But you don't seem to understand my point I take it. Zeppelin wasn't pedaling Stairway to Heaven to corporations in the 70's. It took decades to take the foothold in the media it has now. And by the time it happened, they'd quit making music. But even they suffered in their waning years by turning into a showcase stadium band.
Bands that music snobs think are crap, but really aren't that bad
- Thread starter Melbourne Red
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But you don't seem to understand my point I take it. Zeppelin wasn't pedaling Stairway to Heaven to corporations in the 70's. It took decades to take the foothold in the media it has now. And by the time it happened, they'd quit making music. But even they suffered in their waning years by turning into a showcase stadium band.
Pretentious yes, one of rock & roll's more endearing attributes actually. However, to call it drivel is a joke. And so is anyone who says so.
I know they didnt. But what i'm saying is that even if they had done in my mind it would have no impact on the magic they did create. For me the only thing important is what goes from the earphone into my ears. I put everything else aside during that process. I forget the commercial aspect, the dislikeable personalities, etc everything but the music. Thats all that matters. Thats how i judge what is creative or artistic and what is not.
Prententiousness belongs with camp and cabaret, it's one of the acid tests that cuts out the crap from rock 'n' roll..
So the Beatles weren't pretentious then? Or the Stones?
It's about the motives of the creator. Had Page or Plant the desire to go commercial it would've hindered their creating brilliant art due to either a lack of complete focus on the music or a complete change in approach. Don't know how I can make it any clearer.
Who are some of your favourite artists?
Stairway has one of the best guitar solos of all time, instrumentally it is phenomenal. Pretentious maybe, but remember it was a different period when it was written.
Some of the time they were and they were crap. The Stones produced Exile in 1972 but have been a cabaret act since 1976.
Exile is a very pretentious record, as is most of the Stones' catalogue.
I'd disagree with that unless you're trying to claim that white boys singin' the rhythm 'n' blues is inherently pretentious I'd say it does exactly what it says on the tin. There's only one track of the 20-odd that breaks 5 minutes which is probably a good indicator not being up their own arse.
Mick Jagger not up his own arse? Never.
Why won't you tell us who your favorites are? You've been asked a couple of times now.
Why won't you tell us who your favorites are? You've been asked a couple of times now.
On the music vs commercialism issue, Bill Hicks had it about right. One other thing - I hate it when a great song - great because it captured the right feeling at the right time, catching the wave of the moment if you will, gets turned into a friggin dog food advert.
Take the Nina Simone song from the Muller adverts - a song presumably about slavery gets drained of all its meaning and power just in order to shift a bunch of sugared snacks.
What's the other one? Snap's I Got the Power, great club tune, now shifting Coco Pops.
Take the Nina Simone song from the Muller adverts - a song presumably about slavery gets drained of all its meaning and power just in order to shift a bunch of sugared snacks.
What's the other one? Snap's I Got the Power, great club tune, now shifting Coco Pops.
Isnt quality music marketable? Are most mainstream artists just more appealing to the public or just more interesting as people/individuals? What makes a band marketable? To it just sounds like an excuse for a lack of success.
Why do you say 'uncomplicated'? Is main strreeam music uncomplicated? When it comes to hard rock, is there a non mainstream band with better and deeper music that dwarfs something like Led Zeppelin and 'stairway etc' for its depth? I just dont buy that. People recommmend a lot of things that apparently didnt make it to your television screens but i've never heard a Zeppelin, or a Beatles, or a Maiden or a U2 or a Rolling Stones whilst doing so.
I'm genuinely trying to understand.v
By marketable I mean various things, including the personalities in the band, and whether the band fits into a style or genre of music that record companies are trying to mine at a particular time. Bonnie Prince Billy (Will Oldham) has made a dozen interesting, high quality albums and is regarded as a bit of a God among music enthusiasts when it comes to folk songwriters but he's probably sold one tenth of the number of records that John Mayer has. This is largely because John Mayer is appealing, among other reasons, due to his youthful good looks while Bonnie Prince Billy looks like this:
Furthermore, a band becomes marketable when the particular style of music they play comes into vogue. As I said before, I've got every Nirvana album and when I was younger I used to like them with a passion I've never mustered for any band ever since but I'll be the first to admit that they weren't a patch on the band they copied most, which was The Pixies. They were also heavily influenced by other bands like Mudhoney and The Jesus Lizard who were part of the scene they grew up in, none of whom had even a fraction of their success. In fact some would argue that Mudhoney were also a superior band to Nirvana although I wouldn’t go that far.
Either way, Nirvana were fortunate enough to emerge at a time when there was a global movement among record companies in which 'alternative music' started to be seen as a genre they could make money from. The song that gave them their breakthrough was 'Smells Like Teen Spirit', a great song without a doubt, but such a blatant rip-off of a Pixies tune that it's uncanny. It comes as no surprise that Kurt was a huge Pixies fan when you hear that song. It's got the soft-loud dynamic followed by a simple bassline over the quietly sung verse followed by a rapid surge into the screamed chorus, with the repetitive 'Hello, hello, how low' bit thrown in for measure. You could find something similar happening on 'Levitate Me', 'Gouge Away' or any of a dozen Pixies songs. In fact, my old media teacher swears that the first time he heard SLTS he thought it was the Pixies and was shocked to discover it wasn't. I'm sure he wasn't the only one.
Yet Nirvana managed to sell 300,000 copies of Nevermind every week for several months while the Pixies probably never even shifted 300,000 copies of a record in any one year. What it came down to was that Nirvana, for all the quality of their music, was in the right place at the right time to be signed by a label like Geffen. And while the early enthusiasm for the song was down to the fact that it was a great, if highly derivative tune, they were very fortunate to be on a label that had the muscle to milk it to the absolute full.
The grunge scene is a particularly instructive one if you’re looking at the way record companies market and cash-in on bands that fit into the particular scene or sound that are currently in vogue while other, identical bands never get the same opportunity. After Nirvana’s breakthrough, every label and his dog set about scouring America for copy-cat bands whom were capable of yielding a similar profit. This is why the likes of Soundgarden, Pearl Jam and Stone Temple Pilots suddenly found themselves being marketed to within an inch of their lives while bands who were doing the exactly the same thing, and IMO doing it better, in the 80s like the Pixies, Husker Du and Dinosaur Jr. were busy slugging it out on independent labels and College Radio, simply because at the time, the conditions of the industry were such that they simply weren’t marketable enough for record labels to bother.
By uncomplicated I point to artists like Goo Goo Dolls, Matchbox 20, Nickelback, John Mayer, Jack Johnson and various other shite I can’t think of this early in the morning. What they all have in common is very basic pop structures, with formulaic three chord progressions, verse-chorus-verse format and production so polished and pristine that you almost forget that there’s human beings playing the music. Their labels make them churn out albums with a certain number of 3 minute songs, which they’re happy to do because radio stations generally prefer that format. There are of course examples of music outside of this format becoming viable money-makers, such as the grunge scene, but generally this is the most bankable variety of music and big labels and FM stations go ga-ga for any band unimaginative enough to churn out this sound.
Generally if a band strays too far from that format too much, by having unusual arrangements, or pedal effects, or production that favours a raw, less polished sound, or any of a hundred other musical possibilities, the average punter listening to his FM radio station will find it too disconcerting to embrace and big labels are not going to touch them with a bargepole. Once again, there are lots of notable exceptions, and every so often labels try to market a different type of sound, but the sound I’ve described above will always be a bankable fall-back position for the big labels and one they’ve never abandoned even whilst trying to encourage alternative styles such as the grunge scene. This is a general maxim that has been true for at least a generation now and will continue to be for the next couple.
Anyway, the point of that spiel was that there’s fecking loads of reasons that brilliant bands don’t become mainstream, and the idea that mainstream exposure is something that all good bands inevitably receive, or even aspire to, is false. You've cited bands like Led Zep, the Beatles, Stones as examples of genuinely excellent bands who achieved huge popularity largely through the quality of their work, and you'd be right in arguing that none of those bands fit even remotely into the bankable big label formula I've described above, However, that era was decades ago. The industry has changed enormously, and for the worse, since then and what made a band popular back then is vastly different to what makes a band popular now. This is why in a discussion of the mainstream scene today, those bands and the era they came from are not particularly relevent. And it's also why mentioning those bands as examples of good bands becoming popular through merit don't change the fact that your assumption that non-mainstream bands, in today's context, would be mainstream if they were good enough is a slightly misguided one.
I think one of the problems with mass culture like pop and film is that because everybody eats it there's an assumption that it's all of a piece or to be taken on the same terms. No one in their right mind tries to compare Dan Brown with James Joyce but you get those kind of efforts in pop culture (Hendrix v Queen).
Uh-huh. I hated that stupid ROTS with Snoop, and the stupid Paul Oakland remix of another song. Ray Manzarek sees $$$ at every opportunity, Robby pretty much goes with whatever Ray says and John Densmore is the only remaining band member with any artistic credibility left IMO as he publicly spoke out against this amongst other things.
Jim Morrison would never have allowed anything like that to happen if he were alive, not a fecking chance in hell. In 1968, Jim was in England for a couple of weeks and The Doors received an offer of approx. $100,000 for Buick to use 'Light My Fire' in a commercial, which they accepted without Jim's consent (as they couldn't contact him). When Jim returned and found out about it he went ballistic at the band, it really hurt him a lot and massively affected his relationship with the band. He phoned up Buick and said he would smash a Buick to pieces at every concert if they used LMF in their commercial
Now there's a fecking artist for you. It's just like Jim said though; "money beats soul".
Fair enough. Was wondering if you'd stick by those convictions when applied to a band you like but if you do then fair play, and I suppose the Buick story backs up your point. I wouldn't personally be immediately dismissive of any commercial move but licensing for TV ads and really crass stuff like the Snoop thing are pretty unforgivable.
Well Jagger is difficult to pin down as 'Performance' classically illustrates. There's little point in widening this out to have people trying to have a go at Davis, Dylan, Hendrix or Cream.
Well I am in love with The Doors as a band between 1966-1971 but nowadays instead of trying to preserve their legacy by buying new tapes, they are busy releasing converse sneakers with Jim's face on or re-releasing 'Best of' compilations. It's all about the $$$ rather than preserving their legacy. Their last ever show with Jim exists so you'd imagine they'd jump at the chance to buy it...apparently not as a fan offered the tape holder more money than The Doors.
I can't wait for the next "best of" or "greatest hits" or even "best of the greatest hits"
Oh FFS.
Exactly, your prejudice disables any debate on the principles.
Dylan and Hendrix are untouchable. Cream? Meh. Great musicians but The Allman Brothers Band wrote far, far better songs.
Without Cream there would have been no Led Zep, no heavy rock, no metal, no def metal - and some people think that woud have been a good ting.
Yeah I'm up to about 1965 (maybe) after that I can't hack it.Miles Davis I take it?
Blue Cheer were around at a similar time in the States so Metal would have happened no matter what. Your second point is irrelevent.
Well that might have happened in a parallel universe but the last 40 years of heavy/metal is pretty much footnotes to Led Zep.
Although I'm a big fan of the Allman brothers, Cream wins this hands down. There up there with Hendrix IMO.
Allmans Bros are great, Duane monster on slide etc etc but they ain't in pissing distance of Cream.
To be honest that's patronising bullshit. Punk had a huge influence especially from the mid 80s on.
I think Led Zep pretty much defined it, punk added some flava but it's essentially the same shit recycled for the last 40 years.
Unbelievable. Like the Indian fella who somehow knows that nothing out of the mainstream can touch U2 even though he's heard virtually none if here comes mr 1970 complete with yawnsome taste in music and really funny username with his critique on a music genre he's barely in touch with. Prick.
It's no different than criticising films you haven't seen. Narrow minded feckwit.
It's no different than criticising films you haven't seen. Narrow minded feckwit.
You'd do better to add some critique rather than just rant or head bang.
peterstorey, you are little more than a wum in this thread. The fact that you're seriously only makes me sad for you.
He he, I bet you think Tevez is world class as well.
and without the yardbirds there'd have been neither obviously so that point becomes redundant and even more wrong basically.
Just get the new Isis album. It's called Waving Radiant. There are intelligent, thoughtful musicians out there who do play heavy music. It has evolved so much since 1983.
Gotto love the Led Zep haters. It's just so cool to hate them now. "Harrr they stole all their music" "Harr Stairway sucks" "Harr I have no taste in music and cant appreciate the brilliant piece that is Ramble On"
Biggest problem in this thread and almost any 'discussion' about music 'merit' is the lack of acceptance about taste and opinion
Its difficult to define what is definitive in music (a mouthful I know) and it's based purely upon personal taste which makes arguing that one band is absolute shite impossible to prove. I think you can only say that some are more popular than others and that some are better examples of certain genres than others - ok maybe 'different' not better.
I would agree that it is hard to understand some opinions but that's human beings for you - inexplicable, unpredictable.
I can't understand how Peter thinks a song like BRhapsody is shite. It appeals to and satisfies the listener and the musician on so many different levels - its quality is for me obvious. But he may just hear a load of pompous bollocks with a tune that has so many chords and melodic changes that it's maybe too much for his sensitive ear!
I had a great deal of problems back in the 70's when so many fine musicians in bands started giving it the ten minute solo. It became an intrinsic part of the style of the music - prog rock but for me simply often hid a really nice song and got bands widdling away for fking ever on some self important bollocks. Now I dont like that stuff but there are testament millions who bought it so they must know something I don't. I cant say its bad can I just that it doe'snt fit my bill for appreciation
Bad music and 'good' is very difficult to judge when everybody has a different aural perception to it and people get so fking dogmatic about it
Its difficult to define what is definitive in music (a mouthful I know) and it's based purely upon personal taste which makes arguing that one band is absolute shite impossible to prove. I think you can only say that some are more popular than others and that some are better examples of certain genres than others - ok maybe 'different' not better.
I would agree that it is hard to understand some opinions but that's human beings for you - inexplicable, unpredictable.
I can't understand how Peter thinks a song like BRhapsody is shite. It appeals to and satisfies the listener and the musician on so many different levels - its quality is for me obvious. But he may just hear a load of pompous bollocks with a tune that has so many chords and melodic changes that it's maybe too much for his sensitive ear!
I had a great deal of problems back in the 70's when so many fine musicians in bands started giving it the ten minute solo. It became an intrinsic part of the style of the music - prog rock but for me simply often hid a really nice song and got bands widdling away for fking ever on some self important bollocks. Now I dont like that stuff but there are testament millions who bought it so they must know something I don't. I cant say its bad can I just that it doe'snt fit my bill for appreciation
Bad music and 'good' is very difficult to judge when everybody has a different aural perception to it and people get so fking dogmatic about it
You're a pathetic little whiney tosser who cant handle anyone elses opinion but his own. First learn how to form a sentence, then post on forums.
'It's no different than criticising films you haven't seen'
No it isnt you deluded feck. Criticising something and loving something else are two different things. Stretch that brain of yours it might just become big enough to carry on a normal civilized conversation.
Completely agree. I guess this was the point of the thread. And its gone exactly how it was expected to.