Help me explain to my friend why the Foo Fighters don't matter.

-- SQUARECOATS (plsmit...), June 23rd, 2006.

otm, it's like a totally different band

that's bullshit! total fucking elistist bullshit! i had friends that fucking loved scenes from italian restaurant...people play these songs at weddings, dance to them, just because these people aren't hip or you think billy joel is shit doesn't mean that these songs don't mean something to a lot of people....people fucking love singing along to piano man, etc etc....i mean he's pretty mawkish and whatever, but pretending that people don't "really" like his stuff, they're mindless sheep or something is total crap.

Like without Billy Joel I think you'd have a giant gap in there; there would be so many people who didn't quite make sense. I'm not saying this alone means anything, but in this case it might: this is a guy who wrote several songs that "everyone" knows practically all the words to. Good or bad, he's occupied a ton of space that way, on this really fundamental level of practically writing standards, and so I don't know if you could just write him out of history without leaving kind of a hole behind.

Plus, Billy Joel had "Captain Jack." So I think he was maybe initially viewed as being a bit weirder than he really was. I agree that he's a bit of an anomaly over the long-term, though, either way. I heard the abysmal "Movin' Out" last weekend (which is also sorta weird, isn't it?) and had a long conversation trying to explain how exactly he became/remained popular enough to, like, have his own musical and stuff.

a Joel-hole

But doesn't that open up a whole other can of worms--who gets to decide which groups of people are important enough to carry a mediocre artist into the Hall? Why are suburban middle-class white people important enough (sheer numbers aside, although I suppose that's a compelling argument) that what they listened to in the 70s and 80s deserves to get put in the canon?

I prefer Taster's Choice to Folger's Crystals.

i don't even know why i'm in this thread! billy joel sucks! but he's important, kind of!

But doesn't that open up a whole other can of worms--who gets to decide which groups of people are important enough to carry a mediocre artist into the Hall?

Well, see, here's where we get into why it's the rock and roll Hall of Fame. One of the things I was saying is odd about Billy Joel is that he managed to do songs that could received on the level of pop standards, like Manilow (or better yet Neil Diamond) -- but at the same time, he took on the reputation, in his early work, as, like, a poet, man. Like a "meaningful" auteur, like the Dylan of musical theater, or something. (I don't know his mid-70s stuff well enough to entirely understand why, so I shouldn't make fun.) So the difference there would be that his fits the category of "rock and roll" better than someone like Diamond would, and he would, reputation-wise, even if the two were musicologically identical.

So when we ask "who defines importance," well -- above and beyond the fact that we live in a country where middle-class white people are always perceived as representing the neutral mainstream core of society -- I think the "rock and roll" answers that question, maybe. It's the audience that goes with that perception of what ("meaningful") "rock and roll" is in America, and that necessarily spotlights certain audiences (male, often youngish, "serious," interested in the "classic") and pushes out other ones ("pop," middle-aged, "not serious/meaningful," tweeny/teenybopper, female, etc.).

They get all worked up over it, and it sounds meaningful, but it just doesn't hold any meaning except to them. The Elvis Costello effect. As soon as I stopped plugging my current beloved into the song I was listening to (as Elvis' "you"), the songs became trite and meaningless to me.

xpost - Kinda true, Matt, but the flip side of a "standard" isn't just that other artists cover it, it's that it's the kind of song where the sheet music is sitting inside people's piano benches at home -- and Joel has gotten that far with a few of them, not to mention karaoke as the new form of that same thing. Certain Joel songs are as close as the modern age gets to (oh irony) the popular 1940s musical number that's just a routine part of music and life, quite apart from any central recording of it.

This, I believe, can be partially explained by his upbringing Bronx/Long Island background and his early tenure as a Tin Pan Alley kinda session dude. Y'know he's got that jive/sexy sax/Manhattan nights/B'way/Bright Lights Big City vibe which was then flitered through the Beatles and Dylan. Springsteen really isn't that far off, as a NJ denizen. All those East Coast cats were mixing the doo-wop and B'way and Dylan. Dion!

-- nabisco (--...), June 23rd, 2006.

The answer to all your questions is Supertramp.

:p

whos the middle dude?

Full disclosure--I have never owned (or wanted to) any artifacts created by Billy Joel or Neil Diamond. But the people I grew up with and worked with in the 70s & 80s had both, sung along with both, turned up the radio when they came on. These are people for whom music is a secondary matter--they have maybe 100 albums & for them Joel & Springsteen and Neil Diamond and the Beatles and Fleetwood Mac are the soundtrack of their lives.

Trust me. I have argued with these folks that they would enjoy music more if they widened their horizons. But they are exactly the people who will go to Cleveland, buy the fucking shirt, drink the kool-aid, and go home happy. They, like the Foo Fighters, get into the HoF by paying the admission charge.

if they have personal/business ties with whatever iteration of that council exists, then they will. if they don't, they won't, vis-a-vis virtually any big-selling artist/act (Boston, Kiss) or influential act (Stooges, MC5, Dolls) that isn't.

nu-wings

They'll glide into the RRHOF on longevity, like Don Sutton.

they singlehandedly killed rock & roll. or it feels like anyway when i hear them.

Everlong is the best song ever

They're the world's longest-running and best-funded Rock & Roll Fantasy Camp. Dave Grohl got to play with Queen! Taylor Hawkins got to play with Rush!

It's like what Quincy Jones said about Wynton Marsalis: "no trumpeter in America wants to play like Wynton in his style. Every great trumpeter - Louis Armstrong, Roy Eldridge, Miles - borrows from someone before him and adds his own thing. But nobody wants to play like Wynton."

Jesus, I feel like we're in 2001 ilm

We are talking about a band who debuted 18 years ago

Wonder why new bands wouldn't want sound like them

They are great radio rock like Styx or foreigner and if you hate those groups then whatever vet

preach

styx and foreigner are both like fifty times better than the foos!

proven by science!

boston>>>>>foo fighters
styx and foreigner are both like fifty times better than the foos!

fuck that