I’m not talking about mainstream acts you just plain don’t like here, more the smaller ones with a near rabid fanbase, while you just can’t see the appeal.
Warren Zevon, for instance. Well enough known for a couple of songs, never huge, but with a fanatical fanbase. For the purposes of this thread, a “cult” artist. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind a bit of Warren Zevon. He could pen a catchy enough tune, and craft a fairly amusing lyric, in a over-the-top misanthropic sort of way. Not bad, but not the greatest thing since fish grew legs, either.
But you really don’t want to get trapped in a room with a diehard Zevhead {or whatever they call themselves} - and there are more than a few of them out there - who insists that he was the greatest songwriter of the last century, and if he {it’s always a he} just plays you enough obscure B-sides, the scales will fall from your eyes. Sorry, but I just don’t get Warren Zevon.
Yeah, I’d agree with Warren Zevon. I’ve always liked Werewolves of London, and I’d heard great things about him - here and elsewhere. Heard people absolutely gush over him. So I checked some of his albums out of the library and gave them a listen. They were ok but very, very forgetable.
Ditto Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen. I’ll admit that their good songs are really good, but they have far more mediocre songs IMO.
Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen both have very unique personalities as well as characteristic voices. I think that if fall for their style, you’d be more likely to enjoy their mediocre material also.
I haven’t heard much Tom Waits, but for me Leonard Cohen has much more depth than Warren Zevon: a song like Cohen’s “I’m Your Man” deals with real adult feelings about a doomed romance - most grownups can recognise something of the protagonist in themselves - whereas a song like Zevon’s “Excitable Boy” is inescapably adolescent in its cartoonish nihilism. Fun, but disposable.
As someone who lives in Austin, this is heresy, but Daniel Johnston. The Hi How Are You frog makes me smile when I’m walking down the Drag, but his music does nothing for me. From my experience, there’s no such thing as a casual Daniel Johnston fan either. Everyone gushes about how he’s the most brilliant songwriter since Brian Wilson and is really better than Brian Wilson anyway. This is big talk about someone who sounds like a mentally damaged nine-year-old who thinks he’s John Lennon.
Ok, an “artist” in a different medium – Peewee Herman. I never got him, and I have friends who thought he the comic genius the the French used to think Jerry Lewis was.
I’m a casual fan. As an outsider musician goes, he’s one of the most melodic. And he really writes some great tunes, he simply doesn’t perform them himself. I also appreciate his tremendous impact on music, but he clearly has some mental issues. This is fine, but the rabid devotion people have towards him, in an unhealthy way, makes me a little uncomfortable.
Also, I agree with Sonic Youth. They don’t annoy me, I simply don’t see them as all that great. Good, yes, but not great. Same goes for Radiohead.
The odd thing is that Kate Bush is only a “cult artist” in the US. I’m a rabid Kate Bush fan but I’ve long given up on trying to make any more cultists - it just annoys people. She’s someone you either get or you don’t.
I’m perplexed as to why you think you’re “supposed” to be a rabid fan of Kate Bush. All these people in this thread, MOST especially Kate Bush, are “cult” artists for a very good reason, they only appeal to a small subset of music lovers. Why are you “supposed” to be in that subset? Admittedly I’m a rabid fan too and find much of her music very emotional (regarding your ‘leaves me cold’ remark) but I have never ever thought to myself “Why doesn’t everybody adore Kate Bush?” because I know that she’s only going to appeal to a small group of people. The same could be said for everyone mentioned in this thread.
And Joan Armatrading? How random. She’s hardly a cult artist. Why not Minnie Ripperton or Diamanda Galas or Eddi Reader or Alison Shaw or Sandy Denny or Noe Venable or about a thousand others? What in the world made you pull Joan Armatrading of all people out of a hat? I’m just curious.
I like some Pixies songs, but don’t love the band. Frankly, I think the Pixies, Sonic Youth, and a handful of other late '80s/early '90s “alternative rock” bands simply made it acceptable to be mediocre musicians playing noisy, dissonant music with nonsensical lyrics, and then made that the norm rather than the exception. I also blame them in large part for inspiring Nirvana and grunge in general, making the the first half of the '90s a very vacuous and unpleasant time for rock music in general.
I just wasted a Netflix selection on Mitch Hedberg. Neither I nor the Better Half thought he was particularly funny, and we certainly wouldn’t place him in the standup pantheon populated by the likes of Steve Martin, George Carlin, Jonathan Winters, Bob Newhart, and Robin Williams. The “aired” version was marginally superior to the “uncut” version, as it mercifully edited out his interminable foot shuffling, hair tossing, microphone fiddling, and alternately yelling at the audience because they weren’t laughing loud enough, and whining at the audience because they weren’t laughing loud enough.
Our adult children were amazed that we didn’t find him stone hilarious. To them, in some way they were unable to adequately explain, the interminable stalling in between jokes was part of the appeal. “See, it’s like he’s drunk, and it’s funny to watch him be drunk…”
We begged to differ. We’ve seen standup comics do the “drunk” shtick successfully, and this wasn’t it.
Echoes of the whole French people/Jerry Lewis/genius thing here…
