Musical Hot Takes

[sutin]

Yep, Introduce Yourself is still a great album. It's got that weird, Cali-gothic-art-funk-punk-rock sound that they, Jane's Addiction and a couple of others whose names escape me managed to pull off successfully. They definitely lost that with the start of the Patton era. A real shame.

I love the first album even more than IY.

[famethrowa]

Everyone in Pink Floyd was a pretty terrible musician. Could barely play in the traditional sense, but they slogged away and somehow managed to make something good. Even Gilmour, he's got a good touch, but can barely get out of first gear on the fretboard.

Danny Elfman owes most of his success to a long long assembly line of arrangers, orchestrators, producers, players, and editors who turn his half-formed, possibly ripped-off, melodic ideas into a fantastic end product. Same for John Williams.

We Built This City is totally awesome, it sounds huge and powerful and it's a great lyric for a band of 60's survivors to express in the midst of the 80s.

[famethrowa]

Prince's vault probably contains the best pop album since the Beatles

You know this isn't true. It's not there, it's not going to happen! It's just jams and rambling go-nowhere ideas.


Prince fucked himself over by being such a tightass about having his stuff on youtube etc. There was a period of a few years where his best music was just erased from history, and a new generation couldn't hear it, it's impacted his legacy.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

You know this isn't true. It's not there, it's not going to happen! It's just jams and rambling go-nowhere ideas.

there are probably days worth of jams and 'jazz', but what we've already heard suggests treasures. nearly every good Prince album after Around the World in a Day is an edit-down from something more ambitious with a tracklist to make you salivate

and he's responsible for ridiculous jams! the thought of more like the extended America, Computer Blue and I Would Die 4 U gets my pulse racing. its a crime he had to trim so many of his songs DOWN. In a sane world, the coda at the end of I could never take the place of your man would go on for a fortnight

[The Pink Chunk Jazz Band]

Faith No More with Chuck on vocals was good.

Is that a hot take? I love Chuck's doomy goth syrup vocals. "Why Do You Bother" is such a song.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

other prince hot take is less favourable - loads of his best songs are just alternating chords and sometimes kind of plodding for a minute before the band comes together or things fall into a groove

i love Little Red Corvette, but it takes until the second go round of the chorus to get really special and all the best parts are in the ending and fade with the dual voices and guitar overdub. listening to the 3 min version you'd never know what a great track it was. 5 min version is candidate for his best song but you never hear most of what makes it so good

[Video Game Fan 2000]

the stones could have stretched out more too

[Egyptian Feast]

Imagine if he had actually released Camille as intended.

I wish he had. It'd probably be my favourite Prince album (now that I've heard Dirty Mind and Parade a few too many times) if he had released it. 

[Joe Qunt]

I'm annoyed that The Black Album isn't anywhere online :(

[Magnum Valentino]

I think that Sepultura are far better without Max Cavalera than with. And fuck it, even though he's my favourite drummer ever, Igor too.

[dontpaintyourteeth]

I think that Sepultura are far better without Max Cavalera than with. And fuck it, even though he's my favourite drummer ever, Igor too.

scalding hot this

Quadra was really good though

[wrec]

Everyone in Pink Floyd was a pretty terrible musician. Could barely play in the traditional sense, but they slogged away and somehow managed to make something good. Even Gilmour, he's got a good touch, but can barely get out of first gear on the fretboard.

Very true of Waters and Mason, think you're right about Gilmore. But Wright was a better musician than the rest and Syd was a genuine innovator, and not just because of being a crazy diamond or whatever.

We Built This City is totally awesome, it sounds huge and powerful and it's a great lyric for a band of 60's survivors to express in the midst of the 80s.

Interesting argument but though am eternally amused by them singing "mamba" instead of "mambo" and only realising at the mixing stage.

[wrec]

Dee Dee Ramone and Shaun Ryder wrote fantastic lyrics, unlike the fucking Manics

Agree though gotta hand it to the Manics for the "libraries gave us power" bit. Probably haven't heard a Manics song for 20 years but Bradfield's delivery always irritated me, sounds like a band that are so precious about lyrics that they don't care about decent phrasing.

Re general Screamadelica discourse: in 1994 a girl I was seeing introduced me to her friend who was also "into music". He mentioned Screamadelica and I said I hadn't heard it and he reacted with genuine panic - not in an affected way, genuinely triggered in the pre-ironic sense.

[PlanktonSideburns]

The jefferson starship take is not so much spicy, as vinegar on fire -

That song sounds like some sort of charity single for a donkey rescue sanctuary that needs asbestos removed to keep running

[Video Game Fan 2000]

they're my favourite band but live bootlegs suggest that can's classic line up during their purple patch was a frequently tedious live experience, later boots make them sound more appealing as their records got less interesting.

john french is as responsible for 'captain beefheart' as don vliet was

its a travesty that tom jones never cut an album with a heavy rock backing in the 60s, vanilla fudge style. we were robbed of a welsh janis joplin

Agree though gotta hand it to the Manics for the "libraries gave us power" bit. Probably haven't heard a Manics song for 20 years but Bradfield's delivery always irritated me, sounds like a band that are so precious about lyrics that they don't care about decent phrasing.

won't lie, those lyrics meant a bit to me as a teenager. but now i love the lyrics for PCP, my keeper manics song, really captures something about being lefty/outsider in south wales and frustrated at the all persuasive liberal do goodery. smothered everything. the line about kids with no school dinners but new bilingual signs, and "when i was young PC meant police constable" - then some cut and paste. good stuff. five bloody stars

[Video Game Fan 2000]

pre-Different Class Pulp are uncomfortably misogynistic, it only seems ironic with the hindsight of how sensitive Jarvis became after. he did a reverse Ray Davies

good singles but a band releasing Lipgloss or Razmataz in 2002 would have been belted, never mind how they sound with todays ears. think the reason i love His n Hers so much is that it crystalizes the sense of someone thinking "yipes i really shouldnt be writing or thinking this shit should i" the first rays of self awareness through dirty windows

[Kankurette]

Some of the Manics' recent lyrics are clunky as hell. 'I had a very bad dream, the main actor in it was me'. The Holy Bible is a different animal though. VGF has PCP; I have Yes. I know being a self-harmer who loves the Manics is cliched but Yes was one of the few songs that articulated how I felt.

Couldn't agree more. Modern music is far too middle-class and it needs a working-class revolution to make it interesting again.

At least there's grime, I guess.

[drummersaredeaf]

John Frusciante and Flea are incredible, creative and inventive musicians that happen to make their living in one of the worst bands to have ever existed. JF in particular has released some incredible solo stuff that makes me wonder what the fuck he gets out of that dog shit stadium band wank.

[Magnum Valentino]

Chad as well, a fantastic drummer. Really saddens me that the only way to get all three of them always involves that other cunt cunting it about upfront.

[The Mollusk]

John Frusciante and Flea are incredible, creative and inventive musicians that happen to make their living in one of the worst bands to have ever existed. JF in particular has released some incredible solo stuff that makes me wonder what the fuck he gets out of that dog shit stadium band wank.

Money? *QI siren goes off*

I don't think that opinion will be a hot take on CaB though, and tbh I feel like the majority of RHCP fans would have difficulty arguing against you as well since they probably don't know much if any of Frusciante's solo material.

[drummersaredeaf]

Money? *QI siren goes off*

I don't think that opinion will be a hot take on CaB though, and tbh I feel like the majority of RHCP fans would have difficulty arguing against you as well since they probably don't know much if any of Frusciante's solo material.

I suppose it feels spicy to me because they are so fucking abortive that it pains me to give either of them any praise.

I'd go as far as to say I actively hate Frusciante because I think he's a fucking wank guitarist who gets praise from people who buy strats, and his guitar playing is of absolutely zero note. That is until you divorce the gurning sloppy box one pentatonic RHCP shit from his solo albums or session work with much better acts.

[willbo]

I thought I didn't like it at the time, and that The Strokes and The White Stripes were the bestest best bands ever. And while I still think they are both good, in a never-actually-listen-to-them-anymore sort of way, I am legit into a lot of nu-metal and nu-metal adjacent music now. Deftones, Nothingface, Snot, Flapjack, Slipknot, Korn, SoaD, late era Sepultura, Soulfly, Mushroomhead, Mad Capsule Markets, Mudvayne... I can't pretend they're all brilliant bands but they're fun, and the older and fatter I get the more value that has.

Side note: another hot take is that I think early rap-rocky Deftones is better than later art-rocky Deftones. But I like both.

have you heard Downer's "last time"? I still play that song a little, one of the more obscure classics IMO

I've got a similar hot take to you in that I would listen to Machinehead's "Burning Red" a million times before "the blackening" which just sounds hollow and forced to me. I love Slayer's "Diabolous" album too

[willbo]

John Frusciante and Flea are incredible, creative and inventive musicians that happen to make their living in one of the worst bands to have ever existed. JF in particular has released some incredible solo stuff that makes me wonder what the fuck he gets out of that dog shit stadium band wank.

my unpopular RHCP opinion is that the Josh K albums were a genuine leap forward for the band and way underrated, and they took a step backward in getting Frusciante back (not that Frusciante isn't amazing, I just imagine him and RCHP being more interesting seperately)

[Kankurette]

I've heard a couple of Frusciante's solo songs, Ramparts being one, and I agree - he is legit talented and he was wasted in RHCP. Flea is the best thing about them though. Love their older/early '90s stuff, dislike pretty much everything post-Californication except Can't Stop, if only because of the video with them acting like berks. They're also one of the worst live bands I've ever seen. I swear, if you post a thread about bad festival experiences on a British social media website, someone will always mention RHCP at Reading 2007 because they were that dreadful, and worse, they ignored the audience. I get not all musicians do banter or chatting, Rammstein don't for instance, but at least acknowledge there are people watching you, you know?

I've got a similar hot take to you in that I would listen to Machinehead's "Burning Red" a million times before "the blackening" which just sounds hollow and forced to me.

It has The Blood The Sweat The Tears on it, one of my favourite songs of all time, and I love it for that reason alone.

[PammySpacek]

Here are my Manics hot takes:

Revol is the best song on The Holy Bible.

Faster would be better if the lyrics had had a few more drafts.

I can't listen to Yes anymore, because the "Call him Rita if you want" bit just makes me imagine G.L. belting it out into his webcam at 3am, all boggle-eyed.

[Kankurette]

Controversial one: Liverpool Revisited > SYMM. I'm glad the Manics support the Hillsborough Justice Campaign, but SYMM is such a horrible fucking dirge with dreadful lyrics.

[willbo]

I always liked him in interviews and as a general commentator but when I finally decided to give his music a chance in 2013 (I never heard him growing up besides 3 or 4 hits, my Dad loathes him for some reason), it just sounded like weaker versions of music I already loved.

Something like Jean Jeanie, it's just utterly generic Chuck Berry rock 'n' roll. This is the genius David Bowie?!

There's a fair chance i'd feel different if i'd grown up with him, but I didn't, so I don't.

I like the Ziggy album, but so much of his stuff sounds to me like he's just playing at parodies of genres like soul or whatever. Other big artists like The Beatles, Led Zep and Queen have done so many different genres yet they seem to have a strong core so that their discography always sounds like them and has the same identity. Yet I don't feel that same connection or identity with Bowie, like his stuff is so varied you can love one album yet hate the rest. There's just something...loose and inconsistent about his genre experiments somehow.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

plenty of my favourite rock music is utterly generic Chuck Berry rock n roll because a lot of what makes rock n roll a good type of music peaked with Chuck Berry and the first wave of white boys who ripped him off to get laid round the back of burger bars, getting too far beyond that is going to lead to some right crap statistically

[willbo]

It has The Blood The Sweat The Tears on it, one of my favourite songs of all time, and I love it for that reason alone.

I knew modern metal was lost to me when Metal Hammer voted The Blackening the top album of the 21st century. I mean, I don't hate it or anything, it just does nothing for me. I prefer the weird experimental Machinehead the fans all hate.

[dontpaintyourteeth]

Controversial one: Liverpool Revisited > SYMM. I'm glad the Manics support the Hillsborough Justice Campaign, but SYMM is such a horrible fucking dirge with dreadful lyrics.

Nah, I agree with this. I understand the sentiment of going "there's nothing I can really say" because it's such a heavy subject but like... just bin the song? Crap tune as well.

Liverpool Revisited is pretty meh (and I reckon Resistance is Futile is probably their worst album) but it's less of a... yeah, a dirge.