Cult of (a) personality.
Music The death of bands?
- Thread starter Pogue Mahone
- Start date
I sometimes wonder that too, but I think it's just new music genuinely doesn't hold a candle to the classics of the past and nothing new that I listen to sticks or resonates with me, so I go back to the old stuff.
Ban this guy
The Foo Fighters sound like an anti-supergroup, that consists of the most boring and pointless members of some great bands.
Fairly accurate. Never did like them and never saw the appeal. I could have won VIP tickets to see them once, it was tickets or cash, I took the cash.
How old are you? Music is as good as it has ever been in my opinion, but I'm as guilty as anyone at just sticking the old stuff I love sometimes. It has old memories and feelings attached, and I think you just have more time and energy to immerse yourself in finding new music when you're younger.
I try and discover new music every so often for that reason. I always find there are phenomenal releases constantly coming out when I do delve into it.
For me the Foo Fighters are mostly a cult of personality around Dave Grohl, who portrays himself as this true and real rockstar. The music is absolutely pointless. You’d have to pay me to watch them.
Plus he's recently been shown up for being an absolute piece of shit.
He’s basically the same person Jared Leto is.
I saw a hilarious post on reddit where someone essentially said "I don't like putting celebrities on pedestals and don't like it when people really idolise them. As an aside, Dave Grohl being revealed as a cheat has ruined my life."
Hard to believe that a group containing members of Nirvana, The Germs, Sunny Day Real Estate and No Use for a Name manage to play the blandest of bland radio-rock. It shouldn't be possible. There's some stuff across the first 3 albums that I think is decent, but they just got duller
Dave Grohl somehow successfully conned the world into thinking he's a saintly super nice guy too, and this recent affair is seen as the first blemish on his reputation. Even though by his own admission he cheated on his first wife a bunch of times in the 90s, causing their divorce. The whole band's involvement with the AIDS denial organisation Alive and Well in the early 00's should have absolutely buried him and the Foo Fighters, but they masterfully sidestepped it by completely ignoring it, and his squeaky clean nicest-guy-ever reputation remained untarnished. Grohl is a PR mastermind, but his music post-Nirvana is mostly guff. Every time I hear a new Foo Fighters song from each passing album, I find it impossible to believe anybody actually likes them.
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Morons, they're just people at the end of the day, they shouldn't have such an impact on your life, especially when you don't actually know them.
Jeez. That organisation sounds terrible.
This thread really turned into a hate Dave Grohl. I don't particularly like Foo Fighters either, but Dave Grohl is certainly a talented musician.
Both yes and no. It's sort of the samd argument. Since the music bands traditionally makes isn't really the mainstream music right now, it generally takes longer for bands to establish themselves these days. The last band to make an impact right away that I remember is Imagine Dragons, and they make very radio compatible music.
Dave Grohl comes across a nice enough fellow. He’s a bit self indulgent but famous people tend to be. He was a brilliant drummer for Nirvana, absolutely brilliant, but I’ve just never really found Foo Fighters remarkable at anything. As a singer Grohl is okay but he’s more of a second best singer in the band material and their songwriting is usually very safe and in inventive.
Back on topic, rock music has essentially died a slow and painful death in mainstream music since the 00s. There’s good indie stuff out there but hip hop has taken its place now with rock relegated to the background. Looking forward to Beato’s video on it as his stuff is great and aligned (mostly) with my musical senses.
Back on topic, rock music has essentially died a slow and painful death in mainstream music since the 00s. There’s good indie stuff out there but hip hop has taken its place now with rock relegated to the background. Looking forward to Beato’s video on it as his stuff is great and aligned (mostly) with my musical senses.
Foo Fighters are my favourite live band, have seen them a bunch of times. Great energy and crowd interaction and incredibly talented musicians. The vitriol for them kind of odd tbh.
It's hard to feel vitriol for a band so boring. Don't disagree that they are all talented, the music is just so safe and they never really evolved at all. If someone put them on, I probably wouldn't complain, but I'd never choose to listen to them myself.
They never evolved? They had a pure metal and a pure disco album in addition to a lot of folkesque kind of stuff. They have more range than most bands tbh....but whatever, people like what people like. Very good live band regardless of what you like though!
What was the pure metal Foo Fighters album?
I know Grohl has done metal oriented side projects. Probot and Dream Widow were cool. Wasn't aware of a FF metal album.
He is a very talented drummer, clearly the thing he's best at, by far. Still a POS though for that Alive and Well stuff, and the lack of accountability for it.
I know Grohl has done metal oriented side projects. Probot and Dream Widow were cool. Wasn't aware of a FF metal album.
He is a very talented drummer, clearly the thing he's best at, by far. Still a POS though for that Alive and Well stuff, and the lack of accountability for it.
Think most of the cool new(er) bands I see are in the punk space - think Amyl & the Sniffers, the Chats, Shame, Viagra Boys, Death Grips, I also like a few bands in the electro pop space like Confidence Man, but yeah - none of them are gonna be topping the charts.
Also - didn't Heat Waves by Glass animals top the charts in the states for a while? Is this stat just about the UK? Given how globally interconnected music is now, single country charts seem quite irrelevant.
PS. appreciate i'm not a mod but the "argue about the foo fighters" topic is tedious as hell and maybe start another thread.
Also - didn't Heat Waves by Glass animals top the charts in the states for a while? Is this stat just about the UK? Given how globally interconnected music is now, single country charts seem quite irrelevant.
PS. appreciate i'm not a mod but the "argue about the foo fighters" topic is tedious as hell and maybe start another thread.
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Personally I think these guys are to blame
Yeah I agree with this. Art/post-punk/rock have had some good bands in the 10s and 20s. The ones you mention, and then stuff like Squid, Fontaines DC, Protomartyr, Crack Cloud, Iceage, Gilla Band (Girl Band), Parquet Courts. And then of course King Gizzard who don't really belong to the above but have been interesting to follow.
Concepts like bands, being on charts, and radio are all going the way of the DoDo bird imo, mainly because of how music is disseminated during the information age and how artists make money by promoting themselves on social media. Its a direct artist to audience relationship these days, which incentivizes individuals to go it alone.
Agree 100%
Bands are cool when theyre metal or rock but when they're singing pop love songs their not cool their pathetic and if you like bands like westlife and backstreet boys you shoul dbe ashamed and listen to the real music like motzart and kenny g
Good bands are still about, they just aren't being signed anymore due to cost. And you need to be signed to make money and keep putting out stuff.
A while ago, I was in a band that did the pub circuit in the East Midlands for a couple of years. You lose money doing it, and the only way out of that financial hole is a recording contract. Those are hard to come by - you have to be ridiculously good to get one over a solo artist because it's so much cheaper to sign them instead.
A while ago, I was in a band that did the pub circuit in the East Midlands for a couple of years. You lose money doing it, and the only way out of that financial hole is a recording contract. Those are hard to come by - you have to be ridiculously good to get one over a solo artist because it's so much cheaper to sign them instead.
My favourite band - Fleet Foxes - is a current band but they’re neither rock or metal band but more indie folk. The War on Drugs have released some great more conventional rock albums (more springsteen like than proper hard rock) over the last decade.
Having said that, the death of the genre in mainstream music is undeniable. I can’t even imagine the charts being topped by a Queen, Zeppelin or Nirvana now - because that style of music has completely faded from the the face of pop culture. People want hip hop and your Taylor Swift’s and Sabrina Carpenters and that’s what executives will push.
It’ll probably take another Nirvana-esque moment to shift the tide again.
Grohl wasn’t pointless. He was a tramendous drummer and an important cog in giving a three man band a big sound. It’s just that Kurt was a musical genius who sang, played guitar and most importantly wrote their whole (brilliant yet short lived) catalogue. In any other band, Grohl wouldn’t be considered a pointless member.