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Successful bands that you dont like
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IanB
IanB
6761 posts

Edited Nov 14, 2008, 18:00
Re: Successful bands that you dont like
Nov 14, 2008, 17:58
dave clarkson wrote:
My view on rock stuff is....to listen to music with my heart rather than my head (although the ears come in handy too). I think music within the 'rock' genre should not be intellectually discussed although I find myself doing it - it's all rather embarrasing at times. This is why I find a lot of prog very difficult to listen to as the musicians tend to come over as trying too hard to be virtuoso when they're clearly not - its all very pretentious. The people who pushed punk were very important in addressing that balance in rock music but I think there's been a shift back into that old stuff recently. I'm a musical snob and to me most rock music is the lowest common denominator. Best take it on its primal level first time you hear it, play it and then put it away and get an Oscar Peterson album out with the a glass of port and a cigar. 8)


You make a very fair point but I can get a very similar poetic, spiritual and physical rush from John Martyn as I can from Vaughan Williams or Alice Coltrane. I can get the same foot-on-monitor high from No Quarter and Hit The Road Jack as from Parsifal.

What I hate about rock music is how musicians of little talent pass themselves of as virutosi and writers of sparce wit get away with passing themselves off as thinking men simply because the bar is set so very low.

Where prog had it right was that there is merit in applying yourself to your art. Of course the results were often risible but if you don't sacrifice your entire being to the gods like Iggy then applying one's intellect to the problem is better than plagarism disguised as tradition and authenticity.

To make my old point - too much rock music is based on nicking a half understood idea, regurgitating it for the hard of thinking, slapping on the title of someone else's book as a song title and then reading the back cover a couple of times before tackling the lyrics. That's inexcusably slapdash.

The rest of the Arts habitually pat rock n roll on the head as an idiot cousin of cinema, literature, 'classical music' and fine art. They let a few folks through the velvet rope to play with the big boys and girls (Eno, Byrne, Bowie, Gabriel, Albarn) but leave most of them where they belong - on the pavement selling matches. I'm not saying Eno et al deserve the royal treatment but you can see why being able to walk the walk just a teeny bit might be helpful in terms of extending the art form beyond the second hand and the half baked.

Lets raise the fucking bar!

ps I think you are wrong about Marr - he comes across to me a talented imitiator of many styles, a magpie of motifs. The John Paul Jones of post punk if you will. Always the sideman etc ...
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