"Uncool" music you dig. Out with it!

They're one of my favourite bands but I will say seeing U2 copy a lot of their moves (the whole Discovering America thing in particular) makes those moves seem a bit corny in retrospect.

Don't get me wrong, having Grandmaster Flash and Lloyd Price open for you is indisputably cooler than the whole Joshua Tree thing.

i think of matt dillon and john cusack when i think of the clash. and, sadly, johnny depp.

lone wolf gen x actors who played by their own rules.

I grew up in a town that totally Clashville, the irritating local punk scene was all about the Clash and Strummer. Ruined my appreciation of them ever since.

Then there was some crossover with the slightly less irritating but irritating nonetheless mod scene which was all about the Jam and Weller.

hey, i STILL listen to *This Is Big Audio Dynamite*. one of the first CDs i ever got when CDs were new. maybe that fits this thread. can't imagine that album being very cool in 2024.

Johnny Depp is technically a Boomer (or “Generation Jones”)

bashing the Clash has been an ilm tradition since it started iirc

So much excellent uncool music out there. Like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2XS7pj8lAE

Ace,thanks !

Haven't really seen this thread because my initial thought when I keep seeing the title is 'where would I start?', but broadly, I think my biggest uncool love is commercial dance music of the 90s. Handbag, hardbag, eurodance, euro house, hard house, pop-trance, funky house. just hell yeah.

with pop trance my tastes are still a bit more discerning, admittedly

I guess there's a line between "uncool" and "so uncool it's cool", but I think from the former mine would be stuff like, Chris Rea, The B-52s (the Don Was era - the earlier stuff is still cool), The Christians, 90s Rolling Stones records, and I will always be happy to hear "High" by the Lighthouse Family or "When I'm Good and Ready" by Sybil

I also think "The Brazilian" by Genesis absolutely rocks, but I don't think it registers as "uncool" anymore

bashing the Clash has been an ilm tradition since it started iirc

i am totally a mick jones clash fan. and i just like the hits. but the hits are really good! or, you know, the famous ones. they weren't all "hits". train in vain. police on my back. this is radio clash. and i still love hearing rock the casbah and should i stay or should i go on the radio. i will forever i think. but i'm not really a clash fan.

i mean i don't own any of their records. i guess that's how i gauge fandom.

I’ve never thought of the Clash as either cool or uncool, they’re sort of neutral ground… like Springsteen or someone.

What is pop-trance?

not a real thing (though it's a term people use), just using it to differentiate from trance as it was in the first half of 90s. so i mean some of the big hitters in e.g. dream, uplifting, ibiza, progressive and vocal trance. and *only* some, as per my comment that i tend to enjoy trance less than its commercial house siblings of the period.

late 90s straight edge hardcore and 2000s orgcore always feel like an uncool guilty pleasure when I mention them to fellow music nerds.

personally i like the clash a lot without ever regarding them as an all-time favourite. possibly because to be a 'fan' (caricature version) is maybe to buy into all sorts of things that i don't: them as last gang in town, london calling as masterpiece (i may prefer cut the crap), having a passionate opinion on what punk is or isn't.

basically, and as with led zep and the stones, i'm not too bothered about the image(s) and just accept them as a colourful art rock band on my own terms. things like sean flynn or silicone on sapphire are way to more tastes than, say, tommy gun.

they were "punk" in the way that elvis costello was punk. good rock songwriters riding a wave. and they were pissed off a lot.

eh i never perceived them as giving one fuck about what what punk meant or if they were in it (though they might have i dont really gaf).

they seemed very into doing what they wanted and celebrating what they liked. they were cool as fuck in how they did it. whether they were/are considered cool that’s on you and me or wherever.

i like plenty of their stuff, but i appreciated how they went at it as integral to that. (lol i’ve never even heard cut the crap tho)

they were way into seeming to be outside tho, critics hated their urban guerilla posturing

personally i like the clash a lot without ever regarding them as an all-time favourite. possibly because to be a 'fan' (caricature version) is maybe to buy into all sorts of things that i don't: them as last gang in town, london calling as masterpiece (i may prefer cut the crap), having a passionate opinion on what punk is or isn't.

basically, and as with led zep and the stones, i'm not too bothered about the image(s) and just accept them as a colourful art rock band on my own terms. things like sean flynn or silicone on sapphire are way to more tastes than, say, tommy gun.

This is pretty much exactly how I feel, minus that last sentence. I really liked "Rock the Casbah" when I was 12 and listening to American Top 40 every weekend. I bought London Calling when I was like 15 and spent almost a whole summer at the beach just listening to that and Megadeth's Peace Sells...But Who's Buying? over and over and over. I prefer the US version of the self-titled album to the UK version. I like more songs from Cut the Crap than from Give 'Em Enough Rope. I read a book about them but don't remember any of it. When you look at their eyes in photos (especially Mick Jones) you can tell they're huge fucking dorks who can't believe it got this far.

They were totally 100% punk until they weren't - probably around "London Calling", which I've never heard tbh. Strummer obviously gave a fuck about punk or else he wouldn't have had that 30-something guy with a stupid mohawk look he had ca. "Cut the Crap"

they were "punk" in the way that elvis costello was punk. good rock songwriters riding a wave. and they were pissed off a lot.

This is completely wrong btw, Costello had nothing to do with punk, the Clash were steeped in it.

aka the Matt Belgrano look
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They're virtually the only original punk band that actually sang about punk and punks.

i think i just always saw them as a rock band. with punk fashion/design ideas.

but that's just me! motorhead seemed more punk to me in the 70s.

What, the first album? White Riot? UK punk was all about them and the Pistols and Lydon ditched and repudiated punk much sooner than the Clash ever did, if they ever did repudiate it.

i was 18/19 in 1977 so the clash kind of hit me head on. i was super ready for them. saw the show where he smashed his bass. everything.

There might be a transcontinental difference going on here but thinking of the Clash as not having much to do with punk strikes me as insane.

Tom D otm

They were the band from the initial surge of punk acts that took on the rock'n'roll ethos the most, maybe it came across differently in the US? Less of the Situationist crap is what I mean.

Even that's wrong. In fact they were the band that took the punk ethos most seriously and for much longer than any of the original UK punk bands. No other UK punk band would have even thought of making Rude Boy, for instance. As for the Situationist crap, well Bernie Rhodes certainly took it seriously!

i know and knew that they were part of punk but when i heard their music back then it didn't scare me like when i first heard the pistols or like i said motorhead. the pistols and motorhead sounded like they wanted to scare me away from their music! the clash and buzzcocks and stranglers and even the damned were tuneful to me in a poppy way? i guess i just thought of punk as abrasive and fucked up. and, in the end, i kinda like my punk abrasive and fucked up.

but i certainly see (and saw) the whole newness thing and the haircuts and all that.

i was watching these guys last night. talk about fucked up looking. 1973! what a bunch of weirdos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrdqX_auyPc

having said that about poppy and tuneful i did love the first ramones album when i was a little kid and i totally saw them as PUNK. they scared me a little.

punk schmunk

I don't know. The early Clash sound much more like how punk developed than the Pistols.

but the first time i heard sex pistols - on 8-track no less - i was totally like what the fuck is this holy shit. i had no idea what to make of it. my little brain couldn't comprehend it at the time. it was just...noise? i never felt that way about the clash. i really loved the clash album covers.

i do love tuneful too. buzzcocks are probably may fave first wave band. and the damned aren't far behind. sometimes i think there isn't anything more beautiful in life than "new rose" and "neat neat neat".

(i got corrupted later though by crass and flux and discharge and subhumans and rudimentary peni. my heart will always belong to them. they did try to teach me to hate the clash. but i only half listened. i could make up my own mind thank you very much.)

afaict there was never any consensus on what this word/movement/genre was about and it's been like 50 years and I hoped we were over it

it's just the scuzzier younger brother of 60s counterculture although punks are oddly resistant to acknowledging this fact

I worked backwards through US hardcore and UK anarchopunk so when I got to the 70s stuff it just sounded like rock music to me

maybe the priming I had from crass et al meant I had no more expectations of the clash than I did of springsteen or whoever

I was lucky and didn't hear the Sex Pistols at all until sometime in the mid-2000s. When I did, I thought they were terrible, and have never changed my mind. Other than the Clash, my experience of punk as a teenager was the Dead Kennedys and Black Flag and Flipper, and a compilation of weirdo electronic art-punk stuff called Red Spot with Minimal Man, Jed Speare, Fried Abortions and a bunch of bands like that. And then sometime in junior high I heard the Cramps' Bad Music For Bad People and that was obviously the greatest thing ever.

My first exposure to punk (as a kid) was Repo Man, the movie and soundtrack, which was one of the first tapes I owned.