The ILM 1980s Anti-Rolling Stone Canon (FREE PUSSY RIOT) Rock Poll Results - Tracks! Final top 10 results happening right now.

because of so much bitching

old biz f/EIII

yeah ok maybe not sister

thought there was some proto-dinosaur stuff on there but looking at the track list, no

xp to stirmonster

― vincent black shadow giallo (Edward III), Tuesday, September 25, 2012 4:34 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

no, I think you're 100% OTM. SY were huge Dinosaur Jr. fans, and were v. vocal about it. Sister is very much SY's first big stab at making a relatively conventional rock record, and while it's true that they were influenced by Black Flag, I think that they were also influenced by Dinosaur Jr. Black Flag may have reclaimed hard rock first after its exile by punk rock, but Dinosaur Jr. were so much more overt and unashamed about their hard rock intentions, which was a real novelty at the time (Black Flag buried their hard-rock adoration in so many punk signifiers that it was often tough f/people to see what they were doing). I suppose the argument hinges on your interpretation of Sister, but I definitely see a substantial progression towards more conventional hard rock stylings, and I think Dinosaur Jr. had a hand in this evolution.

its kinda funny we're still arguing about poll specifications in the 3rd thread for the poll

i expected the sonic youth discussion however

well, apart from the fact that i just can't hear it on sister, at the time they recorded it dinosaur had only released one record which had little initial impact. while i don't doubt the fact that sonic youth became big dinosaur fans i think sister was already done by that point. the jump in style from evol to sister never seemed that great to me and i always think of it as part of a trilogy starting with bad moon rising. the change in sound and style from sister to daydream nation however was gigantic. xp

dinosaur had a huge impact for the people listening to indie rock in my neck of suburban NJ, I assume a group of rabid music fans like sonic youth had probably heard of them in NYC

oh hai, when in doubt consult wikipedia. by the time they recorded sister they had already toured w/ dinosaur!

Mascis took Cosloy up on his offer to release an album and Dinosaur recorded their debut album for $500 at a home studio in the woods outside Northampton, Massachusetts.[4] Their debut album, Dinosaur was released in 1985. The music was extremely eclectic and revealed a combination of musical styles that was very unusual, especially for the mid-1980s: hardcore punk, Crazy Horse-style garage rock, Black Sabbath-style metal riffs, folk rock, twangy country-rock and gothic music. On the band's later albums, these elements would often be combined into single songs, but on the debut album, each individual song is different stylistically. All of this was delivered with the extreme level of volume and distortion that would become part of the band's signature style. Mascis wrote all of the songs. Some of the singing was done by Mascis in his trademark nasal drawl, often compared with Neil Young, but the majority of the lead vocals were by Lou Barlow. Mascis would sing most or all of the lead vocals on all of their subsequent releases. The album did not make much of an impact commercially or critically: it sold only about 1,500 copies in its first year and was largely ignored by the majority of the music press.[5]

After the record's release, Dinosaur would often drive to New York City to perform shows. At one of their shows, the New York-based alternative rock band Sonic Youth was at first unimpressed by the first Dinosaur performance they saw, but after watching them play several months later, approached the band declaring themselves as fans.[6] The band was bewildered by Sonic Youth's praise; Barlow recalled, "We're like, 'What? How could the coolest band in the world like us?'"[7] Sonic Youth invited Dinosaur to join them on tour in the American Northeast and northern Midwest in September 1986.

yeah i was gonna say, in the You're Living 33 1/3 it goes into how Thurston championed Dino almost immediately

well, apart from the fact that i just can't hear it on sister, at the time they recorded it dinosaur had only released one record which had little initial impact. while i don't doubt the fact that sonic youth became big dinosaur fans i think sister was already done by that point. the jump in style from evol to sister never seemed that great to me and i always think of it as part of a trilogy starting with bad moon rising. the change in sound and style from sister to daydream nation however was gigantic. xp

I disagree about how and when SY's sound changed (and obviously their influences), but inevitably every fan is going to draw the map differently. I used to think that the band peaked w/Evol (w/Confusion, Bad Moon and Evol being a kind of "trilogy"), but after re-listening to all of their 80s records f/this poll, I see '83-'85 as their real peak, w/Confusion is Sex and Bad Moon Rising forming really bold yin/yang bookends. I don't expect anyone to agree w/this, but it illustrates my point about the number of ways that you can parse their career.

ok but to boringly reiterate yet again, i just don't hear it on sister at all. i think the two massive changes were from confusion is sex to bad moon and sister to daydream but yes, hellhouse, i guess it's different for different ears.

for the record, bad moon rising is my favourite SY record.

just wait til the sonic youth fights on the album results thread!

I kinda shoulda just posted #40 with this argument going on. It's a Sonic Youth song. But I guess you gotta wait to see which one it is..

Black Flag may have reclaimed hard rock first after its exile by punk rock, but Dinosaur Jr. were so much more overt and unashamed about their hard rock intentions, which was a real novelty at the time

yeah, I've been thinking a lot about what differentiated dinosaur from other folks who were turning towards hard rock at the time, and overt/unashamed seem like good terms to use. in 1985 you had not only black flag going sabbath on my war and loose nut, but other SST bands like st vitus, husker du, minutemen, and meat puppets embracing 60s rock/folk/country styles, not to mention folks like the butthole surfers bringing back psychedelic sprawl. things were definitely getting more stoned out in hardcore land. but there was something unashamedly AOR and radio-ready about dinosaur, something more integrated and expansive about the way they approached the guitar. it definitely felt like a deliberate return of the 70s "guitar god" concept. it's hard to put my finger on it, but aside from SY's express endorsements of the band, I hear more dinosaur in "teenage riot" than husker du. maybe it was just the whole quiet-LOUD-quiet thing, which was also kinda novel at the time.

what's weird is that dinosaur's influence was so widespread it's hard now to hear how revelatory they were in '85. you've heard a million songs like "repulsion" from the indie corps over the years, even "smells like teen spirit" capitalized on their quiet-LOUD-quiet steez. so for me listening to it now is almost like looking at a cubist painting, I can hear both the shocking original and the done-to-death aspects of their sound.

http://youtu.be/gHnPaGFzhTY

jjj please change title to alert everyone to top 40 counting down/finishes today when you get a chance.

47 Blue Öyster Cult - Burnin' for You 666 Points, 12 Votes
this song rules, i dont care if i've heard it a thousand times

43 AC/DC - You Shook Me All Night Long 693 Points, 11 Votes
whereas i would not care if i never heard this again

i think the two massive changes were from confusion is sex to bad moon and sister to daydream but yes, hellhouse, i guess it's different for different ears.

I'm not so much falling back on lazy relativism as I'm conceding the power of certain codified indie narratives (mainly b/c I'm really fucking tired atm). (for a v. zany example of cognitive dissonance re: Sister, check out the P4K Sister review from their Top 100 Albums from the 80s feature; not conflating yr. opinion w/that bit of madness, btw, and BMR is a v. cool 1st choice).

EIII OTM re: Dinosaur xp

aren't people giving Dinosaur Jr. a lot of credit that the Pixies deserve?

speaking as an American here, at a British uni the year SY toured behind Daydream Nation; I can say that nobody gave a flying fuck about Dino Jr, but the Pixies were the hottest band in the world when Doolittle came out. And, much as I think the Pixies are the single most overrated band on ILM (scary spooky horrorcore lyrics bore me, too old and unGoth), nobody did quiet/loud better than them...

you guys need a Sonic Youth thread or a Dinosaur Jr thread... or something

:)

Does anyone else think the first 45 seconds of "Little Fury Things" sounds just like Lifelover?

dinosaur jr impact on american underground precedes the pixies and tbh was pretty much absorbed by the time the pixies put out an album. dinosaur jr quiet-loud works differently than pixies also - pixies quiet-loud is the 'smells like teen spirit' template that ends up ruling 90s rock radio, dinosaur jr quiet-loud could almost more contained-fucked up (ie it's never really 'quiet' like 'gigantic' is) definite impact on sonic youth at the time and directly or indirectly on mbv (though there's enough differences that i can see ppl not buying it - asleep vs dreaming, frampton vs cocteau twins maybe), also alot of pixies quiet-loud is really albini quiet-loud, to the extent you hear the pixies in 90s amerindie i'd argue you're hearing albini, whereas dinosaur jr all over 90s amerindie beyond quiet-loud dynamic even. fwiw i love both bands, have definitely listened to more pixies (i was 13 when surfer rosa came out, there were boobs on the cover), probably more likely to listen to dinosaur jr in the future.

also obv dinosaur jr-mbv connection i'm missing: they toured together! athens show ppl still talk about twenty some odd years and i missed it (tbf i was in high school and underage and o god fuckit i have no excuse i will regret this til the day i die). interesting guitarworld story on mascis and shields: http://www.mybloodyvalentine.net/press/guitarworld-apr93.html. for those that don't read it, an excerpt:In the other corner we have Kevin Shields: guitarist, singer, songwriter and overall mastermind of My Bloody Valentine. An Irishman by birth, Kevin has also lived in New York, Berlin and now London. Quiet and trippily introspective, he answers the general description of what's called a "shoe-gazer" in the UK. And he is positively obsessed with guitar sounds--the kind of person who could easily spend an entire day making minor adjustments to the angle of two Vox AC30's pointed at one another and miked from nine different sides. All of which helps explain why My Bloody Valentine's breakthrough album, Loveless, is a brilliant collection of warped, other-worldly guitar tones and mind-bending pop hooks. As soon as it appeared in 1991, the record was universally acclaimed as a masterpiece of the new Nineties guitar rock. The trouble is it took an awful lot of time and money to record. It's rumored that this is why the Valentines were dropped by their English label, Creation. Not to worry, though: Shields and his group recently found a new English home on Island Records. (They'll continue on Warner Brothers in the States.) Kev is in the process of building his own studio, where he will record the band's much-anticipated follow up to Loveless. He promises this one'll be done much more quickly.

So looks like about 32 songs in the top 40 will be non-Sonic Youth. isnt that somethin

yeah, albini made the pixies heavier than they actually were on surfer rosa, and those dynamics had to be well-known to them anyway, they lived in the same state as dinosaur for cripes sake. a buddy who saw some early dinosaur shows described them as "jangle-jangle-jangle (steps on imaginary distortion pedal) SKREEEEOOOOOOOOOOHONGKKKKKRRRRRRR (turns off imaginary distortion pedal) jangle-jangle-jangle", and anybody doing that trick in '87, self included, was pretty aware of where it came from, as aware as if you had just stuck a screwdriver in your guitar.

You guys know orig name for Teen Age Riot was J Mascis for President, rightv

and I swear my final point here - I wasn't spotting dinosaur's influence everywhere because of a great love - as noted above I didn't even like you're living all over me when it came out! and the dinosaur influence was the least interesting part of MBV's sound! and SY's fascination with dinosaur pretty much ruined them as a band! it was some pernicious language-is-a-virus pandora's box that dinosaur opened, but they opened it so credit where credit is due.

alright fine i am listening through the sonic youth tracks on spotify now since u dudes seem so into it all

is stereo sanctity the first one that placed or did i miss some stuff

I'm actually not that interested in YLAOM either, aside from "In a Jar" which is awesome, and totally another track I wish I'd nom'd, and what I would recommend to DJP if he wants to hear Barlow playing bass...

xp ha yeah, I liked Stereo Sanctity a lot more when they sped it up and let Kim go hammer all over it and called it Orange Rolls Anmgels Spit

ok so that didnt help or change anything. i think the problem is that i can kind of sort of see them being sort of innocuously ok wrt the instrumental side (although kind of boring?) but holy shit man i can not stand the vocals, i hate everything about them across the board. like in a way where i will sorta ease up on my cranky old man routine because i am willing to admit that i cant give this band a fair shot at all because as soon as somebody starts singing i skip the song. although death to our friends seems to be instrumental and i hated that too. eh.

segued into rocking in the free world which is actually much worse because the vocals and instrumentation and song are all equally dreadful so hey sonic youth gets one leg up from me sorta

a bunch of crappy SY tracks got nommed tbh, listen to "halloween" or "making the nature scene" instead

hah ok as a dude that reached the whopping age of 16 in the 80s my cranky old man metaphor is prob kind of far off i suppose

xpost ok i will do that. i think i like death valley 69 iirc! just not this stuff maybe

ok halloween is better? i can hear some art bears stuff in here, which is what i kept waiting for but never came in the other stuff i listened to - not totally sold but yeah this is way easier to listen to. maybe i have a singing thurston moore problem?

i think id still rather listen to the art bears or sleepytime gorilla museum but still this is way better

I think "Schizophrenia" is the best thing they ever did. It has singing on it though. If you like "Death Valley '69" though, hmm, maybe "Brother James" is one to try??

2xpost

They're not really like the Art Bears or SGM though.

Weirdly, I don't remember "Halloween"!

you might like some screeching thurston vocals maybe? try "kill yr idols"

ps can't believe no one nommed "kill yr idols" wtf

Actually, I'm guessing that "Schizophrenia" might not be what you're looking for.

"Shaking Hell" maybe

"halloween" is one of my fave SY tracks, at their otherworldly best before they started trying to be dinosaur lol. I figured you P4K nerds would be all over that shit so I spent my time nomming stuff like drunks with guns and chain gang.

You're not calling me a P4K nerd, are you?:P

I need to pull out my BMR CD.

I wouldn't necessarily say that they ever had really great voices.

Oh, "Halloween"! I love this song, actually. I thought "Flower" was this song tbh. "Flower" was the one that goes "USE THE POWER OF MAN! SUPPORT THE POWER OF WOMEN!" then? That's totally crappier.

jjj: You might like "Protect Me You" too?

well shit i am def not anyone that should be looking for great voices given my tastes but there is something ultra grating abt the thurston vox to me? like maybe i blame him for that whole lazy i dont give a fuck abt/cant be bothered singing thing in some ways xpost

ok kind of digging protect me you

Confusion Is Sex/Kill Yr Idols (1 CD) is probably closest to what you want.

Man E3 you're the one who got me to listen to Halloween and now its one of my favorites

jjj - try listening to Cross the Breeze which is my fave 80s SY track; its on Daydream Nation. Or maybe some 90s stuff like Dirty?

ok listening to kill yr idols and i am totally down with this vocal thing he is doing - is this more common on the early stuff? i could be down with this band when they arent doing the mumble into the microphone thing i think. yeah ok actually i really really dig this song, was it nommmed?