shifts in popular opinion you have noticed

haha also not cool to me as a kid, but probably cooler than Hall & Oates

i had no use for palmer at all until i discovered "simply irresistible" in my mid-to-late-20s, and then a few years later got into clues again via ILM iirc and i've been tentatively exploring some of the surrounding albums. he really didn't have much of a cool presence at all in the early 2000s. halloween 2003 i saw a group of friends dressed up as the 'addicted to love' video but i think that was an isolated incident.

Addicted to Love is pretty awesome! i had to learn the keys on that a few years ago and was really into it. made me think of T-Rex for some reason.

no harm, Alfred! sorry for calling H&O corporate crap, they have a lot of really good music. using that dumb phrase is a bad habit of mine.

Didn't he work with Gary Numan too? That was pretty cool.

the bad thing about Robert Palmer, even slightly apparent to me as a kid, was that he tried so hard to be cool. Getting the Duran Duran guys and Tony Thompson for Power Station (who did cover T Rex), using those models in the videos (which is an admittedly iconic image). When I got older, and realized he was just a workaday classic rock guy who wanted to update his act for the go go 80s, he seemed even lamer. The actual songs are pretty time capsule mid-late 80s tho.

re: sade, "smooth operator" was the first song i ever loved, and possibly the last song i ever fully committed to performing, at the age of 3.

isn't the standard line that the band's uncool rep in the 90s had to do with the grunge era: the fact that their music was unabashedly successful and sellable, they had a vibe you could place in a hollywood film, the production was smooth and sophisticated, they were "multicultural", sort of a code for 80s excess when viewed from the vantage point of grunge and indie, which had some truth to it even though it was really misguided and threw the baby out with the bathwater and didn't offer much in return. of course now it's clear that sade made perfect music. thank someone with an ironic mustache. or any fan of music who is black.

to me he was the definition of a dilettante in the best way: he tried a style, often approximated it, moved on.

Sade's relaxed release schedule helped her rep. She only released one album in the '90s!

i heard "every kinda people" for the first time this year. really good tom moulton production on that one. anybody that good at selling out is okay in my book.

he had an exceptional ear for R&B too

i was into 'johnny and mary' in the early '00s but i don't recall how random that was

Todd Terje has a great cover of that on Its Album Time. Tbh I had never heard it before then. I detested what little I knew of Palmer in his heyday

Not every 80s smoothie made a habit of covering "New Day Rising" live.

One sort of annoying thing (that kind of puts a spin on how popular opinion can shift) is that you can post videos *in this actual thread* where Hall and Oates are clearly not yacht rock or wallpaper or whatever, and it's like water flowing off of an anti-water surface. I mean, they sound like fucking Led Zeppelin in 1977, but nothing in the world will apparently erase the 80s. Time has been kinder to Fleetwood Mac, though I'm not sure why. Same holds true for a bunch of other people here: they're frozen in a particular time, strangely. That doesn't happen to all artists. I sometimes wonder how this happens (or doesn't)...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgPjzwRzK2Q

also worked with the comsat angels, rescued them from jive

palmer track i've really been loving recently is his cover of 'you are in my system' (funny 80s video too obv if you like that sort of thing) xp

i was into 'johnny and mary' in the early '00s but i don't recall how random that was

Todd Terje has a great cover of that on Its Album Time.

'Johnny and Mary' is one of the all time most wonderful pop songs imo. Placebo covered 'Johnny and Mary' in 2003, not sure what that says about Palmer's hipness at that point, if anything

Time has been kinder to Fleetwood Mac, though I'm not sure why

Bootylicious happened

I'm turning 30 in a few months and I'm amazed to find I can qualify as a millennial, I thought I'd have to be at least 5 years younger.

REM are one of the first bands I really got into. I thought they were boring before that and I understand why people think that but they still fascinate me in a way that most of my other early favourites don't (I still love Radiohead, Captain Beefheart, Smiths, Morrissey, PJ Harvey but I don't think of them much). As much as the last few albums disappointed me, I really don't think many bands have something comparable to their 80s-90s output. Swans are about the only other band that I know that has like 5 essential albums.
I have faith that younger listeners will agree with me eventually. Fucked Up (not really a hip new band anymore) have a song that sounds so much like something from Monster but it could just be a coincidence.

I really should get more Tom Waits, "Innocent When You Dream" is so incredible.

I've always felt quite resistant to The Clash. I think a few of their songs are amazing but I never liked the London Calling album much and they always had this aura of dullness. And that stuff with Sex Pistols and Banshees criticizing them for being like a really annoying type of lefty students.
Perhaps I'd like their other albums much better because I've seen a lot of enthusiasm for the others. Doubt I could ever love the guys voice who sounds like he's singing with ulcers and a really hot roast potato (that hasn't even been sliced open) in his mouth.

Haven't listened to Patti Smith in ages but those b-side bonus tracks on Horses and Easter left a really strong impression.

I think Frank Black's first 3 albums should be up there with the Pixies albums, they still really amaze me.

It's really odd, the tribalism and prejudices of the not too distant past seems really oppressive and unpleasant to look back on. Vaguely nightmarish even, thinking of having lived longer with all that bullshit.
I would like a tad more of a backlash against the thinkpiece stuff though, but I guess that stuff will easily be forgotten and the pop music can easily detach and live on.

Since there's less emphasis on rock bands being fashionable, do you still get any embarrassing attempts to keep up with the trends?

Has Lisa Germano's fanbase altered at all. Haven't listened to her in ages.

i like hall and oates (again, millenial). my other all-time favorites are john fahey, sterolab, and my bloody valentine. i grew up listening to john williams soundtracks, beethoven (weird 7 year old obsessed with beethoven) and then pop punk like operation ivy and dillinger four. radiohead openeed my ears to weirder stuff. also the internet has ruined my brain. thx for reading

Recent BBC documentary on women in bands had Elkie Brooks on saying Robert Palmer broke up Vinegar Joe because he was jealous that she was getting more attention than him.

re: hall & oates and "this actual thread" - yeah totally, but the thing is the hall & oates that's getting revived in popular opinion is not their "zeppelin" sounding stuff (a bit of a stretch imho but sure) or even sacred songs, it's exactly the stuff that defines their hit sound, and also the smoother/rainy-day pop stuff from the 70s (e.g. abandoned luncheonette). i would have thought that the latter was just me, but i saw a peer posting about that album on instagram a while back. it's not the totality of their career, but neither does the totality of fleetwood mac = rumours + "rhiannon" + "gypsy" but there you go.

picking up a lot of threads at once:

lisa germano's fanbase probably has to do with her music becoming absolutely awful, pretty much everything after lullaby for liquid pig is not good (happiness is a classic though)

not only could tanya donelly release a bunch of EPs without whatever "public opinion" we're talking about noticing happen -- it's happened! there are a lot of them! they're great! (kristin hersh probably comes out a bit better here, but mostly because of rat girl -- afaik the last throwing muses album is classic to me and only me, and I bet 75% of this thread doesn't even know her last solo album even exists. (let alone its original, superior tracklisting, but I think I've proven that I am not the barometer of public opinion here)

re: lounge -- trip-hop is an interesting case because its sound has been reappropriated en masse -- I still find it hilarious that one of the single most influential people in how critically beloved music sounds is from fucking ESTHERO -- but with the exceptions of the first three massive attack albums, mezzanine and reddit threads about people's sex lives, nobody will touch the rest of it

Fleetwood Mac always had its English rhythm section and several incarnations (some wonderful) before Buckingham-Nicks. Their catalog's deep enough for old timers to say, "Er, the Bob Welsh-Jeremy Spencer period was the best, man."

"i think "90s alt rock" might be on the upswing"

i've had a lot of young bands play at my store and i hear that Matador sound a lot. or stuff that sounds like it could have been on Matador back in the 90's. it's a pretty big thing now.

what other 90's stuff has been reclaimed/revived by young groups/artists now?

(not that matador was one thing - my craycray brother had a record on matador! - but you know what i mean...)

well, i'm a zep-head who scorned hall & oates back in the day and has only recently come around to them, and yes, it's their '80s hits and "abandoned luncheonette" that strike me the strongest, because these songs play to hall & oates' strengths. hall & oates don't sound bad when they're trying to ape led zeppelin, but they're at their best when the focus is on the melody and their voices (though "abandoned luncheonette" isn't as 'smooth' as its reputation- "lady rain" sounds like the violin solo was flown in from "larks' tongues in aspic part ii"). and i also love their todd rundgren album, which is all different kinds of fucked up and crazy, but it's hard to consider it straight up _good_.

anyway hall and oates are one of those bands that were, i think, unfairly held back by cultural genre barriers, and are benefiting now that such barriers are no longer really relevant.

as for fleetwood mac, of late i'm mostly a fan of the danny kirwan era, which doesn't even get recognized as an "era" by most folks.

there is a local radio station here that is really popular with the boomer/npr/quinoa crowd and its the only time i ever hear lots of people that i kinda forgot about. including lots of 90's women. joan osborne and tracy chapman daily. also elvis costello and joe jackson! but usually the good stuff like sunday papers and the angels want to wear my red shoes.

http://wrsi.com/playlist/page/5/

the only time you ever hear Melissa Etheridge deep cuts on the radio...

geir would be a fan of that station. crowded house up the wazoo.

(they also play tom waits and the clash quite a bit!)

elvis costello is one of the few critically acclaimed guys with a decent sized fanbase from his era whose records you can still find for super cheap. i always see 'my aim is true'/'next year's model'/'armed forces' and the other early ones for just a few bucks each. springsteen vinyl, waits vinyl, clash vinyl, that's all pretty expensive (though i found a super clean copy of bruce's 'the river' at a comic book shop in illinois a few months ago for $5.)

a friend of mine - old ex-skinhead from boston - actually came in the store today and asked if i had a copy of cut the crap.

In the SPIN Alternative Guide, Bill Wyman observes that Elvis Costello was the "least full-bodied and least influential" member of the rock pantheon. In 1995 -- when people still bought stuff like Brutal Youth!

i always see 'my aim is true'/'next year's model'/'armed forces' and the other early ones for just a few bucks each.

Probably 'cause they've been reissued about 17 times each?

Waiting for fretless bass to make a comeback

Going back to school a few years back (in order to obtain an MA, and now a PhD, yes, but I still interact(ed) with plenty of undergrads), the first thing I noticed in my discussions about music with people who were a decade/decade-and-a-half younger than me was that way more early-twentysomethings listened to Kate Bush than was the case when I was that age. True, she had come out of exile in the years since (two albums!), but these guys were really into the classic stuff too--hell, one of the kids I taught actually lent me The Dreaming!

OTOH, another student referring to The Clash as "cheesy 80s rock" nearly made me lose my shit on him.

A friend of mine once seen a Clash video and genuinely asked if they were Duran Duran.

Yeah I read somewhere, maybe on Marcelo Carlie's Brit #1s blog, that Kate bush was seen assort of "naff" previously. Sort of like Peter Gabriel, seems like his early albums have picked up more cache in recent years maybe thanks to increasing temporal distance from chuck the monkey and other assorted "wack" stuff

chuck the monkey to life!

ftr I'm fine with H&O's 70's output, Fleetwood Mac is a good comparison imo

also love Hall's vocals on Exposure

but I never want to hear most of those 80's hits ever again

I love blue eyed and Philly soul but Hall and Oates are just dull shit. Billy Joel is the worst, no questions about it.

xxxp Yeah, I'm 25 but I've been on ilm for ten years too and feel ancient with regards to taste and (to be honest) enthusiasm.

shout-out to ILM for turning me on to that Double album years ago. had no idea how good is was. never would have listened to it.

Curious where Elvis Presley lands in all this.

that brimstead post is epic

yeah, when I was a kid, Sade was like the last thing I ever would have wanted to hear, and seemed to be the essence of lame grown up music. And today... well, she still is, but Pfork covers her.

― Dominique, Wednesday, April 6, 2016 5:34 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

insane

^^^

xxxpost

I don't know that I have an answer for this, other than to say that I have known two types of Elvis fans in my life: the ones who acknowledge the brilliance (according to them; I have only really heard the hits) of the early work and think he became a cartoon afterwards, and the Graceland-vacationing types who love all of it--the crap movies and the Vegas stuff very much included. I find that I encounter far more of the latter than the former, and I kind of think that a lot of people make assumptions about Elvis based on these fans (and the aspects of his career they celebrate).

I've said this a few time: I've felt for the last few years that Elvis is fading away in the public consciousness, as unfortunate as that may be. In a way the Beatles aren't yet, although it'll happen at some point.

one of the big things, obviously, and a way in which women did receive a reappraisal, is '80s R&B in general. In the last ~8 or so years (?) where people moved on from disco revival & started "rediscovering" '80s R&B with the rise of Dam Funk and record collectors getting into jam & lewis etc. It's seeped into musicians' toolkits as well...I think in part, people looking back undervalued R&B a lot but when you listen to, like ABC or Madonna's "Lucky Star" and realize how incredibly similar it sounds to the R&B which essentially invented it (cf the work of Kashif—what is 'Lucky Star' but a Kashif record—of Jam & Lewis, of Quincy Jones [the George Benson record Whiney mocked on the Pitchfork list is in the realm of Jones' work on Thriller aesthetically...], of Leon Sylvers ("And the Beat Goes On"). With time, it becomes a lot easier to see how artists like Anita Baker and Whitney Houston (the latter of whom has had songs which transcended their era and remain floor-fillers today even among white audiences despite negligible attention from critics). It is not surprising to me that there has been a rebalancing where people "rediscovered" songs that have basically remained in rotation on R&B radio because the music was innovative and brilliant

of course in hip-hop '80s R&B was always cool, so we're speaking about a particular demographic's idea of 'cool'...Puffy was revisiting '80s R&B as far back as '96-'97

xpost

Reminds me of a convo I had with my old boss years ago about whether or not people will still listen to Frank Sinatra 50 (or whatever) years from now. Like, I'm sure there will always be an interest, however niche it may become, but once no one who has any memory of him is around any more, what will happen to his status?