OK, is this the worst piece of music writing ever?

BM is actually my favorite

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, June 3, 2016 10:03 PM (53 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

thirded. total masterpiece. but I still listen to 3ft a lot and still feel the same about it as I did bitd - its masterful pop genius far outweighs the skittishness and the bittiness.

What I found depressing about this piece was the way he seemed to see listening to music he'd not heard as a chore. I really can't identify with that, and never have been able to.

I had a friend at uni in the mid-90s who was really into the first Violent Femmes album so I heard it a lot and really liked it but thought of it as pretty much an obscurity until I got the internet and found out they were huge in the US.

FWIW, Whiney and David have established peace via bagels.

https://twitter.com/_davidturner_/status/738849336218550273

"What I found depressing about this piece was the way he seemed to see listening to music he'd not heard as a chore."

this was totally my least favorite part of the thing. it really made me cringe. well i guess i HAVE to listen to it. which might have been an attempt at humor but....

this was the bit:

I can be pretty hard to please with certain musical aesthetics, and rap music prior to ‘92 — the year I was born, of course — is something I’ve struggled with a lot in my life. Too often, going that far back can feel like a chore.

I've been a music writer long enough to know enough music writers to know it's not a rare opinion but I still just cannot grok it.

also re tweet abt bagels, did this guy write trolly thing and then scour twitter to find people bitching about it without mentioning his twitter name? because that's p depressing to me too.

Even 'Blister In The Sun', their most well-known song here, was kinda obscure until it appeared on an advert or something.

Not even remotely true, they were pretty popular over here.

... I'm talking about at the time, not 10 or 20 year later ffs.

Was gonna say I think they were known at the time (saw a video of them playing the Hacienda I think back in the mid-80s) but by the 90s my impression was they were mostly forgotten apart from the odd music nerd, relatively speaking.

The Pixies killed them off tbh

the first album never went away here though. trust me on that.

xxpost:

No they weren't, if they were popular here it was with a painfully tiny percentage of music nerds. The Violent Femmes were nothing here.

Pixies were far, far bigger in the UK than Violent Femmes ever were.

tbf the Pixies did have 2 top 40 singles in the UK so yeah

No they weren't, if they were popular here it was with a painfully tiny percentage of music nerds. The Violent Femmes were nothing here.

You were there at the time, were you? LOL a painfully tiny percentage of music nerds, that's indie bands for you.

Pixies were far, far bigger in the UK than Violent Femmes ever were.

First prize to the eminent Historian of US Indie Rock Trends in the United Kingdom (1983-1993).

So you agree with me that in the big scheme of things they were nothing. Okay then, that's that sorted.

That sort of depends on the criteria for being Something in the Big Scheme of Things. But eye bow 2 the superior knowledge U have of music of all ages and all nations.

Thank U.

I didn't realise this was such a contentious issue tbh

Neither did I, fwiw!

Violent Femmes first album stayed big with generations of Australian young teens too, and rightly so, as it's one of the best / most teenage albums ever.

literally just had an argument with a friend who's a year old than me bc he said "illmatic is boring. it was written forever" but also he's not a critic

speaking of young teens, I bought a leather De La Soul medallion from an import record shop in 1989, and Illmatic is really boring

whiney was utterly otm on twitter

about bagels?

yeah whiney thank you for all of that

iirc he didn't mention montreal bagels, so no

This is pretty bad CONSIDERING IT'S NOT EVEN A DEATH GRIPS SONG

http://i67.tinypic.com/24euirc.jpg

I thought Violent Femmes were Australian when I first heard them, which was on a mixtape sent to me by a Melbourne pen pal.

They were really popular in the UK for their first couple of albums! Big venues. Full concert on the TV. Lots of radio play. Continually played in the prefects common room at my high school. This was 83-84 so up there with the Cramps, Ramones etc. Sorry no idea why you guys are debating this but they were. After the third album they broke up and disappeared and the non-chart music scene changed so they got sidelined permanently. Things moved faster then. Add It Up, Gone Daddy Gone, Ugly, Blister in the Sun etc were mainstays of student discos till the end of the 80s though.

i apologize for inadvertently starting a blighty kerfuffle.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUbFtHr3vCE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJXDEynfgR0

^ remember it well!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gproa6vzgws

this song is so great. i imagine it sounded very refreshing in 1983. probably went to #1 i'm assuming.

Sorry no idea why you guys are debating this but they were

One guy.

Thank you, everything! (xps)

i was sure that was right but i didn't start going to lolternative clubs until the late 80s so could only vouch for "Add It Up" getting played every week then. oh and knowing a bunch of peeps who had those albums.

The Violent Femmes were huge among teens in Oslo circa late eighties. They played festivals here and I heard drunk people singing their songs well into the late nineties.

i came of age in the early 90s and remember the 4 big songs from the first Violent Femmes album being in WHFS rotation for the entire decade (plus "American Music" and "Breakin' Up" were pretty big).

in fact i remember it being big news in the early 90s that the first VF album finally went platinum, nearly a decade after its release.

in high school in the early '90s "Blister in the Sun" was like "Rock Lobster" -- slotted with whatever big pop/dance hits got played at parties.

oh god I just remembered they covered "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me"

It was supposed to be funny, right? ugh. violent femmes near the top of my (very) short list of surly, smug, uncooperative interview subjects

I don't think it was meant to be funny.

One of the violent femmes has become an honorary Australian, owns a tea shop in Tasmania and plays improvised lute jams in it or something like that

Flute! http://www.fastcompany.com/1682132/brian-ritchie-violent-femmes-bassist-turned-tasmanian-tea-slinger-japanese-bamboo-flutist

He always dressed like an Antipodean tea shop owner anyway.

Brian Ritchie is a really nice guy who is very into using his band as a way to deliver avant-garde stylings to unsuspecting audiences. saw the Femmes in the late 90's with their anarchistic horn section "Horns Of Dilemma" and although they were past their commercial peak (which, echoing other posts, was HUGE in the 80's), they totally killed it. I mean, they had a dude from Boy Dirt Car playing trumpet! I remember a well-dressed college gal holding her hands to her ears during one of their mid-song free jazz freakouts, but she was still staring, fascinated, at the stage.

(sorry for continued derail)

i'm learning a lot about the femmes here.