It’s a well-established fact* that you get more comments and attention for your posts online if you say something incorrect, spell a wrod wrong or getting your grammar not rightly.
Trolls perform a service for pedants – they feed a need to share passionately-garnered knowledge, to enlighten the ignorant, to show off. So, as a good servant to the Afterword thrivemind, here are some misconceptions you may wish to correct, not infamous ‘Paul is dead’, ‘Elvis is alive’ ones. More things you are tired of hearing about your favourite music.
- Prog rock is over-complicated for the sake of it, it’s all about pixies and wizards and you can’t dance to it.
- Techno/house/acid/rave is all the same and it’s just a big thumping, repetitive noise made on machines by people with no musical ability.
- Folk music is tedious out-of-tune warbling about blacksmiths and sailors and maids in castle towers.
- Americana is basically slightly less sentimental country and western.
- All pop music since 2000 is auto tuned, has the same music and is mass produced by a factory in Sweden.
- Everything was better before 1973.
- Bob Dylan can’t sing.
- Neither can Joni Mitchell.
- Neil Young shouldn’t sing.
- All modern music is derivative and has been done better before.
Responses welcomed in the form of ‘Well actually’ or ‘I think you’ll find’ or even ‘that’s actually true’. Maybe the trolls among us can post some more and we can achieve true enlightenment (and the pleasure of a good tease).
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*Go on, prove me wrong.
Ah good – is this where I get to say “New Order haven’t released anything worthwhile since Regret”?
Precisely this. We can never have too many ‘when were New Order last any good’ threads or indeed thread hijacks, here on the Afterword.
Well actually (as we both know) they stopped releasing high quality material after Substance.
Especially as it is often you or I making the reductive pronouncement.
Indeed. And long may it remain so. Who knows how many there are out there who still need this vital information. Maybe, to encourage (slightly) younger old music fans, it could replace the Beatles/Stones opening question for newcomers?
@salwarpe I think you’ll find Technique was a fine, fine album.
I think I may find that, some time long in the future. Until then I will dismiss it as a poor cash-in on dance culture with a few tunes/basslines nicked from The Cure.
I remember listening to The Walk by The Cure on the radio 1 new singles roundup and being amazed that no one said “…it’s basically Blue Monday though, innit?”.
and another thing… I was gonna say that as well.
Ditto Never Stop by Dear Mister Echo.
Inbetween Days sounds quite a bit like New Order too.
“No one actually likes jazz, they just say they do to impress their friends.”
I like Jazz and I have no friends.
These two factors may be connected. 🤔
I like jazz and there are many dozens of other reasons why I have no friends.
I collect jazz magazines and I have no friends
Downbeat’s Readers’ Wives section is totally gone, man.
See.
It didn’t work, did it.
All techno/dance producers are in a “Fuck it, some doof-doof will do” frame of mind by the time they’re programming the drum samples.
We don’t have trolling on the Afterword. That’s for dodgers.
…, camp sailors and Kenneth Williams.
Colour me shocked.
Don’t Vada Back In Anger.
The first four statements are rock-solid incontrovertible truth.
Well, actually, I think you’ll find…
…no, I’ve lost the will to live already. I was going to launch into The ProgRock Defence, but I need a cup of tea and a lie down before I can deal with it.
If we can class Iron Butterfly as prog or at least ‘proto prog’ then I think you’ll find that it can be danced to as a friend used to dance to the drum solo in ‘In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.’
Also I think you’ll find that Led Zeppelin referred to dance in Stairway to Heaven with the line.
I always thought it was a Bex Bissell in the hedgerow, all the better to do the spring clean for the May Queen…
Prog is dead.
Nothing progressive in it since about 1972. Even King Crimson have stopped progressing.
Definitely nothing progressive (or of merit) about Inna-Gadda-Da-Vida.
And incidentally, You call that dancing?
To paraphrase Zappa: Prog is not dead – it just smells funny…
Is that a Gong teapot?
Why, yes: even has a propeller on top…
Who supplies the leaves? *sinks and taps side of nose*
Some fungi. *winks*
Drugs are no laughing matter. Apart from mushrooms, which are fucking hilarious
Whittards – Assam TGFOP1 2nd Flush…
Ava cuppa tea,
Ava nuvver one,
Ava cuppa tea – oi!
I thought 2nd Flushes were for when Mr Log came to call.
The Phantom has struck again!!
@Tiggerlion – photographic evidence…
Cor!
Everybody would buy CDs if they just would stock them in supermarkets. Fact.
The dire 80s.
It’s (not?) your fault you were born at the wrong time and missed the greatest era for music.
And you can’t tell the boys from the girls….
…and they’re all on drugs
What people don’t get is just how much teenage boys lie about sex. You only have to listen to Summer Nights to understand that. It’s there in plain sight, people!
Akira Kurosawa sweated and strained for a year agonising over his masterpiece. Grease knocks it out in the first ten minutes, while you’re still making a hole in the bottom of the popcorn bucket and Frankie Valli’s bostin’ theme song is still reverberating in your head
The Grease theme (written by Barry Gibb) is the greatest pop song there ever was
It’s not the best song in Grease though. That would be Stockard Channing singing There Are Worse Things I Could Do.
or “It’s Raining on Prom Night” as well.
I agree – it is a really good song.
How about agreeing with the Court that Mike Joyce and Andy Rourke’s contributions to The Smiths were just as important as Morrissey & Marr’s? That’s why no-one involved has gone on to better things because The Smiths were a formidable 4 piece, specifically.
Is that trolling…or is it the truth? I now think it’s true.
You might be right (I liked Morrissey’s first few solo albums though)
“Folk music is tedious out-of-tune warbling about blacksmiths and sailors and maids in castle towers” – unless it’s sung by Bob Dylan, in which case it’s tedious out-of-tune warbling about a wider range of subjects…
Completely agree
I think you missed “that’s not music, that’s shouting”.
See also ‘You’ll grow out of it’. Now, let’s have a look at the average of bloggers on this site.
Then great NWOBHM albums of 1979-1983 is some of the best music exer released.
Then great, now rubbish.
You don’t have to be deluded to contribute to The Afterword but it helps.
BTW those Oasis albums sound better than ever.
No-one actually likes U2. It’s just that everyone thought people did, and were too polite to air an opinion.
(Note: I actually do quite like U2, despite my statement above)
Ah, yes: but are you just being polite?
“All Punk is tuneless rubbish”
Now I may not use the Sex Pistols * to debunk your heartfelt beliefs, but a selection from Buzzcocks, The Jam, The Damned, and The Clash may change your clothearredness
* I think it wise to also avoid Sham69, The Exploited, The Business, Cockney Rejects, and Cock Sparrer
Also, they couldn’t play their instruments and hated prog.
Good thing, as the moment Anarchy in the UK was released, prog completely vanished and was never heard of again. By the time Steve Jones called Bill Grundy a fucking rotter, Emerson Lake and Palmer were living under a railway bridge.
Arf! That image of ELP made me laugh moose.
A railway bridge with Persian carpets and candelabra.
Not under a bridge, but famously one of ELP who had some massive country pile ended up downgrading to a basic semi in Twickenham.
Not in 1977 though. Most narratives of this period say “Punk rock came along and changed everything”…. No it bloody didn’t.
People did start wearing skinny ties to be fair.
That’s not R&B…
Too much twerking, not enough gurning.
Maybe not an Afterword T-shirt…but certainly a Moose T-shirt.
Pay as you gurn, whistle while you twerk.
See also “That’s not Soul. It’s completely soul-less”.
Reggae is only for summer
Could I point out that, at my age, it is actually quite a struggle to lively up oneself when it’s so grey and bleedin’ ‘taters outside.
It’s rough to bogle in a frost.
The mind bogles!
He’s the Bogle Wogle Bogle Boy of Company B
Fo shogle my nogle
Thelonious Monk would never have left his piano stool and danced to the Mahavishnu Orchestra.
I think you’ll find that he would have…
He danced to music only he could hear.
Rolling Stones? About time they got a proper job.
Disappointed. I was hoping this would be a safe space for real pedants actually to be pedantic. (Note unsplit infinitive.)
Go ahead, Mike. The opportunity is here. Speaking* as one who is employed in part to check grammar and spelling of colleagues’ texts, I’m supposed to be attuned to spotting and correcting written errors, so any subsequent ribbing will of course be gentle.
*To be correct here, I should have put ‘typing’ or ‘swiping’. Where does the true pedant stand on the use of idioms? Is it appropriate to go full ‘Mr Logic’ in unpicking them?
Hmmm…when I left the Eden Project to come to Oz, my work ‘friends’ gave me a t-shirt which read I CORRECT MINOR GRAMMAR POINTS. I AM AMAZING.
I could go on, and on, and on, but I won’t. The mark of a true pedant is the ability to go on believing in his sacred cows long after it’s become obvious that nobody gives a shit. But since you asked, one thing that boils my piss is eBay sellers’ habit of describing their wares as vintage/retro, ie both ‘vintage’ and ‘retro’ simultaneously. This is impossible. Vintage is old (how old depends on your own age of course). Retro is new got up to look like old, like those Roberts radios that have wifi and bluetooth. So I say, anyway, because I’m right.
I’ll take that as a condiment.
Sauce!
I’ve only just realized that, by challenging the whole focus of the OP (it’s not about pedantry), you are demonstrating black belt levels of advanced pedantry. Well played!
It’s a gift, he said modestly…I did say I was disappointed.
You should really have refused to accept the T-shirt until
they corrected their shocking use of “grammar points” instead of
“points of grammar” or “grammatical points”
Then again, maybe I’m missing the point
You definitely aren’t missing the point, except for your last sentence*. Grammatical nit picking is at least half of the point** of this thread. Gentle teasing of pedants is the other 55%***.
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* I assume it’s a sentence, even though there is no end punctuation)
** I may**** share a magnified point with pie chart sections to illustrate proportionality
** let’s go 110% on this, everyone!
**** never
Surely two two point asterisks are incorrect too.
B*ll*cks!
The Honourable Member for Progrockshire Central speaks my mind.
*st*r*sks!
@fitterstoke no matter with way you drop your B*ll*cks they always land butterside up.
Don’t be shy, show us your bollocks.
But, but – where’s your asterisks??
Real men don’t use asterisks.
You ****ing rotter.
That’s Muphry’s Law, that is.
…he’s not bitter.
Come to my arms, my Beamish boy.
…. stout fellow
Let’s hear it for Catnip for Pedant’s.
Catnip for pedants, a tonic for the troops, ice-cream for crow, no Christmas for John Quays.
Tonic For The Troops – the third best Boomtown Rats album
C for Miles.
I for the engine
Re: For Madness
D for Kate
E.M. Forster
U for Joyce
C for Thighlanders
I only deployed groce’rs apostrophe; I didn’t expect it to turn out quite like that.
A real catas’trophe
Punktuation’s not dead
It’s just come to a full stop, period.
“The Afterword is just a load of old blokes talking bollocks”.
“No! No, I won’t have that!
.
.
.
.
…There’s a place in Eastbourne.”
I think you’ll find that’s B*ll*cks
“CD: pure, perfect sound forever”
Your on the wrong thread.
ITYF it’s ‘You’re’. *ducks*
I think yule find it’s yore.
I thought his “error” was the pedant’s equivalent of turning your empty beer glass upside down in a bar full of pissed off and pissed up Aussie bikers