It’s not a great comparison, since Nirvana (or at least Kurt) would have been happy as just another Pixies cover band. Wikipedia has an interesting quote or two.
Satellite vs. Cable vs. Tivo vs. DVR vs. I-tunes vs. Napster vs. DVD’s vs. HD vs. Blu Ray vs. movie theatres vs. I-phone vs. Instant Messaging vs. text messaging vs. My Space vs. Facebook vs. Ifilm vs. Youtube vs. Mac vs. PC vs. X-Box vs. Playstation vs. Nintendo vs…
Oh crap, I just ran out of time and money and I haven’t really even gotten to the music genres, much less specific bands. As other have said, with a fragmented entertainment and media choices, it is going to take two incredibly monumental and outstanding bands to capture this country’s attention and draw them into the debate. I don’t think those bands exist right now.
Whether you were a Sega kid or a Nintendo kid seems to have formed a pretty big divide in the X and Y generations, IME.
I like the indie vs. mainstream suggestion. However, the indie oriented music listeners are aware of the mainstream music while the same situation is not true for the mainstream oriented listeners. So it’s not a really case of choosing one over the other as it is with the Beatles vs. Rolling Stones.
Rather the trend of the 00’s, and which will ikely be even more evident in the coming decade, has been that music listening is crystalized into sub-genres and obscure music tastes. That is basically the opposite of putting yourself into a fanbase camp.
Excellent point. I was a Nintendo kid; my love affair with gaming started when my parents gave me a Game Boy with Tetris and Batman on my third birthday; I envied all the kids with NESes; and when the SNES came out I was literally the first kid in town to have one.
Funny thing is, I wanted to be a Sega kid–Sega was so much edgier, so much cooler. But my parents always knew where the smart money was in gaming, somehow. Until the Dreamcast, each time a new generation of systems came out they went against my objections and bought me the system they knew was going to outperform the others (in terms of market share) and promise the best and most expansive game library. And that generally meant that I got the Nintendo system (later Sony) that I would love later rather than the Sega system that I wanted right then.
I third the X-box - Playstation divide. The two have mostly different games; so what hardware you own determines what games you play. Kids nowadays spend as much time gaming as their old folks used to spend listening to music.
The old rift Apple-Microsoft (and Windows versus Linux) has been closed by now, hasn’t it?
It’s certainly less clear-cut than it used to be, Maastricht, but within the *nix communities (and the Linux community in particular), the perennial “holy war” of Emacs vs. vi still rages even as they’ve become more similar, and the desktop wars and format wars burn on. As Python gradually gains in popularity, a perl vs. Python holy war is sure to develop.
back on the 80’s there was a bit of a Morrissey vs. Robert Smith thing going on… nowadays, there simply cannot be Beatles vs. Stones equivalency given the greater types of mucis as well as means of dissemination… it’s just a different world music-wise…
besides, Pearl Jam already won, regardless who is on the other side!
Disney World vs Universal Studios
Saturday Night Live vs In Living Color
Hmm…I would have thought that Prince is the obvious choice, and I like Michael Jackson fine.
And how about East Coast versus West Coast in rap?
Nashville vs. Austin
<hijack>Color me ignorant, I never heard of them linked in that way. That said, I wonder if anyone has tried any Stones/Beatles mashups?</hijack>
Close, but it’s New York versus the South these days. Apart from the Game, who has his G-Unit beef, Snoop, who’s a respected veteran, and the Bay Area scene, which is rather self-contained, there isn’t much going on out West that impacts the game on a major level anymore.
It’s lost its currency now, but Nas vs Jay-Z was pretty big for a while. Many people liked both, but almost everyone has a preference, and it reflected their views on what to value about the music. It could even be condensed to a battle of two songs, “Takeover” and “Ether.”
What about Tool vs. Alice in Chains?
Maybe not now, since Layne Staley died and all, but perhaps when they first came about in the 90s?
If we’re going for trifling debates, I would say Sammy Hagar vs. David Lee Roth.
Oasis vs. Paolo Nutini?
In my day it was Led Zeppelin v Slade.