Oh my, yes. OTOH, I quite like a lot of Phish’s music. I never felt the slightest compulsion to, like, quit my job and buy a Winnebago so I could follow them around the country like they’re Patchouli Jesus or anything, but I actually owned at least one Phish CD at one point, I know I did. (My entire music collection gradually “fell by the wayside” of my life, over the decades.) I was more a fan of the genre-/temporally-adjacent Blues Traveler, who could not-completely-unfairly be described as Phish without the subtlety.
(Link is to an article at The Onion. The Onion is not real news. Do not take The Onion seriously. The Onion is multi-layered. The Onion will make you cry if you slice it.)
I lived with one of those guys on college, too. If it had been one Rush album per week, I’d have probably thought, yeah, I like Rush. No it was two or more everyday for a year. I’ve not voluntarily listened to any Rush since, and that was 1991.
As this thread’s point is not just a pile on of bands we hate, I will moderate it by saying I think I do like some Rush, I just don’t get the obsession some people have, and I got my lifetime supply in one year.
Oh I’d managed to forget that one. It is not one I liked.
@scabpicker mentioned that Geddy’s vocals could be… grating, and “Closer to the Heart” is probably peak… all that. It is borderline painful to listen to, like hearing someone slowly strangle a goose.
And don’t forget, the lyrics compete with “The Trees” for being silly and didactic - ok, “The Trees” blow it away for silly. But they’re neck and neck for didactic-ness. I can still sing that part, but the lyrics are just, ugh.
And to keep it on topic - I like prog rock and metal. I still like Rush. But I understand that they’re very silly, and grating to some folks.
Good point about Rush fans. If you don’t think they’re the greatest band in the history of rock, they get all upset and huffy. Sounds defensive to me.
I have never willingly listened to a Rush song to the end. When I forced myself to, I found nothing of interest. It’s boring and overly repetitive music and the lyrics are awful and technically sloppy.
Led Zeppelin is kind of like that for me. There are The Ten Or So Songs that always get airplay, and I like some of those (especially “Rock and Roll” and “Kashmir”) but some others for which once a year is too much (“Black Dog” and “Stairway”). Some fans listen to those ten and nothing else. My fave Zep song is “Tangerine” but that seems to rarely get a spin.
I respect his writing. Adele recently did a fantastic version of Make You Feel My Love. Michael Buble also covered it. That says a lot about the quality.
I can’t stand his voice. I’ve read he’s trying to sound like Woody Guthrie.
Well, that’s kind of the nature of the Classic Rock format: for any band, there’s a relatively small number of their best-known songs that get played (and played to death); programming directors seem to feel that their listener base wants to hear the “classics,” and pretty much only the classics.
Sometimes you’ll find a more daring program director who employs a wider playlist, or a particular show or time-slot on a Classic Rock station that is devoted to “deep cuts,” but those are the exceptions to the rule for the format.
I suspect that, in most cases, someone who’s actually a devoted fan of a particular band – Rush, Led Zep, or whoever – is well-acquainted with that band’s entire catalog, and will have favorite songs from the band which aren’t on the narrow Classic Rock playlist.
I can certainly appreciate musicians who have a lot of technical skills. I mentioned Les Claypool above, and I would also Steve Vai in that category. But I can’t listen to them for any extended length of time. I am much more impressed with musicians who can write a good song.
My husband adored Frank Zappa and Bob Dylan. Had posters of them on his bedroom wall! I was indifferent to Zappa, liked Dylan a bit more, but only a handful of his songs.
I never got The Grateful Dead. I only saw them once performing, a video on MTV, and the audience was standing on their seats waving their arms around like those blow-up things in front of used car lots. A lot of noodling ‘meh’. But I never fried my brain on drugs or had friends with a van who would follow them around from city to city.
Oh, agreed. Similarly, as a Canuck, I should apparently worship at the altar of The Tragically Hip. When they’d pass through town while I was in uni, I was one of the few (it seemed) on campus who didn’t rush for tickets. I like the Hip well enough, but, unlike a band with a lot of gems that are deep tracks, I find that the singles are really all you need to listen to. I’ve listened to several Hip albums from beginning to end, and the only tracks that stick with me are the big singles, and everything else is totally filler. Like any self-respecting CanRock dude, I think “Bobcaygeon,” “Ahead by a Century,” “Little Bones” and “In View.” are absolute masterpieces, but album-wise, if you get their best-of, you’re completely set and aren’t missing very much.
Also sticking with Canadians, Stompin’ Tom Connors doesn’t appeal to me at all, despite his general deification by north-of-the-49th musicians. Adoration for Connors is, I think, much more about his strident Canadian-ness than actual good songwriting. Just because he’s performed at every Moose Lodge and legion hall from Kapuskasing to Yellowknife singing odes to rural life doesn’t make him an icon in my mind.
Hold Your Fire is a great album (although not as great as Power Windows), as are most of the Synth-era Rush albums. That’s when they replaced screechy hard prog for more melody-driven songs, with airier arrangements and mellower vocals, while giving up none of the chops.
With a band having a 50-year career comprising numerous stylistic changes, I can only surmise that people upthread describing Rush as ‘unimaginative’ and ‘repetitive’ have a very narrow sampling in mind. Few acts within the rock context have been as imaginative, and original, especially in instrumentation.
There are a number of talented country music artists like Roy Clark, Leo Kotke, or Glen Campbell. But as far as I’m concerned the phrase “country music” is just short of an oxymoron. And I was raised listening to it so I should know. It’s just a bunch of drunken farmers warbling on about their failed marriages. Occasionally there’s a horse. It’s so grating it actually makes me sad to come across younger people who are into it. I’m tempted to tell them “I have good news!” and hand them a copy of Pretzel Logic by Steely Dan like I’m selling Jesus.
The above description of Rush fans seems very accurate. I enjoy Stompin’ Tom and The Hip enough in reasonable doses. I like the Canadian blues man David Wilcox better, very good though not brilliant, who toured tirelessly over decades playing in every tiny town or dank watering hole in the country, always putting on a decent show. He never seems to be credited when unhip people simplify Canada into a short list of random things.
Your parents should be scolded if they only exposed you to the bad stuff. There is lots of great country music. As a genre, it can be limited but certainly not to the degree that blues, for example, is. The worst of it, in my opinion, is “new country” which is really all that gets played on the air these days. But there is some really good stuff out there, you just have to find it.
On topic, The Dan of Steel is another group I recognize as being very talented but their sound is just grating to me. I can’t even pinpoint what it is I don’t like. If pressed I would have to say the writing and production.
Steely Dan had a nifty jazzy/reggae/rock thing going. I can see why people wouldn’t like it but “grating” isn’t the word that springs to mind. Their production values, however, were top notch.