Post a controversial music opinion

Not interested in the question of which band was “better” but LTT is undeniably a far superior album to In Utero.

nevermind and LTT are even in my book. both have great songs. a few not great songs. overall, both pretty awesome. though i feel like LTT definitely gets me more emotional. It's a powerhouse.

here's an olde-tyme ILM type of statement that i still believe:

This Is Big Audio Dynamite is better than any Clash album.

i was 10 years old at the time and entering into a deep Van Halen phase. still not sure how i missed it.

_ I have written about it. _

feel like sharing (or elaborating)?

also i agree with you scott, i think The Clash are most certainly among those bands who are fine, but who have never lived up to their reputation imho

The first 3 Big Audio Dynamite albums are incredible, but in their second era they shit the bed harder than the Clash ever did.

Here is a link

Damn ♥️

Also, thank you.

Kurt Kobain was a great singer. Courtney Love is a charismatic vocalist but couldn’t sing her way out of a paper bag.

Eh, I dunno about that.

There were so many genuinely great, charismatic rock singers around during that era (Glenn Danzig, Chris Cornell, Angelo Moore to pick just three) that singling out anyone as ordinary as Cobain or Love feels like special pleading.

those are controversial opinions!

as a rejoinder: Fishbone are unlistenable

I'm a big fan of scream-singing where the melody and lyrics are still intelligible, must be hard because a lot of singers are not great at it. Courtney should be in the 90s vocal hall of fame for Violet alone.

Yeah I mean Angelo Moore is a great singer but to be like “Courtney Love is nothing compared to him” is like comparing apples to oranges— Love was playing a commercialized version of riot grrrl grunge, and Moore was fronting a glorified ska-funk band. There is deep pathos and real character to both of their voices, but they operate in different ways because of the whole package of what they were a part of.

Fishbone are unlistenable

counterpoint, Reality of My Surroundings is a stellar album

As is Truth and Soul

I've never listened to a Fishbone album but I did once mistakenly buy a Thelonious Monster album. It sucked so bad.

i'm pretty sure that in the 80s i thought bands like fishbone and rhcp were joke bands! like novelty acts. i probably would have lumped them in with kid creole and oingo boingo. i didn't realize how brilliant kid creole and the kid creole family were at the time. i can't know everything right away. my own personal novelty acts were fun boy three, bow wow wow, adam & the ants, wide boy awake. anyone wearing a pirate hat i guess. but the funk-rock thing...i guess it didn't sound that dope to me. not like haysi fantayzee...(god i was a moron...)
(any ska rock after the specials and the 2tone crowd sounded like joke rock to me too. like roman holiday or the polecats.)

Fishbone were the best live band on the planet from 1984 to 1992. Their shows were incredible, even when they didn't have the 2 Live Crew as an unannounced opening act (as they did the first time I saw them, at the Palladium in NYC).

My only controp I can think of today: Chuck Mosley > Mike Patton

I view both eras differently and enjoy both

I used to watch SNL reruns during summer break in middle school and the one with Fishbone truly blew my mind. Their studio albums are good but it was hard to get into them knowing how insane they were live. To tell the truth I think Ween are kinda similar in that aspect.

yeah the SNL performance was an utter triumph. saw it the night it aired and it just blew me away.

there have always been fishbone fans on ilm! and faith no more fans. and ween fans. i don't know about oingo boingo fans...is ned an oingo boingo fan? it's nice though. the fandom. i'm a fan of the fandom of bands i don't listen to. don't ask me why. devo fans are cool. true controversial fact: i have never listened to a devo album.

Me neither. I have a friend who’s a big fan though

Freedom Of Choice rules, go get it immediately

Are We Not Men? and Freedom of Choice are both amazing records that sound like they were made by two entirely different bands. And...that's all the Devo anyone needs. (Controversy!)

I kind of co-sign that, I’ve never felt like I needed to go beyond those two albums

Oingo Boingo has come up because of the recent relaunched KROQ polls, they came up in 1985. I don't think there has been much fandom on ILM, just observation.

xp i am at min 30 of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fhz3RpyBRs0

*recollects*
i've done everything wrong. but at least i still really dislike rhcp.

"You Can't Hurry Love" by Phil Collins is better than "You Can't Hurry Love" by The Supremes. There's a clenched urgency to it which moves me more.

I can feel it clenching in the air tonight

Living in Los Angeles throughout the 80s I saw Fishbone, Oingo Boingo, and The Untouchables a lot and never had anything less than a great time, but I can't remember the last time I listened to an album of theirs start to finish

_Fishbone are unlistenable_


counterpoint, Reality of My Surroundings is a stellar album

Yes hi Fishbone, Oingo Boingo and Devo are my favorite bands (I'm from Los Angeles)

^ these are all very good bands! (I'm not from Los Angeles)

Oingo Boingo was once upon a time my favorite band. One of my first real concerts was seeing them at a small theatre in Fresno. I have all their albums on cassette in a closet somewhere, but tbh I rarely listen to full albums by them. “Nothing Bad Ever Happens to Me” is still a banger.

Back when I paid close attention to lyrics and still believed in the idea of "subversive" pop culture, so when I was like 13-15, Oingo Boingo felt super-subversive to me. I owned a bunch of their albums and a best-of from their early years.

Listen to Nothing To Fear really loud. It's aged very well and produced amazingly

I'm not a Boingo superfan or anything but I like 'em fine, or did when I used to bring a best of CD on road trips. "Who Do You Want To Be" is good adrenaline driving music imo.

hole > nirvana was a classic ilx opinion from back in the day

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown)

I am in the right place then lol

btw to all of my fellow peers who think LTT is >NEVERMIND/IN UTERO check out Rob Harvilla's "doll parts" episode of '60 songs that explain the 90's' :

https://www.theringer.com/2022/6/15/23168672/courtney-love-hole-doll-parts-live-through-this-podcast

Some great insights on why Courtney Love was in many ways more fit for the 'rockstar' moniker than Kurt Cobain.

Regarding Janet Jackson > Michael Jackson I'm aware it's a more personal (and I admit controversial) opinion but by the numbers I don't see how she's not at least at the same level as her brother:

The run from Control > Rhythm Nation 1814 > Janet. > Velvet Rope is in many ways more influential for the music I actually love than Off the Wall > Thriller > Bad. And despite that incredible 3 album run by Michael he really fell off in quality imho after Bad. Janet's quality falls off just slightly after Velvet Rope but she was still releasing the goods; "All For You", "Damita Jo", "Discipline" and "Unbreakable" still deliver some grade a cuts and some of the most successful singles in her career. The only "not great" album I can think about after Velvet Rope is "20 YO".

Ok maybe Discipline is a bit mid too.

Maybe a bit less controversial opinion would be Janet Jackson's singles > Michael Jackson's singles /// Janet Jackson's albums < Michael Jackson's albums

But then there's songs like Velvet Rope's "empty" or "my need" which are amongst my favorite cuts from her and they weren't singles.

Fuck it I stand by my initial controversial opinion that Janet > Michael

Michael Jackson was an artist of his time (early 70s to late 80s — a pretty long run) whose cultural relevance has almost entirely faded, more due to the rise of hip-hop than the allegations against him. But he doesn't mean shit to kids.

I mean I’d argue that Janet Jackson isn’t that hot with the kids nowadays either but fuck them kids.

Michael Jackson was an artist of his time (early 70s to late 80s — a pretty long run) whose cultural relevance has almost entirely faded, more due to the rise of hip-hop than the allegations against him. But he doesn't mean shit to kids.

― but also fuck you (unperson),

This is 100% untrue. My students know "Beat It," "Don't Stop Til You Get Enough," and a few of the other monster hits. He has NOT gone away.

However, Janet Jackson is completely lost to time.

Yeah i feel like MJ's relevance peaked relatively recently, he seems like an important archetype for different kinds of pop artists. Justin Bieber, Justin Timberlake, The Weeknd, etc. Even Ariana Grande in a sense.

My 8th grade history teacher used to treat us to selections from Velvet Rope in his piercing falsetto, even that didn't ruin it for me.

He said it was too mature an album for kids to like it, maybe he was onto something.