shifts in popular opinion you have noticed

I saw Faust live in the early '90s; they toured after Rien came out in...'94 maybe? They set off a road flare onstage and almost choked everyone in the club to death.

Punkers like John Lydon and Pete Shelley were bigging up Can at the end of the 1970s, and there's a Neu! track on one of those NME 80s compilation tapes - in the UK at least, they've been in a pretty constant state of reappraisal/rediscovery

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.

― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat),

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d7/RodStewart_Time_albumcover.jpg

Answering a post way upthread: in the '90s loving Bowie and Roxy in America was a lonely thing. My friends thought I was bizarre, for Bowie was still a joke b/w 1989-1995.

Few bands' respect/credibility/influence have just gone over a cliff like The Police. Like, NO ONE gives a shit anymore. Young people in particular, but also olds who may have liked them in the past.

Here's a thing: Dub music is a thing that seems to ebb in and out of popularity every 6-7 years, right? I don't think it's particularly popular right now, but even as recently as 2011 you had people like Ekoplekz and Demdike Stare doing their own underground takes on dub.

You know who is having a rough decade? U2. So much that it probably has hurt their overall standing.

Few bands' respect/credibility/influence have just gone over a cliff like The Police. Like, NO ONE gives a shit anymore. Young people in particular, but also olds who may have liked them in the past.

Like, recently? I can buy that but I was at one of those 2007 shows and people definitely gave a shit then

Yeah, since the reunion tour. After that happened, nosedive.

I hang out around college students all day, and while some may not identify Sting or the Police as the band playing "Message in a Bottle" or "Every Breath You Take," all of them can hum or sing at least a few verses.

Basically this thread is confirmation bias.

When i was 19 in 1988 i moved to Philadelphia and after I got a job I went to 3rd Street Jazz every week and bought a Can album until I had them all. I'd never heard them! I don't know what I read that made me do that. They had every album on vinyl there too. 80's Spoon pressings.

You know who is having a rough decade? U2. So much that it probably has hurt their overall standing.

This might be true, because now they're the old band who forced you to download their new, not very good at all, album. If The Stones had forced me to own Steel Wheels, I might have a different opinion of them at this point.

You know who is having a rough decade? U2. So much that it probably has hurt their overall standing.

― kornrulez6969, Wednesday, April 6, 2016 8:29 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

They don't really have anyone but themselves to blame. They weren't bad back in the day but they were never good enough to override their last two decades of mostly bullshit. IMO.

xpost lol

But after that stupid itunes fiasco, they still filled arenas and stadiums, didn't they?

krautrock i knew *OF* in the 90s but had very little of as it was OOP I had a faust cd, couple of amon duul cds and a best of vinyl , Can cds and bootleg cds of the neu albums and kraftwerk 2 on vinyl i found in tower records (philips original, a warehouse find)

everything else i got when i got napster along with thousands of other things that were rare.

The students I've got in class or advise (i.e. not the radio station kids) listen to music (a) the old fashioned way, i.e. parents' collections, recommendations, curiosity; or (b) social media, YouTube clips, commercial soundtracks, and other kinds of ubiquity.

The second is the biggest change I've seen. That's why I said most students can identify "Every Breath You Take" but not that The Police performed it. When music is knitted into the fabric of your consumption habits – food, cars, sex, whatever – its creators are irrelevant.

It's absolutely fine to like Phil Collins these days.

That's why I said most students can identify "Every Breath You Take" but not that The Police performed it. When music is knitted into the fabric of your consumption habits – food, cars, sex, whatever – its creators are irrelevant.

Yeah, when I was in college, I could hum the melodies of all kinds of old songs without having much/any knowledge of who recorded them. But for a very long time, The Police were afforded "elite" status in journo world and musician/music geek world, and all of that seems to have evaporated.

Looking at Spotify the Police have 173,000,000 listens so far. I don't know how the statistics work, but that's a big number. I could never get into their music, though, as much as I've tried.

It's absolutely fine to like Phil Collins these days.

I remember the UK music press reacting with real incredulity and disgust when Urban Renewal, that 'R&B and hip hop artists cover Phil Collins' tribute album was released in 2001.

Maybe you guys are right, and the thread title is about popular opinion after all, but their rep has definitely taken a hit critically/influentially.

> I think a common thread of a lot of these reappraisals is that the artist actually benefits from a loss of context.

Yeah, Lionel Ritchie went away, Rod Stewart didn't. Elvis Costello soldiers on with a new batch of songs every few years, unlike Patti Smith. Bowie's rep definitely benefited by taking a decade off.

yeah, definitely knew Can, Faust, Neu, Kraftwerk, etc in the 90s. Can't remember when I found Cluster, but it wouldn't have been far after. The thing is, the internet was actually around in the 90s, so sometime around 97 or 98, anything I wasn't aware of suddenly became a lot easier to find.

The Police is kind of a sad case imo, and pretty much totally down to Sting. I personally still revere Stewart Copeland's drumming, but Sting's persona (and a lot of his lyrics) is absolutely cringeworthy.

I thought Sting might be cool after that Simpsons episode where he was described as a "good digger", but whatever credibility he got from that was destroyed by that lute album he released.

Jane's Addiction, whatever reunion stuff they do, they're just 'there' nowadays.

Copeland's majorly hit-or-miss for me. Generally dig him on some of the early stuff, but after a while I just want someone to take his hi-hat and splash cymbals away from him.

Xxpost Are we talking about popularity or critical rep though?

When I lived in Italy everyone revered the police as an unimpeachable classic but I think you'd be hard pushed to find a less credible classic rock artist among young music fans in the uk, even if they could all hum 'every breath you take ' or whatever.

yeah, I think this is about critical rep. Recently, I actually had the (mis)fortune of attending a benefit where Sting was performing, and people loved him there.

In their heyday, every profile of the Police mentioned "with lyrics that reference Nabakov and Jung" like it was a big deal, which just seems silly now. The first two records still sound pretty unique, and could probably find fresh fans, especially if Sting fades more.

did people know of Can, Faust, Neu! etc. in the 90's?

When was Julian Cope's Krautrocksampler? Can were well known enough in the 70s to do tours of the UK (I feel like I've covered all this in another thread); Faust Tapes was sold for 49p, plenty of people bought it (whether they listened to it more than once is another matter); Neu! not so well known, though Cherry Red released a compilation in 1982 which I suppose they were expecting people to buy. This is all in the UK, no idea about the US. I'm not sure, but do people think Can were more obscure than Van der Graaf Generator or Gong or Gentle Giant or whoever, 'cos I'm pretty sure they weren't.

Rush, oddly enough, seems to have displaced The Police in the critical corner they used to occupy.

Dominique, i didnt get internet til the last few months of 1999

Can were on top of the pops :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0nfjguTclg&nohtml5=False

Krautrocksampler was published in 1995, but, as I remember it, Can/Faust/Neu were all well known by then, it was more useful for some of the more obscure artists he covered.

xpost

Can had a critical visibility from the 70s on that straight prog never did -- mostly because punk and post-punk bands repped them. You could read about them in regular rock mags here in the US, usually accompanied by a reference to Talking Heads or David Bowie.

Discussions of The Police these days usually devolve into making fun of Sting, whether putting down his new age-y solo albums or cliched jokes about tantric sex

For what it's worth, I'm 25 and the Police have some jams. I was at that last concert at MSG with my piano teacher--I was 17 then and probably loved The Police even more.

Dominique, i didnt get internet til the last few months of 1999

I think I used at my college's library in the late 90s, but had friends with services like Prodigy as early as '93 or so (which they was using almost exclusively for porn!). But should also add that I knew about krautrock before all of that anyway, just from reading about music. Blue Rolling Stone record for example had reviews of all these bands as I recall?

Probably due to his twitter account and ability to self-deprecate, Richard Marx's credibility seems to have had an upward swing in recent years.

Michael Bolton too.

Lionel Richie went away, Rod Stewart didn't. Elvis Costello soldiers on with a new batch of songs every few years, unlike Patti Smith. Bowie's rep definitely benefited by taking a decade off.

I think these are all different cases. The recent Lionel Richie rehabilitation is a complete fucking mystery to me, I confess: The guy was garbage in the '80s, why is that garbage suddenly popular again now? Who will children discover next, Kenny Rogers? Rod Stewart never went away, except he kinda did - all those "American Songbook" albums effectively removed him from pop cultural discussion. He was suddenly making music for grandparents. Elvis Costello, I agree, labors in relative obscurity, making albums for his natural constituency of NPR critics. Van Morrison is the real "how can we miss you if you won't fuck off?" guy IMO; he put out a record basically every year or two in the '80s, '90s and '00s, and nobody gave a fuck. His longest break was four years between '08 and '12. Bowie's rep improved because it took about a decade for the stink of his last three or four albums pre-The Next Day to waft away. Those records sucked, I don't care what anybody says now.

Can were definitely more obscure in the U.S. than VdGG or Gong or Gentle Giant in the 70's. though Gong were pretty underground here even by underground prog standards. solo Hillage records had more of a presence. Most Can was not released here at the time. That's the main thing. Lots of Hawkwind records in the U.S. and not so much Can. United Artists almost singlehandedly responsible for what did get over here. they put out Soon Over Babaluma in the U.S. and Ege Bamyasi. but finding a U.S. copy of Ege Bamyasi is REALLY hard.

Thought it was different in US.

Cluster's a good one, I don't think I heard them till the 90s. I borrowed a lot of albums from the sister's ex-husband's sister's boyfriend (phew) and it had some Cluster ... and Harmonia.

Hawkwind is a band I had heard of, but never heard, until the 2000s when Sanctuary/Castle remastered their UA albums.

it took about a decade for the stink of his last three or four albums pre-The Next Day to waft away. Those records sucked, I don't care what anybody says now.

Hush yr mouf. Heathen is badass.

I started writing a bit of music yesterday which unwittingly ended up sounding a bit like an electroclash track from the early-2000s. It made me think about how, growing up in the 90s, I didn't even know what electro was - it was a touchstone that had been left behind in the 80s. When electro came back into style, and then stuck around for well over a decade, it felt like it would never go away. But I haven't heard an electro rhythms in quite some time now.

U.S. copies of the first Neu! album probably easier to find than an american Ege Bamyasi. my U.S. copy of Hijack by Amon Duul II is on Atco! so cool to look at that label. there were some weird distro deals at the time. but all that stuff barely existed.

... and Kraan. Yes, seems like a lot of German bands had trouble even getting released in the US.