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Big influential acts you have no desire to ever listen to

Started by The Mollusk, July 07, 2021, 10:41:13 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

Neville Chamberlain

Quote from: Kankurette on July 08, 2021, 11:38:29 AM
Which albums are the right ones? There's like five billion of them.

Live from the Vaults – Alter Bahnoff, Hof, Germany 1981

phes

Quote from: kalowski on July 08, 2021, 06:50:34 AM
arrogant Deacon
Hate them.

Always got totally the opposite impression of Deacon. What gave you a sense of his arrogance?

Dirty Boy

Quote from: Kankurette on July 08, 2021, 11:38:29 AM
Which albums are the right ones? There's like five billion of them.
Mainly the 80's ones. I found The Fall similarly middling and overrated for years, but ended up really getting into them, so it can happen.

If you've tried Hex Enduction Hour or Perverted By Language and didn't like them you can jolly well try again in a few years time!

Neville Chamberlain

Quote from: Dirty Boy on July 08, 2021, 11:44:14 AM
I read something once that said most of Zappa's music sounded like it was "in inverted commas" which stuck with me. It's that technical, studious, show-offy thing combined with the arch (and often plain hateful) "liberal baiting" lyrics. Throw in the horrendous production on some of those post 70's records and his lack of quality control and predilection for endless guitar spoo and yeah, there's an awful lot of shite.

Yes, I read that 'inverted commas' description, too - I think that sums it up perfectly!

Quote from: Dirty Boy on July 08, 2021, 11:44:14 AMBeefheart definitely won (you like Beefheart right, Nev?)

Now you're talking ;-)

PlanktonSideburns

#64
Quote from: Dirty Boy on July 08, 2021, 11:44:14 AM
Re: Zappa, i was a big Zappa fan in my younger days and still like some of it, mainly MOI-era. he was a gateway to me getting into a lot of other Prog and weirdo music that i'm far more likely to reach for nowadays.

I read something once that said most of Zappa's music sounded like it was "in inverted commas" which stuck with me. It's that technical, studious, show-offy thing combined with the arch (and often plain hateful) "liberal baiting" lyrics. Throw in the horrendous production on some of those post 70's records and his lack of quality control and predilection for endless guitar spoo and yeah, there's an awful lot of shite.

Beefheart definitely won (you like Beefheart right, Nev?)

Correct zappapinons here

Enjoy him as a teenage edge lord who wants to Learn about complex subdivisions of time, then grow up and listen to cardiacs

Or skip to stage two immediatley

PlanktonSideburns

Quote from: madhair60 on July 08, 2021, 09:33:48 AM
fantastic sneering thread mate, unfortunately can't contribute as I enjoy everything

Exactly the same as having no opinion

madhair60

Quote from: PlanktonSideburns on July 08, 2021, 01:03:50 PM
Exactly the same as having no opinion

dont care

edit: actully i;m being a cock again. sorry. flouncing now bye

Supposedly delicious foods I have no desire to ever taste:

1. Jellied eels

buzby

Quote from: idunnosomename on July 08, 2021, 11:35:47 AM
oh i didnt know that. As he says Brian plays it on his own live and you just assume he did it the studio with more effects.
Quote from: Rich Uncle Skeleton on July 08, 2021, 11:38:57 AM
Yeah get that one to the fucked hat thread on the double!
From the previous TOTP thread:
Quote from: buzby on August 03, 2017, 11:38:15 PM
The I Want To Break Free video was prime 'harrumph' material for my dad. The synth solo was played by Fred Mandel on a Jupiter 8 (using it's distinctive wide-range pitch bender to replicate May's guitar style)

Neville Chamberlain

Quote from: Dirty Boy on July 08, 2021, 11:44:14 AM
I read something once that said most of Zappa's music sounded like it was "in inverted commas" which stuck with me.

QuoteZappa was driven initially by an anger which, as his career progressed, degenerated into a satirical and hollow sneer. His arrangements, amalgamated pastiches of rock, doo-wop, jazz, classical and musique concrète, were breathtakingly finished, dazzlingly executed, but often seemed to be pointed demonstrations of virtuosity, a baton with which to beat the less advanced pop in all its earnest banality. Every passage in Zappa's oeuvre feels like it's in inverted commas. As a bandleader he was a disciplinarian to the point of being a martinet, and he was far more of a social conservative than he was often taken for. His vocals are not so much sung as spoken, sardonic and always above it all. What one finds hard to locate in Zappa and the Mothers of Invention is that intangible, haunting and haunted quality you might call soul.

David Stubbs in Future Days, there.

Ballad of Ballard Berkley

And Stubbs is a ROCK EXPERT, so he knows what he's talking about.

Chalk me up as someone else who can't stand Zappa and who just doesn't get the appeal of The Fall at all. Well that's not strictly true, I get the appeal, but their music leaves me cold. I've tried and tried, but they're just not for me. I shan't try again, you can't make me.

And Smith really was a charmless, bullying arsehole. I wouldn't really care about that if I liked the music, I listen to loads of artists who I'd never want to spend any time with, but the combination of arsehole singer and dreary music is insurmountable. 

I really don't care for New Order either. They're just so insipid. I've never been able to listen to one of their albums without drifting off after a couple of tracks. It's like listening to tracing paper.

And those are my opinions. Cheers.

Neville Chamberlain

See my avatar? <--

That's what I do when I hear The Pixies.

Brundle-Fly

Quote from: OnlyRegisteredSoICanRead on July 07, 2021, 07:23:59 PM

I believe the correct answer was Pulp.


And if you wanted to be really snooty a quarter of a century ago, you'd stick your oar in adding, 'Actually, I don't like Oasis, Blur OR Pulp, I like Tricky, Massive Attack and Portishead'.

The Mollusk

Zappa's pompous sneering at pop music and kicking back against it with his own pompous sneering music is precisely why I can't abide him or his work. That excerpt above about lacking soul is bang on. Conversely, The Residents' deconstruction and weird The Thing-esque freak assimilation with pop music standards was a remarkable and joyous endeavour. It's not cold or soulless at all - it bubbles and fizzes with life, and there's affection and compassion in the artists, scenes or styles they worm into and eat from the inside out. They got it absolutely right whereas Zappa was so far off the mark.

Ballad of Ballard Berkley

Exactly. Similarly, the Bonzos were a band who managed to satirise various forms of popular music without coming across as sneering gits who thought they were above it all. Innes and Stanshall loved commercial pop, but they were also aware of how silly it could be.

Without exception, the best pop parodies have always been written by people who actually know and, to varying degrees, like the music they're parodying.

Guest, McKean and Shearer clearly had some affection for ludicrous hard rock, hence why they were able to skewer it so perfectly. Same goes for Morris and his brilliant parodies of Pixies, REM, Pulp etc. The attention to detail is paramount.

The Mollusk

Trying my hardest not to be like "AND WEEN AS WELL!!" here but yeah, I agree fully.

Lisa Jesusandmarychain

Were Queen ever all that influential? Who've they influenced? I would say, perhaps semi- ironically, Manic Street Preachers, Muse and The Mars Volta, but I can't think of anyone else.

idunnosomename

The Rolling Stones

oh this is supposed to be one of those genuine "dont think theyre shit or anything" just why would I EVER listen to whole album of theirs, live or studio. cant imagine.

sevendaughters

Quote from: Lisa Jesusandmarychain on July 08, 2021, 03:16:02 PM
Were Queen ever all that influential? Who've they influenced? I would say, perhaps semi- ironically, Manic Street Preachers, Muse and The Mars Volta, but I can't think of anyone else.

Robbie Williams, My Chemical Romance, Guns'n'Roses?

Cuellar



Brundle-Fly

Bruce Springsteen.

Again, like Bob Dylan, I don't think he's boring or shite. To be honest, I haven't listened to a great deal of The Boss's output to make any sweeping dismissive judgments and I actually like him as a person from what I've read. My first proper love was obsessed with 'Brucie', as she used to call him, which immediately made me burst into a Bruce Forsyth impression singing Born To Run etc. Consequently, I heard Born In The USA album a lot on my car stereo in 1984 so it will always hold a special place in my heart.  It's odd I never explored further because he's not a million miles away from my other favourites at the time, Elvis Costello and Tom Waits. I liked Costello for his acidity,eclecticism and sporadic Englishness and Waits for his humour and the vaudevillian melodrama aspect.

Springsteen seemed a bit earnest and musically conservative to my liking (but I'm prepared to be proved wrong). His whole blue-collar sentiment and particular nostalgic take on America didn't resonate with me for some reason where other transatlantic artists did. For instance, I can nebulously connect with George Thorogood & The Destroyers, James Brown , The Beach Boys and all that Rat Pack bollocks so there's no real consistency there. I loved the single Streets Of Philidelphia though.

I suppose I should probably add Tom Petty, Warren Zevon, Leonard Cohen, Tim Buckley, Joni Mitchell and hell, maybe even Nick Cave. They're all too 'grown up' for me, a bit UNCUT magazine.  I feel guilty for never properly exploring these artists because I've probably missed out a lot. Journalist, Neil Kulkarni once said much the same thing about digging into Elvis Costello's back cat on ChartMusic podcast. There's only so much time and listening to music shouldn't feel like homework.

The Blues? Now, there's a whole can of worms.




Brundle-Fly

Quote from: Lisa Jesusandmarychain on July 08, 2021, 03:16:02 PM
Were Queen ever all that influential? Who've they influenced? I would say, perhaps semi- ironically, Manic Street Preachers, Muse and The Mars Volta, but I can't think of anyone else.

Jellyfish, Scissor Sisters. In fact, who was that other artist that sounded like Scissor Sisters that had a couple of big pop hits in the mid-00s. Very camp, afro hair, had a similar song to Queen's Fat Bottomed Girls. Began with a K?  Him.

Ballad of Ballard Berkley

Quote from: Lisa Jesusandmarychain on July 08, 2021, 03:16:02 PM
Were Queen ever all that influential? Who've they influenced? I would say, perhaps semi- ironically, Manic Street Preachers, Muse and The Mars Volta, but I can't think of anyone else.

They also influenced The Darkness and Foo Fighters. Quite the legacy etc.

Even if you can't stand Queen, there's no getting around the fact that Freddie and the lads were fully aware of how overblown and camp their music was. That was the whole point. Can you be ironically influenced by a band who were steeped in irony to begin with?

Ballad of Ballard Berkley

Quote from: Brundle-Fly on July 08, 2021, 03:24:10 PM
Jellyfish, Scissor Sisters. In fact, who was that other artist that sounded like Scissor Sisters that had a couple of big pop hits in the mid-00s. Very camp, afro hair, had a similar song to Queen's Fat Bottomed Girls. Began with a K?  Him.

Mika! 

Ballad of Ballard Berkley


Sebastian Cobb

Biggest thing that put me off Zappa was his fawning pseudy fans tbh.

Brundle-Fly


Cuellar


Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: Cuellar on July 08, 2021, 03:19:36 PM
The Beatles. Can't be ARSED.

I'm a bit like this. There are bits and pieces I've heard and like but a fair bit did nothing and I can't really be bothered digging much deeper.

I think part of the problem (and maybe in some cases with The Rolling Stones too) is that I grew up in a time less isolated so a lot of the soul and blues sources they were appropriating paying homage to I heard first hand too at the same time.