Post a controversial music opinion

All solo artists are cowards.

lol

All trios are Norwegian.

All ILM posters are liars

I feel like the Eagles worm has been turning for years now, but still no one is ready to say the Eagles are good. Until now folks. The Eagles are Pretty Good

― strong deutan (rip van wanko), Friday, September 7, 2018 1:03 PM (five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I have a constantly running loop of that lebowski clip in my head, but never more than last night when I was in a duane reade after hell commute that was playing take it easy

jmm otm

I feel like the Eagles worm has been turning for years now, but still no one is ready to say the Eagles are good. Until now folks. The Eagles are Pretty Good

― strong deutan (rip van wanko), Friday, September 7, 2018 10:03 AM (ten minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"i can't tell you why" is an amazing song but i can't join you here just yet

the eagles are good

i can't tell you why is really good

other eagles songs i like: hotel california, new kid in town, try and love again, take it easy, peaceful easy feeling, witchy woman

The High Llamas were (are?) a million times better than their 'parents', the Beach Boys.

that's not controversial, it's just wrong

the only good Beach Boy was/is Mike Love.

High Llamas relationship to the Beach Boys was always tangential at best (and related to a very brief period/narrow slice of their catalog) and was way over-emphasized in their press materials.

I would take even the low points of M.I.U. over the High Llamas tbh

No artist at all has a "New Jersey" - a huge event album that ultimately feels a bit hollow & signals a career decline

You could say that about any band that has the opportunity to develop someone else's idea further, if it works for you.

xps

There are a bunch of good Eagles songs. Every one of them was released as a single, so a compilation is all you need. There's not one Eagles album worth listening to all the way through. The Long Run comes closest.

The Beach Boys have, like, two good songs ("Good Vibrations" and "Don't Worry Baby"), and I could happily go the rest of my life without hearing either one of them ever again.

Can't think of any.

Black metal sucks. Even the "good" stuff is bad enough that it's worth handing the whole genre over to the Nazis and walking away. Let 'em have it.

Does it have to be a controversial opinion that we actually hold or are we allowed to just say something we think might wind people up?

Saying a band or genre you don't like sucks isn't controversial or even a wind-up tbh.

that late-90s Brian Wilson worship was so tiresome

Counterpoint: at a Silver Jews show, D. Berman did a sneering routine of saying, "What's the big deal with Brian Wilson? He's so overrated," etc.; which was equally annoying.

It could have been John Prine who wrote "Margaritaville."

Here's an (actually held) controversial opinion: while I've been into the Silver Jews since I first ran across "The Arizona Record" (filed under Pavement on a rack), and I think they have some terrific records, I also think Berman is significantly overvalued as a lyricist by most fans. He has some good one-liners, but his lyrics tend to be strings of "clever" non-sequiturs that only sometimes land. He's seen as some kind of rock poet.

I feel like the Eagles worm has been turning for years now, but still no one is ready to say the Eagles are good. Until now folks. The Eagles are Pretty Good

― strong deutan (rip van wanko), Friday, September 7, 2018 10:03 AM

We have a daily listening thread that'll prove you wrong.

you could make a dud list for most anybody

i remember Howard Stern once had a guy on who claimed it was ok to drink your own urine and he did it daily, so they had the guy pee in a cup and drink it to prove it. it was pretty clear he was not very used to drinking his own urine.

music is a fine hobbie for kids and teenagers but should be outgrown (outside of casual interest) early in adulthood

yes

99% of the music criticism on ILM is actually bad sociology

music is a fine hobbie for kids and teenagers but should be outgrown (outside of casual interest) early in adulthood

There's music for adults and music for children/teenagers. Many adults refuse to a) admit this and b) learn the difference.

apollonian >>> dionysian

xp - rude

90% of piano ballads suck

I heard "Take It to the Limit" on the radio last night and man that song sounds great, I'm pro-Eagles now

This is very, very good:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqhYXLVYQJ8

controversial opinion: randy meisner sings "take it to the limit" better than etta james

Retro soul covers of rock songs (Charles Bradley's version of Black Sabbath's "Changes" comes immediately to mind) frequently suck, and are mostly championed by people who don't want to be seen liking the original version.

we definitely need another one of these threads

lots of opinions about people here instead of music what a surprise

*falls off high horse into trough of metallica blackened whiskey*

Probably not controversial, but have just realised that most of the music I don't really get, from The Eagles and Steely Dan through to 80s hardcore punk, yacht rock, hair metal, grunge and most of the US indie music of the last 25 years, it's all straight white American guys with guitars.

Kenny G and Chuck Mangione are the two most influential and important jazz artists of the 20th century and it isn't close.

Yeah, but only if you consider 'important' and 'influential' to be synonyms.

xxp humblebrag much, lol

didn't mean it that way, honest! I listen to a lot of music by straight non-American white guys with guitars for example.

man i love Steely Dan so much

Probably not controversial, but have just realised that most of the music I don't really get, from The Eagles and Steely Dan through to 80s hardcore punk, yacht rock, hair metal, grunge and most of the US indie music of the last 25 years, it's all straight white American guys with guitars.

― mfktz (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Friday, September 7, 2018 5:02 PM (twelve minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

agreed 100%, but I've known this basically all my life

three chords and the truth, that's all you really need

that's a quote about classic country songwriting, tbf

Joy Division was the best band of all times. In the early days of ILM this was less controversial, I think.

what is "yacht rock"

Drummers who drum like that (Loosely, I mean the Mitchell, Moon, Bonham, Baker type) could only get away with it because they were in solid bands that didn't need a centered drummer keeping things rock-steady. They were skilled enough to have a drummer who just played whatever-the-fuck because they didn't need the drummer to be a metronome.

― coolgnoscenti (Ye Mad Puffin)

for me it's more than that, mitchell was a key driving force in hendrix's music. i do think hendrix is sort of overlooked these days... i like a lot of rock guitar stuff, but hendrix's playing, to me that's in a whole different league. i've heard him play stuff...

look, check out this live version of "spanish castle magic" from the fillmore east, may 1969.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZBUJtK5H0k

it's a mediocre audience recording but halfway through his solo it's like... what _is_ this? what the fuck even _is_ this? i don't mean on, like, a technical level. i just mean that i get the same feeling from it that i get from listening to someone like josef hassid. that's the best i can come up with.

and i feel like as a drummer mitchell really drove a lot of that, gave hendrix the freedom and creativity to just go way the fuck out there.

oh spanish castle magic starts at 31:10, i forget that the linking here doesn't do timestamps

i like a lot of rock guitar stuff, but hendrix's playing, to me that's in a whole different league. i've heard him play stuff...

lol @ posting this in the controp thread <3

Drummers who drum like that (Loosely, I mean the Mitchell, Moon, Bonham, Baker type) could only get away with it because they were in solid bands that didn't need a centered drummer keeping things rock-steady. They were skilled enough to have a drummer who just played whatever-the-fuck because they didn't need the drummer to be a metronome.

― coolgnoscenti (Ye Mad Puffin)

Does Robert Wyatt sit with this group wrt Soft Machine, would you say?

or Hamish Kilgour

Hamish always sounds rock steady and solid to me and doesn't do a lot of fills

The bass is the rhythmic backbone to most of those early Soft Machine songs, giving Wyatt the ability to play around.
In interviews, he was dismissive of the drum kit as an instrument, said it was difficult to get music out of it...and it was partly the other members' unhappiness with his drumming that caused his dismissal from the group.

xp, he's a "busy" drummer with an idiosyncratic groove, admittedly not of the Mitchell/Moon/Bonham/Baker type so nm i guess

They were skilled enough to have a drummer who just played whatever-the-fuck because they didn't need the drummer to be a metronome.

The irony is that Moon was alone among his contemporaries in playing along to sequencers and other backing tapes. For all the talk of Moon’s supposedly shaky timekeeping, there isn’t a single recorded example of him getting out of tempo with the backing tapes. He was a metronome; he just didn’t sound like one. (Also, fun fact: John Bonham hung around with them during the session for “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” sitting on the floor next to Keith’s kit.)

Wyatt had much more of a jazz background for his drumming, his first solo LP is essentially free jazz, as are the early pre-wilde flowers demos.

Thanks, Kate, for the high-quality Mitch content. I love him and always will.

And to Tardumes, yes, it is sort of interesting that Moon was a solid timekeeper despite everything else going on with him.

Sorry, I haven't really formulated an opinion on Wyatt

*Tarfumes, sorry

imo wyatt was kinda the inverse of tony williams: consistent drummer, got even jazzier/more nuanced as he went, and a terrific band leader

Here's the video of Baker getting smoked by Art Blakey if you haven't seen it

wow that's brutal

wonder what blakey thought of baker's style

I love how casual Art Blakey is.

At first he isn't even breaking a sweat. Baker gives it his best shot, looking labored. Then Blakey says "okay, fuck it," and throws DOWN.

It is a master class. Blakey was all time.

that baker/blakey video is incredible lol. baker's tom work is so boring and it just goes on and on and on, and then he's like, "maybe it'll be interesting if i do it faster???"

and then blakey's sticks are like a river rushing through his hands

i'm not a baker hater by any means but he is not flattered by the comparison lol

My favourite Keith Moon drumming is on Quadrophenia, which is an era where a lot of people seem to think he was getting tired; but I think the songs are the strongest that Townshend ever wrote and so they stand up to the drumming.

I actually struggled a bit with his playing on that record for a time, finally realizing that much of what I heard as slightly-reduced-energy was down to how his kit was miked. The snare doesn't crack and the bass drums don't pop like on songs recorded by Glyn Johns (two of which are on Quadrophenia), and the cymbals are far too prominent. On the 1973 shows I've heard -- particularly Philadelphia, 12/4/73 -- his playing is absolutely as great as it ever was, superior to what's on the record.

huh i never thought that he was falling off on quadro at all

though i feel like that is the ultimate entwistle album for the who, he's just beasting out on that record

Entwistle had one gear and that gear is called awesome. There are exactly zero times when I have wanted the Ox to do anything other than what he did .

If there is such a thing as "lead bass" the definition would be simply "See John Entwistle."

Thought this was pretty cool:

“The Real Me” was the first take. I was joking when I did that bass part. The band said, “Wow, that’s great, that’s great!” And I was just messing around. They just loved the song. I was sitting on top of my speaker cabinet playing a silly bass part and that’s the one they liked.

though i feel like that is the ultimate entwistle album for the who, he's just beasting out on that record

Which is why I never understood why Entwistle remixed most of it for the Quadrophenia movie soundtrack. There's indeed more bass, but it's not better bass.

ll cool j's performance in the movie toys is better than any of his music.

(also the song performed by robin williams and joan cusack in the movie is f'kn rad and had trevor horn involvement iirc)

god cardi b has only gotten even more terrible over time.