I Need You’ sounds quite nice now. And my favourite, The Dancer, is pretty spiffing.
Nice falsetto. I keep waiting for Basil Brush to show up.
And a falsetto teeth….hahaha HAA! HAA! BOOM BOOM!
Gen-i-us.
The first time my mate played me Sheena is a Punk Rocker, I said it sounded like a speeded up version of the Bay City Rollers. Now the definitive precursers of punk rock. Go figure.
I can’t see that this example has been mentioned which is surprising: Lennon was supposed to be the genius, in touch with the avant garde but these days we have learned that it was McCartney who was meeting movers and shakers in London and it was he who was often experimenting in the studio, working on tape loops for Tomorrow Never Knows etc. Like the Bowie example above, people go with the received wisdom of the myth; Lennon was a saint, a genius. No. Exceptional, yes. Responsible for nasty, ugly behaviour at times. Did great work but went on to produce crap.
To be fair a lot of that revisionism came from Macca himself, it still may be mainly true. You make some good points, but Lennon also got somewhat involved in avant garde when he took up with Yoko.
Totally agree, Dids; John Lennon a genius? Two words: “Double Fantasy”. Don’t make me laugh. Have a third that underlines it: Yoko.
I am all for people liking what they like; it’s received wisdom I have issues with. Never forget https://rateyourmusic.com/list/schmidtt/rolling_stones_500_worst_reviews_of_all_time__work_in_progress_/
yes, we did hang on ever word by Charles Shaar Murray, Nick Kent, and the rest of the hip older brothers (and occasional sister) through which we vicariously lived, and internalised their prejudices until we were brave enough to reject them. If there had been an AfterWord website in 1974,we would have had a whole lot of different prejudices.
I respect and admire Charles Shaar Murray for championing the memory of Jimi Hendrix in his very fine book, and swimming against the tide in doing so. I think the world’s come round to his thinking now, hasn’t it? Hendrix is indisputably grade A rock canon?
I don’t think “geniuses” are people who never make bad or mediocre records. Not sure what “Yoko” means as your 3rd word. He fell in love with her, it happens. He did make dozens of the greatest recordings in popular music history, but let’s ignore that because Double Fantasy is crap.
as, I’m afraid to say, is much of his output between 1970 and 1980. I put on Shaved Fish the other day, which is supposed to be a best of. I took it off before the end of side one because I grew tired OF BEING SHOUTED AT!!
Side two is more mellow, granted, but John the revolutionary was a bore.
Instant Karma is close to the best thing he ever did. I also love Cold Turkey, Plastic Ono Band is awesome and Imagine (the album) is pretty great. I also like Walls and Bridges and some of Double Fantasy/Milk and Honey. Like McCartney there is something of worth on all his albums.
Instant Karma is a good song beyond dispute I think. So many great songs but not many found after 1970. I understand you liking POB album but I’m with the view that he became rather strident and this limited him. Going Down On Love on Walls and Bridges is very good.
I’ve never listened to Double Fantasy in it’s entirely, so the only knowledge I have of it are the songs you’ll find on any Lennon compilation – (e.g Starting Over, Woman, Watching The Wheels etc) and I really like them.
The Stripped versions are beautiful. His voice is one of the seven wonders of the musical world.
And the other six are….?
Aretha’s voice, Jimi’s guitar, Elvis’s hips, Lee Perry’s imagination, Becker & Fagen’s songs and Prince’s swagger.
“Aretha’s voice, Jimi’s guitar, Elvis’s hips, Lee Perry’s imagination, Becker & Fagen’s songs and Prince’s swagger.”
ATS!
1. Fred Durst’s Flow
2. Ralf Hutter’s forefinger
3. John Bonham’s metatarsal
4. Bobby Bland’s golly
5. Nena’s armpit
6. Van’s hat
7. St Vincent’s Crack
Was that the rejected Side 7 of Sandinista?
Lee Perry’s “imagination”? Lee Perry’s stash, more like.
The Belouis Some version was so much better.
The same circular arguments about some of the same artists plus another few.
Almost as bad as the “Theories, Rants Etc.” pages in Mojo.
I’m losing the will to live.
Yes, but we’ve gone an entire and substantial thread without a mention of Steely Dan. Ooops.
I’m getting tired of the word ‘genius’. Starting to regret ever having used it myself. Almost anyway.
But the truth is all of us love reading and talking about music. It’s all part of the culture. We do feel the need to know that other people like what we think is crap (and why) and vice versa. I personally don’t think there’s anything wrong with people making a living out of writing about music, particularly when they can do it in ways that are witty, challenging, etc. Sometimes they also (help to) bring about new trends. The example I’ve used before — and I still stand by the claim — is that NME in the early to mid-seventies began to describe EXISTING (or even, in some cases, past) music as ‘punk rock’, and thereby helped to create a new genre of ‘punk rock’. I find that type of thing endlessly fascinating. The music itself and the discourse around it, how they mutually influence and shape each other. It’s like being interested in authors and their lives and reading interviews with them AND also reading their books.
It’s all grist to the mill isn’t it? Explains why even this AW is ridiculously addictive, doesn’t it? The ‘byways’ of pop culture and all.
Gee, why couldn’t I say it like Tahir instead of wasting my time (and his) with Disappointment ” just need your ears” Bob ??
It’s not my fault that I’m an elite critic of your posts, Lodey.
Tahir’s comment is sort of the nub of the whole discussion.
In nineteen seventy whatever, “elite critics” were the folks who had access to tons and tons of free music, sent to them by record labels in the hopes of garnering their attention. A position of which the layman could only dream.
He or she was therefore perfectly placed to hand down from Mount Olympus their idea of what was “good” music, and people were likely to listen. It was never so much their astonishing talent with words (with very very few exceptions, allow me to chortle) that established them as taste-makers, more their astonishing access to content.
in 2017, every single one of us has access to virtually every note of music ever recorded, almost all of it for free. We do indeed want recommendations and to be pointed to new stuff, but we’re just as likely to get those pointers from mates, social media or some bloke on a backwater music blog as we are from those still trying to cobble together a living from the fag-end of the UK music magazine industry.
And we don’t need to think as hard about the recommendations either – there’s no 30 minute trip to the nearest Our Price to hand over fifteen quid in the hope that this thing you’re buying on the back of a description in the Melody Maker is good; you can just click your mouse three times, get bored after 30 seconds and move on to something else if it’s crap.
Rock critics don’t enjoy the status they once did, because they no longer enjoy a comparative monopoly on information/material. They’re just another voice among many, and we’re all more able, and more inclined to – yes – “use our ears”, and decide for ourselves.
We have always and still do use our ears as the final judgement. In this chaotic ever changing world it’s sometimes nice to read an insightful review with info or background not easily available to us punters. Sometimes, only sometimes, one’s appreciation of that record or film or book can be strengthened.
To dismiss all critics as elitist is elitist in its purest form
Hmmm…
(i) I didn’t dismiss all critics as elitist.
(ii) I used the term “elite critics” purely in reference to your own post upthread, hence the quotation marks.
(iii) Regardless, dismissing all critics as elitist would not necessarily be “elitism in its purest form” anyway, unless you have a very peculiar definition of “elitism”.
Other than that, completely agree. Although I would add that to say whales are fish is entirely wrong.
I’d rather be a hamster than a whale
Hello Wrongness, my old friend
I’ve come to squawk with you again
I bet you would, you saucy devil.
It’s received opinion innit. We might laugh at the prejudices and inconsistencies of the NME firing squad, but I’m as guilty as anyone of propagating received opinion, mentally accepting that there’s such a thing as ‘good’ music’ and that to like things like Self Portrait, Dire Straits, Status Quo (even before Margueritas and Army), prog, (particularly Genesis), heavy rock etc is somehow to be regretted. Yes it’s all a bit laughable now, but the instant rush to condemn the likes of Queen, Peter Kay, Michael McIntyre et al whilst flaunting an ignorance of most of their material would seem to indicate that these attitudes live on.
The problem is a post that suggests someone isn’t much cop is catnip to Afterworders, myself included.
True dat. I used to be the other way around with Steely Dan – couldn’t they see it – this was cold, clinical, sophisticated elevator music etc. Now thanks to the sabbatical-tastic @Twang, I’m fully immersed.
Isn’t there a bit of a paradox from Bob and Bingo here? Their mantra is trust your ears, so why do they then write about Queen and Abba – two bands everybody has heard, and decided what they think of them. In writing about these bands, they’re putting at least some faith in words to alter existing opinions in music.
I don’t mind this in the least, and find their posts pretty entertaining. It’s just by their own logic, I don’t think they should be writing them.
“In 2017, every single one of us has access to virtually every note of music ever recorded, almost all of it for free. We do indeed want recommendations and to be pointed to new stuff, but we’re just as likely to get those pointers from mates, social media or some bloke on a backwater music blog as we are from those still trying to cobble together a living from the fag-end of the UK music magazine industry.”
B.Little – Literally two inches above your comment (may vary by device)
I think you’ve got the wrong end of my stick, though I’m always glad to use it for the pleasure of others.
hur
But you’re not offering a tip off to some obscure band are you? Queen? Everybody has heard them and made their mind up, yet the urge to talk about them is still there. Which is why this blog keeps going.
David, I’d warmly invite you to re-read what I’ve actually said on this thread (bearing in mind that, although we share clothes and occasionally a bed, I’m not biologically the same person as Bob) and then ask yourself again whether I’m really guilty of the awful double standard you seem to have me fitted for.
I don’t know if you’d call it “revisionism,” as such, more moving the goal posts, but when the biggest acts are the ones at No. 1 (Beatles, Stones, Kinks 45s, Dylan LPs) you don’t need to do it!
However, once the (perceived) cool/NME approved acts aren’t the ones at No. 1 … put it this way, pretty much every post-60s act is an example of it.
How about the Smiths and Wham!
Wham! must have outsold the Smiths 30 to 1 in the UK and 100 to 1 around the world, but don’t hold your breath for a 16 page cover feature in Mojo … clear case of revisionism, you could feel it happening at the time.
It’ll be knowing even a just a tiny fragment on the Smiths that would get you the jackpot on “Pointless.”
What is your point caller? That singles sales should determine retrospective music magazine coverage? No wonder the Dido Word edition sold so well!
Just be thankful he didn’t mention The Clash…
Now there’s a Best Of CD that’d be considerably shorter than a Quo one. Less adventurous too.
That’s just not true, is it? I realise the Clash may be lionised a little too often but to say they were unadventurous, is just, well, bollocks.
To each his own bollocks. A handful of decent songs and a hell of a pass for being ‘cool’ imv.
And here’s all 139 of them, ranked. From worst to best. By that Bill (not that one) Wyman chap again. (See also Beatles and Zep). He’s got it all arse backwards though. Sean Flynn at 126? Feck orf, it’s brill! The Equaliser at 122? Bollox, it’s brill! He’s got the top two right though.
http://www.vulture.com/2017/10/all-139-the-clash-songs-ranked-from-worst-to-best.html
Hitsville UK at number 4?!?!?!? Pure arsewater!
Washington Bullets is one of my bestest favourite Clash songs. #36 on this list
I am agree. Total choon.
Is it possible to explain the Clash’s musical significance using words like melody, chord structure, tune, innovation, arrangement,
harmony etc as opposed to attitude, statement, generation, volume and (largely male) adolescent rebellion?
I love Rock the Casbah as much as anyone, but it doesn’t seem any greater than Tenpole Tudor or post-Lyron Pistols.
You be ear-dead, dood. Melody, chord structure, tune, innovation, arrangement:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSWUKOPTt2g
Blimey, that the best you’ve got? That was embarrassing.
Couldn’t sing for toffee, but..
Straight To Hell
Bit rude.
Bartleby, you are right. The Clash never claimed to be fine musicians with a way with melody. They defiantly stuck to a few chords and sloganeering. They were a Punk band, after all. That doesn’t mean they are entirely without value. White Man still raises the hairs on the back of my neck four decades later. I like their championing of reggae and, later, disco and their pursuit of value-for-money. Both London Calling and Sandinista made losses because their expanded length wasn’t matched by price. That’s why I can forgive the dross on vinyl three of Sandinista. London Calling is a superb double Rock album with more tunes, thought-provoking lyrics and better sound quality than Exile On Main Street.
Very fairly put Tigs. I love London Calling, the live album and maybe half of the ‘essential’ stuff, which doesn’t tend to include the early shouty stuff – I think you possibly had to be there and a certain age.
People just like different things in music.
I was neither there, nor a certain age when they first broke, but I’ve always loved them. They just have this energy that does it for me. I adore Complete Control, and Rudy Can’t Fail and Charlie Don’t Surf and the way that the theme tune to CBBC’s Go Jetters is basically Death or Glory.
But then, I quite like bands to be a bunch of mates thrashing away together. It’s probably not a coincidence that when you asked above for a justification of the Clash that invoked melody and harmony and musicianship, my stomach turned. I can’t think of a single band I like who I’d ever describe in those terms. Horses for courses….
Wrong!
I was three when the first album came out. Caught up with it 11 years later. Brilliant! I suppose 14 is the right age for that kind of scratchy agitprop.
As I think I said elsewhere on here recently I do understand why people get annoyed by the Clash, or at least by the reverence they’re given. For a comparison I think about the way I feel about Nirvana and RAT Machine (good riffs, good band, clearly talented but… calm down, guys!)
Stuff like White Riot’s very intense. Intensity gets you a long way.
Only number 52 for “Justice Tonight/Kick It Over”?
No way!
Now there is one piece of Rock Revisionism that is unlikely to ever happen.
Cut The Crap was actually a perfect sign off to the Clash’s career.
That Mick Jones with all his fancy dan hip hop sequencing ideas.
No, what the public wanted was a complete mess of an album over-run by Bernie Rhodes ego, and Strummer unable to stand up to him
“Bernie Rhodes knows don’t hargue”, as The Specials (a far better band than The Clash) would say.
It’s pretentious political bollocks from people like him who make me think that “20 chords and tricky time signatures plus a bit of pondering” is better than “three chords and the truth”.