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When I see the footage of the shows, that's why I think Guy is almost as important to the band at least as a live band as Ian. He brings the Flava Flav anarchic energy that makes the shows still seem fun, even if MacKaye's uncompromising nature might be easier to admire than enjoy.
Yeah, Appetite actually had singles spanning '87 - '89 thanks to its slow rise. Based on my criteria, all the non-singles would be eligible only in '87 and then the singles in the year they were released. Paradise City is a little convoluted. I have a promo single from November '88 with Move to the City as a b-side. The official single (according to Wikipedia) was released in early January '89 with Used to Love Her as the b-side. I'm torn between my innate need to follow arbitrary rules and my overwhelming association of Appetite with 1988.
It's been all downhill for all of Western Civilization from there.
The Illusion albums are kind of like the second two Matrix movies...you could make one good album/movie by taking the best songs/scenes from each of them.
One might even say it was The Decline of Western Civilization, Part IIIt's been all downhill for all of Western Civilization from there.
Yes, that means I believe Paradise City is the zenith of civilization.
There's one particular set of lines that still really gets me. As always, it has to do with a girl, and it's a fairly typical story. She and I hung in the same crowd during my summers home from college. There was always this obvious yet unstated tension - the questions of whether we were into each other - but I had a serious girlfriend (who definitely noticed the whole "weirdness flows between us" thing.) We made each other mixtapes. Stuff kept almost happening. She started dating one of my best friends. I got jealous even though I had no right to be. I went back to college for junior year and she sent me a long letter along with a mix tape that absolutely floored me. She ended the tape with Freak Scene and the letter with the closing lines of the song:
I've been lucky enough to see them a bunch, usually with @plinko. Great shows, but you always have to ask yourself whether you're going to need to hear anything for several days after.Oh yeah!!!
I saw Bob Mould a few months ago so I understand potential hearing loss (Wire in Atlanta last year too). Fortunately for me and Mrs. O, there are some pretty good ear plugs out there that I won’t go to any show without. I like these and carry a spare pair everywhere I travel. I probably look like a dork at shows, but very happy to retain most of my hearing. No ear ringing afterwards is so worth it.
Thanks - just ordered a pair. Going to see 4 nights of Drive-By Truckers in Athens, GA next month so hopefully they'll save my ears.
Oh God, and I'm still jealous of you. Wire still puts out good albums. I wouldn't mind seeing a Wire show at all.
Last show I saw before the world shut down last March. I’ve more than made up for it this year and feel very fortunate. I already have 9 shows on the agenda next year plus spoken word (Henry Rollins)
Totally. I'm not a GnR historian, so I don't really know how downhill it was right after that, but I I know I never thought they were cooler than right then.
Egos, booze, drugs, delusions of grandeur, more drugs, mental illness. It's a damn shame.
I always loved Axl's vocals in pretty much everything. His personality, on the other hand, left much to be desired.
I’m that kid in the corner…
Hmmm... So I know nothing of Danger Mouse and am not super literate on the pre-1984 history of Van Halen, but this is something I have strong opinions about.
Maybe?
I like both bands’ big, popular albums, by the way. “Wait” and “Glycerine” are good pop songs, IMO. Nothing more, but pleasing in their own way.
Yeah, I'm just talking out my ### while making a cheesecake for my father's wife. No doubt there was a cultural shift, hence the "alternative to what?" joke that prospered in the mid-90s.Good points. I was cutting and pasting them up for a rebuttal, but I'm not sure I really disagree with you, especially about Nirvana not being the death knell for all things metal and macho. Nirvana is just shorthand for a major cultural shift happening, something that would probably take a ton of screen space. Instead of describing that shift, it becomes easier to just write "Nirvana," which is lazy and sloppy, but is how I approached it in comment. That's on me, and doesn't quite do what happened justice in its accuracy.
But, one quibble. I mean, maybe I pay too much attention to that which is led by critics, but acts like Kid Rock and Limp Bizkit? They were discredited even while they were big by opinion and taste makers. The question, I guess, is how serious do we take opinion and taste makers, or do we enter into evidence the success of the bands, which I would say was due to the record labels' last gasp at supply-dominated airwaves and distribution rather than any popular demand. Once Napster hit, those bands? Dead.
That said, you certainly have a point about the death of genres being because of lesser bands taking up the mantle.
And those acts were big, for sure. So where that leaves me, I'm not sure. Clinging tenuously to an idea that the moment was precious and doomed, I guess.
Faster #####cat's first album was pretty much written by Ric Browde and was pretty good. But I'm a sucker for glam/trash, and ninth grade rock loved them and I can't let go of the fact that they pretty much sucked but he was all-in on them.
Eh, not talking out your ### too much. Those are all salient and good points. I wouldn't argue them too vociferously. I think you're right that the taste makers weren't critics. Perhaps I was too attuned to critics back then to really see what was going on. MTV and radio execs ruled the day in the court of public opinion.
One is vanilla with a graham cracker crust. The other is peanut butter with an oreo crust.
In the huge Genrepalooza draft I took George Michael ("Faith") in the "Hall of Fame Snubs" category.
Sounds good. Both of them. Are they real cheesecakes or no-bake cheesecakes? I hope they're the heavy, baked kind. My stepniece makes no-bake cheesecake. I'm not even sure what that is, though it didn't look like cheesecake at all. It looked, well, sloppy.
I'm the one who was confusing, Rock. I meant that without the laughing emoji, I wasn't sure the appropriate "I find that funny" response.
This record & album was the most amazing in-real-time (not retconned like ABBA or many others) turnaround of an artist's rep I've ever seen. I wasn't listening to a ton of new music during this time but I still read stuff like Rolling Stone and other music-based rags. George Michael was on NO ONE's radar at the time. He had all of the cultural cache of - to pick a name from my own childhood - someone like Tony Orlando. Then this album dropped and it was like a bomb had exploded. Praise, both critical and commercial, was flying. Hell, even WHUR (the Howard U radio station in DC) played this song. You couldn't go ANYWHERE without hearing it - gas stations, malls, dentist offices, soul food stores (I know, because I heard it in one in SE), and pretty much every open car window.
Justin Timberlake with Timbaland comes to mind, actually. Same thing. Same neo-soul from pop vibe. Justin Timberlake, like Wham!, was for twelve year old girls only. Then, wham!, JT became JT.
It did, and more's the pity. It's not Nirvana's fault, of course - they were making their own music. But the influence initiated a 3-decade period (and counting) of folks thinking navel-gazing, woe-is-me guitar rock is the only way to go.
It’s 50 years on. Anything that gets people into Marvin Gaye who wouldn’t otherwise care, I’m fine with.
That's probably a good comparison, though I was paying even less attention to NSYNC in their time than I was to Wham! in the 80s, so I don't really know how NSYNC was regarded critically (probably less well than crap like Korn, I'd imagine).
I demand to know who these people are.
