(How would we separate the outsiderism of both Axl and Moz? Axl's was the outsiderism of being inside, of being typical and thus anonymous, and it was the outsiderism of entry, of proving worth and breaking from anonymity by "taking over." Moz's outsiderism was the outsiderism of difference, an outsiderism that theoretically linked all the different into a viable and separate community.)
― nabisco%%, Wednesday, 26 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
The difference is enormous and the two have nothing in common. Guns n Roses = bad stadium band, largely seen as a joke.
The Smiths = most important British band of the past 20 years.
Maybe you need to be American to see something in common, but as a British (Scottish) person at the time of the early 90s I can ASSURE you the kids who liked Guns n Roses were denying all knowledge of having any such CD in their collection as they hit puberty and, yes, discovered Nirvana.
― Calum Robert, Wednesday, 26 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Sterling Clover, Wednesday, 26 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Lord Custos III, Wednesday, 26 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
― mark s, Wednesday, 26 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Kris, Wednesday, 26 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Ned Raggett, Wednesday, 26 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
Maybe they were welcome in the American music climate at the time, but we had The Stone Roses, Morrissey and The Happy Mondays to brigthen up the charts back then.
I will say this as well - The Manics are not best suited to be compared to Guns n Roses either. A far better band that changed lives and kicked ass on stage. When they were good at least, but that's another thread surely!?!?
― Melissa W, Wednesday, 26 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Lord Custos IV (, Wednesday, 26 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Tim DiGravina, Wednesday, 26 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
― sundar subramanian, Wednesday, 26 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
― geeta, Thursday, 27 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
Your brother scares me.
― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 27 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Arthur, Thursday, 27 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Senor Pulpo, Thursday, 27 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
― mark s, Thursday, 27 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
the simpsons
We have a winner!
― Daniel_Rf, Thursday, 27 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Siegbran Hetteson, Thursday, 27 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
Sorry but this is the funniest thing I've ever read. Are you American by any chance?
― Calum Robert, Thursday, 27 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
― axl rose, Thursday, 27 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
― fritz, Thursday, 27 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
Nor am I actually slagging of yanks, although I did have the experience of living with three culturally/ socially inept ones (2 from Texas) a short while ago. That was in England, actually, and they were seen as twats. Although that isn't neccessarily cos they are American.
Point is - Americans do tend to like really crap stadium rock. Some Brits lap it up as well. Just America seems more guity.
That other thread is indeed really funny - I imagine the chap who wrote that is a handsome, sexy and highly intelligent individual.
― g, Thursday, 27 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
― gareth, Thursday, 27 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
Ha ha apparently we share a brother (mine was the treasurer, and he embezzeled a bunch of money to pay for private parties and satellite pirating equipment), though I'd never think of trying to turn him onto anything "weird" except drugs. I took him to this britpop club once and he was baffled by the fact that the girl he was hitting on the whole time turned out to be a lesbian. I think if I were a few years younger, I might have been into the bhangra/hip hop scene too, but I think I just preceded it.
― Kris, Thursday, 27 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
And Axl was hardly androgynous. He looked like a walking thug.
And The Smiths never recorded National Front Disco, it was Morrissey solo and Morrissey solo vs The Smiths is a whole other issue.
― Lord Custos III, Thursday, 27 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
a WALKING thug you say?
― Bob Zemko, Thursday, 27 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Sterling Clover, Thursday, 27 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
― tnd, Thursday, 27 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
"I can't believe anyone thinks that Guns n Roses even produced one good song" translates, in objective critical terms, to "I am so mindlessly and carelessly convinced that Guns n Roses are undeserving of my attention that I'm unable to actually listen to 'Sweet Child of Mine'" -- to which, by my count, we can add "Welcome to the Jungle," "It's So Easy," "Don't Cry," and "You Could be Mine," and that's coming from a person with little-to-no familiarity with their proper album tracks. (Here's a fellow I went to high school with discussing "Sweet Child of Mine" on AMG.)
"I'm glad that they are seen as a joke." -- please navigate the AMG (or actually read the thread you're posting to for once) for evidence of the massive falsehood of that statement.
And on and on: "The Smiths inspired lifes [sic] with their lyrics," as did Axl, for better or worse (and as did Cobain, even when he was accidentally inspiring rapes -- is this really an effective route to judging music?). Or they "wrote some of the most amazing ... tunes ever," which reads fine as a declarative statement but it's very convincing as an argument -- I think we all already know you enjoy the Smiths.
Your guilt-by-association with regard to Michael Jackson and Elton John and money and popular-film would be a lot more convincing if your argument for every band you like didn't at some point include "oh, they were important" and "the bands you like are obscure and no one cares about them" -- you need to either sort out your appeals to popularity/relevance or just admit that only middling- popular Britpop gets through the gates of your musical universe. (Were you not just hours ago taunting Julio that Skullflower would sell out if given half a chance?)
No, what bothers me most here is this: "They were/ are/ always will be a joke. Except to some Americans who 'still dig them cos they wrre, like, cool and stuff'," especially after your pointing out that I've never set foot in the UK based on my having a better understanding of the UK indie industry than you -- your caricatures are so far off the mark that it often seems like you just imagine various bands' fan-bases. Seriously, navigate that AMG entry in full and you'll work out precisely what the current US music- fan reaction to GnR is: that much as a lot of us indie-inclined folk were politically obliged to slag them at the time, it becomes clearer and clearer in retrospect that they were an intially-spectacular band, and that even their long decline into bloated, mysterious ridiculousness was a marvelous and occasionally brilliant thing to observe. Few of us want to actually admit that they were "cool" -- we're just forced at the moment to concede that they did indeed Have It for a little while. And for the millions upon millions of people who never had to "concede" that because they were with it from the beginning -- well, your typical dumb appeals to one band being "important and influential" and another being "irrelevant" aren't going to work here: GnR's influence was, for better or worse, far more massive in human terms than the Smiths' ever was. In fact one could make a good case that a lot of the credit given to Nirvana for ushering in the big rock flip-over of the early 90s belongs to GnR, the first step of a three-step walk: people who thinks GnR have everything to do with 80s hair-metal and nothing to do with 90s grunge need to either work on their mental categorization or figure out something good to say about Shannon Hoon.
As for Axl looking like "a walking thug" have you any idea what the word "thug" actually means? I say that not only because most of them are able to walk but because if you stripped off the attitude and the cultural associations and just went by visual inspection, you'd probably conclude that Moz could take Axl in a fight.
(And have you honestly never noticed how often Axl looks entirely like a woman? And not in the hair-metal sense but in an honest-to-god feminine sense?)
― nabisco%%, Thursday, 27 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
Suggs from Madness was like best friends with the dude from Skrewdriver right? I thought Madness had a lot of ties to WP skinhead stuff under the surface
Well, there was a rumour that he'd been friends with a guy from Skrewdriver, not the main guy, but who knows? And a lot of Madness' early fans were skinheads so, given that scene at the time, it's likely there were a few wrong 'uns among them.
― Charles Kennedy Jumped Up, He Called 'Oh No'. (Tom D.), Tuesday, 24 January 2012 16:46 (twelve years ago) link
i'm not gonna post stuff from skrewdriver bio sites, but anyway i found a bunch of wiki stuff that said suggs worked as a roadie for skrewdriver and when suggs moved out to his own house the ian main dude took his old room and lived with sugg's mom in her house for a while
― the 500 gats of bartholomew thuggins (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, 24 January 2012 16:56 (twelve years ago) link
(i guess that was "stuff" i meant links)
― the 500 gats of bartholomew thuggins (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, 24 January 2012 16:57 (twelve years ago) link
Wow.
"Sorry to bother you, Mrs McPherson, but do you think could you turn down that recording of Hitler's address to the Reichstag please? I can't hear what Shaw Taylor's saying on Police 5."
"Oh sorry love, that's the lodger, what's he like? He does love 'is Adolf, bless 'im!"
― Charles Kennedy Jumped Up, He Called 'Oh No'. (Tom D.), Tuesday, 24 January 2012 17:03 (twelve years ago) link
By the way, from Shaw Taylor's wiki page:
Taylor was a boyhood friend of the writer Anthony Burgess, who published his novella A Clockwork Orange in 1962, the same year Police 5 was first broadcast. The novella's central character - Alexander the Large - was said to be loosely based on Taylor, who was interested in violent crime from a very early age and also had a rare gift for the English language, as demonstrated by his "Keep 'em peeled" catchphrase.
... this is surely bollocks? Taylor is from Hackney and Burgess was a Manc for starters.
― Charles Kennedy Jumped Up, He Called 'Oh No'. (Tom D.), Tuesday, 24 January 2012 17:08 (twelve years ago) link
If it hadn't already been done to death, I'd have launched a Smiths website. But too many already. So I decided instead to launch a website around the music of two other great songwriters - Cathal Coughlan and Sean O'Hagan. On https://coughlanohagan.com/, I think I'm building up something worthwhile. Hope you enjoy it.
― weirwrite, Saturday, 23 May 2020 06:52 (three years ago) link
I'd think American Music Club might fit the bill. Arch self deprecating lyricist over classic melodic rock though there's a lot more country in it alongside Nick Drake and stuff.Singer even came out of the closet later but is thankfully not a rabid patriot or xenophobe.
― Stevolende, Saturday, 23 May 2020 07:01 (three years ago) link