Popular music: some logical investigations
Premis: I don't really like U2
Premis: I don't like Radiohead
First Lemma: I don't need to bother with Coldplay (ie, a linear combination of Radiohead and U2)
Second Lemma: I don't need to trouble myself overly with Franz Ferdinand (ie, a linear extrapolation of Radiohead along the axis linking it to U2 via Coldplay)
Premis: I do like AC/DC
Conjecture: So I suppose I might or might not like the Killers, the Strokes, or any of those other bands which can roughly be described as linear interpolations between Coldplay and AC/DC.
Any suggestions, readers?
Their hits should be available on YouTube, although as of about a week ago there's a good chance you'll be limited to live versions of dubious quality. (Good enough to form an opinion of the songwriting going on, though.)
ReplyDeleteAs for more concrete suggestions, what do you like about AC/DC? What are the general contours of your taste in rock music?
If you would like to listen to any of these albums (and just about everything else I can see), and all free and legal (I think there are adverts every 30 mins or so), I can give you a code for 'spotify' which is a bit like an Itunes radio.
ReplyDeletewww.spotify.com
No to The Strokes, horrid three chord crap by numbers done by the New York prep brigade. First two Kings of Leon albums are better.
ReplyDeleteIf you are feeling bold, get Relationship of Command by At The Drive In. Pulsating. It's hard, but done with so much passion and musicality.
"Hard-bolied brigands with MC5 guitars and heads full of revolutionary spleen"
Enya?
ReplyDeleteI personally don't see much of a link betwee FF and Radiohead. When first heard FF I thought it was some old punk song from the early 80s, DKs or Ruts or similar.
ReplyDeleteBut yeah, ignore Coldplay, and definitely Muse can be ignored. Or shot. Feel free.
Never bothered with the rest though.
I love the Killers. Their first two albums are quite different though - the first is smaller and feels (intentionally) quite English. The second is definitely small-town Americana. I like both, but prefer Sam's Town, which seems to have a bit more sweep and gusto. The singles on Hot Fuss are probably better though.
ReplyDeleteAlso, your 'comments' link doesn't appear in your individual posts page, which means that if I'm coming here from RSS I have to click back to your main page before I can comment.
Coldplay are on the line that connects Radiohead to Herman's Hermits. Fortunately Radiohead are fab, so Coldplay aren't all bad - unless of course you're burdened with a dislike of Radiohead.
ReplyDeleteFranz Ferdinand are midway between U2 and the Gang of Four, or possibly the Rezillos. But so are the Killers - with a dash of Human League - so I'm not sure I understand the question. (Neither the Killers nor the Strokes are anywhere near Coldplay, as far as I can see.)
Now I think of it, U2 were actually working at the same time as the Gang of Four (and the Rezillos), which makes their survival 30 years on very wrong indeed. (I mean, 30 years! That's like... 1947!) Mind you, I've just got back from a gig by the (reformed) Only Ones, so who am I to talk.
Your second lemma is nuts.
ReplyDeleteFF come out of a completely different 'tradition'.
As Phil says, Gang of Four [and Wire, and the like], not Radiohead or U2.
No to The Strokes, horrid three chord crap by numbers done by the New York prep brigade.
ReplyDeleteI must protest that this is quite wrong. Most of their songs have more than three chords. The Strokes have nothing to do with Coldplay at any rate; and they probably are as close to The Kinks as to AC/DC. Also, their guitarists are amazing. Third album First Impressions of Earth is a masterpiece.
Coldplay are just a straight Radiohead tribute band. Franz Ferdinand can fuck off.
Placebo have some AC/DC in there along with maybe some Radiohead.
Queens of the Stone Age are sort of dissonant AC/DC.
Rage Against the Machine are probably the anti-Radiohead/U2 but not very AC/DCish.
Chinese Democracy is brilliant.
Try the Easybeats -- Angus Young's older brother's band. They could have been bigger than the Beatles. And stick to math next time: Zomg-it's-1982 acts do not lie between any portion of either U2's or Radiohead's career, despite the former's actually having been around in 1982.
ReplyDeleteU2 wasn't that kind of band.
Agree that you can't really 'understand' FF independently of the Gang of Four: white, guitar-based, post-punk conception of 'funk' the other bands you mentioned never really had anything to do with. Fact that the Groan/Observer complex had a massive hard-on for F F before they moved on to Lily Allen sort of speaks for itself.
ReplyDeleteAlso agree that Queens of the Stone Age are a good bet for the more reflective end of AC/DC's fanbase.
Also agree that Queens of the Stone Age are a good bet for the more reflective end of AC/DC's fanbase.
ReplyDeleteBuy Songs For The Deaf. That's it.
Agreed above: the linear combinations seem a bit... well, flat to describe musical links and similarities, especially if we're linking FF to U2, which I think you can only do going way back to the early 1980's, which as Phil notes is a bit far back to be useful for comparing the here and now.
ReplyDeleteMight I suggest some kind of fractal?
Since you're fond of Anglo Saxon working class vulgarity and music hall R&R why would you want to listen to retreads by spoiled college kids?
ReplyDeleteThe Stones only did a good job of it because they were following the working class of another race and country. They were formalists. And they didn't do music hall.
Go to some miserable third rate town and find a noisy bar where you get the feeling you should know where the quickest exit is at any time, and ask what night the bands play. If you end up watching 4 drunk thugs pounding away at some sort of vicious incompetent stomp, but then have the sudden sense that you could imagine the lead singer 10 years from now singing a duet with Elton John, you've found it. And I want 5%.
Or just go home and put Motörhead [ö] on the Nakamichi,
and the captcha this time was "trole"
"The Stones only did a good job of it because they were following the working class of another race and country. They were formalists. And they didn't do music hall."
ReplyDeleteSomething happened to me yesterday...
Another proposition: there is no intersect between the set of people who like U2 and the set of people who like REM. Obviously this can immediately be disproved empirically by the first black swan-style commenter who claims to like both, but I've found that it holds more true than one might expect given the not dissimilar genres (variations on guitar-based stadium rock) involved.
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ReplyDeleteEnglish funk, from the prehistory of this blog. I was writing about Ian Dury and The The at the time, but I think that the Gang of Four/Wire sound can be put into the same template (which actually stretches back to King Crimson, and I have the Robert Fripp "League of Gentlemen" CD to prove it).
ReplyDeleteActually, while reading these comments over the weekend I was listening to a few old Happy Mondays tracks and was struck by the fact that the real forerunner to Franz Ferdinand is the Invisible Girls/Martin Hannett sound. FF are basically what Wet Wet Wet would have been if they had actually, rather than in my imagination been a Factory band.
"no intersect between the set of people who like U2 and the set of people who like REM."
ReplyDeleteOn a sample of one I prove that theorem. Hate U2, love REM. They reissued their first album, Murmur again recently. Pretty much the only record I've seen get a 10/10 from Pitchfork.
there is no intersect between the set of people who like U2 and the set of people who like REM.
ReplyDeleteHow much U2 are we talking about here? I like early U2, but hate the later stuff, and generally like REM, too.
I guess I'm a black swan. I must now go and ASTONISH Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
Cynic: let's be more specific. Do you like both "The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite" and "Sunday Bloody Sunday"?
ReplyDeleteGetting back to the OP, I can barely understand anyone not liking Radiohead, but I guess words like 'humourless' and 'earnest' might be involved - which would also rule out U2. But if you don't like Franz Ferdinand you really aren't going to like the Killers. Unless it's a smugness thing, in which case you might not be able to hear it so well through an American accent.
Just to fill in a bit more of the map, where do people stand on the Pet Shop Boys (when they were good, i.e. 10-20 (dear God) years ago)? I'd contend that their version of Where the Streets Have no Name is (a) hilarious and (b) a great piece of music in its own right, at least as good as the original if not better; same goes for Always On My Mind, come to think of it.
Buy Songs For The Deaf. That's it.
ReplyDeleteYep, you really can't go wrong with that record, unless you hate rock music.
Do you like both "The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite" and "Sunday Bloody Sunday"?
That's a strange choice for a representative R.E.M. song (if it is meant to be representative). But surely yes, it is possible to like "Fall On Me" (Best Song Ever(TM), or nearabouts) and "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For"; or "The One I Love" and "One". I do, anyway.
"Something happened to me yesterday..."
ReplyDeleteMy response sounded too begrudging.
Anyway, I laughed.
Ian Dury. And Shaun Ryder.
Class again.
Actually thinking about it, I quite like "U2 from quite a long time ago", same as I like "AC/DC from quite a long time ago". I don't know what motivated me to proclaim I "don't like" U2, but "do like" AC/DC, since both of them are still around and releasing albums of roughly the same degree of awfulness.
ReplyDeleteIs it really just that Bono's pretentious pseudo-intellectualism is more annoying than AC/DC's studied boorishness? That would be particularly weird since in real life, I would far rather be trapped in a bar full of people like U2 than one full of people like AC/DC. Hmmm.
Hmmm, I suspect Zizek would have something to say about it - it's all about the dreaded quest for authenticity. Reminds me of the truism that while people who pretend to be "tough guys" but can't back it up are usually assholes, people who are genuine tough guys who walk the walk as well as talking the talk, are often ten times worse.
The likes of Bono and Geldof proclaiming how to solve a problem called Africa was a fucking disgrace. You could say they raised awareness, but all they really did was raise expectations that it could all be solved in a trice, as long as we gave enough of a shit and went to their gigs. Nothing more than cant from a pair of cants.
ReplyDeleteThat's a strange choice for a representative R.E.M. song
ReplyDeleteNot representative but extreme - "Sidewinder" is a concentrated example of the dedicated larkiness that's present in almost all REM songs, just as "Martin Luther King Knew My Father (Father Knew Martin Luther King)" is an extreme case of the constipated self-righteous bawling that, well, you get the idea.
while people who pretend to be "tough guys" but can't back it up are usually assholes, people who are genuine tough guys who walk the walk as well as talking the talk, are often ten times worse
It's the difference between crossing the road because you don't want to be irritated by a dickhead, and crossing the road because you'd really rather be somewhere else. The fakeness of the dickhead is part of what makes them irritating, but irritating is still better than scary. (Feel free to call this the Dickhead Paradox and work up a management book out of it. Have to change the title, obviously. I don't know... The One-Minute Dickhead? Over to you.)
I despise U2 and Radiohead and Coldplay. Even though a radiohead is part of a cell site, and they're M4-corridor enough to know that.
ReplyDeleteFF, though, more fun.
And they didn't do music hall.
I am your howling wilderness of ahistoricality.
Meanwhile, where I live there are scummy bands in horrible Irish pubs every weekend, and you know? They're shit.
As Tom Lehrer said, the problem with folk songs is that they were written by the people. It's not really the songs though, it's the performance. If you're playing the Mother Black Cap, you've got a problem when the best song in your set is "Country Road".
I am your unsung "Fields of Athenry".
I remember not so long ago some Celtic fan who got murdered at an Old Firm game, who died singing that, bleeding from the eyes.
I said to my girlfriend that there wasn't any better song to go out on - she seemed to find this answer insufficient for some reason. Women, eh? She doesn't like Renegade Soundwave either.
wow. BBoy, you're tempting me to go off on this one. Especially since I'm probably the only person here to have shared food and drink with both Zizek and a murderer or two (if not at the same time).
ReplyDeleteThing is the ones who can walk the walk I've sometimes ended up respecting, which isn't true of the fakers. And then there's the difference between the thugs who became thugs because they had no choice and those who were bullies from day one. The people I've grown to like didn't choose violence, it chose them. I prefer gangsters to Mercs for that reason alone. Though these days I drink with a veteran of the Croatian special forces. "I used to be a Nazi." A Great guy. And yes, a little sad.
I think hanging out with U2 would be annoying. Hanging out with the production crew on one of their videos would be more interesting.
There are a lot of ways commercial culture can become art, Sometimes it's just an accident of process. The video for the the scientist is a beautiful short film: a 4 minute tragedy; and devastating if you pay attention. Self-important pop bands are annoying but sometimes people get it right, almost in spite of themselves. or someone else gives mediocrity a context that makes it something more. Sometimes we catch on immediately, sometimes after the fact. I want to hate U2 and Coldplay almost on principle but something odd happened when Bono first discovered irony. Something worked, for a minute or two. That's not bad. It doesn't really matter how it happens,
I'm thinking of writing something on Slumdog Millionaire and GA Cohen. Danny Boyle's much more honest. And when I told Zizek I'd worked in construction off and on for 20 years he turned a little pale.
I'd expect anyone who reads this blog ought to be a fan of The Mekons.
ReplyDeleteI'd expect anyone who lives long enough to be a fan of the Mekons at some point.
ReplyDeleteI thought that was going to say the Monkees.
ReplyDeleteWell, that's assumed.
ReplyDeleteI can, seriously, listen to Mike Nesmith or Mickey Dolenz singing stuff that gestures amiably in the direction of Deeply Profound and Meaningful for much longer than I can listen to Bonio waving his countersigned deposit slips from the Bank of Deeply Deeply Profound and Really Genuinely Meaningful in our faces.
ReplyDeleteThis is also why I prefer REM to Coldplay and Franz Ferdinand to Muse, and quite a lot of the time prefer the Pet Shop Boys to the lot of them. (Never really got the hang of the Kaiser Chiefs, though. I mean, what are they saying? Yes, I know they do fast-paced pop songs with mildly amusing lyrics, but is that it?)
(Never really got the hang of the Kaiser Chiefs, though. I mean, what are they saying? Yes, I know they do fast-paced pop songs with mildly amusing lyrics, but is that it?)
ReplyDeleteI thought their schtick was "be a bit Northern, but not so Northern it offends delicate middle-class sensibilities."
One can also use the Deeply Profound metric to suggest just exactly why Razorlight is so deeply, utterly hateful in every way, shape or form. On the other hand, Joy Division are so Deeply Profound they're probably off the scale, but I can't help liking them since they're so bloody miserable.
And yes, Phil, I do quite like both the above songs, though they're probably not my favourites of either band, and I'd probably listen to Echo and the Bunnymen before either of them. I must really be shocking Taleb now.
Or is it perhaps Deeply Profound Without Saying Anything At All which is the actual target of ire? Can't believe that one slipped me by.
ReplyDeleteJoy Division are so Deeply Profound they're probably off the scale
ReplyDeleteWell, there's just arsing about being clever and putting words together to make songs (Kaiser Chiefs), then there's gesturing at being Deeply Profound without really taking it all that seriously (REM, the Monkees), then there's gesturing at being D. P. and taking it all very seriously indeed (U2, Coldplay). And then, maybe, there's doing stuff that other people label as D. P. because it's just the stuff you do (Joy Division and perhaps Radiohead). Or am I conceding too much to the myth of Joy Division (and perhaps Radiohead)?
Or is it perhaps Deeply Profound Without Saying Anything At All which is the actual target of ire?
ReplyDeletecertainly not, or "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" and "Everybody Hurts" would be worse songs than "One" or "Nightswimming" and they're clearly better.
REM; the band whose handle accurately describes their music. Whether you're thinking Rapid Eye Movement sleep, or the REM statement in some programming languages - which means "ignore this line, it's just a comment".
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteSincerity is not seriousness.
ReplyDeleteThe Monkees understood that, most pop stars don't.
Actually, most Americans don't (best intentions, etc.)
As you've said you enjoy AC/DC, I'd like to suggest you try listening to an Australian band called Airborne. They apparently have a very similar sound.(possibly too similar if I'm remembering the name correctly)
ReplyDeleteBy the way, a supposedly true story:
Eric Clapton (to Angus Young): They say you're a great guitarist, but I only ever see you play three chords
Angus Young: Yeah, but I know all six.
certainly not, or "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" and "Everybody Hurts" would be worse songs than "One" or "Nightswimming" and they're clearly better.
ReplyDeleteEither you're trolling or you've just shown the futility of making music recommendations for you.
Joy Division are so Deeply Profound they're probably off the scale
ReplyDeleteNot profound enough for Peter Hook, who claims in the recent film that he never actually listened to the lyrics.