Post a controversial music opinion

My older brother brought Radio-Activity and The Man-Machine home after his high school art teacher used to play them in drawing class. They're certainly my favourite Kraftwerk albums, as a kid I thought it was only natural that you would start a record with two minutes of (synthesized) Geiger counter.

anyone who puts computer world second to last is a musical idiot imo

Blondie is one of the few bands I would spring for a deluxe box set of at this point in my life. My love for that band goes beyond reason. Of course, it has a lot to do with the time of my life I discovered them. I still remember, at 13 in 1978, dropping the needle on Parallel Lines and hearing Debbie launch into "Hanging on the Telephone." At that point in my life, I'd heard the Runaways, but I really didn't know women could make the kind of music Debbie was making. And I'll freely admit I was crushing on her hard--still am, truth be told.

I've had a couple posters on my Facebook wall bitch about that box set. Whatever.

Complaining about its existence? I think it’s cool if box sets are still happening for anyone! (but I also thought they were more of a holiday season thing)

This one has been a long time coming.

No -- complaining about Blondie (which I understand but don't share).

I’m not a big Blondie fan, but I didn’t realize they were considered to be bad & hated (by folks in general).

they’re good. they have at least three amazing records

there was a kind of avant disco blankness about them at the time that seemed very much like the future, I think that is a lot of the appeal

not really a fan but “rapture” is amazing

I've never heard the first three albums and I don't care.

Ralf und Florian is essential, it's one of my favorite Kraftwerk albums.

Then again my other favorite Kraftwerk albums are The Man Machine and Computer World, probably

I also love Ralf und Florian

Yeah my eternal top 3 are Computer World, Radioactivity, and Ralf un Florian. Side 2 of Ralf und Florian is one of the most blissed-out sides of vinyl in existence

My potentially controversial Blondie opinion is that the first album may be more entertaining than Parallel Lines. My controversial Kraftwerk opinion is that side 2 of Trans-Europe Express gets pretty dull after a few minutes.

and your controversial Tonic opinion?

My controversial opinion is that it is not possible to have a controversial ranking of Kraftwerk albums.

The first five Blondie albums are like ranking your children. You love them all individually and as a family. Maybe you have a favourite but that changes, and the eldest and the youngest have their issues.

and your controversial Tonic opinion?

OK, since you asked...

I've never heard this song, it's unremarkable. I agree with you that the lead guitars are the most interesting part, there's some nice slide and they use subtle reverb and delay at various points. It's not making me miss the 90s as much as the poor YouTube commentators.

Yeah, I couldn’t have told you the band name or title of that song (though I do remember it)… I revisited it / listened closely after the above post, and it def. didn’t have any zing for me.

Perhaps I should check out their most recent single – 2021’s "If You Could Only See (25th Anniversary)”

it's been lowered 4 full steps and is sung like Tom Waits

My controversial VH1-scum opinion is that the first Matchbox 20 album is fairly kickass, and is also one of the best-sounding albums I’ve ever heard… it’s like the pinnacle of modern record production.

the first time I heard "Long Day" I said 'oh, I get this band, the singer pronounces words funny'

Ha, well thanks for the thoughtful takes. Yeah I remembered it as a radio rock hit but when I heard it again recently I was struck by how much nicer that lead guitar was than it could have been. Overall the song had more texture than I would have guessed prior to the revisit.

xpost the only show I ever played in a band, also on the bill was one of the ex-member's of Tabitha's Secret, who was now in a jazz combo and playing jazz for the 8 people in the audience.

I've had a couple posters on my Facebook wall bitch about that box set. Whatever.

― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, August 26, 2022 6:27 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Why are people bitching about the Blondie box set? I got the 4-disc bonus material-only version and enjoyed it a lot.

First three tracks on Tonic's Lemon Parade are actually pretty good... spotty album after that. By sheer coincidence, I listened to their third album for the first time just this week out of curiosity (their highest rated on rym) and it's aggressively bland

To me the apotheosis of Blondie as a top-tier critically acclaimed band after being relegated to the 2nd tier for many years feels of a piece with the similar rise of Fleetwood Mac. Both are fronted by women, perhaps more known as singles bands by most people, and somewhat disco-friendly — qualities that might have worked against them in the old rock-crit establishment.

My musical controp is that neither band has ever been relegated to the second tier by the old rock-crit establishment (Rumours #4 P&J, Parallel Lines #25, Eat to the Beat #17) and it would be far more of an anti-establishment critical reversal to say that AC/DC and Black Sabbath are better rock bands than Blondie and Fleetwood Mac.

yeah maybe my idea of things is distorted by having read the lester bangs blondie book but they have always come off to me as critically beloved

I don't think that's distorted: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_Lines#Critical_reception

Maybe it's selection bias in terms of what critics I read (or paid attention to) and who the bands that I liked cited as influences, but I always felt, in terms of that era, there was a pretty clear top tier of bands like the Ramones, Patti Smith, the Clash, Wire, X, Talking Heads, Television, etc., and that Blondie was not quite at that level, although still beloved by many. However, my perception may have been colored by the fact that Blondie seemed to lack a certain edginess or aggression in their sound that connoted importance to me in those days. My knowledge of rock criticism was also fairly limited. Probably the ur-text for me was the 1995 SPIN list of best 100 alternative albums. That list has Ramones at #1, Patti Smith at #6, X at #10, Wire at #12, Buzzcocks at #17, and Blondie at #20, which is higher than I remembered it being. So again some bias on my part is probably involved.

Please Kill Me came out in 1996 and upended all of that, bc Patti Smith came out of it looking kind of sketchy if not fraudulent and Blondie came out looking great.

The Beths are totally overhyped and overrated. I'm a Kiwi and I'm sorry, it's so disheartening to see their competent but ultimately bland power pop attract so much acclaim, when there's so much more interesting music happening here. It's getting really infuriating that everyone thinks of NZ as the home of Aldous Harding (yawn), The Beths (double yawn) and Lorde (diminishing returns), or some island of nostalgic indie halcyon days that peaked with Flying Nun.

Where's the love for Church and AP, or Wax Chattels, or Fazerdaze, or Tami Neilson, to give just a handful of examples off the top of my head?!

No idea what you're talking about. New Zealand is where Beastwars and Ulcerate and Organectomy and Rendered Helpless come from.

I've never know a moment when Parallel Lines wasn't revered as much as Horses, Marquee Moon, etc.

"Side 2 of Ralf und Florian is one of the most blissed-out sides of vinyl in existence"

There was a period back in the late 1990s when HMV seemed to he hip to bootlegs, and there was a widely-available bootleg of that album on the "Germanofon" label:
https://www.discogs.com/release/303652-Kraftwerk-Ralf-Florian

I still have my copy. One day I'll bring out all of my compact discs and tell the local kids that I bought them in a shop. There were shelves of records and compact discs. But no vinyl because that was weird.

It's more directionless than their later albums, but I've played it more often than all of the other Kraftwerk albums in my collection because it's nice to have on in the background. Each song has one idea that repeats throughout the whole song without much deviation. It's like an ancestor of the early records by Fennesz and Solar Fields, before they found their mojo. It also sounds really happy. The back cover photo of Ralf and Florian jamming in a brick studio is a life goal:
https://i.discogs.com/BzstVJ-XjrZR0Q5w2s-xNcv1w64e-1g686SWOv_haIc/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:600/w:600/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTEyNTIw/NS0xMjIxMzAxMjU5/LmpwZWc.jpeg

The front cover is weird. It's as if it was shot at a press conference. But why would Kraftwerk have a press conference in 1973? They weren't even technically a synthesiser band yet. They were just "a band". Apparently Germanofon was so popular (good-quality needle drops) that there was a fake Germanofon that re-issued the original bootlegs thus making them bootleg-bootlegs. The label's discography would make for a terrific Nurse-With-Wound-style list but for Kosmische Musik. I have now switched back and forth between my PC and my Mac Mini so often I can copy-paste without having to look at the keyboard. Truly I am system-neutral.

Controversial music opinion. Controversial music opinion. The bass on Sarah McLachlan's "Possession" is distracting. It'll too flashy. It doesn't complement the song. It's just too active. I realise I may be in the minority here but that's my take. And whereas Duran Duran pretty much emerged fully-formed, or at least almost fully-formed, Japan took ages to get their groove and had a relatively limited range. Ditto Ultravox. By the time those two bands reached their final form they were worn-out, whereas Duran Duran peaked at a time when they were still enthusiastic. And David Sylvian was unwilling to push his vocal range after the first Japan album, so his music tends to be of a piece, whereas... was I just about to praise Simon Le Bon's vocal depth? I believe I was.

That's why I dislike dogma. It's why I dislike rationality. Reasoning. Intelligence. Every time I try to be rational I start with good intentions but I end up convincing myself that Simon Le Bon was a more adventurous vocalist than David Sylvian. Sylvain. Sylvian. Sylvian. And that is how invasions and wars happen. Rational people perverting themselves with facts and logic. Machine men with machine minds etc.

On the subject of Blondie, and perhaps this is a UK/US thing, but I've always thought of them as a pop band. Not a rock band. They're much better than that. Parallel Lines was produced and/or written by Mike Chapman. Their most popular singles were disco ("Heart of Glass", "Atomic"), pop-rap ("Rapture"), and reggae ("The Tide is High"). They did not quote rock out unquote. They were far too sophisticated and musically adventurous to be a rock band.

"Ah, but you think that pop is inferior to rock" - not at all. Completely the opposite. I'm British! I grew up with pop. It's in my lifeblood. From a British point of view - my point of view, which reflects that of each and every human being who lives and breathes on these islands - pop is king and rock is stupid. That's one of the reasons Iron Maiden etc were despised in the 1980s. Because they were rock. It's why people laughed at Bruce Springsteen and Dire Straits. They were rock and thus boring. Blondie were huge in the UK precisely because they were pop. The likes of Kansas, Boston, Bob Seger, Van Halen etc weren't popular in the UK because they were rock. Van Halen's debut album got to number 34 over here. 1984? Number 15

We had Adam Ant, Gary Numan, and Kate Bush, who were popular because they were interesting. Unlike Foreigner or The Knack. And then we had Culture Club and Duran Duran, and then you had Culture Club and Duran Duran because they stuck their stingers into MTV and poisoned the United States.

And so at least in the UK Parallel Lines is a classic album, but it's not a classic rock album. And that's a good thing.

Unperson, I think you actually do get my point. There's a thriving metal scene here (alongside many others) and yet critics and ILXers are talking about... The Beths. Smh.

Each song has one idea that repeats throughout the whole song without much deviation

Apart from "Ananas Symphonie", which takes up most of Side 2.

Actress should be treated with the same hyper obsessive fanboy regard as Boards of Canada

I'm British! I grew up with pop. It's in my lifeblood. From a British point of view - my point of view, which reflects that of each and every human being who lives and breathes on these islands - pop is king and rock is stupid. That's one of the reasons Iron Maiden etc were despised in the 1980s. Because they were rock. It's why people laughed at Bruce Springsteen and Dire Straits. They were rock and thus boring. Blondie were huge in the UK precisely because they were pop. The likes of Kansas, Boston, Bob Seger, Van Halen etc weren't popular in the UK because they were rock. Van Halen's debut album got to number 34 over here. 1984? Number 15

We had Adam Ant, Gary Numan, and Kate Bush, who were popular because they were interesting. Unlike Foreigner or The Knack. And then we had Culture Club and Duran Duran, and then you had Culture Club and Duran Duran because they stuck their stingers into MTV and poisoned the United States.

I was going to add "disco was also more respected by the old rock-crit establishment than AOR hard rock, fairly obviously" to my post but figured it would be too tangential - but, yep, hating rock is nothing new for rock critics.

The back cover photo of Ralf and Florian jamming in a brick studio is a life goal

I like how they keep a pedal steel guitar handy, in case George Jones drops by.

Duran Duran pretty much emerged fully-formed, or at least almost fully-formed, Japan took ages to get their groove and had a relatively limited range

Because Duran Duran "emerged" from ripping off what Japan had done a year or two before...and every Japan album sounds different, even their "funk" was more propulsive and interesting than Duran's.

David Sylvian was unwilling to push his vocal range after the first Japan album

He was still hitting notes at the top of his range as late as the "European Son" single. Simon LeBon's voice is higher, though, if that counts for anything.

I like how they keep a pedal steel guitar handy, in case George Jones drops by.

"Ananas Symphonie"! Also it's a lap steel. Cluster had one at the same time. And so did Can.

Didn't know Ulcerate are from NZ.

Cluster's lap steel...

https://desertplanetmusic.files.wordpress.com/2019/04/cluster.jpeg

Duran's debut and Rio don't sound like Japan.

Re: Patti Smith, mentioned upthread, I think she might be the single most overpraised and absolutely talentless “musicians” I’ve ever heard. I’ve tried dozens of times and dozens of albums, and my conclusion is always the same: Patti Smith sucks.