Post a controversial music opinion

that one (for me) is second only to the "free will" post

... I was DJing at a party, and this annoying girl asked me whether I could play some Nirvana, and I was like, sure. Then I put "Call It What You Want" on; it starts exactly like "Smells Like Teen Spirit", but then the bassline kicks in and MC Fusion starts his (to be honest, rather awful) rap. You should've seen the expression on the girl's face!

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Friday, May 20, 2005 4:23 AM (sixteen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

the loud and distorted noises made by rock guitars startled and frightened tuomas

The one I really get on Austin's list is Elvis Costello— have never been able to understand what the fuck people hear in this guy's music.

the funny part is: i actually really like a lot of rock bands and prefer r+b that has guitars in it.

not my fault that most of the guitar music that's been canonized is just shit.

in a nice way.☺

I started liking Elvis Costello a lot more when I stopped thinking about him as being "punk rock" or "new wave" or whatever everybody says he is supposed to be and started just thinking he was a petulant dude who made petulant music and there's a time and place for that

He's certainly never been punk rock!

Generally I love The Rolling Stones but I think the A-side of Exile is kinda bad! especially because the rest is so great.

Nirvana are terrific

Pixies are terrific, especially the debut album/EP, it is wild tho how Frank's songwriting from Trompe onward showed his hand, you realize he's more of a prestidigitator than a songwriter, and his magic tricks were more effective at the outset. Still pretty magical though. "Vamos" is one of the weirdest best songs I can think of

the punks were useful idiots for elvis c. i'm sure he preferred it that way. the main difference between him and them was that some punks could actually write engaging music.

genuinely believe we'd all be living in a utopia by now if pixies and nirvana never existed (or at least fizzled out before making any records). just bad, hurtful music.

and the stones are even worse than that.

and, just in case anyone thinks i'm just showing my bias away from rock music, i will reiterate: d'angelo is also among the most overrated ever and has made plenty of embarrassingly bad music.

here's a controp in the inverse way: zapp and roger troutman made some of the most innovative music of their era. those first two zapp albums (and the first roger album) are better than any records that were in the rock sections at the same time. like . . . it's not even close.

it is wild tho how Frank's songwriting from Trompe onward showed his hand, you realize he's more of a prestidigitator than a songwriter

that's a very intriguing thought, which admittedly i don't quite follow. what was it that tipped you off, and what's the difference anyhow?

Oh, I think it was "Subbacultcha" that was the first 'miss' of a lyric, but what "showed his hand" was "Whatever Happened To Pong?" and "I Wanna Live On An Abstract Plain" off his solo albums where it wasn't surreal any more, it was that 50/50 balance of "clever" and "funny" that ends up being neither

I think it was further up in this thread that people were questioning as to why a band can fall off and cause people to dislike their earlier material as a result, I don't think it's that much of a mystery. With any body of work there is an unknown element of "what would it sound like if this band got bad" and as long as it remains unknown, the existing work retains its magic. Hearing Frank Blank get hokey-jokes on his post-Pixies songs definitely made me like lines I used to unconditionally love feel less lovely. "Self-parody" is often used but I feel like it's more like if you keep doing magic tricks, eventually the audience figures out how they work, and it makes your previous tricks less special, I guess

I think a lot about this wrt Smog, bc I'm not a fan of Dongs-era, songs like "Dress Sexy" feel like he's telling jokes, whereas there was something grim and mysterious and not-jokey (but actually very funny) about "37 Push-Ups" and "I Break Horses" and "My Family"

It's funny I guess people don't really think "Frank Black, lyricist" but I've puzzled over the meaning of more Pixies songs in my life than Bob Dylan or Joni. "Cookie I think you're tame" lives rent-free etc.

I do think that, sometimes. "Dead" + "Gouge Away" = "Hallelujah"?

"if you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with bullshit."

pixies firmly in the latter.

Uriah hit the crapper

xp to fgti, ahh ok, not at all what i thought you meant.

With any body of work there is an unknown element of "what would it sound like if this band got bad" and as long as it remains unknown, the existing work retains its magic.

OTM

not wanting to shit up the proper topic with my rants and raves but jesus christ, jane's addiction is some abysmal bullshit. crimes against humanity levels of dreadfulness. perfect argument against free speech and proof that just because you can doesn't mean you should.

where's the clip of perry farrell saying hiphop "isn't intelligent music"? i really want to sample it. what a terrible person.

See, why don't you post on the individual threads for these bands if you want to incite controversy?

not wanting to shit up the proper topic with my rants and raves

― get shrunk by this funk. (Austin), Sunday, January 16, 2022 10:36 AM

xp fgti I mostly agree with you re: Frank Black, though I think his lyrical semi-shark-jump came on Bossanova when he started jettisoning the gothic surrealist imagery and fixating on UFOs/Roswell/Area 51, partially embracing a kind of "Weird-with-a-capital-W" 50s B-movie aesthetic that was nowhere near as cool as what he was doing before. Despite this, I still love Trompe Le Monde deeply, and his whole thing didn't really start to fall apart for me til the first solo album. "Subbacultcha" was actually one of his earliest songs; it was on their original Purple Tape demo but didn't make it onto Come on Pilgrim.

I can't find any evidence that Perry Farrell said that quote, would seem odd since he collaborated and is friends with Ice-T and booked him on the first Lollapalooza when no rock festivals booked hip hop.

I can find quotes from him saying they were influenced by hip hop.

He even did an Uproxx video in 2019 talking about Ice T

Huh, check out this Farrell quote that came up in a search (talking to MTV News): “(T)hose first two zapp albums (and the first roger album) are better than any records that were in the rock sections at the same time. like . . . it's not even close.”

it was from an early 90s interview. it was in a longer form documentary about music evolution after punk. could've been something i saw on pbs just as likely as it was to have been vh1. it definitely wasn't mtv. that's all i can remember. it's real and it happened. sorry if that's upsetting for you.

would imagine he's backtracked quite a bit ever since, because duh.

it wouldn't be so bad if his music wasn't such absolute trash, but oh well. i don't have to listen to it and i'm not invested in it whatsoever. but it is rubbish.

I've been caught trolling once
when I was 25

I wouldn't spare a second out of my day to defend Perry Farrell, but I find it hard to believe he'd say that with all the evidence to the contrary and that, if he did, it wouldn't be preserved in multiple places because of the shock value.

not wanting to shit up the proper topic with my rants and raves
― get shrunk by this funk. (Austin), Sunday, January 16, 2022 10:36 AM

Oh, I thought this thread was the "proper topic".

...and you were apologizing in advance.

These satellite radio stations focused on 80s music have seemingly decided that hair metal will be included in the canon, but there’s no room for the likes of the Pixies or Janes Addiction. I’d be fine with never hearing Perry Farrell sing again and I also give a hard pass to most of Frank Black’s solo work but it would seem like a cosmic injustice for Winger to live on in the culture long after Gouge Away has passed.

I think they segregate that stuff in “1st Wave”

i wish i was trolling. it's something he said in the pre-internet era in a program that i saw on late night 90s tv, either on public broadcasting or cable.
the doc was about the evolution of music in the wake of punk, was originally from the early 90s, and he was brought in as an important figure because of his main man involvement with lollpalooza. that's all i can remember. it would be very convenient for me to just look it up if i could remember what it was. but i can't because it was something i saw one time, ever. i certainly have no reason to make things up, as they're a terrible band of idiots that makes terribly idiotic music either way.

kind of like the elvis costello being racist thing. he's apologized and backtracked ever since, but to me that's a stink that never wears off. that his music is also quite odorous is just a happy coincidence for me.

(perry's comments re: hiphop were nowhere near as egregious as elvis' drunken outburst, but the fact still remains they both made regrettable comments that line up nicely with my dislike of their music)

xp fgti I mostly agree with you re: Frank Black, though I think his lyrical semi-shark-jump came on Bossanova when he started jettisoning the gothic surrealist imagery and fixating on UFOs/Roswell/Area 51, partially embracing a kind of "Weird-with-a-capital-W" 50s B-movie aesthetic that was nowhere near as cool as what he was doing before. Despite this, I still love Trompe Le Monde deeply, and his whole thing didn't really start to fall apart for me til the first solo album. "Subbacultcha" was actually one of his earliest songs; it was on their original Purple Tape demo but didn't make it onto Come on Pilgrim.

This is interesting, and otm re: "UFOs/Roswell/Area 51". I love Trompe Le Monde and enjoy lots of Frank's solo music! I don't think I can really demarcate when he's being "sinister surreal" and when he's being "goofy surreal" but there's a big difference how I feel about it. The best theoretical analogy I can think of would be if Lynch made "On The Air" and then made that the tone of all his subsequent work

I do think that, sometimes. "Dead" + "Gouge Away" = "Hallelujah"?

You said Cohen, not me! I probably was being hyperbolic re Joni though. But like I don't speak Spanish and I know what Frank is singing bc I looked it up when I was young and I have spent many nights thinking about the "if man is 5" verse.

"if you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with bullshit."

This is a good quote and probably applies!

I don't really carry the same animosity toward many of these musicians, I think I'm probably allergic to Mike Patton maybe but I love Ipecac so

You said Cohen, not me!

I know; I meant that I do think "Frank Black, lyricist". I just liked that they also wrote songs about David/Bathsheba and Samson/Delilah, both referenced in "Hallelujah". Their takes obv different, bring out more of the crazed lust and violence, but I think they were p clever in their own way.

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0150922/?ref_=m_ttep_ep_ep10

it's on youtube in an edited down form that glosses over the hiphop part (and subsequently cuts out the offending portion), but this is it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MfObML5emk

Not arguing that he's a poet on Cohen's level tbc xp

Frank Black's best album, solo or Pixie-lated, is the '93 eponymous one. Fact.

Ohhh I thought you were taking the piss xp

I don't agree with Alfred but that first solo record is really good.

But I also have about equal tolerance for all Pixies records

well, there's yer problem right there! yer listenin` to crap records, son!

top five worst pixies songs?

i revisited doolittle for the first time in years recently and it's still one of my favorite rock records ever

to get back to controversial opinions, pixies are wild, messy, and interesting, but that never really resulted in any albums that i really like to listen to front-to-back

doolittle is the closest but the second side is still a big step down from the first - "hey", "no. 13 baby" and "gouge away" are all fanastic but "mr. grieves", "crackity jones" and "there goes my gun" are all only fine and "la la love you" and "silver" (sorry kim but it's pretty far from your best) really shouldn't have made the album at all.

like i'm sure that's all part of the appeal for a lot of people but not for me

I could have written the exact same thing about Doolittle, except I'd also put "Crackity Jones" on the discard pile. Haven't heard Bossanova, and the other two records have some great stuff and some that's forgettable.

My unpopular opinion is that "Here Comes Your Man' is the worst song on Doolittle, possibly in the Pixies' catalog. "La la Love You" and "Silver" are good. Frank Black's first solo album is really good.

side a of doolittle is so stacked it's insane

Otm

I love "Silver," but I'm a Kim freak. It sounds so lonely and desolate, but it drags so much at the end of the album or in the context of Doolittle at all. If it had been released as a b-side it would be seen as a hidden gem.

if there’s no “mr grieves” on doolittle then there’s no tv on the radio cover, and that would be a shame

also the album would need a new name

keeping in mind his oft professed love of Trembling Blue Stars, some of Austin's recent posts itt are kind of amusing. I'm reminded of a Joe Cornish interview from years ago where he was saying he doesn't like any rock music except the Bluetones.

don't see what's controversial about liking r&b more than rock anyhow.