overrated albums article

[music.guardian.co.uk]



Post Edited (06-20-07 13:12)

Dear Eddie Argos : How can someone who makes such smart records as you be so dumb about The Stone Roses?

Dear Dude from The Battles : You are a pompous bore. Worse than that however, you apparently are such a moron that you don't think using the terms "rich kids", "Gucci" and "hair metal" qualify you as passing judgement on a bands "authenticity". Must be nice knowing that you'll never make a record that gets anyone as excited as "Is This It" got some people (me included).


The commentary on the Arcade Fire makes an interesting contrast to the TP review.



Post Edited (06-20-07 16:00)

tupac -all eyez on me, overrated? my kids listened (past tense) to this sort of thing a few years ago. Then I think they got tired of the responsibility for keeping his legacy alive or something. Those darned kids.
Me? I avoid "entertainment tonight" subject types, especially those that use lots of Z's in titles.
nirvana-nevermind overrated? Its now sixteen years old. I would expect someone of about the same age to be sick of both nicklebag, oops, nickelback and this particular album. But in '91 it was a (let's see Mr Coyne...which adjectives you used actually work here...POWERFUL yes it IS! very good, ORIGINAL? not so much... to those who remember '77- but to everyone else it certainly was, FREAKY? you've lost me there, you old okie!
beach boys-pet sounds, overrated? - this record is forty one years old, came out with acid. your environmental setting is very important for the experiment. So don't bum me out man.
stone roses-stone roses, overrated? You've got to fucking kidding me, Ok, now you're trippin.
Strokes-Is this It, overrated? Never heard the album, can't say. Saw a short video clip a few years ago, they remined me of the Jam. Not Bad.
Television-Marquee Moon, overrated? Is that old Grateful Dead anaogy is still adhering to this group. I don't know, I wasn't there in '75, but people who were said they would never make it out of the bowery. I think they have actually toured since then. Great live band. Oh, the record...! Perfectly timed (we can't wait any fucking longer) revolutionary inspired amatuerism geared to knock the old geezers off the top of the hill. THE NEW WAVE.
Beatles-Sgt Pepper, overrated? see Beach Boys, maintain calm, if you prepared for the experience, remember (really try now) you laid out your vinyl in play order. There it is CANNED HEAT-LIVE AT TOPANGA coming up next!
Abba-still better than most 70's shit (i.e. Manilow, Bread, Carpenters)
Arcade Fire- I've heard exactly two songs from this band...kind of nervous and scrappy-like a ferret. Will investigate further.
Pink Floyd-dark side of the Moon, overrated? Too many conservative yobs list this album as their favorite all time...OVERRATED
Doors-L.A. Woman- Their best ever album.
Smiths-Had a very good guitar palyer
Capt Beefheart-Trout Mask-Seems to me eccentric long distance truck drivin hippies like this stuff as well as Mothers of Invention. And if they have a sense of humor, they also like THE BONZO DOG BAND.
Velvet Underground-Nico-The guy who wrote the above mentioned article (thanks eric) sounded SCARED, NOT OVERRATED



Post Edited (06-20-07 18:05)

>
> Dear Dude from The Battles :

> Must be nice knowing that you'll never make a record that gets
> anyone as excited as "Is This It" got some people (me
> included).
>


i'm not an anyone? mirrored has me pretty excited!

never got too excited by the strokes, but that first album seems pleasant enough...

Coyne cracked me up.

Pritchard's right, in part, but he missed the historical relevance of the setting and production.

Argos may be right...but only from the Brit perspective. The SR's are adifferent beast on this side.

Williams is only 40% correct.

Kapranos has no taste anyway.

Don't agree with Childish...wait...maybe I do...today anyway....new band name"Dickensian Misery". He makes the album sound ultimately intriguing, no?

Donaghy. In what alternate universe did you live where Abba was forced on people? Sounds like there are other problems afoot.

Gartside. People, stop comparing Neon Bible to anything but what else topped charts this year. It's good the way Oasis is good and Fall Out Boy, etc. are rank(ed).

Singh is observant, but, again, makes no account for history. Injuriously/tellingly, he described (but for the proper nouns) Cornershop.

Finn, you're my hero. Today anyway.

McKeown dissected Morrissey without focking realizing that Meat is a freaking Johnny Marr album!. Their best band effort.

Though I disagree with Hook, kudos for tackling this one without taking the piss. Today I pledge to incongruosly use the phrase "err on the selfish side of jazz" to somebody I barely know.

Nobody mentioned Joshua Tree. Maybe that era is over?

I find it odd that Neon Bible is on the same list as all these classics. Can't it be slagged off with regular stuff. I don't think it is worthy of being slagged off with LA Woman and Pet Sounds.

It's funny (not haha) that Coyne weighs in here, as I think the Soft Bulletin and a good portion of the Flaming Lips work is way overrated.

Some of these are pretty good - and I HATE the Doors, so good for that one - but some seem a bit childish and petty overall. Ironically I own none of the listed albums and the one I did once own, Trout Mask Replica, is astonishingly unsuited for my tastes. As you'd imagine that didn't last long in my collection.

As I think a number of the reviews observed, many of these are albums you might admire rather than actually listen to on a regular basis.

OK, i rate FF as high as any 21st century act, and i'm actually reading Kapranos' delightful foodie book, but this is the stupidest canard Her Majesty's subjects have been repeating ad infinitum for more than 30 years and it makes my beer boil!!!!

<<They were the Grateful Dead of punk, and I always hated all that jam-band stuff. They have the ethos of a jam-band but the aesthetic of a New York outfit.>>

Trust me, I loathe the Grateful Dead like yesterday's puke, and TV has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING in common with them. Guitar solos do not equal Grateful Dead. And Television does not equal guitar solos. A does not equal B and C does not equal B so C does not equal A. QED.

If TV was the Grateful Dead of punk, than Franz Ferdinand is the Standells of post-punk. Grow up, Alex.

very little in music has moved me the way a garcia solo can

i absolutely love verlaine's work

[they both play guitar...]

the 'grateful dead of punk' is a meaningless albeit perplexing catch phrase used in lieu of thought - where was this coined? should be trackable

corollary: who are the eagles of jazz?

i recall seeing TV compared to the Dead in the NME at the time of Marquee Moon

I think the Dead comparison--and pretty much every other opaque assertion about TV--comes from trying to understand them within the "punk" context. They may have shared a venue, a time, and a place with the first-wave of NYC punk, but that's it. I think of TV as the first post-punk band, which puts the chicken before the egg (or, uh, the other). It just would have been a whole lot neater if TV had the decency to crop up in Dayton, OH, or Bloomington, IN, in 1981. Not in NYC in '74. True iconoclasts.

The solos were almost a jazz affectation (which moves even farther afield from the Dead thing). I mean, they listed the solos like a jazz LP would.

THAT particular venue you speak of was the birthplace of new wave, Big D.
New Waves of differing shape, size and power. Waves are ultimately to be ridden though, with each rider leaving his (or her, Debbie Harry) imprint upon. That's what makes the place so special.

Now then, I wanted to say to Kapranos, after Ira's little nip and tuck with a pair of rusty pliers...

Let that sleeping dog (Television, not Ira) lay.



Post Edited (06-21-07 13:57)

>
> corollary: who are the eagles of jazz?
>


mannheim steamroller

That's too cruel, even for the Eagles.

Are the Mannheim Steamroller even considered jazz?

you can't very well be the "eagles of jazz" if you actually play jazz music, now can you? hehe

how about chip davis as the randy meisner of new age and c.w. mccall as the don henley of baked goods?

> who are the eagles of jazz?

No idea. But these guys call themselves the Eagles of Death Metal. (I hope that helps.)





Post Edited (06-21-07 04:47)

Hmmm, after reading Martin Sharp's review, perhaps Gare could be the Eagles of jazz.

Five of the 14 albums mentioned in that article (Nevermind, Is This It, Marquee Moon, Dark Side of the Moon, VU and Nico) are in regular rotation at my house. None of those five albums has lost any of its particular luster, in my book.

The Stone Roses and Neon Bible may not get played as frequently, but I enjoy them just fine.

Pet Sounds and Sgt. Pepper belong in the "overrated" column, IMO. I made my views clear on Sgt. Pepper in a recent thread. The Beach Boys have never been on my list of favorites; my wife loves 'em, though, so they're in frequent play at my house.

The remaining five albums aren't in my collection, so I won't comment on them. (I do like Abba, but a good singles comp of theirs should please any but the most ardent fan.)

What does this prove? Nothing. Just my US$0.02.

i remember the review in rolling stone for adventure that compared TV to:

"One advantage of the spluttering proliferation of punk rock and the continuing failure of the New Wave to do anything more than lap at the bottom of the American charts is that you can relax and enjoy a group as a band, not a brand. Since there's no longer a single standard to bear or conform to, no mushrooming movement to augment or betray, it's no skin off anyone's nose if Television, which virtually invented CBGB's, pays tribute to—you're not going to believe this—the Turtles.

Yes, the merry martial beat and blithe vocal harmonies of "Careful," on Television's second album, conjure up those folk-rock fatties of the Sixties. "I don't care" is the song's refrain, and the words are neither snarled with Johnny Rotten's defiance nor deadpanned with the Ramones' parodistic dumbness. It's just that the singer's in bed with his baby, and the rest of the world is out of sight (if not entirely out of mind) behind a drawn shade. What, me worry?

And Television is free enough to sound like the Byrds, whom the serene circularity of "Days" evokes with almost ethereal grace. "Turn! Turn! Turn!" enters the postpunk era.

By daring to be different, Adventure lives up to its title, but it also comes as something of a disappointment because it lacks the jagged tension and mysterious drama that imbued last year's Marquee Moon with such dark but lucid power. Marquee Moon celebrated friction, and Richard Lloyd's rhythm guitar fairly grated against Tom Verlaine's more lyrical lead playing. The music is dreamier and much more benign here, more apt to charm than to challenge. Instead of baying at the moon, Verlaine often yelps like a puppy. On "Carried Away," his vocal veers uncomfortably close to something you'd expect from Keith Carradine.

A line from "Carried Away" runs, "I felt the old ropes grow slack," and there is a certain slackness to much of Adventure. Coproducer/engineer Andy Johns gave Marquee Moon the hard, gleaming edge of an obsidian knife; the duller sound on Adventure, credited to John Jansen, whets but does not satisfy the aural appetite. Thus, "Ain't that Nothin'," a potentially devastating rocker that crosses the Rolling Stones with what sounds to me like Argent's "Hold Your Head Up," kicks harder in the memory than on the turntable. The songwriting could also be sharper. "Foxhole," for example, is commonplace both lyrically (an antiwar stance) and musically (heavy metal).

Tom Verlaine remains, however, a unique and masterful guitarist who doesn't play lines so much as shape them with a sculptor's deliberation. A connoisseur of timbres, he draws on everything from a Middle Eastern jangle to the blues to a crystalline tinkle to achieve—on a song like "The Dream's Dream"—an encyclopedic but unified grandeur.

As a whole, Adventure lacks such unity. Like the Jam on its recent second LP, Television seems to be in a state of transition, extending and then repeating itself. Some of the old ideas are exhausted, while some of the new ones aren't yet fully realized, and at times they jostle each other awkwardly. But the growing pains augur well. (RS 266)"

KEN EMERSON

So, TV sounds like the Turtles and Richard Lloyd is purely rhythm and Verlaine is purely lead.

I can't believe this was printed.

it is always worth going back to Chuck Young's first RS cover story on London punk - the image of Rotten ripped. Wenner had assigned an indignant hatchet job on the shock rockers, and Chuck semi-obliged.

I would have thought that Billy Childish would have been pleased about The Beatles becoming music hall.
I think I'm being mislead by that rather dandy 'tache of his.