I love Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s get it on”, fully and wholly. His biggest acclaimed work however, “What’s going?”, just don’t work for me. I see the appeal, and I recognise it as great musicanship, I just don’t… really bother.
Everything on this list: http://www.rollingstone.com/features/coverstory/featuregen.asp?pid=2164
aside from the London Calling, VU&Nico and the Dylan records.
And you know what? I hate Jazz. Thats right, all jazz. I have several of the big legendary albums on CD (Giant Steps, Live at Massey Hall, Kind of Blue, etc). And I cant stand any of them. I tried, really I did. I even dated a Jazz major in college, and she tried to make me understand. But its so goddamn boring.
There were a few genres of music I never understood until I listened to them high, including classical music (in such a state, one can truly follow the emotions of each piece–it’s amazing; before I did that kind of thing, I always regarded the talk of “Oh, this piece represents the sadness of the Russians” as pure bollocks).
One song that really, really annoys me is “I Want You to Want Me”. It’s so popular, even today. Makes me want to hurt someone. I don’t think any amount of dope could make me like that song.
Yeah, the only jazz album I’ve got is “pop” jazz - Brubeck’s (excellent) Time Out. I tried listening to my dad’s old LP’s of Mingus, Jobim, etc., and no love.
I also have to watch my mouth in the company of classic rock fans, because I love Zeppelin, the Stones, Clapton, and their ilk, Pink Floyd just drives me up a tree. Waaaaaaaaaaa-we’re-holding-the-first-note… waaanaaaaaaaaaaaa-now-we’re-on-another-note…
I think I’m not patient enough to appreciate their “sublime pacing” which sounds to me like “really boring noodling.”
And speaking of noodling, I love American Beauty by the Dead, but haven’t dared to pick up another, because I’m afraid it will have something like Dark Star on it. For you non-Dead fans, “Dark Star” is supposed to be the pinnacle of their work. It’s something like a half hour of Jerry and the kids noodling.
There, I’ve spilled my guts.
As a lover of classic jazz, I must agree with this pagan on one count, and that concerns a complete and utter befuddlement as to why Kind of Blue is regarded as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, works of the genre. Give me Relaxin’ or either of Miles’ live dates at the Black Hawk in a heartbeat.
In the rock sphere, I guess I’d have to go with a broad vote for Bob Dylan. Yes, the guy’s songs are brilliant. Why anyone would voluntarily listen to him sing them is so beyond me as to be other-worldly.
You should be safe with Workingman’s Dead*. It came out at pretty much the same time as American Beauty and I’ve never understood why they didn’t just release it as a double album.
The relatively recent “Classic”, OK Computer, Radiohead. Now, I like Pink Floyd, but this was a pale imitation of their style, poorly executed.
Headcoat, I wouldn’t feel bad about hating jazz. I don’t care for it either, and it used to worry me because I’ve always been really into music, and the general perception is that jazz is the best modern musical style, technically. That it’s the “musician’s music”, and if you don’t like it, it means you don’t get it.
And then I relaxed a little, and also took a heck of a lot of classes, and realized that it’s ok not to care for it. I understand the form and the intent - music theory covered that in a great deal of detail. I’m familiar with the greats - my dad is a huge jazz fan, and I grew up listening to the records and going to the live shows. (I even met Sun Ra once.)
The problem is that I have no emotional connection to it. All jazz is to me is pretty noise. Hey, I can follow the chord progressions just fine, but that doesn’t mean (and doesn’t HAVE TO mean) that I find the work interesting or engaging. It doesn’t speak to me, and music that doesn’t speak to you is music that’s incredibly boring for you.
Incidentally, I make two exceptions. I own a Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross CD that I can listen to over and over again. It doesn’t mean that I like other bop artists at all, though. And I once saw a Max Roach concert. He played a solo drum piece for about a half an hour that gripped me the entire time.
I believe it. The guy’s a force of nature.
It is so often said of Dylan, “He writes great songs, but he should get someone else to sing them.” I completely disagree. The old Columbia Records advertising slogan got it right: “Nobody sings Dylan like Dylan.” No one else can duplicate the expressiveness, the knowing winks and leers in the voice, the “lived-in-ness” of the songs, the utter Bobness of it all. Take Joan Baez: she has a terrific voice, and if anyone can claim to really know what Dylan is all about, she should be the one…so why is her Any Day Now double set of all Dylan covers so stiff and lifeless? The Byrds are famous for their Dylan interpretations, and their “Mr. Tambourine Man” is indeed a glorious noise, but they might as well be singing a laundry list for all the involvement with the song they display. (The fact that they ditched most of the lyrics shows how much respect they had for the song itself.) Tellingly, the only Dylan interpretations I can think of that I would rate above Dylan’s own also feature singers who can’t sing in the conventional sense: Hendrix’s “All Along The Watchtower” and the Nice’s “Country Pie” (and perhaps also their “She Belongs To Me”). In both cases, of course, the singing is a distant second in importance to the displays of instrumental prowess, so a comparison with Dylan himself as a singer becomes pointless.
Oy, I knew I’d get someone who digs his voice. 
Biffy, for what it’s worth, I actually do like his version of “Tambourine Man.” And I completely resepct the subtleties and depth of feeling you get from his vocals, but… argh, I don’t know. I heard “Tangled Up in Blue” on the way to work this morning, a song I truly love, and I could not for the life of me get past how godawful he sounds at times. Almost as if he’s struggling to even hit the right notes. But I’ll admit total ignorance when it comes to the mechanics of music, and I could be full of it on that point.
If most hardcore Dylan fans find as much to love in his voice as you do, I guess I should shut up about it. I’d just be curious to know the percentage of fans who actually dig his voice and those who just kinda tolerate it. Which brings up another point!(Lol) Are people who love it being totally objective or are they simply ascribing to him a level of vocal nuance and skill out of sheer love for the compositions? It’s almost as if, at this late date, Dylan is brilliant, period. No one gauges his vocal skill with the same measuring stick they would another singer, because, well, it’s Dylan.
Really just thinking out loud here.
[QUOTE=Moody Bastard]
No one gauges his vocal skill with the same measuring stick they would another singer, because, well, it’s Dylan.
[QUOTE]
Yeah, I think that’s a fair way to look at it. I wouldn’t call it “skill” on Dylan’s part, though another word you used, “nuance,” definitely comes into play. I think it has a lot less to do with any mechanics of music than with charisma, and Dylan’s uncanny ability to establish communication on a visceral level with the receptive listener. If you don’t “get it,” that doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you–it’s more of an emotional than a technical thing–but when you do get it, you see that there’s something to love in even Dylan’s most outrageously “off” singing. “There is no beauty that hath not some proportion of strangeness in it.”
An excellent quote to conclude with! 
Rumours* by Fleetwood Mac. Terminally bland elevator soft rock.
the Velvet Underground and Nico by the most over-rated “classic” band, and led by the most over-rated rock star of all time.
I’ve often thought that this record, indeed the entire output of this band, was one of Andy Warhol’s ironic “pop art” statements - He sought out the worst band he could find, claimed they were his favorite band, and watched gleefully as every pretentiously arty NYC-downtowner fell all over themselves raving about the Velvet Underground, all just because Warhol said he liked them.
Have any of the wannabe-punkers / pseudo-hipsters who claim to worship this band actually listened to this record? “Heroin” sounds like a Grateful Dead outtake. “There she goes again” sounds like it should have been recorded by the Monkees. And Nico…has there ever been a more grating voice in history.
I think there are overrated Velvet Underground-moments (namely “Sister Ray”), but I don’t personally count VU & Nico to be one of those moments. It’s just that the music critic mob rave about certain artists and albums so much that they lose much of their appeal.
I mostly agree with your analysis, but I “call you on the carpet” on your last ascertation. May I present as rebuttal: Yoko Ono!
"I’m blEEEding insIde!
One more unforgettable sig resigned to the mists of time!
This is wrong in so many ways…
Anyway, back to my reality.
Dylan is the only person in the loosely-named field of “rock music” that I would unhesitatingly call a genius. True, he is idiosyncratic to a fault, his ideas of presenting his songs to their best measure would make a buddha weep, and his voice is to singing what the Wright Brothers were to the Concorde.
But when he attacks his songs on his early albums, and masters the impossible intricacies of their lyrics, and shades their emotions as in the finest poetry, there is nothing on earth to compare. More than anyone else in the field, he creates a universe with each song. No wonder that others find his songs such magnificent scaffoldings for their own interpretations.
I was too young to appreciate him when his albums debuted, but I keep finding more and more to them as the years progress. Perhaps that’s as good a definition of genius as anything.
But enough of the good. To stay in the spirit of this thread, I hate every band anybody “cool” ever lauded because corporate music sucks, man.