INXS - Classicking or Dudding?

Play an INXS track/album today y/n?

No. INXS become less and less relevant as time passes.

relevant to what?

They were not the most innovative band even at their best, so they don't have that Beatles/Hendrix/Kraftwerk thing where people say "this sounds corny now but back then it was the first time anyone did that". I did like some of their records at the time but there's nothing there that I'd want to listen to again.

that Beatles/Hendrix/Kraftwerk thing where people say "this sounds corny now but back then it was the first time anyone did that"
that Beatles/Hendrix/Kraftwerk thing where people say "this sounds corny now but back then it was the first time anyone did that"
that Beatles/Hendrix/Kraftwerk thing where people say "this sounds corny now but back then it was the first time anyone did that"
that Beatles/Hendrix/Kraftwerk thing where people say "this sounds corny now but back then it was the first time anyone did that"

Yes, wtf?

INXS don't sound corny to me at all.

I like all the hits except "Never Tear Us Apart," I think. I've probably said it before, but you could do worse than James Brown meets Derek Zoolander.

How is it that I never weighed in on this one? In any case, classic.

That first singles comp is ace. Classic for "Original Sin" alone.

awful

i went to the usa one time in my life, in the summer of 1988, and heard 'kick' many, many times, cos my cousins loved it. this was in seattle. now they say they were all mudhoney and rubbish like that.

so anyway classic.

A few great singles. I like "The Original Sin", "Need You Tonight", "Never Tear Us Apart", "Disappear" and "Baby Don't Cry" and that's about it.

Sad ending to Hutchence's life, but that doesn't make them classic. Mostly dud.

DON'T CHANGE

Does anyone else love this song?

Love Is (What I Say)

I've been a big fan of that one for a long time. But I resisted posting the clip for the "Burn For You" video, even though it's equally brilliant. I think I told ILX already that The Swing album is amazing. But apparently not on this thread.

Never Tear Us Apart (Extended Version)

god i love this band

in the video for "don't change" they look like dexy's midnight runners!

"Don't Dance" morelike. Thanks for posting that though. That's a great song and I never knew who did it.

YOUNG HEARTS BE FREE TONIGHT
TIME IS ON YR SIDE

INXS greatest hits was the last album i ever bought on cassette

anyhow nothing but love for inxs, for every single they have i'm bored to death by they have two that lotsa fun. took duran duran's roxy music + chic model subbing the stones for roxy music. never touch duran duran's sublime moments (i like 'never tears us apart' but it doesn't even come close to breathing the strange ether 'save a prayer' gives off), and, w/ the exception of 'mediate', their silly moments are way more boring than duran duran's. still - 'don't change', 'what you need', 'new sensation', 'disappear' - this band had ALOT of great singles.

plus they put my skateboard on one of their album covers!
http://www.skateboard-decks.info/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/psycho-stick.jpg

This thread inspired me to listen to "Not Enough Time" (their hat in the ring for the Madchester craze - see also U2's "Mysterious Ways") for the first time in, I don't know, well over a decade at least. It holds up! Classic, then, I suppose.

Psycho Stick!!

Once upon a time I dismissed this band. I'm over the hipster asshole phase now. These guys are pretty great. "Don't Change" is everything I love about 80's rock.

man i was gonna download that rhino comp and somehow 'kiss the dirt' isn't on there! wtf - HAVE THESE PPL NEVER BEEN TO VICE CITY???

o wait wrong comp apparently.

"Don't Change" is everything I love about 80's rock.

Their best song, IMO. It's a lot of what I loved about 80s rock, too. INXS had a handful of vital singles that burst with energy, e.g., New Sensation, The One Thing. And aside from a few songs, their hits weren't so overplayed that they outlasted their welcome.

YOUNG HEARTS BE FREE TONIGHT
TIME IS ON YR SIDE

Um...that's Rod Stewart's "Young Turks"...not INXS. But maybe you knew that??

snrub at 50

best song: 'just keep walking'

a handful of good singles, but even the greatest hits comp is difficult to stomach all the way through
the 'kick' era was slick and catchy, but ultimately gimmicky and shallow

they had michael hutchence. he is classic all the way. oh yes, i am being superficial.

I love "Never Tear Us Apart" and haven't looked for much else.

Oh shit. Bimble is an early 80's Top 40 whore. Oh no. Call the cops. Don't Change.

since recent snap decision to sing 'need you tonight' at karaoke i have been revisiting 'the years', the singles comp from a few years ago. the cover of 'the loved one' is appalling, otherwise the first disc of that 'the years' singles comp is so, so classic.

*checks track listing*

yes i agree

Welcome to Wherever You Are wins at life.

Perfect place to cut it off, you can immediately take the second disc out and tie it to the porch to dazzle cats

Don't Change is getting a lot of love on this thread, but let's not forget To Look at You from the same album, which is fantastic. So romantic!

ha, I looked at the tracklist for Years and I love "Suicide Blonde" a lot but um not really anything else on that 2nd disc

posting this meters away from where they michael hutchance killed himself ~spooky~

FYI the more years pass, the more that INXS sounds really shit.

But do yourself a favour and read Rhett Hutchence's 'TotalXS' for some of the best laughs that you'll ever have.

Garry Gary Beers

GARRY GARY BEERS

There been a thread about this shit yet?

http://www.slicingupeyeballs.com/2010/10/21/inxs-original-sin-tracklist-rob-thomas-ben-harper-jd-fortune/

oh you have GOT to be kidding. ugh.

wtf is wrong with them? as if Terence Trent Darby and Jon Stevens and that stupid freaking reality show weren't bad enough.

can we send them some kind of cease and desist?

nothing wrong with TTD

xpost -- first read that as Jon Stewart.

nothing wrong with TTD, as long as he's not fronting INXS ffs.

This has been out here for 1.5 weeks and I haven't heard a single thing about it. Says everything.

Also, wtf is Kav Temperly doing on this thing?

'mediate' is one of the most unintentionally hilarious songs i have ever heard

Yes they slid from “endearingly pretentious” to “obnoxiously pretentious” pretty quickly around 1987

I'm not even sure what that means.

INXS never had pretenses. They recorded brittle electrofunk, a lot of which worked.

And those Kick and X singles fucking rule.

lol “Mediate” always makes me roll my eyes
its kinda cute now
but at the time was like ughh what is this beat poetry lol it was v forced

also kinda dovetails into Max Q stuff that followed in 1989

I always thought it was a goof, and never thought of it as a stand-alone song.

was max q... pretty good? like i remember way of the world being lyrically trite, but also the fact that it was an (aus) chart single makes the heavy-handed lyrics seem kinda - subversive? and having ollie olsen in the charts was pretty cool.

it is cool! but cool to me now as an adult with a bit more context. at the time as a early teen w limited tastes i thought it was weird & dumb lol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgRWJP1Ktww

I remember always being a little disappointed when the radio or MTV only played “Need You Tonight,” without the segue.

Nice revive, made me look out my copy of the Dekadance cassette, here is a rip if anyone wants it - https://fromsmash.com/6EabD4Gybu-bt

Mystify was some real time-travelling, a specific time and place where someone and something like Hutchence and INXS could, with the help of some solid home run songs, thrive in their own specific spot. It's tempting to what-if: if what happened didn't happen, could that hot hand have continued post-1992 into some sort of U2-arena level something? (assuming that Andrew Farriss, nine albums in, was ready to write their Achtung Baby). I saw INXS on the Kick tour - they were OK. I wish I could say more, but all these years later it's so much them I remember, but the era when a band like them could be around and sound great on the radio.

Have you seen the restored "Live Baby Live"? They went back to the original 35mm. It is glorious

Bits of "Welcome to Wherever You Are" sound like the retrenched album they might have made *after* an experimental detour, though fwiw Eno is credited with mixing this one from the next album:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3jl7FItnP4

Alfred the diff between “endearingly” and “obnoxiously” is “don’t know any better” vs “should know better”. To me.

Ha never would have guessed Eno was involved on "I'm Only Looking", but I suppose it's only mixing. The synth washes do sound like him but everyone's did by 1993

Have you seen the restored "Live Baby Live"? They went back to the original 35mm. It is glorious

Didn't know about this. (and apparently I do have to see it)

Meant to say "it's not so much them I remember, but the era when a band like them could be around" earlier

Video Rockers in Balboa: “Too Freaky”
By GINA ARNOLD Nov. 20, 1987 12 AM PT
Ellie Trapp, 13, of Newport Beach was in school Wednesday afternoon when she heard the news that INXS, an Australian rock band, was shooting a video on the Balboa Peninsula.

“And so,” she recounted later that day, standing outside the Balboa Inn, “I ran out to the pay phone at recess and called my dad. He left work and picked me up and drove me over here.”

“Now,” said Anja Breton, also 13, “we’re missing social studies and P.E.”

Ellie’s arms and pants had been signed by various band members after much pestering by her. “Just think,” she said. “INXS could have been filming anywhere on earth , and they’re here in Newport Beach.

“It’s too freaky! I can’t believe it!”

Ellie and Anja were the first of INXS’s fans to arrive on the scene. Dozens more followed as the shooting--for “Devil Inside,” the band’s newest single and video--continued well into the night.

The night before, Tuesday, shooting in a local bar had lasted until 4 a.m. The band was somewhat more under the gun Wednesday, having to be in Toronto for a concert the following night.

The shooting moved into a pinball parlor where a gigantic, loud, smoke-spewing machine (“actually a mosquito fogger,” a technician said, “without any insecticide in it”) was being used to turn the parlor into a dank mystery spot. It is there that video watchers will see INXS encountering all kinds of subcultures and sociopaths who, according to the song’s lyrics, “have the devil inside.”

Hanging around picturesquely, those “subcultures” (actually professional extras) turned the peninsula from “white-bread bunny beach heaven,” as one observer described it, to something wholly other and far tougher.

Several said they didn’t mind having to miss the U2 concert in Los Angeles that night. “Are you kidding?” one said. “INXS beat out U2 any day! That U2 is just a bunch of sloppy dudes. Bono needs a bath.”

Inside the parlor, everything was nearing readiness for lights-camera-action. Director Joel Schumacher (“The Lost Boys”) was about 10 minutes behind schedule . . . and losing his marbles. “After this is over,” he said, “will somebody buy me a T-shirt that says, ‘Too Old for Video’?” When the shot was delayed yet again, he pleaded, to no one in particular, “Come on--make an old man happy.”

One person who was extremely happy was Ellie Trapp, who had managed to wiggle her way into the parlor and alongside singer Michael Hutchence, and who had persuaded a passer-by to take pictures of them hugging (much to Hutchence’s girlfriend’s annoyance.)

“Don’t you wish you were part of my generation?” Ellie asked everyone who wasn’t.

From: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-11-20-ca-15339-story.html