Post a controversial music opinion

I've a good friend who's big into Southern Rock; I note that the last time Skynrd played the UK they played the Wembley Arena, which has a capacity of 12,500, so there are plenty of weirdos who like them (don't think they are or were as legit big in the UK as BS or ZZTop though).

I think there are a lot of deep veins of americophilia in the UK, but I'm not sure whether people would think of the charm as "american" rather than "country" / "deep soul" / ""southern rock" / "NYC hip hop" / whatever.

(In my case it was the other way round - I've loved visiting America in large part because it is the natural habitat of the big lumps of US culture that I enjoy.)

Yeah, I was just wondering if here was a weirdo UK contingent that listens to ZZ Top and Skynyrd and stuff.

Pronouncing the "z"s like "zee" is like a secret handshake for admission to the cult.

that's funny - I never considered whether it may be pronounced "Zed Zed Top"

Same, and I say 'zed' (Sund4r too, I assume).

Wouldn't it be "double-Zed Top"?

Two Zeds and a Top

yeh, we say Jay-Zed too

LOLing at the idea of Glaswegian record shop assistants being asked if the have any Jye Jye Cale records.

Interestingly, the only person in the UK who does not pronounce it "zed" is named Frank Zed.

Zed Leppelin

it was fun to watch dragon ball zed when i lived in canada

Haha, I think I did say "zed zed top" the first time I read the band name as a child before I heard anyone say it.

Hey have you heard of this band called the 13th Floor Lifts?

Or Pavement... uh, never mind

love a girl with some junk in the boot

Living Color

Lol

She got dumps like a lorry

every bird crazy bout a sharp dressed lad

I'm trying to imagine being repulsed by someone who (for example) britishes so britishly that I just can't stand it

Richard Dawson (raucous experimental UK folk racket w/ intense picaresque realness vox)

every bird crazy bout a sharp dressed lad

― Paul Ponzi, Tuesday, February 2, 2021 6:15 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

lmao

that was great

lily's post is a revelation imo, it's like the thesis for the best book about bruce springsteen that hasn't been written yet.

Thank you, map! That just made my day.

lol Paul

Great post on bruce for sure

Im ok with bruce,the e st band can do one tho

Even though I'm from NJ, the NJ Springsteen is from (and about) is unrecognizable to me. Where I grew up, it was rich kids listening to the Grateful Dead and poor kids listening to rap, metal and punk

totally feeling this as another native garden-stater

don't want to derail this with another "authenticity" debate, but I recall a few years ago (in the NY'er?) reading a really long profile that his perfectionism/discipline extended to choreography of every onstage gesture—exactly when a fist gets pumped and how many times, etc.—and I remember thinking oh yeah, that makes perfect sense, because the whole thing has always struck me as a kind of contrivance.

Again though I know I'm bringing some NJ anti-Bruce bias into this having had to endure his weird devotees growing up

Hard to work too hard to display authenticity as the hardworking archetype imo

Its a funny angle at which to come at anyone tho

Massively popular superstar cultivates image, yeah but like so do i

In the Broadway special he says straight up that his whole steez is a performance, and that he's never had a normal job; it's a trick but it more or less works so why change it at this point?

(paraphrasing)

there's image cultivating and then there's image cultivating

his hero is incapable of doing the same thing twice

it's less an aesthetic objection for me, more that it jibes w/ something overly deliberate in his music

Even though I'm from NJ, the NJ Springsteen is from (and about) is unrecognizable to me.

Everyone I’ve ever known/met from New Jersey has said the same thing. None of them grew up in New Jersey in the 1950s-1970s.

tbf there are also two New Jersey's geographically, I always assumed he has a bigger audience in the southerly part

tbf there are also two New Jersey's geographically
and many more "New Jersey's", metaphorically

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mm8ZOQkzyFc
#OneThread

I always assumed he has a bigger audience in the southerly part

I think he is more Monmouth County/northerly guy.

this is right I think, but in the North Jersey imagination any place that has beaches is "south"

Need to get The Boss himself on here to settle this. Or Floyd, why not?..

Great post, Lily, and the thing about trying so hard/too hard, he's said (or maybe it was Sugar Miami Steve) that there were other guys starting when and where they did who were better singers, songwriters, musicians, everything except at working as hard as possible, all the time---and he in particular said that if any muso, like in his employ especially, ever said, "Well maybe I should try junior college, at least part-time, or GED (eqivalent of high school degree, after dropping out), more time waiting tables...?", he would immediately agree, because if you were thinking about being less single-minded, you already were; there had to be NO QUESTION ABOUT DIRECTION.
On the other hand, he turned Born To Run, album three, into Make or Break by taking so many years, in the time scale of them days, at such expense, to finish product, and not by recording so many different songs, but so many many different takes---and the whiff of grim, almost over-the-top obsessiveness, although it paid off, in a sometimes carefully nuanced, and mostly broadly acceptable, not-too-weird-a-vibe-for-the-70s-way (what the hell, Apocalypse Now cost a lot more)
---nevertheless this kind of compulsive momentum led toward the shut-down later, when he was so embroiled in his mostly offstage legal battle w Mike Appel, even getting his ass forbidden to enter the studio---to where he found himself thinking (as I think he said in press material re expanded reissue of Darkness) that his career might be over, or in for a long hiatus (makine me think of Fogerty's feud with Saul Zaentz, Steve Forbert's with his suits:it happens, for sure) And he said he found his thoughts turning back to growing up in Freehold in the mid-60s, a place and time for which he'd always had Highway 61 Revisited, and later, "David Lynchian" associations, more than rockin' at the hop etc.
And yadda yadda, many years later, after much therapy, "The best day of my life was when I picked up a guitar, and the other best day was when I learned to put it down."

Some of my friends who were raised Catholic (unlike me) saw it allll coming, very early.

But speaking of Brits, those painfully earnest white boy vocals, even or especially among the middle-aging, were basis of my aforementioned nfacness re U-2, Radiohead, many others.

Please don't tell me you're calling U2 British.

uh oh

lol

Same vocal effect (and when there are so many good Irish male voices to be influenced by). But if you want to say he's a heartland/boondocks/grand battered-heritage overachiever like Bruce, so, Bono is indeed Irish-as-hell in that sense.
Wiki says Bruce is of Dutch, Irish, and Italian descent...Springsteen's Italian maternal grandfather was born in Vico Equense.[12] He emigrated through Ellis Island, and could not read or write when he arrived. He eventually became a lawyer, and impressed the young Springsteen as being larger than life.[13] The name Springsteen is topographic and of Dutch origin, literally translated as "jumping stone" but more generally a stepping stone used on unpaved streets or between two houses.[14] The Springsteens, originally from the province of Groningen,[15] were among the early Dutch families who settled in the colony of New Netherland in the 1600s.[16]

Father worked as a bus driver nd held other jobs. Douglas Springsteen suffered from mental health problems throughout his life which worsened in his later years. "Larger than life" im midnight kitchen table encounters w son, as told in on-stage intro to "It's My Life, " when I saw him in '74 or '75.

Not sure what that has to do with Bono or Bono's vocals?

Buses flatten vocals

has to do with having to try harder, represent oneself as product of this underdog drama: Irish heritage, rich in culture, endlessly striving in other ways, so Bono and immigrant-heritage rebel son Bruce of the boondocks, tend to overdo things. Stated as sympathetically as possible, but I still don't care about Bono that much---he's had his moments, Springsteen had more, when I was keeping up with him.

(Springsteen sounded very worn, wearier than ever, but indomitable, an old rock singer as old rock, v. recently on Saturday Night Live w E Street Band---a more discernible melody might have helped, or hurt.)