shifts in popular opinion you have noticed

"i always preferred B.A.D + variants thereof."

lol, the only clash-related stuff i own is the first BAD album/medicine show 12 inch/cmon every beatbox 12 inch.

70s lite rock going from the enemy to ironic "yacht rock" to essential.

― human life won't become a cat (man alive), Tuesday, April 5, 2016 3:16 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Isn't designed-for-radio pop kind of experiencing the same trajectory? Dismissed as disposable and/or ironic novelty listening for years, now people are truly valuing the more successful examples or going out of their way to champion it. Not saying there's anything wrong with this!

and yet ABBA still hasn't become a cool favorite

ABBA has tunes. intricate melodies have never been less cool than now

the intensity of clash fandom seemed to have a big element of personal identification with the band, where you really cared about joe, mick, etc., maybe closer to the way ppl care/cared about the beatles than the way they care about wire. and that's something which might be hard for younger ppl to embrace, since the clash are gone and will never play again and their story is kind of messy and sprawling, not short and neat like the smiths or joy division. i've always loved them but always wondered if i would've loved them even more if i'd gotten to live through their existence, seen a couple shows, etc.

he's a hokey maudlin goofball to some people now

I've always kind of felt this way about Tom Waits but felt like I was very much in the minority and was missing something that everyone else apparently saw.

A couple of years ago me and another guy my age (41) talking to some people 10 years younger who all thought Guns and Roses were no different than Poison and Winger while we were trying to argue how different they felt when we were kids but I don't know how true this really is in retrospect.

Acceptance and fandom of New Age was not even close to a thing for record snob types two decades ago was it?

xp Those lines are p blurred now, yeah. Why was Soundgarden good and Ugly Kid Joe and Silverchair terrible? They just were, kid, OK? I can't explain it.

it's interesting if people are starting to diss Tom Waits now, because even though I like a lot of his stuff, it's always amazed me the kind of critical free pass he seemed to get. Like, every time an album came out, boom, 4 1/2 stars. In the 80s, what he was doing was so different than what you normally got from even underground pop acts, he was seen as breath of fresh (rotten stinking) air. Like, there was the moment when something like Capt Beefheart aesthetics broke into the mainstream, and in the context of the time, that was a pretty cool thing to happen. And yeah, he WAS hokey -- it seemed he went out of his way to be hokey sometimes, and that's part of his thing.

"and yet ABBA still hasn't become a cool favorite"

they were for people my age kinda. along with the carpenters. i think mamma mia! might have ruined them for later generations.

yeah, was gonna say ABBA was cool in the 90s, fwiw

most ppl i know, even major music buffs, think of stewart as a kitschy figure and seem shocked that anyone would take him seriously.

Hasn't this been the case since at least the early '80s, though?

abba prob would be cool again if not for the nazi stuff.

well I didn't know anyone who liked them but me and my one music nerd friend. I actually pitched a big ABBA retrospective to a certain popular indie music site about 15 years ago, and they passed. Ended up writing it for Stylus

oh wait, that was ace of base. sorry, abba.

GnR is totally better than Poison and Winger, Soundgarden is totally better Ugly Kid Joe and Silverchair. I don't think there's even any subjectivity to those declarations, they just are.

One of the weirdest hip namedrops of our time, for me, is Enya.

I guess I don't know who her actual fanbase was in the early to mid 90s, but at the time she sort of seemed like vapid earth mom music to me.

Really? Huh. So what you're saying is that there's hope for the eventual validation of my evergreen Basia fandom.

I never thought I'd see a festival headlined by Radiohead, LCD Soundsystem, and Lionel Richie and yet here we are.

Similarly the whole new age thing. My parents used to make fun of new age stuff, and I associated it with this one hippieish friend of my parents who wrote her own feminist Jewish songs for holidays. One of the Passover songs included the word "afterbirth" and I think it was my introduction to that word.

tori amos

One of the weirdest hip namedrops of our time, for me, is Enya.

― human life won't become a cat (man alive), Tuesday, 5 April 2016 19:51 (9 minutes ago) Permalink

I guess I don't know who her actual fanbase was in the early to mid 90s, but at the time she sort of seemed like vapid earth mom music to me.

― human life won't become a cat (man alive), Tuesday, 5 April 2016 19:53 (7 minutes ago) Permalink

i think this has to do with Grimes. also Brad wrote a pretty positive review of her album on pitchfork

enya probably due to "only time" reaching the age of millennial nostalgia

One of the weirdest hip namedrops of our time, for me, is Enya.

i have had a new age/ambient groove recently,
and after the recent critical love-in for enya i picked up a couple of their cds from the cheap bins.
nope.
still aint feeling it.
give me the relative mad sonic non-excess of enigma anyday over her dreary nothingness.
summary : next time i catch up with luke from tQ i will be having words.

young'uns don't care about REM now because they are totally boring + irrelevant to modern musical landscape

my piano and guitar teachers in middle/high school fucking loved enya

I have bad associations with her, because for some reason Orinoco Flow and the video for it caused me nightmares when I was a teenager. The song has a suffocating effect on me.

most ppl i know, even major music buffs, think of stewart as a kitschy figure and seem shocked that anyone would take him seriously

Definitely me; I've tried to like the Faces three or four times now and it's never taken.

I like some of Waits' songs, especially on the tribute album New Coat of Paint, or just about anywhere, as long as *he's* not "singing" them; like him as a storyteller and bandleader on his live albums, and the studio sets also flaunt hip taste in and access to musos.
Even in his early heyday, Stewart was conceptually (and manipulatively) corny, switching back and forth from the Rooster to Sensitive Kid Inside, but those were the man-rock times, and track by track, most of his pre-American LPs were often pretty effective (I ain't listened to none since the big move, but hehad some okay radio hits later---even "If You Think I'm Sexy" was an effective use of part of Jorge Ben's "Taj Mahal," in a new, ridiculously archetypal 70s context).(Also, much later, did a good if subway-yachty version of Waits' "Downtown Train.")
The albums he made with (originally as one of) the Faces are uneven, butworth checking out too---especially for Ronnie Lane songs---although think it was Ron Wood who said that several (of the best) tracks he thought of as Faces tracks somehow ended up on RS solo LPs instead.
Oh yeah, and speaking of (those particular) man-rock times, he did that white rock star thing of following templates pretty closely, on covers of The Temptations' and especially Four Tops versions of "(I Know) I'm Losing You," Sam Cooke's "Twistin' The Night Away," and Etta James's "I'd Rather Go Blind," although you gotta have the chops to follow those acts, and he did add his own raspy etc. trademark sound to the shadow of their phrasing (and James said that hearing his cover while she was in rehab made her determined to get back to her career).

Rod Stewart/Faces were definitely part of the vinyl nerd canon when I was in college, but that was a pretty distinct and relatively small subculture on campus -- vinyl had not quite blown up to current levels yet.

I think a common thread of a lot of these reappraisals is that the artist actually benefits from a loss of context. E.g. when an otherwise talented artist makes a style move that makes him/her seem like a cynical poser tagging along with the "authentic" bands of the times, those records often sound better in later years when you lose that frame of reference.

yeah like how Tunnel of Love is now a well-regarded springsteen album

young'uns don't care about REM now because they are totally boring + irrelevant to modern musical landscape

i aint no young'un, but having tried a few albums recently, i concur with this judgement.

Watermark was the first ever album I became obsessed with, I had a cassette taped version of my dad's cd so I could listen to it in my room when I was about 6 or 7 (this would be the early 90s). I don't remember any of my peers expressing any interest in Enya throughout my teens or early 20s, though i do recall being excited when the NME published a letter from someone about the release of A Day Without Rain.

Definitely me; I've tried to like the Faces three or four times now and it's never taken.

ahh ... you see i have been tempted by recent boxset,
but i have real problems with rods vocals i.e. they are like bovril.
and i fucking hate bovril.
guess that's my quest over.

Also the whole stink that can attach to a band because of who the perceived audience is. E.g. presumably you couldn't be an intellectual post-punker in the 70s and also be down with the cokehead party boys and music magazine-reading dorks who played the Dan on their hi-fis.

my piano and guitar teachers in middle/high school fucking loved enya

Ha, are you young enough that precocious girls from my high school cohort could have been your teachers?

This might be the most obvious one: I remember how everyone thought it was hilariously ironic when I bought Journey's Escape for a quarter in 2000.

the only Rod i own is Jeff Beck's Truth. everyone should own that album.

I still hate Journey, especially *that* song.

I don't like Jeff Beck, either. Of the big British guitar players, he's the one I have the least use for, including Clapton.

Ok I put on some Enya and this shit is still awful, possibly the most unpleasant music I have ever heard.

Truth rules. even if you hate Jeff Beck. it's just a great album.

It makes me feel like someone is tightly holding a silk sheet over my face. xp

I think I started a thread once where I rated Truth over Zep I (and I'm a huge Zep fan).

is popular opinion shifting away from Led Zeppelin? I feel like about the time grunge happened, Zep's profile was higher than ever, and then over the years, they kind of faded into the background again.

Faces' Four Guys Walk Into A Bar... box is essential; can't say the same about the individual albums (except maybe A Nod Is As Good As A Wink).

Every Picture and Gasoline Alley are great, too, but Stewart basically never gave a shit if he was taken seriously or not. He never even made a clumsy/fumbling/self-conscious late-career attempt to get back to his early '70s peaks.

the crematorium where both my grandfather and later my great-grandmother were cremated in the early 00s had the title track from Watermark piped in as background music during the cremation; which seemed kind of odd. I suppose you could choose specific music if you wanted to, but Enya was the default?

Yardbirds stuff + Truth the only Jeff Beck i own. and need to own. kids should get into the Yardbirds. post-Clapton Yardbirds anyway. best band.

Ha, are you young enough that precocious girls from my high school cohort could have been your teachers?

oh nah, they're about the same age as my aunt (70s), and in fact engage with enya in roughly the same way i think (all the other music they listen to is classical and abba, which i think informs what they enjoy about enya)

Tolerance for excellent horn arrangements

Spirit have elements I keep hearing in later rock music so wonder if they were majorly influential or if it is just coincidental.
Do like what i've heard of them anyway. But do need to pick up another couple of the original line up run on cd.

Spirit have elements I keep hearing in later rock music so wonder if they were majorly influential or if it is just coincidental.

Will be able to answer that when the court case is finished.

they were so varied. Spirit. which might have been a detriment in some ways, i dunno. i mean they had a huge hit, but the albums really go all over the place. people definitely buy their albums faster now when i put them out than 5 years ago or so. and hepcats have latched onto that randy solo album. the kaptain kopter album. for its over the top guitar squall. there is great crazy stuff on the 70's albums too. even on the 80's albums!

Spirit's original lineup split just a couple months after Dr. Sardonicis came out. The groups mix of pop, psych and jazz was unique and if perhaps if they would have kept touring, they might have finally clicked in the early 70s prog/hard rock album rock period.

I think they suffered a bit from not having a "frontman".

I remember when a P!nk song came out a bunch of years ago that Beck produced, and it was essentially "Fresh Garbage" with P!nk singing different lyrics/melody. OK, fine, that's cool...except in accompanying interviews, P!nk talked about "that fun track Beck recorded...it's such a typical Beck song!" Beck didn't rush to correct her, either.

Beck ripped off Fresh Garbage wholesale himself

maybe this is the same as the P!nk song idk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJZkVNQBVYw

Same song. I didn't know Beck did it though!

Looking for a place to ask. Has anybody ever called 13 Songs (i.e. The 1st 2 mini lps) by Fugazi Math Rock?
I thought it was material that was massively influential, along with the group ethos on the more punk end of the independent /alternative scene since it came out. Just surprised to see it dismissed as such in a riposte to the Rolling Stone list.

&with Spirit I think I was hearing vocal mannerisms echoed in late 70s hardish rock.
Also possibly some song structure stuff from 12 Dreams echoed elsewhere.

I don't think Patti Smith fits here at all. At Field Day in Victoria Park, last year, on the Sunday playing before Ride she got an ecstatic reception. She played all of Horses, plus more. It was fucking great. I don't understand why there is an issue here with her - she's always been fantastic. I don't get how she is dated.

Playing before Ride may have been a bit strange but she got that dusk hour just damn right.

JUst been knocked out by that Fugazi are Math rock and therefore don't fit on a list of 40 top punk records put together by Rolling Stone, whereas Nirvana apparently do according to the same writer.
As far as I can remember in the early days of Fugazi as represented on the material on those 2 mini lps or their later reissue as 13 songs the band were mainly playing on a punk circuit to crowds with a large punk content. Is that wrong?

That's how I remember it: almost everyone I knew in Louisville in the later nineties who was into mathrock was also into Fugazi, but it's a very strange editorial move to separate them from their punk context.

that fugazi thing really fucking irritates me

kinda see what you guys are talking about b/c it sounds baffling

The full description among a series of responses to the individual entries on the RS list was 'Math Rock. Yawn.'
i can't see much ambiguity in that comment.
It's up at the Ugly Things site which I find quite disappointing.

Many of those 90s math rock groups came out of the same punk/hardcore scenes anyway, especially in Louisville and Chicago. For some of those musicians, it was often their second known band after an earlier more trad. punk sounding band.

uh, meant "kinda WANNA see what you guys are talking about" above. left a word out there.

Fugazi doesn't even particularly strike me as much as math rock other than a few tunes like Stacks or Arpeggiator. Definitely not as much as say Jesus Lizard.

I don't remember seeing them called math rock before. & certainly think they came out of a scene at least based in punk. So do find it a bit baffling that they're supposed to be one thing they may have touched on to the exclusion of something I know they were influential in the contemporary version of.
Wonder how widespread that 'corrected' list view of them is. Seems as misguided to me as the writer finds the original list.

i guess like steady diet of nothing was the only fugazi album than maybe

i just don't put them in the same category as don cab, a minor forest etc

It didn't seem like a leap in 90s post-hxc circles (esp. keeping in mind the more discontinuous songs on Red Medicine and End Hits), but that doesn't mean they weren't accepted as punk.

I think the 'math' was built up originally in the rhythm section, then the guitars gradually followed esp Guy

Fugazi is too cool to be popular. maybe if in 10 years "Merchandise" is on an Apple ad they will get onto the Rolling Stone top 40.

They're on the list. I'd think deservedly so. Writer correcting the list seems to be saying they don't belong and it's a foregone conclusion hence Yawn.
I think there is fantastic material on that set. Think a lot of punks worldwide think so too.

ONe could assume taht at any point in a history dealing with revival of certain styles or the influence of certain styles there will inevitably be some parts of the original style or that associated with it that are no longer deemed cool. So certain trappings won't be brought to the surface or will just be laughed at and swiftly shelved. Would hope that one would maintain the cool aspects and recognise what made it of inherent worth in the first place, but would also think that one has to look at things from a current perspective.
JUst trying to think what Gadamer says about tradition which is something about it not being a monolithically solid entity but something in conversation/communication with the current era so under continual flux. With some new elements coming in and some older bits fading out, possibly to be revived later if the tehn current focus deems them of interest.

So looking at things like punk or mod or whatever other youth culture keeps being revived those involved will never be back at the starting point so things relevant at the time, motivations etc will never be quite the same. & if they were they would tend to ossify and probably be seen as more of a joke than something cool. Though would hope taht the spirit of both of those scenes I mentioned would be more into continual reinvention so would avoid that. Which might be why md gave way to what ever other stylish egocentric fashions it gave way to and punk begat postpunk begat whatever. But both got revived as something more static.
If you see what I mean. Or at least that's what I'd think, like.