Television’s Marquee Moon is generally considered one of the top ten albums of all time. I’m not so much a fan, myself.
While I don’t necessarily agree with the OP, I totally get the sentiment. For over twenty years Stairway to Heaven was the local FM mothership’s #1 song in their “Memorial Day 500” count down. Yeesh.
Bri2k
Eek, Marquee Moon is a great, great album. You need this.
YouTube is awesome:
Thanks. I will sample in true punk style, after getting bladdered tonight.
I listened to them straight and enjoyed them. If I were plastered and it were YouTube, I probably wouldn’t like it but to each his own. On the other hand if I were at a bar and they were playing – hell yeah.
Marquee Moon is just a great, great album. A lot of space in the sound with a bit of alt-Steeley Dan collegiater-than-thou lyrics. Archly jammy - perfect hipster fodder but really cool on it’s own merits.
My favorite Zeppelin tune has always been “The Rain Song”. (I still like “Stairway”, though, overplayed, as it is)
Okay, let me clear up something that I’ve realized might not have been clear in the OP (although I have tried to bring up this point, to no avail): The original rant was not directed at anybody who may have actually seen it, i.e. anybody on this board. Having said that, I can’t help it if a lot of you took the post very personally, although I don’t see why anyone would because nobody has so far tried to identify themselves as “ex-hippies” or anything else.
I will reiterate, though: I’m not trying to elevate my taste above anyone else’s; I’m not trying to tell anyone else what they “should” be listening to (you’ll notice that issue doesn’t come up in the OP, and actually it’s been responders who, taking my directionless rant, have seen fit to tell ME what I should think is good); if I had truly desired to swing my “musical appreciation dick” around then I would have mentioned some of those “hipster” bands I’m into in the OP (someone asked me which bands I thought had “interesting guitar arrangements,” so Fugazi and Slint came to mind). If you’ll notice, the second sentence of the OP contains the words, “I don’t expect anyone to agree with me,” so anyone who thinks I’m trying to preach or impose my will is reading selectively because they want and choose to feel antagonized by this thread. If it helps you hypersensitive assholes, just put an “I think” before all of the supposedly inflammatory statements I made and the problem will vanish.
“Classic Rock” - note the quotes, both here and in every mention of it in the OP, indicating the sort of music that gets reshuffled and resold on Time Life compilations every year - is a romance. Did I ever imply that all the music from that period was rubbish? No, and I never would. Does every other generation do the same stupid thing? Of course, and I never denied it, nor would I ever deny it. The punks do it, Golden Age hip hoppers do it, shit, even 90s kids like me are doing it. Being a part of the outside world, the “classic rock” myth as promoted by radio DJs and (okay I’ll bite, you vultures) those certain members of the baby boomer generation, who think that because they experimented with drugs and hung out at “be-ins” that every generation hence owes them something was eligible for a Pitting. Does that encompass the whole generation (the whole hippie culture, even), or the whole body of music produced before 1974? Fucking of course not. If I had said, “Classic rock sucks, punk rock forever!” that would be one thing, but I didn’t. I said later on that I like punk music, and you folks generously took it from there. Not my fault.
Also, you can tell me I don’t know anything about music by putting Stevie Ray Vaughn in that list, but his only relationship with the other guitarists mentioned is that he is also a deified guitarist whom I find utterly uninteresting.
At the end of the day, I have a view more along the lines of the one expressed by rogerbox, that NO one generation should feel they have an excuse to hold their achievements (in this case, specifically music) above any other. Jimi Hendrix is not better than Tom Verlaine simply for the fact that he is Jimi Hendrix, and that he came before. If you like his playing more, whatever - I don’t. His skill and influence have no bearing on that, and they don’t need to.
Anyway, I’m not the one with a superiority complex, despite the concerted effort on the part of most people present to project one on to me. It’s true that I think all these bands suck, and that no one needs to hear “Born to be Wild” again, but obviously not everyone agrees with me. That doesn’t automatically mean I think I’m God’s gift to man. The ones with superiority complexes are the ones who make the effort to seek out every way in which they can be offended by someone who says something they disagree with, expound on them, and then make condescending judgments or assumptions about them based on little but the opinion itself. I used some strong language, sure, but if that makes you feel like you have to consult me when deciding what music to listen to, that’s your problem, not mine.
Two more miscellaneous disagreements: Sonic Youth are definitely a punk band, and music doesn’t always have a message, nor does whether or not that message is understood necessarily determine whether someone enjoys it.
Can I be extra superior because I love both the bands the OP likes (MBV and Television, especially) and the ones he hates (Zep and the Beatles particularly.) And I’m not even a boomer, either! (And I’m not saying this for the sake of the thread–last time the “top ten” albums thread came around, all four bands above were in my top ten.)
Seriously, though, for somebody who likes Sonic Youth, Television, and My Bloody Valentine, I don’t understand how you can completely fail to appreciate the bands you mention in your OP.
I know you keep saying it to be facetious, but saying that Sonic Youth is punk makes it sound like you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. And I say that as a big fan of theirs. New wave, alternative, indie, noise rock…yes. Were they influenced by punk? Hell yes. Did they have an influence ON punk? Of course. But even with all of that being true, I don’t see how anyone can seriously classify them as punk.
(Labelling bands is always subjective, but on this one I just can’t come around to your way of thinking.)
This dickhead’s mother was:
[ul]
[li]On acid for 9 months[/li][li]Was drunk for 9 months[/li][li]Didn’t clean her bong screen (apologies to The Master) for 9 months[/li][li]Cut her Meth with Angel Dust for 9 months[/li][/ul]And no telling whatever other shit it took to deliver a fucktard loser like him.
Oh yeah- people noticed Moms was a little bit too friendly with the neighbor’s dog.
That should about cover it.
There’s nothing facetious about it - they formed in the late 70s in New York, hung out in punk and no wave circles, recorded and released their music independently, and the music itself was noisy, confrontational, and generally uncompromising. What’s more punk than that? What is so “un-punk” about them that makes me sound like I don’t know what I’m talking about?
And disagree with me if you want, but leave my mother out of this.
I just don’t like the “Classic Rock” concept. I’ve been accumulating favorite tunes and groups since the sixties. Some when, when I wasn’t paying attention, I think during the 90’s, some one decided “my music” belonged to an old guys’ category–let’s be nice about it and call it “classic.” Suddenly the rest of “my music”, the stuff I was yet to hear, enjoy, and add to my list, was split off into some other categorie(s). I don’t care if it was marketing demographics, I resent it personally, and it’s inconvenient. I’m not sure I’m persuaded that my age group peers have gone thru some sort of music menopause and don’t want any more new (types of) tunes. I am sad for them if they have. Oh so long ago in the 70’s I didn’t care so much for Disco, but Blondie and Gloria Gaynor rock, and so do Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift, and of course Stevie Nicks, and Aretha, and Eartha Kitt, and … Peggy Lee, and … someone new. So, although I was never infected with establishment conspiracy paranoia, I think “somebody” has been waiting a long time to finally bury that alternative/progressive (a la KPPC) hippie message music, and the tombstone reads “Classic Rock.”
I have a question for punch line loser, and everyone else. When I looked backwards at music before my time (Tommy Dorsey, Bing Crosby, etc.) I didn’t find much to add to “my music list”, irrespective of the excellence of the performers. I liked Peggy Lee, and I “got” the New Seekers, but I can’t say that I ever really got Elvis—he seemed antique. Excuse me if this is too personal, but I wonder how this works in peoples’ heads. Is there a bio-psychological clock that makes us “get” music from our social peer network during adolescence and early/mid adulthood, but shuts off before and after these life cycle phases? Or is there really a strong musical/cultural difference between, say, Elvis era/type music and Beetles era/type music (some people in “Elvis” zones of the country publicly burned piles of Beetles’ records). Are we having another one of these about now, say from the mid 90’s? If so (I wasn’t paying attention) which performers would be on either side of this next “divide”? I am really interested in this. I hope someone responds. Thanks.
I think that depends largely on your approach to listening to and appreciating music, but overall I think I would say no. There’s plenty of music from way before my time I love - Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, early Kinks, ABBA, whatever, and a lot of contemporary shit that my peers love but I hate. The kind of sounds you grow up with is definitely a factor, I think, and there definitely are people who stop liking new music after a point because their interest in the music they DO like only extends as far as identifying it with their past. And just to be clear, I don’t have a problem with that. I don’t understand that thought pattern, but everyone has their own schema.
For the record (derp!), I don’t think it was fans of Elvis necessarily who were burning Beatles (not Beetles, just sayin’) records - in fact, they were probably the same people who not too long before were burning Elvis records for their suggestive content. Elvis vs. the Beatles is a bad example, but I think I know what you’re talking about; anyway, I don’t think one can really generalize, because the kids growing up with the internet are swiftly losing a sense of the generational divide in the first place. Everyone now has access to all music all the time (hyperbole alert) so the lines are all blurring.
From various sources, annual teen spending in the US is from 170 to 200 billion dollars. But perhaps tech savey teens find radio passe.
I contemplated that very question as a child, growing up with my older-than-normal parents. While my peers had parents that were into the rock of the 1960s, the musical tastes of my parents ossified around 1953. Thus, I’d be subjected to crooners and boogie-woogie bands on long drives; something that today’s hipsters might be envious of, but sheer torture for a pre-teen Generation Xer in the 1970s.
My disconnect with popular music probably began in 1995. Why then? It’s the closest I could draw the line; I could relate to the cast of Real World-San Francisco but not Real World-London. It was also at the tail end of the popularity of grunge, the last musical style that felt like it came from my generation, and the beginning of the indie/alt-rock/emo movement in earnest. Nirvana and Soundgarden spoke to me, as did the bands that came along before them. Nickelback and Creed doesn’t. 1995 was also the time where I could no longer always identify the name of a band whose song was playing on the radio, or hear the name of a band and know their “sound”.
It also seems like the time the music scene really started to fragment, not just into far different genres than existed in the past, but where there were far more bands of minor importance, rather than a smaller number of more influential and popular groups. Before 1995, you didn’t get street cred for following a bunch of bands nobody ever heard of. After 1995, that started to change. Before 1995, a band became a “sellout” when it had its music licensed for commercials. After 1995, a band became a “sellout” just for being popular.
It’s not that my musical tastes have frozen like my parents, but I just have a much harder time keeping up than in the past.
1995 minus 13 (start of teenage years) is 1982, considered the starting year of Generation Y. Biological, or something more?
Suicide formed in the late '70s in New York, hung out in punk and no wave circles, recorded and released their music independently, and the music itself was extremely noisy, confrontational and uncompromising. That doesn’t make them a punk rock band. If you use the term ‘punk rock’ to mean ‘awesome’, then yes they could be described as punk rock. If you’re using the term ‘punk rock’ to describe a musical genre, then no, they aren’t.
I would argue that they are. But if you want to debate this point, do so here.
Why bother? If you want to use the term that loosely, Cabaret Voltaire was punk rock.