Rivalries - Friendly & Otherwise

The lousy news concerning CBGB's this week got me thinking about the CBGB bands, which made me think of the feud/rivalry between Television and Talking Heads which was chronicled in the songs "Prove It" (which I believe was Verlaine's critique of "Love Goes to Building On Fire") and "Artists Only" (which I think was Byrne's answer to "Prove It" - although I may have the chronology wrong on what was first and what was an answer to what), so that got me wondering:

What are some of the best examples of bands who were contemporaries whose admiration for or dislike of each other spurred everyone involved to better work?

I thought of the three way mutual admiration society of the Beatles-Dylan-the Byrds, all of whom were inspired by each other.

The Clash & the Sex Pistols.

And the movie DIG, which chronicles the feud between the Brian Jonestown Massacre and the Dandy Warhols, where only one side of the participants were even aware there was a feud for a long time.

more in the nature of spurring each other on

stones/beatles

buff spring/byrds/love--a three way!

temptations/four tops

stax/muscle shoals in house superstars

george clinton/outer space

creation/who

yankees/red sox

my wife/I

Bowie/Iggy

I always thought that Nick Lowe's late 70's love/hate obsession with Bowie was hilarious. Some of the context is lost on me - I was pretty young at the time - but am I right that "I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass" is a parody of Bowie's Low-era artiness? And what about that "Bowi" EP?

Oasis vs. Blur. (I pick Oasis, love the first 2 records - after that, not so much). Can't remember if it was Noel or Liam Gallagher who said he wanted the members of Blur to get AIDS and die. Oh those wacky Brits.



Post Edited (09-03-05 15:43)

i thought that was vincent gallo about ebert??!!

oh thoise wacky east villagers!

I think the Gallo quote for Ebert was cancer rather than AIDS? Weird how those two have become buddies since all that happened at Cannes......... "They're middle class bastards. The Chas N Dave of pop. They're a good comedy band. They make me laugh anyway" - Noel Gallagher of Oasis on Blur (1995).

Nicky Wire of the Manic Street Preachers said the same thing about Michael Stipe the same year, I think essentially because their manager had just died of cancer. Then again maybe he wished cancer on Michael Stipe. One of the two anyway, must have been a good year for trivialising horrible diseases.

There were lots of Stipe-AIDS talk right around the time he shaved his head and appeared to have lost 2/3 of his body mass. He did look incredibly unhealthy.

Nick Lowe titled that album "Bowi" to return the favor after Bowie released "Low."

Butthole Surfers/Marcy Playground

Uhm, I will look into that Television/Talking Heads relation, but right now im thinking that Gang of Four could be the friendly counterparts of the Heads. They are rythmically related, and spend a lot of time together, in CBGB too.

How The Beatles influenced Bob Dylan?

dylan vs donovan perhaps more than the beatles

i was gonna go with husker du/prince, or michael jackson/replacements, but i prefer pokemonojeff/pokemonojackdaniels.

Hüsker Dü and Minutemen ("Take that, Huskers!," all in good fun)

DOA and Canadian Subhumans (sort of brotherly kind of match-up)

Public Image Ltd. vs. Flipper (art appropriation)

I heard the Lou Reed vs. Frank Zappa rivalry was pretty nasty, with Lou openly cheering to the press when he heard that Frank got pushed off the stage and was seriously hurt.



Post Edited (09-04-05 04:10)

are you sure about "Prove It"?

It's what I'd always heard - that Verlaine didn't think much of David Byrne's statement that he wanted to write Abba-like pop songs, and that "Prove It" was a response to that, and the line "Chirp chirp, the birds, they're giving you the words..." was a slam at "Love Goes to Building On Fire" in which Byrne sings "Tweet tweet tweet tweet tweet Sing like a little bird." And that the line "I don't have to prove that I am creative" from "Artists Only" was either Byrne answering Verlaine, or was another thing that Verlaine was challenging with "Prove It" - don't remember which song was written first.

All of this may be hearsay and rumor and just someone's attempt at making some sort of sense out of Verlaine lyrics, the clearest of which are open to pretty endless interpretation.

Where I read any of this is lost in the misty mists of time - if I could find my copy of PLEASE KILL ME, I'd check to see if there's any reference to it in there. But I definitely remember reading about it in a few different sources, all of which also played up the fact that both bands had television related names. And I don't recall that any of the sources featured actual quotes from either Verlaine or Byrne on the topic.

So anyhow, no, I can't be completely sure if any of it is true - but I definitely read about it in enough places for it to stick in my head.

I can't find my copy of "Please Kill Me" either but as far as I know it's not in that book - at least not the first edition. The Talking Heads are barely mentioned at all in there. Legs McNeil has a real dislike for them. So much so that he basically ignores them in the book. Legs McNeil vs. Talking Heads?

I did find my copy of FROM THE VELVETS TO THE VOIDOIDS, and after a quick glance, it goes into a lot of detail about general dislike of the Heads by most of the CBGB bands, but doesn't go into anything specific about a Television/Talking Heads rivalry or those particular songs.

So I still don't know for sure where I read it - I'm assuming either an ancient issue of Creem or Rolling Stone, since if Ira doesn't remember it, it must not have been TP.

Does no one else remember any kind of connection between Love Goes to Building on Fire/Artists Only/Prove It? I know I didn't dream it, because when Television's reunion tour came to St. Louis years ago, it came up as a topic of conversation before the show. Who knows - maybe it was something that originally came up in the Jet Lag fanzine in St. Louis - some creative writing by Jeff Tweedy or Beatle Bob or someone - and is only part of the legend in these parts.

One brief mention of the bad vibe between Television and Talking Heads in the new CBGB photo book, but Verlaine's word choice doesn't give much away:

"There are maybe two early eras of CBGB...the first was the NYC bands who were very revved-up and then Talking Heads who, in a way, sort of signaled the arrival from--elsewhere." -Tom Verlaine

Just listened to "Prove It" again yesterday and was reminded of other lines that supposedly referenced the Heads/Television rivalry:

In addition to the previously mentioned "the birds are giving you the words" and "prove it" vs "I don't have to prove...."

"you could write a book" - a reference to "The Book I Read"
"First you creep, then you leap" - a reference to Byrne's spastic stage presence
"such colorless clothes" - a reference to the Heads' anti-image image (which they lifted from TV in the first place...)
"the world is just a feeling..." - a reference to "Good Feeling"
"it's too too too to put a finger on" - a reference to Verlaine's feeling that something was off about the Heads and his suspicion that they were poseurs looking to exploit the CBGB scene to make a name for themselves

Now again - I have NO IDEA if any of this is true, and at this point I don't even care. But I do know I read all this somewhere, and dammit! I'm not imagining that! Someday someone else will recall all this and I will be vindicated!

By the way - the walrus was Paul.

Blame Beatle Bob!!!


chilton is ok according to longtime pal Terry Manning

coast guard, etc etc

re IR's MF's DJ list

one of my fave concerts off all time was in the smoky and sexy Upstair's JBs in downtown Kent where Snakefinger and Ubu/Beefhaert Feldman cut us down for two hours


before the show they showed tons of rare resident videos, speaking of great NO/LA artists


btw as with senile Breno i will rely upon pure memeory here: didn't Muddy Waters, Snakefinger, and D Boon all die within 6 months?

jeez: what a blow to music and to guitar

The brits traditionally enjoy a good rogering rivalry in their (ever-so) active music press. All in good (bad) fun. The Oasis vs. Blur thang was just that; though bands enjoyed success from it. Looking back it's pretty absurd. Comparing the two was like comparing Duran Duran to the Clash.



Post Edited (09-05-05 18:48)

I was baffled that PLEASE KILL ME didn't mention the Talking Heads - an inexcusable oversight, imo. (But it also didn't mention the Modern Lovers, or any other Ohio bands besides the Dead Boys). But I've never seen evidence that the THs were disliked - when the other Heads went on their own after Byrne left them, other CBGBrs like Debbie Harry stepped in on vox. And DeeDee Ramone has nothing but nice things to say about 'em in his LOBOTOMY autobiography.

But, yeah, Reed and Zappa had a love/hate thing going on. Reed on Zappa (in the 60s when The Velvets played with the Mothers): "He has a low opinion of himself, and I think he's right!" And Zappa said something like "These guys really suck" on stage about the Velvets (from Victor Bockris' "Uptight: The Velvet Underground Story").

But then Reed inducted Zappa into the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame, so there ya go.

How about Reed and Lester Bangs?

"How about Reed and Lester Bangs?"

Ha ha! Yeah, Reed called Bangs a "pathetic death dwarf."




Unless it was the other way around...

But didn't Lester Bangs love the Velvets? I know he wrote some eloquent stuff about "White Light/White Heat". In "Stranded" he may mention that as his runner-up album (to "Astral Weeks")? Were they friends who had a falling out? Maybe it was over Bowie - I don't think Lester Bangs liked Bowie much. I vaguely remember reading an interview where Bangs asked Lou Reed to name 1 great song Bowie had ever written....the tone was very pushy.

Bangs' point is more realized now; name your 3 favorite Bowie LPs and see if it's the band that made them good or Bowie himself. It was the guitar riffs that Ronson, Alomar, et al. spilled, sprayed and worked that made that stuff great and made it hold up. Bowie tried to recapture this with 'Tin Machine', eh? Not that this is a bad thing. Most of us as front men would need to find and work with a great guitarist (morrisey, costello) and most of us as great guitarists need a front man for direction. I recall that Bangs' had a bad taste from that combined with Bowie's flagrant self-promotion (pre-McLaren). Course, McLaren/Lydon is another great rivalry.

Speculation. A re-write of rock history. Rather than going MOR in the early sixties, Elvis has Chuch Berry on lead and Bo Diddley on rhythm. Both are songwriters. What follows?



Post Edited (09-13-05 17:20)

Elvis, Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley in the same band?

I'd say, considering the egos and individual pride involved, what followed would probably have been a lot of arguing and hostility, followed by the band's breakup. From there, I'd say each man would have proceeded to his respective destiny, pretty much the way it did play out in rock's existing history.

I don't think that Bo Diddley could could successfully be in anybody's band--his signature, primitive bedrock rhythms evolved from his inability to play in any other fashion and pretty much dominate whatever he does. Bo Diddley can accompany Bo Diddley. Period. And we wouldn't want it any other way. Chuck Berry and Elvis is an interesting equation to wrap one's mind around though. . . I could see the Elvis of "Little Sister" teaming with Berry. I can't see the Elvis of the first two RCA albums doing it though, with the combination of rockabilly and dewey ballads. It's hard to picture Berry in that context.

I'd love to hear Link Wray dirtying up something like "Little Sister" behind Elvis.

jerry lee lewis and chuck berry rivaled

Every time I hear Elvis' 'Suspicious Minds' I think that it's a great tune that would have been amazing with him backed by the Beatles. Imagine that for a line up. John singing harmony voc's with Elvis ('We can't go on together...' etc.), with Paul and George singing background vocals instead of, what was that all-female backing group called, the Sweet Inspirations?

And the drumming on that track is very pedestrian. Some vintage and ace Ringo fills would have made the track perfect.