Past Critics' Darlings Re-evaluated as Duds?

Aside from the Doors, have there been artists that were once critics' darlings but no longer so?

pink floyd? to a much lesser extent obv

P.M. Dawn.

Terrence Trent D'Arby

Arrested Development
Jackson Browne
Linda Rondstadt

I gather that at the time a lot of jazz aficionados considered Dave Brubeck to be the most exciting jazz innovator of his era, and though I don't know that many wound label him "dud," I think it's fair to say he probably would make most people's lists of the two dozen most interesting musicians of the era.

Rod Stewart kinda. Most people still like Every Picture Tells a Story and his stuff the The Faces just fine, but when you go back and realize just how ecstatic some rock critics were over EPTAS, it seems pretty out of whack with his actual accomplishments.

Also not quite dud, but no longer so beloved: Van Morrison, who was generally written about as the most important singer of his generation by rock critics in the 70s. I don't think he's nearly so treasured these days.

And critical re-revaluation is just wrong about D'Arby - I still think that first album is dynamite.

D'Arby's debut delivers, doubtless.

(UK+ only) Tom Robinson Band.

Also, though i know he/ they are revered here, Kid Creole.

maybe tracy chapman?

And regarding Brubeck, that should read "would *not* make most people's list of the two dozen most interesting musicians of the era." I think opinion has shifted to such a degree that a lot of people (such as Gary Giddens as I recall) tend to give credit Paul Desmond above Brubeck.

And yeah, Chapman's a pretty good example. Does anyone still like Rickie Lee Jones much?

Another not quite dud, but no longer so highly ranked case: Graham Parker. He actually won Pazz & Jop in '79, pretty shocking even when you take into account that London Calling was a 1980 release for P&J consideration.

does edie brickell fit this too? seems like tons of late 80s/early 90s stuff got this treatment

And not so much an artist, but an album: Artists United Against Apartheid, which people at the time seemed to seriously argue was an excellent/important album on musical terms, not just an instance of admirable good intentions.

I suspect part of the problem in the late 80s/early 90s was that a lot of critics were trying not to deal with gangster rap, resulting in the elevation of the likes of Arrested Development and PM Dawn. (And I say this as someone who likes the first Arrested Development album just fine, and thinks it's probably now slightly underrated.)

Edie was clocked as fairly MOR and a retread almost from the start (critically, anyway; popularly she and Chapman, others - Tanita Tikaram, anybody? - woke a lot of industry folks up to the AOR female audience).

definitely PM Dawn. listened to the 2nd album recently for the first time since reviewing it ecstatically in the early 90s...felt relieved when my son demanded it be taken off.

Hahah, it's very much an of-its-time release, for sure. Certainly liked it quite a lot on original release but I don't think I've gone back to it since I drew up my 136 list for the nineties, like a lot of stuff on there.

some misguided critic compared PM Dawn to Brian Wilson...wait that was me...

re-evaluating a critical rave as a dud is one thing (see PM Dawn) but critical faves whose subsequent careers turn dudly maybe should be a different category. classic Van Morrison and yeah even Rod Stewart can still sound pretty great if you don't think about all the half-assed records they've done since (also see Elvis Costello).

man are there actually people who hear brubeck and think it's anything other than awesome? feel sorry for sad wretches if so tbh

I would also add Tori Amos, Juliana Hatfield and the Lemonheads.

how about some of the critical faves of the early 2000s? like the strokes or eminem? I thought the claims made for Eminem were insane, way over the top...has he been reclassified?

Urban Dance Squad and The Pharcyde tanked too hard to make sense here, but the superlatives around their debut records were off the charts. Deee-Lite, same story.

I don't think the claims being made for eminem's flow at his peak were really exaggerated much, dude was completely on fire for a minute there

Where have these "re-evaluations" been made? I'm mostly unconvinced.

like the strokes

Gotta say the Strokes managed a neat trick by going from hot young hyped band to the 'individual members make solo burnout albums in LA' phase without actually have the arena tour part in the middle.

My take on Eminem: "was interpreted and sold as a rebel by the media, but was in fact a whining adult child." Everyone bought into his bullshit. Dude you mean you weren't rich growing up? Rough rugged and raw.

The Doors have not been unilaterally re-eval'd as duds, to the point above; concept is mostly a way of formalizing "Bands that are supposedly crucial but are in fact totally lame because I say so"

Except for P.M. Dawn.

Where have these "re-evaluations" been made? I'm mostly unconvinced.

What I meant is that these artists are no longer looked favorably as there were before.

My take on Eminem: "was interpreted and sold as a rebel by the media, but was in fact a whining adult child." Everyone bought into his bullshit. Dude you mean you weren't rich growing up? Rough rugged and raw.

none of this has jack shit to do with how good his flow is - is there anybody who says it wasn't?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8ZsZnpuofk

I don't get the "former critical faves who later sucked" inclusions; because, basically, which critical faves don't, eventually? You'd have to go with ones where the concensus has changed, not about their later work (i.e., Eminem, Costello, whoever), but about the albums originally considered great. So yeah, Arrested Development probably fit that bill. I'm not sure anybody else here really does, though. (It's not like Lemonheads and Urban Dance Squad exactly tore up the critics polls in the first place.) (Well, maybe in Amsterdam, big whoop.)

I don't think the claims being made for eminem's flow at his peak were really exaggerated much, dude was completely on fire for a minute there

― a full circle lol (J0hn D.), Sunday, December 6, 2009

OTM and that minute was the guest verse on "Forgot About Dre" though the first two rekds are both grebt.

also grebt: TTD's Symphony or Damn, PM Dawn The Bliss Album, the production on Tracy Chapman s/t

http://11.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_krf3io3tcg1qzcbzeo1_500.gif

eminem was on fire for awhile in 1999-2000 no question but there was one talking-heads fest on VHI where all the big magazine guys were trying to outdo each other w/superlatives. eminem was not just a genius and a pioneer but a TOWERING FIGURE IN AMERICAN CULTURE like a cross between elvis presley, thomas edison and paul bunyan. more an indictment of critics than eminem but so is this thread, in a way.

Where have these "re-evaluations" been made? I'm mostly unconvinced.

Metzger and Bangs spent a lot of time dissing Browne, and since they're both read more than Dave Marsh, their distaste is all that's remembered. Arrested Development backlash started with Xgau's pazz & job write up that year, since he really disliked that album, and of course intensified when Arrested Development's next releases turned out to be so dull. Gary Giddens has a piece on Brubeck in one his anthologies. The piece is actually somewhat defensive of Brubeck, in the face of an implied critical turnabout on Brubeck, but even Giddens bases his defense more on Paul Desmond's contributions to the Brubeck recordings than on Brubeck himself.

Pazz & Jop 88-08
# 1988 - Public Enemy - It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
# 1989 - De La Soul - 3 Feet High and Rising
# 1990 - Neil Young - Ragged Glory
# 1991 - Nirvana - Nevermind
# 1992 - Arrested Development - 3 Years, 5 Months & 2 Days in the Life Of...
# 1993 - Liz Phair - Exile in Guyville
# 1994 - Hole - Live Through This
# 1995 - PJ Harvey - To Bring You My Love
# 1996 - Beck - Odelay
# 1997 - Bob Dylan - Time Out of Mind
# 1998 - Lucinda Williams - Car Wheels on a Gravel Road
# 1999 - Moby - Play
# 2000 - OutKast - Stankonia
# 2001 - Bob Dylan - Love and Theft
# 2002 - Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
# 2003 - OutKast - Speakerboxxx/The Love Below
# 2004 - Kanye West - The College Dropout
# 2005 - Kanye West - Late Registration
# 2006 - Bob Dylan - Modern Times
# 2007 - LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver
# 2008 - TV on the Radio - Dear Science

"Flow" is a pretty subjective idea. I mean he has two tracks, always, the nasally track and the booming track, the guy has talent and all but his material is somehow fading away year after year as his persona becomes harder to remember. Whereas, say, ODB's best work is still as devastating as the day he recorded it.

none of this has jack shit to do with how good his flow is - is there anybody who says it wasn't?

bingo

also has jack shit to do with the inspired madness of his lyrics pre-8 mile

And the thing about the Rod Stewart and Van Morrison examples has less to do with their best recordings now being considered duds, and more with even their best recordings no longer being consider Major Artistic Statements. I've read various rock critics going nuts for Van Morrison. Marcus called him the white Otis Redding. I don't think many people, even those who quite like him (and I love some of his stuff with Them) would consider him the equal of Otis Redding nowadays. But I could be wrong.

My take on Eminem: "was interpreted and sold as a rebel by the media, but was in fact a whining adult child." Everyone bought into his bullshit. Dude you mean you weren't rich growing up? Rough rugged and raw.

― cee-oh-tee-tee, Sunday, December 6, 2009 5:18 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

j0hn beat me to it, but horseshit. was "interpreted and sold" as a talented rapper who was funny as hell, but was in fact a talented rapper. plus funny as hell.

eminem was on fire for awhile in 1999-2000 no question but there was one talking-heads fest on VHI where all the big magazine guys were trying to outdo each other w/superlatives. eminem was not just a genius and a pioneer but a TOWERING FIGURE IN AMERICAN CULTURE like a cross between elvis presley, thomas edison and paul bunyan. more an indictment of critics than eminem but so is this thread, in a way.

― chief rocker frankie crocker (m coleman), Sunday, December 6, 2009

tbf white people definitely found eminem more threatening than arrested development

For me Eminem's humor/insight was of its time. Like the show Friends. I don't know, not out to change minds on this.

0t+ I think you're bringing a lot of weird criteria & baggage to the table - most heads I'd guess would say "the great Eminem records are still great" which is all I'm really talking about, I think you're up on some popcult image/legacy stuff which if that's yr trip power to you and all but I don't really give a shit about that stuff, I"m kinda New Criticism about records

like "nobody cares about his records now" - so fucking what? I am surprised to hear that whether others care is even interesting to you - how do the records sound & how's his flow are the two criteria of any abiding aesthetic interest & again I'd guess most heads would say "you can't fuck w/Em's flow at his peak" - it was well respected by most

I would have thought Van was still up there - for 'Astral Weeks' anyway. (X post)

Massive Attack/Tricky/Portishead - the latter especially - have probably gone down a notch or two without being dumped out of the canon completely: Stereo MCs on the other hand.......

So basically, the only answer to the thread question so far is Arrested Development?

Blue Oyster Cult (my favorite band who are not Alice Cooper) were critically celebrated in their day for their ironic wit and rock musculature & caetera. it is true that they are still celebrated by many people for these reasons, perhaps many of the same people, but they seem to linger in the critical & popular imagination only as an obscure and rather risible cult act.

same is true of Alice, legacy-wise, but i dunno that he was ever so celebrated in the 1st place.

tbf, Van Morrison, Rod Stewart, Graham Parker, & Eminem aren't so much cases of darling-to-dud syndrome (sorry for breaking the thread) as just various degrees of devaluation. Looking at the Pazz & Jop list, Beck probably fits that pattern as well - where once critics thought he might be important - great, a genius, the new Dylan, etc - most would settle with "fairly talented songwriter/performer." Eminem was and is really interesting - but would anybody now consider him possibly the greatest hip hop artist of all time - because that's how some people talked about him at the turn of the century. Where this gets interesting is wondering whether critics were just wrong, or whether time, history, and performers subsequent output has simply changed the way we hear their old records.

like "nobody cares about his records now" - so fucking what? I am surprised to hear that whether others care is even interesting to you - how do the records sound & how's his flow are the two criteria of any abiding aesthetic interest & again I'd guess most heads would say "you can't fuck w/Em's flow at his peak" - it was well respected by most

― a full circle lol (J0hn D.), Sunday, December 6, 2009 5:34 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

My take on Eminem: "was interpreted and sold as a rebel by the media, but was in fact a whining adult child." Everyone bought into his bullshit. Dude you mean you weren't rich growing up? Rough rugged and raw.

― cee-oh-tee-tee, Sunday, December 6, 2009 5:18 PM

the more i think about this the more it smells

may be hard to believe in our enlightened age, but the rumors back in the late 90s that Dre was working with "a WHITE guy" were electric.

and then the guy showed up, and he brought it, and his flow was like nothing you'd heard before and he was sharp as fuck and yes, funny as hell, and completely "authentic" - the persona he inhabited was as "white" as he was, without a trace of the bullshit blackface pose that even the most "conscious" of white MCs had all pulled up 'til then. He wasn't "rough" or "rugged" or "raw." He was a scrawny white kid who took pills and fucked up in school and in life and got picked on and fought dirty because he'd never win if he fought fair.

And let's be clear: I like Remedy as much as the next guy but other than Em, no white MC has come up yet who can play the game straight up.

Eminem was and is really interesting - but would anybody now consider him possibly the greatest hip hop artist of all time - because that's how some people talked about him at the turn of the century. Where this gets interesting is wondering whether critics were just wrong, or whether time, history, and performers subsequent output has simply changed the way we hear their old records.

― MumblestheRevelator, Sunday, December 6, 2009 5:40 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

Meltzer and Bangs were never the mainstream of rock criticism; how they fit into this is beyond me. And I'm not sure Otis Redding has ever been a bigger critical icon than Van Morrison. I've never liked Astral Weeks all that much myself, but I haven't noticed an outpouring a critics over the years who suddenly decided that it (or, say Every Picture Tells A Story) were actually mediocre records. (And it's not like critics write about Otis very much anymore, either.)

Obviously there are onetime critical faves like Joy Of Cooking or Jackson Browne or Graham Parker or the Iron City Houserockers or PM Dawn who aren't a major part of the current critical discussion, but even in those cases I don't think there's been a huge movement of critics deciding that say Squeezing Out Sparks was a bad album; it's more like the conversation just winds up shifting elsewhere.

Blue Oyster Cult only had one big record with critics -- Agents Of Fortune. And again, I haven't noticed critics changing their mind about it. If anything, their earlier albums (which had their small critic cult at the time, that's it) have gained cred over the years.

"man are there actually people who hear brubeck and think it's anything other than awesome?"

me. but i don't want to hate on brubeck anymore on ilm. my moratorium on hating now extends to: dave brubeck, nina simone, and the smashing pumpkins. (the last in honor of ned.)

maybe worshiping Eminem was white critics way of saying "we won't get fooled again" after hyping Arrested Development

so Arrested Development then... and maybe Us3?

lol @ ott repping for odb instead -- a brave stand bringing up wu tang

every prog rock band ever, especially Yes and King Crimson

Obviously there are onetime critical faves like Joy Of Cooking or Jackson Browne or Graham Parker or the Iron City Houserockers or PM Dawn who aren't a major part of the current critical discussion, but even in those cases I don't think there's been a huge movement of critics deciding that say Squeezing Out Sparks was a bad album; it's more like the conversation just winds up shifting elsewhere.

Co-sign this. Also, Squeezing Out Sparks is still A+

(lots of xps, sorry)

Rating someone's flow is obviously subjective, but what about this thread isn't subjective? And anyway, Eminem's flow during his 4 or 5 year peak is observationally, plain-as-day better than that of most other people. Even "Lose Yourself," which is a little more "classical" and comes without the Slim Shady persona, is a masterpiece. I won't bore you with all the analysis here-- (it's here instead)--but there's that staggering string of "O" rhymes in verse 2, PLUS he's able to change up his patterns in ways that don't just sound cool, but that actually comment on the subject matter of the song. Like when he says "the beat goes on, dadadum, dadum, dada," he's not just telling us about how mundane everyday life is, he's also signaling that he's resumed the flow pattern that he'd previously interrupted.

But anyway, this isn't an Eminem thread. I still like Arrested Development, fwiw. Even Zingalamaduni!

Critics mostly hated prog-rock in the '70s.

And I don't know, I've seen Marshall Mathers LP showing up on Best Of The Decade lists. And that was by far his biggest crit album on its release too, right? So what records by him have been devalued, exactly?

a further question to the original - who are some critical rediscoveries who were later re-revaluated as duds? like older or obsolete bands who were lauded on rerelease or because some cool new band namechecked them, but later turned out to be generally regarded as a waste of time.

I can't think of any - but is there an example of an Os Mutantes or a Shuggie Otis-type who, after the initial hype died off, turned out to be shitty? (NB: not saying mutantes or shuggie are shitty)

also, if an artist (like em) is viewed as "important", then that will diminish if he drops off. i think that has happened in em's case.

but that has nothing to do with the music itself. the tarnishing of a legacy (or the failure to deliver on initial promise) is very different from an album that was lauded to the rafters on initial release but everyone is a bit embarrassed by in retrospect.

point is, eminem's best albums still hold up just fine.

"some critical rediscoveries who were later re-revaluated as duds?"

This should be a much longer list.

REM

Their last dozen years has hurt their critical reputation. And I don't think they're even on the radar of young people. I have some young nieces in college now who like indie rock. I tried to get them to listen to Murmur, and they looked at me like I had three heads.

"or a Shuggie Otis-type who, after the initial hype died off, turned out to be shitty?"

i thought that shuggie stuff that was hyped was way overrated. but i thought that at the time of the hype. maybe i'd like it more now!

converse of thread question: past critics' whipping boys revaluated as classics? like U2 who pretty much got the shaft from hip critics & indie rockers in the 80s and now get the hosannas from all corners

i talked to six different young noise musicians lately and none of them knew who blixa bargeld was and none of them had ever heard EN. dunno if this means anything. i was just kinda surprised. not that they NEED EN in their life to make cool music...

re: Shuggie I actually thought that one was overhyped too - but I wouldn't go so far as to say it's a dud or anything.

thing about re-releases like shuggie or whatever is that they do distort the dialogue about a given era. a great record will be rediscovered and popularized, and that artist will for a decade or so, be placed alongside the greatest of the greats. release of that death lp this year being a good example. it's a good record, but were it not for the fact that it's got a good backstory and is new to us, i don't think it would be held in such esteem by so many. willing to grant that i could be very wrong about that.

shuggie's another good example. when that stuff got wide release, he was often mentioned alongside sly and stevie, and as good as his best stuff is, i just don't think the body of work sustains those comparisons.

REM

Their last dozen years has hurt their critical reputation. And I don't think they're even on the radar of young people. I have some young nieces in college now who like indie rock. I tried to get them to listen to Murmur, and they looked at me like I had three heads.

― kornrulez6969, Sunday, December 6, 2009 7:55 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

oh yeah. i used to loooooooooooove REM in high school and while i will still stan for my favorites, now it seems like it would be embarrassing to cop to it

What about Dr. Hook? It seemed they were lauded and applauded in the early 70s but get nary a mention these days.

# 1992 - Arrested Development - 3 Years, 5 Months & 2 Days in the Life Of...

# 1999 - Moby - Play

these are the two that jump out at me the most, tbh.

REM/The Cure/U2 and it's just their fault for not breaking up. Moby, definitely, and definitely self-inflicted.

And not to re-turn it into an Eminem thread but to respond to a comment above, I don't agree that Eminem holds up fine at all; I think he will fail to cross generations, which is the defining factor in this.

(As far as me being stuck on some popcult ideoterror cyber head trip John, I thought Eminem was childish then, I think it now, and I don't think he "brought it," I think he was brought in. There are a lot of studio tricks on this guy's vocal tracks, has this never been a big talking point with people? He ushered in a whole new way of sounding edgy and ragged and about-to-explode by multi-tracking multiple timbres. That to me is his legacy more than a few undeniably great verses.)

but even in those cases I don't think there's been a huge movement of critics deciding that say Squeezing Out Sparks was a bad album; it's more like the conversation just winds up shifting elsewhere.

xhuxk is otm, BUT - i think that's a given, part of the subtext. the stooges were central to the critical discussion of and even the making of punk & hard rock music throughout the 70s, 80s and 90s. (perhaps a bit less so now? dunno.) in other words, the conversation did not shift. it stayed focused on and around them. this was due as much to musicians as to critics. so long as musicians were responding to and talking about about the stooges, critics were more-or-less obliged to keep them in focus. same is true of can.

but other artists DO drift to the margins of critical discussion. it may not be that they are definitively reevaluated in a negative way, but they just kinda cease to matter. the name isn't dropped, new things aren't framed in reference to them and they consequently become rather unimportant. this passive sort of reevaluation is just as real as the active kind.

I knew if I hated on REM long enough history would someday justify my reactionary stance

I think he will fail to cross generations, which is the defining factor in this

SMH

xpost Chris 2Pac multitracks a lot too y'know & I don't think it's gonna hurt his rep any

Meltzer and Bangs were never the mainstream of rock criticism

Well, except in the 90s and 00s, when the canonization of rock criticism began in earnest, and they were the critics in the 70s people talked about the most (Xgau too I suppose, and he never had much use for Rondstadt or Browne either, though I don't think he used them for target practice the way Metzger and Bangs did).
On reflection, Redding probably still doesn't get talked about as much as Van Morrison, except in my own brain. But I do remember in one of the consumer guides, Xgau arguing Redding was one of three or four key artists of the 60s responsible for making the album the central object of consumption, and in Stranded, Marcus called Otis Redding the white Van Morrison, so the idea that Redding should be talked about as a major figure has been out there. It also seems significant that in "The White Noise Machine," the event that sparks Bang's reservations about punk's white insularity was the unwillingness of a punk crowd to listen to an Otis Redding record.

btw Eddie Van Halen uses a lot of reverb and sometimes a phaser

REM/The Cure/U2 and it's just their fault for not breaking up.

was talking to a friend about those three bands last night, in exactly this context. weird.

anyway, yr otm wr2 REM & U2, but not the cure. i think the cure's body of work still speaks to young people and draws in new fans. that's a big part of remaining relevant, as you point out. suspect that they will always do this, like the VU. there is something about the cure that synchs perfectly with adolescent experience.

Marcus called Otis Redding the white Van Morrison

hmm...

My finger no typle too smart. Change to "Marcus called Otis Redding the black Van Morrison"

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah?

Too soon?

me. but i don't want to hate on brubeck anymore on ilm.

There was a thread somewhere where the Shuggie Otis revival was compared with the Gary Wilson revival.

but yr still talking nonsense about eminem, cott. of course he was "childish". that's a big part of what made him distinctive and appealing, especially to kids. don't see this evaporating anytime soon. and what's wrong with manipulated vocals? doesn't reduce the appeal of the finished product.

I think it's Van is the white Otis.

Liz Phair of course, though it happened largely through her own actions.

Hip-hop is grown-ups' music. No whining or overdubs.

re: Liz Phair pretty sure Guyville is still a masterpiece. or is this thread now just "artists who have fallen off their game"?

I think this thread is not just "critics' darlings you feel like talking shit about"

*now* just

i was about to be all witty and post something snarky about John Coltrane but i could not do it

Is John Lennon's early solo work still held in as high regard as it was in the 70s? As I recall, in the book Faking It, the authors take it for granted that no one much cares for Lennon's solo stuff anymore. My sense is that at very least, no one would bat an eye if you suggested McCartney and Ram are better albums than Plastic Ono Band and Imagine, whereas in the early 70s that would have been crazy talk.

That *is* crazy talk.

Un-huh.

to be sure im a fan but one thing abt eminem is when he came out he was srsly weird but then rap music in general got so much weirder and his strangeness lost its glow - i could see how that hurts his legacy

also lol remember like 5 years ago there were suddenly tons of is connor oberest is the new bob dylan articles then everyone went back to what they were doing

isn't anyone gonna do the obvious thing and post pazz and jop top tens and see which albums are ones that NOBODY talks about anymore or remembers or listens to? imperial bedroom was number one in 1982. how many pitchforkers have even heard it?

little creatures was number one in 1985. how feverish is little creatures love in 2009?

does odelay mean much to anyone these days?

Late asking, but do people really think Jesus Wept is a dud. Really? Wow.

o man i make feverish love to little creatures all day

in the 80s every fabulous thunderbirds record would get a great review in rolling stone, one time I listened to a couple of them o_O

cuz you know a lot of the number one picks DO still mean a lot to people. london calling, basement tapes, thriller, graceland...

sometimes #1 is a sign of everyone agreeing an album is great - sometimes everyone agrees that its just pretty good

when was the last time any of you listened to a garland jeffreys album, huh?

also lol remember like 5 years ago there were suddenly tons of is connor oberest is the new bob dylan articles then everyone went back to what they were doing

― ice cr?m, Sunday, December 6, 2009 8:28 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^^^totally

pazz and jop is easy. i can tell you exactly which albums nobody talks about anymore in any year. they stand out like sore blue thumb recording artists.

Conor Oberst is the new Jackson Browne.

when was the last time any of you listened to a garland jeffreys album, huh?

― scott seward, Sunday, December 6, 2009 9:35 PM (4 minutes ago)

fabulous thunderbirds syndrome is that impulse a lot of critics have, or at least spin/rolling stone-type critics have, to overrate any kind of band they saw when they were drunk and having fun which is generally a return to the roots of rock n roll americana act.

a lot of musicians have spent the last decade lobbying for their place in the canon. dylan, george clinton, iggy, van. you can fare well if you convince people you've changed the direction of popular music. folks like graham parker, who had the misfortune of releasing 2 or 3 great records in an already-established form, don't make out as well.

in the 80s every fabulous thunderbirds record would get a great review in rolling stone, one time I listened to a couple of them o_O

― 鬼の手 (Edward III), Sunday, December 6, 2009

OTM and LLOOOOOOOOLL

xgau's '77 top ten. spot the sore thumb!

Television: Marquee Moon (Elektra) 13
Ramones: Rocket to Russia (Sire) 13
Kate & Anna McGarrigle: Dancer with Bruised Knees (Warner Bros.) 13
Fleetwood Mac: Rumours 13
Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols (Warner Bros.) 12
Andy Fairweather Low: Be Bop 'n Holla (A&M) 10
Lynyrd Skynyrd: Street Survivors (MCA) 8
The Beach Boys: Love You (Brother/Reprise) 7
Ramones Leave Home (Sire) 6
Al Green: The Belle Album (Hi) 5

Just skimming now; probably missing a lot but:

- No way were U2 hated by critics in the '80s. Or at least not in mostu of the '80s. The Joshua Tree was a huge critics album. And their first few did okay too. But maybe I'm just misunderstanding the argument. (Maybe m coleman meant '90s instead? Though seems to be they had a couple pretty big critics albums then, too.)

- Dr. Hook. Not exactly a big critics' deal, ever. Not even close. Though I hope at least one single they did was liked in Rolling Stone.

- Fabulous Thunderbirds not exactly a big critics deal, either.

- I don't think anybody is saying the Death album is as good as, oh, the Stooges or MC5 or the Dolls. (If they are, they're nuts.) Just that it's one of the better albums of 2009. Which isn't the same as being one of the better albums of 1973.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RzBZsOeqOQ

Didn't xhuxk say he often plays "Wild In The Streets" or something when he deejays? Or was it "35 Millimeter Dreams"?

The former. Well, I did, though I haven't DJ-ed for quite a while now. But the last time I played a Garland Jeffreys album was maybe 2 months ago. Escape Artist, from 1981, which I bought for $1. Thought it was pretty great.

Note to self: get everything Garland Jeffreys ever recorded in the next week.

B-b-but you'd better be careful he didn't sneak in any BAM-commissioned collaborations with Lou Reed in the past year or two.

Wonder if anyone still pulls out those RS-endorsed Robbie Robertson records from the 80s?

i'm a sucker for those andy fairweather low types. ronnie lane. proto-pub.

i just picked up that grinder's switch featuring garland jeffries album!

Wonder if anyone still pulls out those RS-endorsed Robbie Robertson records from the 80s?

― uninspired girls rejoice!!! (Hoot Smalley), Sunday, December 6, 2009

First one, definitely.

The Cure through Wish was so reliant on various images ("Anti-image", Goth, Loner's Pin-Up and that stoner paisley vibe in the post-Disintegration material). Those images are all sealed off and preserved, so yes, that music continues to jibe with them and most importantly a lot of it holds up, but I don't know that anyone familiar with that work has engaged 100% honestly with the post-Wish material - e.g. without some measure of forgiveness/pity. What new fans have come to the band through WMS are getting the short end. I mean he had to cancel a lot of WMS dates. It was a real death knell and kudos for coming through it and coming up with the handful of good reduxes on Bloodflowers, I just don't know how or why this thing is still going in the present tense. It's worse than Bowie - it's a decaying pantomime. Smith lost touch with the emotions that informed his best work. Wish is the partially-redeemable falling off point.

I played an Andy Fairweather Low LP a month or two ago, too! (At least if his '83 one with Local Boys counts. Don't have any of his '70s solo albums, though I'd buy one in a second if I saw it for a buck.)

See, the thing about these old critic faves who've fallen off the radar (not saying Low was one of those -- Xgau liked him, but I don't think many other critics paid attention to him even then) is that after a while they're ready again for re-discovery! If this board is any indication, that might well be happening with Graham Parker and even Arrested Development as we speak. So don't count them out yet!

xgau's '77 top ten. spot the sore thumb!

If it was his '73 or '74 top ten, I'd make an Arthur Kane joke.

Ha.

The Cure through Wish was so reliant on various images ("Anti-image", Goth, Loner's Pin-Up and that stoner paisley vibe in the post-Disintegration material). Those images are all sealed off and preserved, so yes, that music continues to jibe with them and most importantly a lot of it holds up, but I don't know that anyone familiar with that work has engaged 100% honestly with the post-Wish material - e.g. without some measure of forgiveness/pity. What new fans have come to the band through WMS are getting the short end. I mean he had to cancel a lot of WMS dates. It was a real death knell and kudos for coming through it and coming up with the handful of good reduxes on Bloodflowers, I just don't know how or why this thing is still going in the present tense. It's worse than Bowie - it's a decaying pantomime. Smith lost touch with the emotions that informed his best work. Wish is the partially-redeemable falling off point.

― cee-oh-tee-tee, Sunday, December 6, 2009 7:07 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

old people in not being what they once were shocker. i'm sure smith will lose even more touch with the emotions after he dies. point is that they had a great 10-year run: 8 solid albums and a classic singles collection. that stuff hasn't lost its shine and still remains central in pop culture both as an influence and a reference point. moreover, it still speaks to people, especially young people, and that in turn guarantees that it's not gonna fade away any time soon. again, they're kinda like the velvet underground in that respect.

the same can't be said of u2 or rem, the artists you lumped the cure in with - not even for their earliest, best and most beautiful material. not, at least, in quite the same way.

the same can't be said of u2 or rem, the artists you lumped the cure in with - not even for their earliest, best and most beautiful material. not, at least, in quite the same way.

the same can't be said of u2 or rem, the artists you lumped the cure in with - not even for their earliest, best and most beautiful material. not, at least, in quite the same way.

don'tthink the zeitgeist really backs you up on this - I mean, you can say "lol pitchfork" I guess but I think the accord they give to U2 & REM from that era is comparable to their treatment of the Cure, and reflective of the general reception of all three by the generation who became aware of them as they were becoming more general-audience and less alternative/indie (or as alt/indie was mainstreaming, however you want to put it), i.e., as canonical.

accidental double copy/paste I am dumb.

well, cat stevens records continue to sell very well alongside the vu - perhaps better, i dunno. but i'd argue that the vu have a centrality in critical discourse (and a hold on the imaginations of young artists) that cat stevens lacks. cred is dubious and subjective, but i think it does figure into this, and suggesting dangerous glamour is a big help in that regard.

i think that the best u2 and rem stuff will always be popular (in u2's case more than just popular). but i have the suspicion that they will be marginalized as an influence & hip critical touchstone, and that the cure won't.

just a hunch. wouldn't be surprised if i was totally wrong about it.

Wait, I haven't been paying very close attention I admit, but the Cure are a "big critical touchstone"? Do they even have any big critical albums??

Oh wait -- Yep, Disintegration finished a staggering 39th in Pazz & Jop in 1989. Must've forgot about that one!

disintegration.

x-post

disintegration also grew in stature after its release.

If you say so. (Not being sarcastic; just news to me.) Cause I was gonna say...just seven more points, and it would have beat out Quincy Jones's Back On The Block for 38th!!

Ha ha, Batman finished 32nd that year. (Highest finishing bat album ever!)

Batman should have finished higher, fwiw.

Hot Hot Heat

the rapture

well, i confess that i have a distorted measure of what = critical relevance, and that it's probably throwing the dialogue off. my use of "hip critical" above kinda gives my hand away in that regard.

in the cultural dialogue about what's cool, new & interesting, you still see a lot of references to the cure. this suggests to me that the cure are still seen as cool, new and interesting by the people who care about such things. and that they will therefore continue to influence scads of young kids who write poetry and favor black nail polish - many of whom will buy guitars and not a few of whom will eventually produce music that will be discussed by the arbiters of all things cool, new and interesting.

same is true of the smiths, the vu, the stooges, nick drake, etc. being a part of that "hip critical" dialogue is, as i see it, a crucial component in staying relevant. and again, maybe i'm way off-base in that.

if pornography isn't in some sort of consensus, i don't wanna know what is

otoh, a lot of stuff that gets enshrined by critics and remains popular is much less an active part of that hipster/artist dialogue. it instead becomes "respectable" in a fuddy-duddy sort of way. and that's what i see happening to rem & u2. like dire straits (who i love, mostly because i am lol old).

80's cure will always live in me. i love every album, single, and b-side that the cure made in the 80's. i have no desire to listen to what they did in the 90's and beyond.

i still love Arrested Development and PM Dawn fuck the haters

there's nothing wrong in liking rap made for little girls in frilly pink dresses. it's endearing.

lol

Interpol

i love every album, single, and b-side that the cure made in the 80's '70s. (I was going to say 1979 and 1980, but then I remembered Seventeen Seconds. That was pretty much when I got off the boat.)

am w xhx re the cure

the idea that the cure are going to remain (or are at the moment, or have been at any point, really) central to "critical discourse" is sort of hilarious. i love the cure -- not as much as the hardcore ilm cure cru does, but still plenty -- but i've been paying attention to the "critical discourse" since the early '80s, and i can't think of any time that the cure were ever central to it.

i did a lot of acid in the 80's. the cure and siouxsie were my woodstock.

yeah critics always liked to make fun of the cure. they were a good target. i could take it. i loved a lot of stuff that was way more reviled.

wait, i take it back. there was definitely some stuff on kiss me kiss me kiss me that i didn't love. forgot about that one.

The idea that Nick Drake is central to critical discourse is kind of laughable too, actually. (Unless "critical discourse" = "Volkswagon commercials.")

Though I dunno, maybe Pitchfork really is closer to the critical mainstream now than I perceive it as (actually, the past few Pazz & Jop winners since I left that job suggest it might be), and I'm just in denial. If so, what the hell -- I'm happy to be old and out of touch.

Bottom line, of course, is that there is basically no critical consensus re: canon-building anymore, and anybody who believes otherwise if fooling themself.

The Cure may be starting to get regarded in the same class as REM/U2 by music critics, but I don't think REM or U2 has nearly the level of devotion The Cure does among youth. After all high schoolers can't really go through a Michael Stipe or Bono-lookalike phase.

surely most music-critics worth their salt regard the cure more highly than U2 at the very least, or am i living in lala land

well what kind of critics? lotsa mainstream critics worship U2 and have for decades. the cure? not so much.

i'm living in lala land, plz ignore

And the thing about the Rod Stewart and Van Morrison examples has less to do with their best recordings now being considered duds, and more with even their best recordings no longer being consider Major Artistic Statements.

Bullshit. Who's saying this?

surely most music-critics worth their salt regard the cure more highly than U2 at the very least, or am i living in lala land

waht

the cure was always considered kidz stuff to a lot of critics. something to grow out of. U2 have been in that stones/beatles/etc arena for a long time.

i remember eminem being my favourite artist at the time of slim shady lp. it was the most exciting music to me in every possible way, and it seemed like everyone else in the world was with me on it. i guess a lot of that's gone, but i don't think the majority of what people wrote was hyperbole, and they'd be silly to retract any of it.

I dunno, it seemed like a lot of critics got on some cure bandwagon circa the head on the door

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANV_fEKbSzs

tbh you guys are confusing critical & cultural consensus w/trying to get somebody to say "what the kind of people who post regularly to a music message board would say" on the $25,000 pyramid

but in the eighties The Cure were NOT more highly regarded than Springsteen or U2. That's patently untrue.

After all high schoolers can't really go through a Michael Stipe or Bono-lookalike phase.

yah JD and Soto i kinda realised that as soon as i posted it, should not post at 4.30 am

the cure was always considered kidz stuff to a lot of critics. something to grow out of. U2 have been in that stones/beatles/etc arena for a long time.

― scott seward, Sunday, December 6, 2009 11:26 PM (10 seconds ago) Bookmark

woah, that's not the impression i get at all. i really hope U2 are not in the same arena as the beatles! i always thought U2 just were a critical punching bag, with a couple good albums really far behind, with a massive army of morons buying their records.

tbh you guys are confusing critical & cultural consensus

not to mention the illusion of critical consensus

i always thought U2 just were a critical punching bag, with a couple good albums really far behind, with a massive army of morons buying their records.

You've indicted most of ILM, moron.

what the FUCK is "cultural consensus"?

i think U2 have always been taken really seriously by critics. i never saw them as a punching bag. their new stuff gets good reviews. their 90's stuff got good reviews. same with their 80's stuff.

just to hip everybody who's not already with it to a little reality: U2 & REM are enormous no matter where you go (U2 the bigger of the two by far, but both still big). The Cure are a goth band, but a really good one. next week my lecture will explain that no, your affection for "Hanky-Panky Nohow" doesn't mean John Cale got a Grammy, so don't miss that one

And the thing about the Rod Stewart and Van Morrison examples has less to do with their best recordings now being considered duds, and more with even their best recordings no longer being consider Major Artistic Statements.

Bullshit. Who's saying this?

― Hell is other people. In an ILE film forum. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, December 6, 2009 11:25 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Van still has a couple albums that show up on the big canonical rock album lists, but I think Every Picture's stature has diminished over the years. or at least I'm assuming so because I was born a decade after it was released, and was shocked to see it at #3 on P&J behind only Who's Next and Sticky Fingers.

xp I mean, teenagers like a lot of things, good and bad. And so do critics (whose tastes are just as good and bad). And they don't necessarily like the same things. But the title of this thread says "critical darlings." So I'm really confused about what high school haircuts have to do with any of this, unless y'all are just assuming those are the rock critics of the future.

pretty sure 'astral weeks' was considered a fairly minor record until lb wrote about it rite?

four stars in rolling stone for one of their latest masterpieces:

http://www.rollingstone.com/artists/u2/albums/album/232369/review/6068360/all_that_you_cant_leave_behind

I think Every Picture's stature has diminished over the years. or at least I'm assuming so because I was born a decade after it was released, and was shocked to see it at #3 on P&J behind only Who's Next and Sticky Fingers.

Right, so doesn't this disprove your point?

And right, I'm really interested in this wacky "U2 = critical punching bag theory," too. Where exactly is their bag being punched? Some alternate universe I wish I lived in, maybe, but not this one. (I got off their boat not long after Under a Blood Red Sky, fwiw.)

I dunno. The old line -- "Rod Stewart, that old sell-out" -- is now, "Oh, Rod Stewart, he made two or three great albums, and a lot of pretty good synth-pop in the eighties." I'm so happy that "consensus" as I know it coalesces around the latter.

well, scott otm, but...

maybe Pitchfork really is closer to the critical mainstream now than I perceive it as...

― xhuxk, Sunday, December 6, 2009 8:13 PM (18 minutes ago) Bookmark

unless y'all are just assuming those are the rock critics of the future.

Where do you think rock critics come from?

U2 [...] with a massive army of morons buying their records.

You've indicted most of ILM, moron.

poll

adam are you trying to crash the server by fishing for zing responses

last post is all just imo. but that's the level at which i think the cure and, like, nick drake are still relevant consensus points, things that other things are understood relative to.

will shut up about pitchfork now due to history of it not working out all that well

i'll be honest, I'M really impressed by U2. i really am. they could be a bloated joke and a mess and somehow against all odds they really aren't! music-wise, anyway. they can still write a catchy tune! and they are one of the only current guitar bands played on modern rock radio that i don't hate! i tip my hat to them. how many years have they been going? like, forever!

(U2 eat a bag of dick except for Numb and the 12" version of Desire, btw)

this. there may be no critical mainstream/consensus (monoculture wah), but in the US, in terms of influence on young bands & messageboard posters & popular music/arts culture, this is it.

Last time I checked PFM said nothing about Browne, Parker, Stewart, Mitchell, Morrison or other rockcrit warhorses. Maybe silence is a statement, but omission /= consensus.

ya it's likely an alternate universe i'm in, trust you all know a lot more than me about critical consensus and the likes than i. from within the small pool of critics i'm actually aware of, i'd say the ones i recognize & identify as credible might be prone to saying nasty things about 90's U2. but that's just my projection and ignorance, apparently.

(and the latter probably does too, but I liked it enough when I was 13 to remember it exists) (xpost to me)

the small pool of critics i'm actually aware of

Finally, someone admits the limitations of most of the theorizing on this thread.

Well, we're all critics here. We all get elbow burn.

pretty sure 'astral weeks' was considered a fairly minor record until lb wrote about it rite?

No, it placed 4th in the Paul Gambaccini critics-list book two years before the Bangs essay appeared.

lightning crashes with adam duritz
lightning crashes with adam duritz
lightning crashes with adam duritz
lightning crashes with adam duritz
lightning crashes with adam duritz
lightning crashes with adam duritz

I think Every Picture's stature has diminished over the years. or at least I'm assuming so because I was born a decade after it was released, and was shocked to see it at #3 on P&J behind only Who's Next and Sticky Fingers.

Right, so doesn't this disprove your point?

― Hell is other people. In an ILE film forum. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, December 6, 2009 11:35 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I dunno. The old line -- "Rod Stewart, that old sell-out" -- is now, "Oh, Rod Stewart, he made two or three great albums, and a lot of pretty good synth-pop in the eighties." I'm so happy that "consensus" as I know it coalesces around the latter.

― Hell is other people. In an ILE film forum. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, December 6, 2009 11:37 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalin

it wasn't my point to begin with, but I think the original statement that you called bullshit, i.e. that Every Picture wouldn't be considered a Major Artistic Statement today (at least not on the level of Who's Next or Sticky Fingers) is pretty true. remembered fondly, sure, but not an A-list canonical classic rock album.

that no, your affection for "Hanky-Panky Nohow" doesn't mean John Cale got a Grammy
So that's what that song in Shrek is called!

Weren't Jefferson Airplane highly regarded among critics in the late 60s? Or was that just Grace Slick?

i'm not a critic. i'm just a guy with a fancy typewriter. and i totally admit that my ass does 90% of the typing. but...

So I'm really confused about what high school haircuts have to do with any of this, unless y'all are just assuming those are the rock critics of the future.

― xhuxk, Sunday, December 6, 2009 8:34 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark

i would say that the most interesting and relevant criticism of pop - the real contemporary "mainstream" - is found/forged on messageboards, blogs and sites like [site not named by author]. that's where the consensus i'm talking about begins to be codified, and it has almost nothing to do with what one might read in the rolling stone, or even with what winds up on P&J. it's hard not to see venerable organs like that as kind of out of the loop at this point - reactive at best, and therefore not inaccurate in a general sense, but not primary. maybe that's unfair, i dunno...

"venerable organs"

heh

Jefferson Airplane is a really good example of the thread's original question. No one really rates them anymore. (I'm a pretty big Surrealistic Pillow fan but the other stuff I've heard has not done much for me at all.)

And with their flannel shirts and bluesy riffs, their sound more rock than folk and their musicianship never less than fervent, the Wallflowers themselves come across as genuine. Theirs is music that wears well – it's wise beyond its years. (RS 644)

The slow stuff might be a bit ponderous, but the first six or seven songs manage a rare trick: They're incandescent enough to jump out at you on the radio, yet are steeped in a type of introspective inquiry that was once integral to rock & roll, and has nearly vanished. (RS 852)

wallflowers will always rule at rs. god bless them. no critical reevaluation needed, you snarks!

i was just talking about them w/ my dad after seeing 'a serious man' -- he was saying how huge they were at the time & central to how ppl talked about the music then, but are so much less so now xp

As far as Terence Trent D'Arby goes, there's plenty of Introducing the Hardline... and Sympathy or Damn fans here.

a type of introspective inquiry that was once integral to rock & roll

What...where...I'm pretending I didn't read that.

Every Picture was the FutureSex/LoveSounds of its day, people! (where jeff beck = timbaland lol)

As far as Terence Trent D'Arby goes, there's plenty of Introducing the Hardline... and Sympathy or Damn fans here.

― Hell is other people. In an ILE film forum. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, December 6, 2009

TTD stans will be quick to note the error in this sentence

contenderizer otm, but i think this thread is about recognizing sometimes critics are near-sighted gooks and gigging at their collective expense rather than being concerned with like, real actual true consensus.

I kind of hated Jefferson Airplane for a long time (thought they were boring hippie music except for a couple songs), but grew to like them a lot. Have no idea to what extent they were critical favorites in the late '60s. (Volunteers gets five stars in the first edition of The Rolling Stone Record Guide, and other albums rank from two to four stars out of five.)

So contenderizer, you're saying you define "critical darlings" as "what I happen to come across on message boards," then? And you don't think that's limited? You do understand that web critics vote in Pazz & Jop, right? (And that not everybody who thinks Nick Drake is boring is uh "out of the loop"?)

how 'bout midnight oil? maybe they didn't fall to dud status, but they sure fell off the map. mid-80s to early '90s, they were treated like an "important" band, but nobody ever mentions them at all anymore, seems to me.

I think the Jefferson Airplane thing is a good place to go for the original idea of this thread because it seems like there must be some similar groups that were lauded in the 60s that were re-evaluated as duds ten years later with the coming of punk.

I bet Australians still love Midnight Oil - they voted Peter Garrett into office, right? (But again, they're a band that had their brief hype here -- commercial and critical at the same time -- and then returned Down Under. Nobody made a point of suddenly going backlash on them.)

Btw, I'm not out to defend Pazz & Jop. Those dipshits fired me, after all! It's just that if there's a better gauge for quantifying who might be a "critical darling" at any given time, and a less insular one, I'd really love to know what it is.

Are people still into Moby's Play? Don't hear that mentioned very much, seems like he could be a good example of this.

they voted Peter Garrett into office, right?

Yup, several times. Currently a member of the Rudd cabinet.

you define "critical darlings" as "what I happen to come across on message boards," then? And you don't think that's limited? You do understand that web critics vote in Pazz & Jop, right? (And that not everybody who thinks Nick Drake is boring is uh "out of the loop"?)

― xhuxk, Sunday, December 6, 2009 8:59 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

at this point, i think i define critical consensus as the the intersection of a lot of talk, mostly happening yeah on the internet, and the production of pop music & pop/culture. with a few strong & obvious points of focus.

it's not anywhere near as easy to define as it was 30 years ago, but it still exists. furor building up to and greeting the arrival of MPP being a recent example. that is, i think the indistinct furor itself, the result of a thousand small voices, is more reflective of the contemporary critical consensus than a handful of big voices writing specific things (which it seems was more the case in the past). then again carles.

i no i no re: p&J, and i'm cool with nick drake being boring.

that consensus yr talking about thinks andrew bird >> mpp right?

i mean, once u start getting that distant from actual critics, it becomes a pretty vague scene to define

how 'bout midnight oil? maybe they didn't fall to dud status, but they sure fell off the map. mid-80s to early '90s, they were treated like an "important" band, but nobody ever mentions them at all anymore, seems to me

Diesel and Dust wasn't even nominated for the '80s albums poll!

In fact, here are Pazz and Jop's winners for each decade of the '80s and the number of points they got in ILX80s:

1981: Sandinista! 211
1982: Imperial Bedroom 57
1983: Thriller 331
1984: Born in the USA 118
1985: Little Creatures (not nominated)
1986: Graceland 237
1987: Sign O the Times 381
1988: Nation of Millions 478
1989: 3 Feet High and Rising 164

So 2009 ILX taste is still pretty congruent with 80s received wisdom!

i mean, ilx is a good a one-stop place to track critical thinking as i've found, and that's probably a big part of why i hang around. it's informative not just in terms of the information regular provide, but in that it offers a look at what smart people who think (and in some cases write) about music are thinking. and it matches up almost eerily well with what i read elsewhere, both in print & online.

i am pretty interested in critics vs. popular consensus, tho -- for example, surrealistic pillow was "Surrealistic Pillow rode the pop charts for most of 1967, soaring into that rarefied Top Five region occupied by the likes of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and so on, to which few American rock acts apart from the Byrds had been able to lay claim since 1964." according to AMG

"MPP"??

Actually, I figured this out! I'm not of the loop after all. Just took me a while. Assumed you've seen this, but what the hey:

http://www.thesinglesjukebox.com/?p=1715

One thing that makes critics critics is that they actually, uh, think critically and stuff.

mpp merriwether post pavilion

i mean, once u start getting that distant from actual critics, it becomes a pretty vague scene to define

― unicorn strapped with a unabomb (deej), Sunday, December 6, 2009 9:33 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

if it were just that, i think you'd be right. but if you pay attention to actual critics, too, and to what people are buzzing about in shops and at shows/parties, i think it starts to become very clear. i'm less and less able/inclined to grasp it as i get older, but that doesn't mean it's ungraspable.

So, I stepped out for a minute, but anyone who suggested that U2 EVER got bad reviews in mainstream media has recanted, right?

One thing that makes critics critics is that they actually, uh, think critically and stuff.

― xhuxk, Sunday, December 6, 2009 9:37 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

this is true, but so do "ordinary people". civilians. and in the past, that distinction was very clear. critics wrote about music, and published books and articles, and defined the canon, and all sorts of fun stuff like that. they even got paid some money! sometimes!

and civilians, for the part, bought records. and never the twain shall meet.

i don't think that distinction is anywhere near so clear anymore, and that looking to "professional critics" for their consensus on the canon is a verging-on-obsolete thing to do. lots and lots of people are contributing to the critical dialogue, on a level that threatens to eclipse the professionals. it's true though that the alternative is much harder to define.

and maybe that's just some wired magazine style pie-eyed horseshit.

i dunno.

Critics mostly hated prog-rock in the '70s.

I thought The Yes Album and Aqualung made the P&J top 10? To an extent, Yes has been re-re-evaluated AFAICT though. Even Rolling Stone has some good things to say about them: http://www.rollingstone.com/artists/yes/biography

xposts WTF, "critical consensus" and "critic's darlings" obv refer to professional critics for better or for worse, right?

xp Well, more "ordinary people" seem to be buying the Susan Boyle album than "MPP." And clearly there was a "furor building up to and greeting the arrival" of her album, too, or she wouldn't have set a new record for Amazon pre-orders, would she? And I assume her fans think critically too - they like some songs more than others, and think Susan is better than some other singers. So, by your wise and forward-looking formulation of all this stuff, how does that make Animal Collective "canon" and Susan Boyle not? And why is their fans' consensus more important than her fans' consensus. Just curious.

they always have. i'm wondering whether that makes sense anymore - if critical consensus can exist independent of a handful of big, loud, professional voices. and probably sidetracking the conversation as a result.

xp Hey, I bet people talked a bunch about Susan Boyle on message boards, too! (Not the ones you read, maybe, but why limit yourself to those?)

There are still "a handful of big, loud, professional voices." It's just a smaller, more tightly controlled handful.

see, xhx, i don't think there was a critical furor among non- or semi-professional voices building up to the release of susan boyle's sings to her cat (fantastic album btw). i think that was strictly a fanbase thing, and a noncritical fanbase at that.

whatever i'm talking about isn't strictly democratic, a manner of counting excited twitters. it's still a matter of how critical thinking gets into people's heads.

But that's my point -- how was the AC furor more critical? From what I've seen, their fans don't seem any more critical than Boyle's.

I thought The Yes Album and Aqualung made the P&J top 10?

Nope. Though Tull did finish #20 in the critics' poll; Yes only placed #27 in 1971 if you figure in, ha ha, the non-critics who voted -- was Pazz&Jop ahead of its time, or what? (1971 was the poll's first year, and a weird one. Also a very small sample. You won't find prog doing anywhere near as well, ever again, when the # of critics polled grows.)

http://robertchristgau.com/xg/pnj/pjres71.php

their fans don't seem any more critical than Boyle's.

no, but lots of critics are animal collective fans. especially when you start counting the non & semi pros, the net horde.

I stand corrected. Thanks. They both placed better than Zeppelin IV though!

Maybe I just remembered that they placed at all as opposed to being hated per se.

Yup, several times. Currently a member of the Rudd cabinet.

He was airlifted into a safe Labor seat and re-elected once. Has nothing to do with people loving the band, especially given his complete personal volte-face on issues like uranium mining.

x-post re U2-punching: That Art Brut song saying sounding like U2 isn't so cool and telling Eno to cool his warm jets is pretty funny.

I was about five minutes into talking about '80s U2 with my friend Jon Dolan when he said, "Wow, so you really are a fan aren't you." There's been critical U2-hate since '88, when they forced themselves onto a year that rightly belonged to heavy metal and hip hop, which is why the circa-'91 Spin headline was "Hating U2," and why Achtung Baby was considered a comeback (though I still haven't gotten into that beyond "One"). My theory is that many people subconsciously realized how thoroughly it'd overrated The Joshua Tree about halfway through watching Rattle & Hum: I remember telling another friend (Joel Paterson) how much I loved the music on "Heartland" only to have Joel summarize the case against U2 for all time by responding that the problem with U2 was that they're a band that would have a song called "Heartland."

I'd written them off too until Zooropa, but missed the merits of Pop until seeing "Wake Up Dead Man" in a live DVD and have been slowly rehabilitating my fandom through a veil of skepticism ever since, only to tear it off after seeing them in concert for the first time post-Katrina, where Bono barely speechified at all except to say something pretty moving about this major American failure (that it brought out the best in us, which wasn't something I was prepared to hear) and how they'd played First Avenue across the street 25 years earlier. Jim Walsh had just had a column in the paper that day about how the band had been so new in 1980 that they ran out of songs and had to play "I Will Follow" again for an encore, and that night at the Target Center they opened with "Vertigo" and played it again for the encore, a little wink to longtime fans. I never got into the Cure beyond that first album, but I'm open.

Anyway: Soul II Soul? (notable non-presence in the '80s poll) And where's D'Angelo in the '00s lists?

"they'd overrated"

So basically, the only answer to the thread question so far is Arrested Development?

― uninspired girls rejoice!!! (Hoot Smalley), Monday, 7 December 2009 01:36 (5 hours ago)

Several years ago, my then band played a very poorly attended show in Charlotte. Afterwards the owner of the club came up to us and very sincerely apologized that normally they'd expect more turnout, but there was an Arrested Development show at the theater down the street.

It was the "Weird Al Yankovic is on that plane" of my music career.

OBV OASIS.

re pete and my lol-indie tendency to dismiss u2

their career has been so long and so successful, they've tried their hand at so many things without ever really compromising or cartooning themselves, and they've accumulated such a vast body of unforgettable songs that it's likely that they'll be both critically and commercially relevant for a long, long time. perhaps more so than a relatively culty/niche band like the cure.

It's probably not been mentioned because it's so transparently obvious, but what of the post-Britpop slew of "next-big-things" who ended up being about as exciting as two-week old birthday balloon? Tiger, Terris, Gay Dad, that band who had stupid hair... So many of them, all about as the number for the Japanese speaking clock.

It's probably not been mentioned because this thread has been going on while Britain has been sleeping tbf

chuck otm about the nonsense that is "critical consensus"

contenderizer you seem to be intent on reducing critical consensus to a really specific and, in the wider scheme of things, rather small niche of critics. a ton of critics dislike or don't care about animal collective (i mean, that jukebox round-up is a starting point for evidence). ignoring their voices is pretty much smoothing over inconvenient dissent.

genuine consensus across the spectrum of critics is obviously never going to happen - maybe someone like kate bush is as close as you'll get to it.

also it's kinda snobbish? susan boyle fans don't post on music message boards that take themselves overly seriously = their voices don't count?

Also compared to most of the ppl that have been talked about on here so far, most of that strain of bands didn't even enjoy critical luv long enough to get good reviews for their first album xxp

contenderizer you seem to be intent on reducing critical consensus to a really specific and, in the wider scheme of things, rather small niche of critics. a ton of critics dislike or don't care about animal collective (i mean, that jukebox round-up is a starting point for evidence). ignoring their voices is pretty much smoothing over inconvenient dissent.

This is why stuff like Metacritic has always seemed pretty bogus to me, at least as a tool to prove one's point about consensus - such and such an album might get glowing reviews all over the place and that's peachy but in most if not all places, records (esp big 'event' ones) tend to be reviewed by people who are hoping or expecting to like them

Luckily mags like Rolling Stone have always reviewed Mick Jagger-related projects and Springsteen with a critical, objective eye.

Maybe not a "critical consensus" example, but for decades I read ecstatic mentions of Skip Spence's Oar--which seemed to be THE obscure late 60s album. But nowadays, it seems there are hundreds of other albums from that period popping up on blogs that people are much more excited about (it comes in at #110 on RYM's 1969 list, behind stuff like Group 1850, High Tide, Wendy & Bonnie, East of Eden, & etc.)--and I mostly see tepid mentions of Oar. We even had a thread here about whether it was a sham. Maybe a case of the internet making legendary albums freely available for people to be disappointed by.

a ton of critics dislike or don't care about animal collective (i mean, that jukebox round-up is a starting point for evidence). ignoring their voices is pretty much smoothing over inconvenient dissent.

genuine consensus across the spectrum of critics is obviously never going to happen - maybe someone like kate bush is as close as you'll get to it.

― lex pretend, Monday, December 7, 2009 4:26 AM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark

maybe there would be less confusion if i'd said "a consensus" (or "a partial consensus" or "a significant degree of agreement") or something more conditional. i'm not talking about everybody agreeing, just providing an example of widespread, vocal agreement among important, tastemaking voices within a given critical population.

animal collective = a niche act, and that the critics who were infurorated by its imminence probably clove pretty closely to that niche. BUT - as has been (agonizingly) noted elsewhere, indie-oriented critics seem lately to have developed a pretty solid grasp on the canon-forging apparatus. and i only offered MPP as an example of a release that we saw being canonized as much by a ragtag fugitive fleet of internet-based critics and tastemakers as by professional music critics.

dunno that animal collective's canonization will last (i haven't liked one of their records since sung tongs), and i'm not saying that the game is now changed FOREVORE!, just that i think the locus is getting more dispersed and democratic.

dunno that animal collective's canonization will last (i haven't liked one of their records since sung tongs)

Once again you conflate consensus with your own judgment, which, you know, hooray! But it should show you the futility of obsessing over a phantom consensus.

(U2 eat a bag of dick except for Numb and the 12" version of Desire, btw)

― Santa Boars (wins✧✧✧@burgerf✧✧✧.c✧.n✧) (sic), Monday, 7 December 2009 04:41 (7 hours ago)

Crazy talk, but these are the two most underrated singles in U2's catalogue, easily.

FWIW, this year I bought the first PM Dawn CD for a dollar (after not having heard anything on it for 15+ years) and was shocked by how good it still sounds.

widespread, vocal agreement among important, tastemaking voices within a given critical population

yeah but the thing is this didn't exist!

unless you want to narrow the "critical population" to such a small size that it becomes meaningless

nce again you conflate consensus with your own judgment, which, you know, hooray! But it should show you the futility of obsessing over a phantom consensus.

― Hell is other people. In an ILE film forum. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, December 7, 2009 4:46 AM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark

i "conflate" nothing, alfred. i speculate, idly about the endurance of what i see as a meaningful consensus ("consensus" here defined as critical agreement significant enough to make itself temporally sticky) - and at the same time, as a parenthetical aside, i pass my own judgement. my own jugement, of course, has nothing to do with the consensus i'm speaking of.

unless you want to narrow the "critical population" to such a small size that it becomes meaningless

― lex pretend, Monday, December 7, 2009 4:56 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

again, as you said, there is no true consensus - total agreement among all. nor is there a unitary canon. so the critical pool that's meaningful relative to a given release/genre/artist/etc. can be quite small, or quite large, or "it depends" or whatever.

in the case of very small niches, for instance, there might only be a handful of critical voices collectively forging the canon. and if that niche genre were suddenly brought to public attention, the work of those few once-marginal critics would likely become a dominant part of the larger critical discourse.

when talking about animal collective's "canonization", i only mean that a number of tastemaking critical voices are forging sufficient consensus on their importance to make their importance seem, for the moment, a fait accompli. perhaps only in the sense that your bigger left-of-center pop acts are important, but still...

more to the point:

"...a number of tastemaking critical voices in the world that animal collective inhabit are forging sufficient consensus..."

just want to say that lex's ac tirade on the singles jukebox has some brutally otm moments. like this one:

the rudimentary electronic bibble which refuses to go anywhere or develop into anything and just keeps hanging there, like a broken car alarm whose owners have gone on holiday

"broken car alarm" would be a much better title, in a consumer-advisory way, than merriweather post pavilion.

didn't that one dude explain to you all in a long blog post that if you don't love a.c. you are a fun-hating old man trying to hold back the kids? get with the program gramps

There's been critical U2-hate since '88, when they

...finished 21st in the Pazz & Jop poll, 17 places lower than their previous album, admittedly, but also 18 places higher than the Cure have ever finished. (And I'm sure there's been critical U2 hate since long before '88, fwiw. Doesn't mean it ever added up to much.)

only to have Joel summarize the case against U2 for all time by responding that the problem with U2 was that they're a band that would have a song called "Heartland."

Out of idle curiosity, did Joel ever like the Sisters of Mercy?

Anyway, way behind on this thread again, but honestly -- pretending pitchfork-type websites constitute the mainstream of rock critical thought in 2009 is roughtly the equivalent of pretending Magnet or Alternative Press-type fanzines were the mainstream in, what, the early/mid '90s or whenever? And I'm pretty sure nobody was dumb enough to make that claim then. (It's not even like these sites and zines are even any kind of cutting edge site/zine-wise, for God's sake. So acting like they're all "in the loop" is really really laughable.)

so wait what is "the mainstream of rock critical thought" then?

(you know, if there is one; and if there isn't, was there in the 90s)

i think mb they've reached a point where they define themselves as a mainstream, rather than as an alternative to a somehow defined other mainstream --

quick answer to thread q btw:

http://cvhs83n85.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/album-tears-for-fears-songs-from-the-big-chair.jpg

I believe that album still remains highly regarded.

John Hiatt

In the 80s he released a string of albums that were very critically acclaimed, especially with the NPR set. Nominated for buttloads of Grammys, big writeups in Rolling Stone, etc. Nobody talks much about him anymore.

That's a good one!

xhukx I think you're wrong, and that "pitchfork" & "pitchfork-type websites" as interchangeable terms is a non-starter. at its peak, did Rolling Stone have the reach that Pitchfork has? I doubt it. It's not as monolithic as it was a few years ago, but the things that its writers deem worthy of attention are, while not "the mainstream," usually at or near the center of critical interest. no, they don't cover mainstream country; you can call that a blind spot, I guess (or, flip side of the coin, you can join me in asking "why would I listen to that?" lol j/k don't get mad). but I'd say, yes, Pitchfork's writers (many of whom also write for Spin & Rolling Stone & probably other places I don't know about) are the mainstream of rock criticism.

Do you have some other "THIS magazine/group of writers are the actual mainstream elephant-in-the-room" in mind?

Kula Shaker were fairly well regarded for a short while by mags like Select/Raw/NME etc until Crispian Mills blew it by saying stuff about swastikas being beautiful, causing a massive about turn among fans and critics alike.

Haha, oh yeah! That was so fucking stupid of him.

It wasn't so much that, but the idea he had of coming onstage with "massive flaming swastikas" behind them...

I'm saying (just like Rolling Stone, or Magnet in the old days, or the Village Voice music section, or hip-hop blogs -- and right, of course, there's overlap) pithfork are part of the nebulous mainstream. They're a niche, among lots of other niches. But their favorites have always been way way way too limited, genre-wise, to be remotely indicative of rock-crit favorites as a whole. (Though right, their reach may well exceed that of those fanzines I named.)

Btw, I also have no idea why Lex picks Kate Bush as somebody all critics agree on. She's really never been that big a crit icon - well, at least not in the States. One single that lots of people loved, maybe a couple albums now and then. But maybe England is different.

I remember Therapy? getting some pretty good write-ups across the board. Does anyone still listen to Therapy??

"pitchfork" & "pitchfork-type websites" as interchangeable terms is a non-starter

Well, I used them interchangeably because that's what contenderizer has been doing for this entire thread. (But right, for better or worse, they're the big dog on that particular block, I get that.)

John Hiatt

In the 80s he released a string of albums that were very critically acclaimed, especially with the NPR set. Nominated for buttloads of Grammys, big writeups in Rolling Stone, etc. Nobody talks much about him anymore.

Very sure. And John Prine hasn't lost any critical acclaim. If anthing he's more respected now than he's ever been.

jason & the scorchers!

"by a ragtag fugitive fleet of internet-based critics"

http://www.delawareonline.com/blogs/spaceballs2.jpg

wretched hive of scum & villainy etc

jason & the scorchers!
They put on a pretty good show back in the day. The real star was the guitar player. Never owned any of their records but would happy to listen to one to see how it holds up.

xpost:
OK, just felt like that it was time to make the obligatory Hiatt/Prine mixup joke and I wanted to make it before scott beat me to it.

Hm, I wonder if any critics overrated that Little Village album?

John Hiatt had a real brief moment in the rock-crit sun -- #5 Pazz & Jop, 1986. But again, this is just yet another guy who was fashionable with writers for a couple years and then they forgot album. There are hundreds of those (though most of them never finished #5 P&J I guess.) It's not like all the critics later decided that he was worthless -- Most critics 23 years later probably have no idea who he was, even.

And right, Jason and the Scorchers were another one. And Rank And File. And the Bodeans. And the Fleshtones. And Alexander O'Neal. And Romeo Void. And half of the other bands who got lots of good reviews once.

"..forgot about."

Scorchers records (esp their debut EP Fervor) hold up better than Rank and File records. John Hiatt's earlier '80s, more rocking new-wave-era albums (when Trouser Press, the pitchfork of its day, used to call him the American Elvis Costello) hold up better than his later '80s, more "mature" ones that got the mainstream crit attention.

I was on a romeo void kick a couple months ago

(Actually the Scorchers had 7-inch EP before Fervor, but you'll never find it so never mind.)

Jason and the Scorchers do a great version of Dylan's Absolutely Sweet Marie.

Ha, I remember that "millennium" artist poll, where Robbie Williams polled highly, maybe even ahead of John Lennon.

While the pundits sat around and agreed that not even RWilliams would place himself amongst them.

And then someone (Bob Geldof I think) suggested an artist for the future who would "be up there"

Your go: You remember?

at its peak, did Rolling Stone have the reach that Pitchfork has? I doubt it.

Curious how John is defining "reach" here, btw, because this seems insane. (Discrete eyeballs seeing the site vs mag, maybe? Web hits vs. subscription and newsstand sales and read-in-the-doctor's-office? I'm really not sure how that compares, quantitatively, though I'd love to see numbers.) (If you mean breadth of genre coverage, I don't see how pitchfork compares, at least judging from their best-of lists.)

I mean, do more eyeballs see pitchfork than Rolling Stone (including RS's website) even now, way past RS's prime? Has anybody quantified that?

http://traffic.alexa.com/graph?&w=400&h=220&o=f&c=1&y=t&b=ffffff&r=6m&u=pitchfork.com&&u=rollingstone.com&

It's not quantifiable, nothing on the Internet is - if my target demographic is x-times more likely to use multiple computers in one day, my traffic figures are x-times less accurate. College student with iPhone, laptop, lab computer, friend's computer, etc. = 3-4 sessions. Pitchfork had a dance with "mainstream media" (Time Inc. mags ran a lot of cute things when I was there, about 2004-5, NME was trying to compartmentalize them as well), but they've settled into a place outside of "mainstream" news media, which was always an intention/obsession when I was there (us v them).

Demographically, they are the mainstream for a certain age/class intersect, but their demo barely registers on a cross-section of consumers who inject money into the music industry. The silos are very far apart now, where at one time mainstream media was interested in co-opting or at least addressing Pitchfork's take for a crack at its audience.

Alexa? I would not be interested in stats (still largely) generated by software an end-user has to install.

xp So, by that graph, if I'm reading it right, pitchfork has gained ground in recent months, but even now tends to run either about even or below rollingstone.com, maybe inching above for a couple weeks here and there. Big difference, obviously, is that I assume that graph doesn't include people looking at physical copies of RS, which is still their bread and butter. Which I assume means RS wins by several miles. (But again, maybe eyeballs aren't what John meant by "reach".) (Also, I'm guessing that pitchfork might inspire more devoted web readers, and hence more repeat traffic than RS, which would mean fewer discreet viewers per hits, right? Though that's just a hunch; I could be completely wrong.) (Also, we're just looking at a six-month sample there, which may not be indicative or long-range trends, obviously.)

Or okay, judging from cee-oh-tee-tee's post, maybe best to just ignore that graph altogether.

What happened in July that increased traffic to RS? That was way after Michael Jackson died, right?

but I'd say, yes, Pitchfork's writers (many of whom also write for Spin & Rolling Stone & probably other places I don't know about) are the mainstream of rock criticism.

why are we limiting ourselves to rock criticism? do people not write critically about hip-hop, soul, r&b, dance, et cet et cet et bloody cet again?

No, apparently they all love all of it.

The silos are very far apart now, where at one time mainstream media was interested in co-opting or at least addressing Pitchfork's take for a crack at its audience.

dude what are you even talking about? they have a weekly feature on ABC News. It started in February. I guess you might say "we'll see how long that lasts" - I think most attempts to make TV news coverage of entertainment in anything other than the This Is Too Big Not To Talk About sense have been fleeting - but ABC News having a weekly Pitchfork feature = something other than "the silos are very far apart."

(lex in this context I just say "rock" the way some people say "pop" or w/e. "popular music that isn't classical or jazz.")

yeah i wasn't pinpointing you specifically, but i get the impression that when others talk about criticism, the only critics who matter to them are those coming from a rock/indie background or perspective

I think there's something in the fact that writing about pop music starts with rock criticism that causes people to accord it a place of privilege - it was people who wanted to write about rock records who sort of invented the form, so "rock criticism" = the general body of work around writing about popular music imo

Pazz & Jop pulled in tons of non-"rock"-per-se' people as well (at least way more than any other poll ever has), which is one reason it's still the definitive thing to look at in these sort of discussions.

(and yeah there were ppl writing about jazz & showtunes & whatever before but there's a niche/genre begun by rock criticism in which all these others you talk about figure, I think. I don't know though just thinkin on my feet I could be totally wrong here.)

and also that the indie critical world really likes to think of itself as the epicentre of criticism - the outraged reaction to that jukebox AC post was quite telling; AC fans seemed to feel they were somehow entitled to be canonised

xps to self

I think there's something in the fact that writing about pop music starts with rock criticism that causes people to accord it a place of privilege - it was people who wanted to write about rock records who sort of invented the form, so "rock criticism" = the general body of work around writing about popular music imo

i get that, i get the historical roots of "popular music criticism" as a thing, but i also think we're way past the stage where this privilege should exist or be assumed in any way

...xp Well, except for Matos's late and sainted Idolator poll, anyway. (But that's conflated with P&J in my mind anyway, partly because it carried on the P&J tradition better than P&J itself, which seems to be serving a more indie-specific crowd these days, has since. Part of the reason I talk about it in the past tense, though I do still vote in it.)

xxp ya that's one of the things that's really hard to get past, as someone who likes the album just fine. it somehow reduces its effect when it's been touted up to be this epochal big deal record, it's hard to remind yourself that it's a pretty good album and enjoy it accordingly. and it's also made me hesitate about admitting i like it, it's like "yeah it's a good album, but you know... not that good" as if the only way to enjoy it is as a masterpiece.

The silos are very far apart now

Maybe THE SILOS are the answer to this thread! Cos Weisbard was all about them in the SPIN guide, but they're actually boring.

Ha.

Jason and the Scorchers were another one. And Rank And File. And the Bodeans. And the Fleshtones. And Alexander O'Neal. And Romeo Void. And half of the other bands who got lots of good reviews once.

i think the replacements would be a half-decent answer to the original question.

all those jason and the scorchers and rank and file and bodeans fan-critics loved the replacements, and they loved the replacements a lot more than they loved those other bands. they took the replacements personally. they were ROCK HISTORY. they were IMPORTANT.

i was a huge fan. huge huge fan. still am, it's just that i don't actually listen to them anymore.

different priorities, different records to listen to nowadays, whatever. i go back to lots of stuff from that era, but not them, i don't know why, i just don't. and i get the feeling that they have pretty much dropped out of the mainstream of critical (and even non-critical) thinking in the past 10 or so years. like they aren't perceived to speak to what's happening in music right now (even though three-quarters of the world's emo and punk-pop bands could probably trace their roots right through them).

maybe i only notice this perceived absence because i was such a fan. maybe nobody else ever really cared. and maybe (probably even) they'll be rediscovered as a important progenitors of something a few years from now, like an '80s version of big star or something, just like they probably always wanted to be. but they once loomed a lot larger than they loom right now.

anyway, that's my answer: the replacements.

xhuxk incredibly otm throughout this thread. but that's obvious, right?

imagine the above post without italics. if you can.

that's my answer: the replacements.

Good one. Even our recent poll confirms it. Besides Let It Be (which will never go out of style) they didn't have any other records in the top 100. Ten years ago Tim and Pleased To Meet Me would have finished high.

fcc otm (no italics necessary)

contenderizer you seem to be intent on reducing critical consensus to a really specific and, in the wider scheme of things, rather small niche of critics. a ton of critics dislike or don't care about animal collective (i mean, that jukebox round-up is a starting point for evidence). ignoring their voices is pretty much smoothing over inconvenient dissent.

This is why stuff like Metacritic has always seemed pretty bogus to me, at least as a tool to prove one's point about consensus - such and such an album might get glowing reviews all over the place and that's peachy but in most if not all places, records (esp big 'event' ones) tend to be reviewed by people who are hoping or expecting to like them

― I AGREE WITH THE COSMETIC SURGERY (DJ Mencap), Monday, December 7, 2009 7:32 AM (4 hours ago)

dunno if this has been brought up but tom ewing (i think) wrote a really insightful piece comparing music vs film criticism and how metacritic scores and "critical consensus" can be misleading

http://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2009/03/which-is-more-broken-music-criticism-or-metacritic/

havent read the piece since then so i might be misremembering its pertinence to this point

how about los lobos, does anyone care about them anymore?

I disagree; that ILM doesn't rate them as high as they once might have doesn't mean critical consensus has changed. Pitchfork rated most of the recent reissues highly: Sorry Ma - 9.4, Let It Be - 10.0, Tim - 8.7, Pleased To Meet Me - 9.3. People may not talk about them as much, but they aren't crapped on like The Doors.

xxxx-post

I believe that album still remains highly regarded.

― kingkongvsgodzilla, Monday, December 7, 2009 9:22 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

the Tears For Fears album wasn't highly regarded enough to make the top 200 of the ilx80s poll.

Pleased To Meet Me - 9.3

Okay, sorry, but this score is ridiculous. (Glad to hear they haven't been completely forgotten, though.)

[The ABC web thing actually underscores the separation I'm talking about. It exists only on the web, as a "Let's see" proposition from ABC, and does no business for them. Pitchfork's audience has no interest in it, nor does ABC's, which is minimal to begin with. As a possible boost to ABC's web presence, Pitchfork is at par with viral web traffic. Like, Youtubes of people tickling their cats. There's no real connection, it's just a pickup. A few years ago the site was taken more seriously, and by a broader and more established tier of publication.]

Ha, I remember that "millennium" artist poll, where Robbie Williams polled highly, maybe even ahead of John Lennon.

While the pundits sat around and agreed that not even RWilliams would place himself amongst them.

And then someone (Bob Geldof I think) suggested an artist for the future who would "be up there"

Your go: You remember?

― Mark G, Monday, 7 December 2009 15:13

I do. Macy Gray.

"pitchfork" & "pitchfork-type websites" as interchangeable terms is a non-starter

Well, I used them interchangeably because that's what contenderizer has been doing for this entire thread. (But right, for better or worse, they're the big dog on that particular block, I get that.)

― xhuxk, Monday, December 7, 2009 6:49 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

pitchfork sort of symbolizes this, but is at the same time very professional. there are tons of other voices out there, otoh, that are much less firmly established as authoritative, but that contribute to a collective criticism-stream (river, ocean). that's what i've been trying get across.

bothers me that because i chose animal collective as an example of this, it's assumed that i think animal collective = the pop universe.

Yep, Macy Gray.

Didn't even make the "artist of the decade" past 2001 or so.

Sorry if I missed it (which may be the case, since it's the premise for the whole thread), but who, exactly, is crapping on the Doors? Not that I would disagree, but they still showed up on the RS 500 best album list, and they're still all over the radio.

there was a doors dig on 30 rock recently

this kinda set off a big blog shitstorm about the Doors a while back: http://idolator.com/385382/you-know-who-really-sucks-the-doors

I think the Doors' place in the classic rock canon is pretty secure, they're just more vulnerable than most of their peers to really vehement detractors that wanna act like they were the worst thing ever

were the Doors ever really critical darlings though?

there is something very satisfying about mocking on the doors tbh

Sorry if I missed it (which may be the case, since it's the premise for the whole thread), but who, exactly, is crapping on the Doors? Not that I would disagree, but they still showed up on the RS 500 best album list, and they're still all over the radio.

― dr. phil, Monday, December 7, 2009 12:23 PM (4 minutes ago)

the point of this thread (at least, how i'm reading it) isn't whether old people still like the doors

Very quick, loose ramble here but:

Most of the various American eighties bands being named earlier in the thread with some sort of 'roots' quality to their music, however defined, increasingly struck me over time as this attempt by various writers to claim back 'real rock and roll' from the perceived unholy trinity of the 'haircut/English/synth' brigade. At the same time, they were held up as an example of something pure against ANOTHER unholy trinity -- the 'haircut/LA/glam' brigade. But history as such made both of the trinities winners in terms of collective memory -- in an actual widespread cultural sense, people *know* these songs and acts, whatever lol80s impulses exist along the way. This roots brigade as such is as nothing in comparison; you don't hear or see random references to how Lone Justice looked.

But it wasn't that acts like the Del Fuegos or Jason and the Scorchers or the Rave-Ups (remember them?) or whoever specifically went out to be some sort of vaguely critically acclaimed niche. They wanted to make music they enjoyed for people to enjoy too, they wanted to hear their songs on the radio, they wanted to hit the big time. Their packaging as such ill served them more than most who got caught up in a putative genre they had no interest in being part of or set out to belong to, because said critical packaging was ultimately so reactive, so much a denial of other things wider in popularity or broader in ambition or trying something different, however the scale is measured. And then when some sort of 'real' rock supposedly came back in the early nineties and then you had adult album alternative as the polite place to put politer people that -- in the critical mind, at least, rather than the popular mind -- didn't have the burden of three forgotten eighties albums on Reprise and a sidebar Rolling Stone feature or two to deal with.

So they ended up as being seen as this Macguffin for discourse, I figure.

xp I was wondering about that too. There was actually a big difference between the scores Doors LPs got in the first (1979) and second (1983) editions of the Rolling Stone Record Guide (Dave Marsh bumped several four and five star albums to two and three stars), but I haven't noticed a huge differnce in appraisal over the past quarter-century or so. In fact, Marsh probably underrates a lot of those, compared to the consensus. Not sure whether Billy Altman's scores in the first edition aligned with most critics at the time or not.

the Doors are probably the biggest late '60s rock dinosaur that you can still hate on without looking like a contrarian loony

"The Doors were very good"

okthxbye

i love the doors.

but, like the cure, they are an easy target. lol goths.

If they'd had a different singer, they might have been less popular then, and better regarded now.

It's not just old people who read RS/ listen to classic rock. Or at least it's old people of all ages.

the point of this thread (at least, how i'm reading it) isn't whether old people still like the doors

Meh meh meh. Simon Reynolds could be "old" though, not sure. He likes techno!

the Doors are pretty good, imo

you don't hear or see random references to how Lone Justice looked

too bad, too.

http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/l/lone-justice/album-lone-justice.jpg

i had such a crush on maria mckee.

I'll bet you did.

Ray Manzarek : After Jim died, Iggy was definitely one of the names that was considered as the Jim Morrison replacement, but that was such an impossible task . . . somebody to replace Jim Morrison.

I was about to ask about Lone Justice (I was too young and didn't have MTV in 1985). Is that first album any good? I have it pegged in my mind as another one of those extracurricular "roots-rock" projects to which Petty and the Hearbreakers contributed in the mid eighties (like that first Feargal Sharkey record, although that's not roots-rock).

simon reynolds OTM!

i had such a crush on maria mckee.

Yeah, she was hot. Robbie Robertson thought so too, because he was practically mauling her in that one video.

Speaking of Robbie Robertson, his solo album fits in this thread.

imagine the alternate universe caused by iggy joining the doors in 1971

Funhouse Motel

the first lone justice album is good. good songs. maria had a heck of a voice. probably still does.

xpost it's like one of those marvel comic "What If" things

but i think ned's post is pretty otm in terms of the whole rockist bent of criticism and the distorting effect it had in overrating some things. i think in a way the roots-rock-centricness of a lot of '80s criticism it's not that different from the indie-centricness of a lot of '00s criticism -- the emphasis on "integrity" of various kinds, the tendency to look for and find value in music made by serious-minded white males being serious (even if it's "serious" in a "playful" way like animal collective or flaming lips). and i betcha iron & wine, say, will look as marginal from a future perspective as the del fuegos do now.

xpost: yeah, first lone justice album is really good. second one is ok. maria got sorta spotty after that, but there are good tracks here and there.

Joan Baez.

Any reason to believe these fallen idols won't rise yet again?

(also speaking of that feargal sharkey record, maria wrote the big hit on that. good song, too.)

The Doors are pretentious as hell and often wildly self indulgent. Totally saved by having a great way with a catchy tune though. And they're easily one of the funkiest of the late 60s groups.

Most of the various American eighties bands being named earlier in the thread with some sort of 'roots' quality to their music, however defined, increasingly struck me over time as this attempt by various writers to claim back 'real rock and roll' from the perceived unholy trinity of the 'haircut/English/synth' brigade. At the same time, they were held up as an example of something pure against ANOTHER unholy trinity -- the 'haircut/LA/glam' brigade. But history as such made both of the trinities winners in terms of collective memory...

some bands have survived this very well, X and the replacements for instance - but they were such massive critical favorites for so long that i suppose their long-term survival was guaranteed. does not surprise me at all that the long riders and green on red have fallen by the wayside.

some bands have survived this very well, X and the replacements for instance

right, but X, for example, predated roots-rock, and aren't really roots-rock.

I mean, there's some crossover. Wasn't the Alvin-penned "4th of July" on one of their "sellout" records from the mid-eighties?

first lone justice album is really good. second one is ok. maria got sorta spotty after that, but there are good tracks here and there

OTM though I'd rate you gotta sin to get saved as good lone justice s/t and the good tracks here and there (this perfect dress, absolutely barking stars, if love is a red dress) are really really good.

i get that, i get the historical roots of "popular music criticism" as a thing, but i also think we're way past the stage where this privilege should exist or be assumed in any way

― lex pretend, Monday, December 7, 2009

lex in world-wd-be-more-convenient-if-it-started-with-my-birth-tbh shocker

>>maria had a heck of a voice. probably still does.

She's still a decent concert draw in L.A. Her Life Is Sweet solo lp (my God, is it 13 years old now????) is one of those overlooked masterpieces.

(also speaking of that feargal sharkey record, maria wrote the big hit on that. good song, too

Freaky Trigger ran this recent demurral.

X and the replacements for instance

Definitely exceptions but they always seemed to me (even at the time I was getting to learn about them in the late eighties) as somehow a little other than just 'roots-rock' -- X had this lingering straight-up punk cred, the Replacements were always mentioned in the same breath as REM. It's all in how one categorizes in the mind based on what you know and learn, and how you learn it. Pretty much all those other bands I mentioned in the post and that you mention as well were this sorta lumped-together mush that was supposedly worthy but always sounded bleh to me, very airless and dull.

lex in world-wd-be-more-convenient-if-it-started-with-my-birth-tbh shocker

how is that remotely what i posted o_0

And they're easily one of the funkiest of the late 60s groups.

if by funky you mean they smell funny then I'm with you

have you caught a whiff of morrison lately?

TS: Lone Justice or Cruzados or Drivin' & Cryin' or Green On Red or Del Fuegos or Jason & The Scorchers or Long Ryders or Bodeans?

X were roots-rock from the start. covering jerry lee lewis. talkin' about elvis. john doe's lefty frizzell wannabe croon. billy zoom, for crissakes.

(and of course they had punk cred. those two ideas aren't even remotely in opposition.)

xxxpost oh, just the whole throwing out history thing. just a zing, carry on.

I just looked at Maria McKee's credits. Damn, she's like female John Hiatt: a bizzer beloved by songwriters who never sold records.

(and of course they had punk cred. those two ideas aren't even remotely in opposition.)

It's not a question of that, it's a question of reception! And X really did have this other quality about them in my head -- I'm thinking back two decades now to how I was learning about them and other bands not on the radio, I can't really provide specifics. You can ascribe it to the band or to those writing about 'em or whatever.

ned totally otm about mainstream rock critics (and i do mean rock critics) in the mid-late-80s totally overrating anything that smacked of american roots authenticity. he's probably also right to see it as a last ditch attempt to assert the value of "the real thing" in response to the emergence of new pop that didn't play by the old rules. thus reactive, narrow, and in retrospect, a bit dull.

but rootsiness wasn't the sole province of fringe critic's favorites that have vanished from mind. bruce springsteen, john cougar, bryan adams, neil young and tons of other big mainstream pop acts got a lot of mileage out of the roots rock angle in the 80s (nebraska, anyone?), and it doesn't seem like an insane stretch to tie it all together as the soundtrack to reagan's morning in america. it was a weirdly conservative time in a lot of ways.

in that sense perhaps different from the current tendency of mainstream critics to focus on indiepop?

do the doors get called "self-indulgent" cuz they would have, like, one long song on some albums (some albums, being, like, three)? MOST of their songs are very economical really. and a lot of them are even under three minutes.

even the soft parade (the song) is only, like, 8 minutes long. hardly moody blues or keith emerson and the nice territory.

Freaky Trigger ran this recent demurral.

i demur!

Rob Sheffield's review of a Lone Justice comp released in 1999, just to indicate how Rolling Stone's values had shifted in ten years:

In the musty closet of rock history, there's a special shelf for next big things that never panned out, and Lone Justice sit right between acid jazz and Morris Day's solo career. These Eighties cowpunks had a born star in Maria McKee, a sun-kissed Cali ingenue who obviously got up early on the morning God was handing out blond ringlets. She had a powerhouse country voice, and she could wear a gingham dress like nobody's business, but the band's two LPs were slick radio-rock flops. This World Is Not My Home, a retrospective heavy on previously unreleased early tracks, is really the first Lone Justice album -- it lets you hear these city kids dreaming country, before they noticed what big cars the Hooters were driving.

nah, I think they're called self-indulgent cuz of morrison's pretentiousness

xp

The ABC web thing actually underscores the separation I'm talking about. It exists only on the web, as a "Let's see" proposition from ABC, and does no business for them.

yeah nobody uses the internet, what am I thinking

Aaaaand the first graf of Rolling Stone's original review of the first album:

If you want to hear great original music without having to buy cheap foreign imports, there's just one place to go: West, young man. Lone Justice is the latest major-label contender on the growing list of left-coast bands who possess a panoramic vision and a thoroughgoing passion for American roots music

I mean, Glenn Beck could have written that!

LOL in the quoted graf delete "Lone Justice" and insert "The Thrills" and it's 2004!

sort of agree w/ fact-checking cuz on X. i came on board circa wild gift and more fun in the new world, as did (i suppose) most MTV babies, and they always seemed of a part with the americana thing. i understood that they were supposed to be a respectable punk band with deep cred and all, but they didn't really sound like my idea of one.

and i remember really, really liking those first couple jason & the scorchers records. wonder what i'd think of them now?

btw Smithereens could be usually be counted on for a big RS thumbs-up in their especially for you/green thoughts heyday...

my what big cars the hooters are driving

i like x! have never really thought "roots rock" though, exene cervenka struck me as a sort of proto-courtney love?

Well, X DID record "I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts," whose attitudes could have been espoused by the Rolling Stone editorial board.

X had this lingering straight-up punk cred

Which was always fucking bizarre; I mean, even the very first album had Ray fucking Manzarek playing organ all over the second side, not to mention Zoom's rockabilly guitar solos (and the straight-up rockabilly and country licks all over Wild Gift)...X to me was '60s L.A. rock, from greaser through Sunset Strip psychedelia, retooled for the late '70s. Their roots move came on albums three and four, when they tried to go the Seger/Springsteen lyrical route with "The Have Nots" and covered Jerry Lee Lewis and got all culturally xenophobic with "I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts," etc., etc.

xpost

(I'll grant that "Bad Thoughts" has a shitload of ambivalence to complement the parochialism)

No, John: nobody uses the version of the internet ABC is curating.

i came on board circa wild gift and more fun in the new world, as did (i suppose) most MTV babies, and they always seemed of a part with the americana thing

Lyrics like this (which mirror the dichotomy that Ned discussed above) probably helped in the Americana dept (even though they're begging for punk bands to get airplay, actually):

"I hear the radio is finally gonna
play new music, you know, the
british invasion. But what about
Minutemen, Flesh Eaters, DOA,
Big Boys. And Black Flag? Will the last american band to get played
on the radio please bring the flag?
please bring the flag! Glitter-disco-
synthesizer night school. All this
noble savage drum, drum, drum.
astronauts going back in time to hang
out with the cave people. It's about
time, it's about space. It's about
some people in the strangest place.
woody guthrie sang about b-e-e-t-s
not b-e-a-t-s"

the knitters album is still my fave alt-country album.

speaking of jason & the scorchers

jason has managed to make it big with new, younger audience:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NME_QnPinhU

part of the problem with the doors is the myth making that went on after his death - an american prayer, no one here gets out alive, etc - painting him as some intellectual wild-man poet

as a rock singer, okay, I get it, but as a poet he's about as tolerable as jewel

that's why they're easy targets for potshottery

or potsharts as I like to call them

under the big black sun was my first x album and they fit in with l.a. punk to me. but americana l.a. punk like gun club and flesheaters.

Still think the first X album (and to a certain extent the second) sound as punk as anybody, though. (Rockabilly etc. doesn't make them not punk. That stuff had been part of punk since the the 101ers turned into the Clash, or since Eddie and the Hot Rods or whoever.) (Oops, Brits - but still.)

but the band's two LPs were slick radio-rock flops

I'd be interested to see writing at the time that called Lone Justice -- or anything else in the vague sorta genre (I love that thread Scott started and linked to!) -- just that, slick radio-rock straight up. And I'm sure such writing was out there, but time really makes the great distinction -- the idea of what 'roots' are has now radically shifted (again?) back to trebly crackle, acid folk, Harry Smith archives etc. Combine that with the acclaimed virtues of what gets called lo-fi and all and this whole bunch seems like a bizarre neither-here-nor-there area.

Contenderizer's point about the success of folks like Springsteen, Mellencamp etc. at that time is telling too, it was the window that all this other 'proper' stuff was supposed to come through. (The missing element I forgot to mention earlier, as I'm sure xhuxk would agree, was where country was heading with the incepient Garth Brooks era -- no less slick but a hell of a lot more entertaining and less concerned with a kind of rock authenticity. Brooks and company essentially took over the space that the Henry Lee Threadgills of the world were meant to inherit.)

re: Joan Baez, how was she rated by critics originally?

Assuming everyone has read In The Fascist Bathroom; Marcus really lends the air of the times to his pieces, you get that almost as much as his take in the Springsteen pieces, but especially his see-saw head-patting and praise for Sonic Youth, and really the entire avant scene. Which is surprising as in the '90s Sonic Youth became Ye Gods of Inscrutable Authenticity as opposed to a potential con.

Kinda related but there's a section in the Dave Cavanagh book on Creation that talks about the massive marketing and selling going on with the Weather Prophets in the UK when McGee tried to get the Elevation imprint going in the late eighties, and a lot of it explores the same idea -- a 'real' rock and roll against the false horribleness out there, etc. etc. but which again ends up with slickly dull worthiness once more than nobody remembers at all.

"x: were they punk or americana" is kinda like "the cramps: were they punk or rockabilly"

(ha, i'd forgotten about that other lone justice thread and me also crushing on maria mckee there.)

Oh Ned the stuff about HoL's contract negotiation, Horne's in-house days...I mean I re-read about half that book at least three times a year. Just bonkers.

xxxpost -- I mean, not that that kind of approach to selling something is unique to the time and place, obviously. But hey, I grew up in that time, learned about music more intensely in that time, those are the signposts and terms and etc. I was dealing with. Others will have different reference points.

I was reminded of all this more recently when I found a stash of old Sam Goody-published free music rags -- very sub-Pulse -- and seeing so many ads for all these kind of bands in there. It was a locked-in discourse.

those early jason and the scorcher records hold up well IMO, production is a little "80s" but great tunes

The idea of what 'roots' are has now radically shifted (again?) back to trebly crackle, acid folk, Harry Smith archives etc.

i came to X (and the replacements and the jesus and mary chain and squirrel bait while we're at it) through a mentow who was also feeding me arthur alexander and wynonie harris and hank williams and lefty frizzell and little richard and gene vincent and george jones records. that's what was being reissued in droves at the time, and that was roots to me.

mentow = mentor

mentows: the taste maker

mentats turned me on to roots music

I always like the idea that the roots are what you first hear, those are YOUR personal roots. For me that's early eighties top 40 radio. Synths aren't some new futuristic instrument to me, those are my roots! I can't pretend otherwise.

then one day he was taken away in a mentow truck and i've never had taste since.

so The Bravery is "roots" now

fwiw, in addition to X, there must be a few other west coast rootsy/"real rock"/americana bands & albums from this era that have managed to hang onto some of the cred that critics were trying to attach to them. the gun club obviously, but JLP being a tragic poster boy helps. first dream syndicate lp holds up, and maybe even the more self-consciously bloozed-out second. the early opal recordings are much beloved, though by a tiny cult.

still, it's not like they often get mentioned alongside the canonical recordings of the era...

can anyone think of any others?

along with the americana thing i do also recall rolling stone giving time to minutemen/husker du/replacements and doing it in a similar heartland kinda way. not that the minutmen were from the heartland, but they fit the american rock myth as much as jason & the scorchers did. those bands did the rebel poet thing but they all liked classic rock too. perfect for RS.

i dunno i mean Ned you're right in the sense that what speaks to a generations nostalgia is always shifting but in this context if "roots" is going to mean anything doesn't it have to mean "some guys who saw The Buddy Holly Story"?

yeah, that big RS article on SST stressed how the black flag roadies listened to the dead

xp

Well you're talking about Paisley now, Conty. Rain Parade etc.

Haha rogerm that would be a PERFECT definition for this bunch, sure!

LCD tentrevival

There's gotta be some critic (Marcus came close to it in In the Fascist Bedroom) who pointed out the most mordant irony of the roots-rock phenom: these liberal proselytizers in the rock press found musical correlatives for Reaganism (which was at its zenith in 1985).

I mean, the first line from that Lone Justice review coulda been written by George Will:

f you want to hear great original music without having to buy cheap foreign imports, there's just one place to go: West, young man.

agree that the paisley thing wasn't exactly = to the western roots thing, but there was a lot of crossover and the rock values are v similar. both tempted critics to herald them as "the real thing" in the face of false idols.

trying to come up with other examples...

violent femmes maybe? especially on the second lp (they weren't "west coast" of course, but so what). meat puppets, once they got past the punk thing? they're so zonked that it's hard to tell, but i'd say that there's a mutated roots rock element to their sound.

and cott otm about the midwestern punk thing - replacements, husker du, later soul asylum. that fit in pretty well, too. but then, yeah, at some point the definition of "roots rock" probably gets too elastic to be meaningful.

xpost Will loved Born in the USA, but I remember him writing a take-down of country music as celebrating alcoholism and other un-American forms of defeatism.

xposts: the lone justice review reminds me of another opening from a review of another band that fits this thread:

Here's a big-noise guitar band from Britain that blows the knobs off all the synth-pop diddlers and fake-funk frauds who are cluttering up the charts these days. Big Country mops up the fops with an air-raid guitar sound that's unlike anything else around, anywhere, and if their debut album promises more than the four musicians can quite deliver at this stage in their young career, what it does deliver – especially on the Top Ten U.K. hit "Fields of Fire," one of the great, resounding anthems of this or any other year–is sufficiently scintillating to preclude any extended critical carps about the group's occasional lack of focus.

"trying to think of other examples" of rootsy, americana-inflected, critic-celebrated "real rock" stuff from that era that does hold up i mean...

There's gotta be some critic (Marcus came close to it in In the Fascist Bedroom) who pointed out the most mordant irony of the roots-rock phenom

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdiCJUysIT0

holy shit re that Big Country review.

Reagan's "Morning in America" campaign could have run clips from "Ways To Be Wicked" video and no one would have blinked.

critics loved the shit outta los lobos

they still sorta do -- i mean, i don't think anyone is proclaiming them as a total "dud." Just not "important" or representative of anything.

i know im answering SOMEBODY's point, can't remember who, when i point out that both meltzer and tosches were both big doors fans, back in the day

fwiw los lobos del este los angeles have been going for 36 years now! shows in socal are still jammed to the rafters and guitar players still revere david hidalgo. so no longer particularly relevant to the scene but far from dud.

as a rockhead in the 80's who also adored rap/dance/disco/new wave/synthpop, reading all that constant homophobia/xenophobia/allkindsofphobia about synth knobtwiddlers and new wave frauds and "authenticity" (not really talking about the review quoted above) was such a bummer. made me hate everyone more than i already hated everyone. and i'd already lived through it during the death to disco days. its why i hate most rock critics to this very day.

xpost yeah, that's what I mean about los lobos -- they play big places out here, too, to enthusiastic crowds. But in terms of critical importance, they've jsut become veterans of the music world. There's no big hook for Lobos these days, other than, here's a good band, they've been around a while, they're still good!

And they torched Paul Simon.

and then there's the Latin Playboys thing.

yeah, also well-known rhymin' simon haterz

"trying to think of other examples" of rootsy, americana-inflected, critic-celebrated "real rock" stuff from that era that does hold up i mean...

steve earle. not west coast, obviously, and not paisley, and maybe two or three years too late to count, but he otherwise pretty much fits in, and despite the fact that he's made a lot of mediocre records, his good stuff still holds up and, more to the point, is widely perceived to still hold up (i think). and people still care about him.

Los Lobos has risen a bit more on the radar recently since David Hidalgo started jamming with Bobby D

Lots more on the great early '80s American-roots-guitar-vs-Limey-haircut-synth battle here, as I recall:

American records that were viable '80s *New Pop*?

Tangential idea: artists critics have lobbied hard and/or endlessly for, without success. Like, Robyn Hitchcock. The ones that become received canon/wisdom for subsequent generations.

dunno, it seems like the Replacements would fit better into that category ... a band critics were super-passionate about but never quite hit the big time, like, say REM.

Actually, forget that; try starting at this permalink instead (though the whole thread is kinda fun):

American records that were viable '80s *New Pop*?

Robyn Hitchcock seems to me like yet another guy who's got a small devoted critic cult, but who's never been anything near a consensus favorite, no matter what his cult thinks. (Fegmania placed #33 Pazz & Jop in 1985 -- 11 places behind Lone Justice!, 28 behind Artists United Against Apartheid, etc -- but I'm not sure he's scored since.)

oh sorry dudes i was just thinking about los lobos with all those 80s "roots" type bands, didn't mean they are a dud or considered such.

the first latin playboys record is super amazing IMO...

xp Oops, I meant nine behind Lone Justice (who were at #24); 11 behind Jason & the Scorchers (#22). (Does anybody like #28 Prefab Sprout or #38 Marti Jones anymore? I'm not even sure I have a good idea what they sounded like. And there's Suzanne Vega at #39; another name that's missed. And Marshall Crenshaw at #35. And Golden Palominos at #27...)

it's too late M@tt everyone is vv offended

los lobos drummer has added you underneath rhymin' simon on his hit list

i still like prefab sprout!

i like prefab sprout way more than los lobos. theoretically. cuz i've never actually listened to an entire los lobos album.

you're on the hit list too now

In re: the late '80s wholesome revival with crits, I quipped about the '88 P&J, that one is just a big pot of yogurt: Tracy Chapman (#3), Michelle Shocked (#5), Traveling Wilburys (#9), Randy Newman (#10), Brian Wilson (#12), John Hiatt (#18), K.D. Lang (#37).

M@tt OTM re: Latin Playboys. love that shit

Yeah: the dad-rock compact disc boom really started in '87 and '88.

trying to think of other examples" of rootsy, americana-inflected, critic-celebrated "real rock" stuff from that era that does hold up i mean...

Dumptruck. The 1987 album "For The Country" has aged a lot better than most of that music. Even better are The Windbreakers, from Mississippi. Completely obscure, but for jangly 80s Americana, they could be the best ones of all.

This is a helpful thread...
Could somebody recommend me some vintage 80s jangle-rock (besides REM)?

Brian Wilson (#12)

this album is great, the last truly great thing he did

i bought how will the wolf survive cuz rolling stone told me to. it was pretty good, but a little "safe" for my teenage tastes. title track is a great tune though and still gets stuck in my head sometimes, half a century down the road. nothing i've heard since has intrigued me enough to investigate further, though i do like their graceland track.

Here lies M@tt He1ges0n

...he dissed los lobos

Rest in Peace

the windbreakers! i know tim lee from that band, and his wife. they're still making music, they're good folks.

Do people hate the Blasters now? I forget. (Non-Fiction was pretty good, honest.)

I got that first Lobos EP and How the Wolf etc for $1 each a year or two ago, and liked them enough to keep them. But yeah, not nearly as good as people claimed at the time. A lot the singing just seems really stodgy to me (and I like roots rock). Never got into their later, artier stuff (and Latin Playboys) at all; I was listening to actual Mexican artsy rock bands like Caifanes and Fobia and Maldita Vecindad by then, and it just seemed lame and corny in comparison. Might have underrated it though. But I doubt it.

Do people hate the Blasters now?

in order to hate you have to care

In re: the late '80s wholesome revival with crits, I quipped about the '88 P&J, that one is just a big pot of yogurt: Tracy Chapman (#3), Michelle Shocked (#5), Traveling Wilburys (#9), Randy Newman (#10), Brian Wilson (#12), John Hiatt (#18), K.D. Lang (#37).

― cee-oh-tee-tee, Monday, December 7, 2009 11:35 AM (8 minutes ago)

most of this is not as wholesome yogurt as you may think, you should revisit the subject matter.

Blasters stuff probably holds up better than a lot of the roots rock LA stuff from the 80s ...

divine horsemen!

in order to hate you have to care

This is the lesson of about 99 percent of this thread, actually.

have no idea if divine horsemen were critically acclaimed or not

You have to care to critically acclaim.

Ripe for rediscovery, though: Alley Cats / Zarkons

Wall Of Voodoo

I still listen to the Blasters all the time. Was excited as hell when Rhino put all their Slash albums together a few years ago.

at this point I'm just namechecking every rootsy 80s band I can think of

the flesheaters hold up VERY well, don't know abt divine horsemen

re: wall of voodoo - no one cared then, no one cares now

Tex and the Horseheads.

danny & dusty

does jon wayne count as "roots"?

goober and the peas

JON WAYNE

dwight yoakam

the goo goo dolls (as long as we're still working the "every rootsy 80s band i can think of" category)

I have learned nothing from this thread.

j/k. This thread turned out a lot better than the original premise might have suggested.

I've been listening to Lone Justice all morning!

I've learned that someone else in the world likes Arrested Development. That was heartening.

I think the key here is the hyperbole vs the actual thing itself, I found one of those o_O fab t-birds reviews

From the opening title cut, which boogies with ZZ Top flash and swagger, to the swinging instrumental "Down at Antones," which shuts this LP down, Tuff Enuff drills a ten-tune groove that leaves the listener in the hottest spot: simultaneously satisfied and craving more. This, of course, is the nightly measure of a working band, and the road-tested Fabulous Thunderbirds energetically blend live-show rush and the more gradually revealed pleasures of studio work on their first major-label LP since 1982.

Producer Dave Edmunds's winning touch kicks the retro out of retrorock, so that the authenticity of Tuff Enuff's bruising R&B workouts is a much less important aspect of the record than the fact that it shakes the walls. Edmunds lets these songs hit frontally, but he's not shy about layering guitars and vocals if crowding the generally roomy sound will give that hit more impact.

And what performances he has to work with! These T-Birds are no showboats, so pyrotechnics are held to a pleasant minimum, but no one lets down for a note. Singer Kim Wilson, who wrote or co-wrote seven of the album's songs, is full of humor and force, manfully belting out the Bo Diddley-style braggadocio of "Tuff Enuff," exuding sexual command on Sam and Dave's blistering "Wrap It Up" and playfully mocking macho control on the Coasters-style "Why Get Up." Guitarist Jimmie Vaughan (Stevie Ray's older brother) twangs on "Tell Me," stings on "Look at That, Look at That," oozes the rhythmic glue that grips "Down at Antones" and blazes from note one of his instantly accelerating solo on "True Love." But bassist Preston Hubbard and drummer Fran Christina are the true stars of these ensemble stomps, starting a rumble down below that urges Wilson and Vaughan into more passionate playing.

This major-label shot, Edmunds's sharp production and a revived interest in the blues may propel the T-Birds out of Texas and the bars and onto the national stage. If so, there will be more space between stops on the highway, and the houses will get bigger, but as Tuff Enuff guarantees, the Fabulous Thunderbirds will never lose their ability to turn any room – even your living room – into a roadhouse bursting at the seams. (RS 472)

ANTHONY DECURTIS

What performances he has to work with

jesus christ

"Oozes rhythmic glue"? Come on, he was fucking with us. Oops, nope. He is currently working on a documentary about Joan Baez for PBS American Masters.

and Latin Playboys) at all; I was listening to actual Mexican artsy rock bands like Caifanes and Fobia and Maldita Vecindad by then

classic xhuxh, also totally wrong (I don't care if there are other "actual Mexican artsy rock bands", what matters is that the Latin Playboys records actually, y'know, sound good)

like, I don't listen to the records for what they SIGNIFY, I listen to them because they are full of interesting sounds and odd song constructions which are fun to listen to in and of themselves

Tommy Conwell & The Young Rumblers 4EVA!!!

What performances he has to work with
Someone should make a Life On Mars-type show about a stuck-in-the-past time-traveling music editor who tries to get his charges to tone down the hyperbole by warning them that in the future everybody will able to mock their foolish opinions on the *internet*

"Signify"?? You got that out of "lame and corny"? Wow.

I think he got it from "actual."

"Actual" meant Mexican bands, as opposed to Mexican-American bands. Sorry if that was unclear.

it's impressive & kinda funny that this west-coast rootsrock tangent has gone on so long, but aren't the brits the kings of slash-&-burn pop criticism? was reading melody maker & NME back in the 80s/90s, and they seemed to have a GREAT NEW BAND!!! every other week. the stuff they loved one year wouldn't be fit to line your catbox a year or two later, and they never looked back.

anyway, there must be TONS, THOUSANDS of briefly mega-hyped UK bands that no one now stans for or even remembers. plus what was the US 90s version of the rootsrock thing? what forgotten wonders did pop critics hitch their carts to during the nirvana years? was some talk of, like, urban dance squad upthread, but really? were they a critic's fave? i honestly don't remember... "a deeper shade of soul" was pretty good iirc.

lol at watching this become a roots rock nostalgia thread

btw i would like to state that i too enjoy arrested development

another name just occurred to me: tommy keene. i may be over-remembering how much hype he had, but it seemed to me the critical establishment spent several years pimping him as a next big thing before finally just sort of forgetting about him.

(i can't even remember if i ever heard a tommy keene song.)

Ha, me too. I think I finally heard an actual record in the end, but maybe I was hearing somebody else who had a similar name who sounded like I thought Tommy Keene should sound like.

Tommy Keene is the art of pretend forgetfulness.

Tommy Conwell & The Young Rumblers

Christ I was trying to remember the name of those clowns earlier.

were they a critic's fave?

Nope.

Anyway (should never have brought them up obviously), but where Maldita/Fobia/Caifanes blew away Playboys/late Lobos to my ears was in their music -- singing, rhythm section, hooks. That they were actually based in Mexico wasn't a consideration one way or the other.

Some more good discussion of them (and the Blasters, etc) here btw:

Los Lobos C/D

it's impressive & kinda funny that this west-coast rootsrock tangent has gone on so long, but aren't the brits the kings of slash-&-burn pop criticism?

Yeah but that was kinda the whole selling point of the roots-rock crit approach to a large extent. "Unlike those TRENDOIDS over there in London we're letting you know about this good honest music that will never be forgotten! And as proof, please listen to this release by Charlie Sexton."

and yes, the fabulous thunderbirds. another record i bought on rolling stone's advice, iirc - probably part of the reason i was so willing to jump ship to spin. it's not bad for what it is (bluesy bar band pop), and i think the review's zz top comparison is mostly otm, though the t-bird's lack zz's weirdness, style & creativity. for whatever reason, the kind of geriatric hyperbole on display in that review doesn't offend me in blues & rootsrock album reviews. i expect them to read as though written by someone's finger-snapping hipster grandpa.

It's instructive that the success of the Spin Doctors followed the same general path of all these 80s never-really-broke-throughs -- "They've paid their dues, they have a great live rep, they're real rock and roll, blah blah blah" -- but with the advantage of 'alternative' as a success point to hang their hat on.

Plus, their hits sounded like Joe Jackson. (So if you ignored their back story, you could have fun with them even if you were an old new waver.)

haha ned but charlie sexton's a helluva player and if arc angels come back for real i'ma go see 'em

That they were actually based in Mexico wasn't a consideration one way or the other.

and yet, that is the criterion you brought up by way of comparison ... instead of comparing them to stuff they actually sound like, like I dunno, Tom Waits

http://www.cmt.com/shared/media/images/amg_covers/200/drf600/f627/f62774g15zf.jpg
Hi dere!

aaaaand i also bought the charlie sexton lp, about which i remember nothing nothing nothing. except tall hair. i appear to have been quite a sucker for the authenticity line. come on over here baby i got something REAL to show you...

speaking of sexton, chris isaak. i seem to recall a lot of critical love for silvertone, and he seems to have endured - as a pop touchstone anyway. can't imagine that critics rate him anymore though. (actually liked that album quite a bit at the time)

cowboy junkies? i guess that was a couple years later...

if los lobos and jason & the scorchers had had a song as cool as this in the 80's i would have been ALL over them!

(my kinda roots rock, in other words)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GA4foTap-WQ

haha ned but charlie sexton's a helluva player and if arc angels come back for real i'ma go see 'em

Noted! Actually IIRC roger you made the best case I've read ever for Chris Whitley, who I sorta lumped in with all this stuff for a long time. Then when he passed you wrote this and it was v. instructive.

(my kinda roots rock, in other words)

That Polecats song is great and Boz Boorer kinda became more famous than most everyone on this thread by being Morrissey's lead guitarist from 1991 to the present day!

xp Latin Playboys and Caifanes drew on similar musical elements, to my ears; one just did it better. Comparing them is perfectly valid. But as I said on that other Lobos thread, Lobos's late Tom Waitsishness was probably a big part of what kept me from liking them more (given how I almost always have trouble stomaching Waits in the first place.)

Sexton's worthy of discussion, as his big album exploited big hair clichés and now he's returned to his dad-rock antecedents (and doing quite well too).

oh man I love that latin playboys album

my favorite roots rock song of the 80's. no contest.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3INucd4lUw

Chris Whitley

= (I think) the first artist ever to finish Top 10 Pazz & Jop who I'd never heard of until the day I saw the issue in question. That was the day I knew I was out of touch. (Pretty sure Robin Holcolmb finished in the Top 40 that year, too; I'd never heard of her til then, either.)

in re charlie sexton, i won't rep for the first album beyond "beat's so lonely," which doesn't suck and hints at his true colors in the solo. i will rep for under the wishing tree, half of arc angels, and his playing with emmylou (all over red dirt girl) and lucinda williams (car wheels on a gravel road) etc etc

much like los lobos, actually, he's a killer talent but only an intermittently memorable songwriter

cuca's blues off the second latin playboys' album is great too

I wish I could find a streaming version of it

haha the polecats

I saw that video on the max headroom show iirc

loved "make a circuit with me" at the time, but the years have not been kind

also: thin white rope

probably my favorite band that's even remotely related to this style/sound/moment, not excluding the likes of the gun club and X. never had a big critical following, so i guess they didn't have much to lose, but <3<3<3<3<3<3 (and more besides)

http://img525.imageshack.us/img525/2316/picture4jj.png

http://img163.imageshack.us/img163/6724/picture5cy.png

Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine.

http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/281/picture6to.png

also: thin white rope

Yeah, was thinking of them more than once on this thread -- I draw different connections in my head as well, but in part that's due to the label they were on, since Frontier was the home/starting point for acts like the Adolescents, Christian Death, Suicidal Tendencies.

"make a circuit with me" was on vh1's the vault a couple years ago and became my 5yo son's most requested music video on the dvr

so it's still touching the youth today

ppl are going forward, I was actually looking forward to going back

heralded 60s/70s acts that clearly didn't have the right stuff

Humble Pie?

Then again I'm sure Gorge/xhuxk/Scott will be along to complain that I mentioned them.

30 days in the hole for you, ned

Hahah

freedy johnston

james mcmurtry

there.

paul kelly

Actually what is the current status as such of the Black Crowes?

just played the Fillmore saturday night

beloved by all. why do you ask?

About this 'all' you mention.

ryan adams was born 2 late

actually, i'm sort of surprised at how popular the Crowes remain with a younger audience. I know a few twentysomethings who love them. They have terrible taste, but ... it might coincide with DMB fandom ...

That actually makes sense.

freedy johnston!!!

ned must listen to nothing but steve forbert for the rest of the week.

And I thought last week was bad!

a fate worse than freedy

aw guys half of shake your money maker is grebt trash (in the spirit of humble pie!), southern harmony is gold, and after that there are a few good songs but who cares

I'm having too much fun over at the rolling stone archives

When The Eagles left their gilded nest, America didn't lose its favorite band, it gained a plethora of solo artists. Among them, only drummer Don Henley is making consistently compelling music, and his second solo effort manages to maintain the highest standards of studio professionalism and lyrical acuity set by that high-flying band. Spontaneity has never been Henley's strong suit, so he looks to score points with craft and tosses in a few topical curves for good measure.

Henley is currently riding high with "The Boys of Summer," a wistful look over the shoulder at a faded summer romance. Guitarist Mike Campbell frames the song with his piquant single-note picking, while Henley offers up an aching vocal that'll tug at the heartstrings of anyone who ever bid a soulful sayonara to a bikinied baby. "The Boys of Summer" sets a mood of romantic dolor that prevails, though is not equaled, throughout the first side. Even the titles abound in weary negatives: "You Can't Make Love," "You're Not Drinking Enough," "Not Enough Love in the World" – all of the songs draggy ballads in the mold of the Eagles hit "Take It to the Limit."

Side two is another animal altogether, wherein Henley and pals – guitarist-sidekick Danny Kortchmar, various members of the Heartbreakers and Toto, plus other guests and sessionmen – really spring to life. On this side, Henley moves from the personal to the political, mapping out with black humor a modern world barely hanging on its hinges.

"Building the Perfect Beast" builds up steamrolling momentum as Henley nervously ponders the madness being loosed in laboratories in the name of science: "The secrets of eternity/We've found the lock and turned the key/We've shakin' up those building blocks/Going deeper into that box." That's Pandora's box, friends. Here, and throughout the side, synthesizers are used not as sentimental embellishment but to sound an air-raid siren on the impending apocalypse. "Beast" sounds something like big-band jazz, driven by a bank of brassy synths and a register-scraping vocal from Henley.

After the abstract horror of the title track, "Sunset Grill" zeroes in on its protagonist's tangible sense of entrapment in a dead-end hangout in a big city. Hunkered over his beer while whores and bums promenade outside, Henley sings, "You see a lot more meanness in the city/It's the kind that eats you up inside." "Sunset Grill" ends in a long, jazzy instrumental fade as evocative of darkened streets and unraveled dreams as "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue."

"All She Wants to Do Is Dance" is a caustic, dry-witted look at Americans abroad, partying obliviously in dangerous places. It's Henley's own "Undercover of the Night," full of images of violence and heat: Club Med à go-go in the bloody Third World. And it rocks with words and music as pointed as punji sticks, as does "Drivin' with Your Eyes Closed," a cryptic attack on the reckless, violent road the U.S. is traveling ("You're gonna hit somethin'/But that's the way it goes"). Kortchmar slashes out some nasty, Zeppelin-ish chords and overdubs a tinkly "96 Tears"-style keyboard, while Henley spits out his most derisive vocal and slams at the drums – not bad for a two-man band.

After the stark panorama of life in the ruins laid out in the preceding songs, the LP ends on a positive note with "Land of the Living." No solutions are proffered, just a bit of shelter from the storm in the arms of one who "Came and pulled me through." It's sung almost as a gospel confessional with an Al Green-type lilt – an encouraging personal testimonial that closes a brave, near-great side of music from Don Henley.

PARKE PUTERBAUGH

get going ned:

Alive on Arrival Nemperor/CBS Records, 1978
Jackrabbit Slim Nemperor, 1979
Little Stevie Orbit Nemperor, 1980
Steve Forbert Nemperor, 1982
Streets Of This Town Geffen Records, 1988
The American In Me Geffen Records, 1992
Mission of the Crossroad Palms Giant/Warner Bros. Records, 1995
Rocking Horse Head Giant/Warner Bros. 1996
Evergreen Boy 2000
Any Old Time (Songs of Jimmie Rodgers) 2002
Just Like There's Nothin' to It 2004
Strange Names & New Sensations 2007
The Place And The Time 2009
Be Here Now: Solo Live 1994
King Biscuit Flower Hour: New York, 1982 1996
Here's Your Pizza 1997
Be Here Again: Solo Live 1998
Evergreen Boy 2000
Acoustic Live: The WFUV Concert 2000
Live at the Bottom Line 2000
Solo Live in Bethlehem 2002
Good Soul Food - Live at the Ark Rolling Tide Records 2004
It's Been A Long Time: Live Acoustic With Paul Errico 2006

What did Freedy do wrong again?

x-post -- I'm going to give Dave Q a thousand bucks to listen to them all for me.

That's Pandora's box, friends.

After the stark panorama of life in the ruins laid out in the preceding songs

Never knew Malibu was Thunderdome.

Henley and pals
Henley and pals
Henley and pals
Henley and pals
Henley and pals
Henley and pals
Henley and pals
Henley and pals

When The Eagles left their gilded nest, America didn't lose its favorite band, it gained a plethora of solo artists.
This some kind of Three Amigos reference?

a caustic, dry-witted look at Americans abroad, partying obliviously in dangerous places full of images of violence and heat: Club Med à go-go in the bloody Third World. And it rocks with words and music as pointed as punji sticks,

Said pals, courtesy Wikipedia:

Personnel

* Don Henley - percussion, drums, keyboards, vocals, chant, harmony vocals
* Michael Boddicker - synthesizer
* Lindsey Buckingham - guitar, vocals, harmony vocals
* Mike Campbell - synthesizer, guitar, percussion
* Belinda Carlisle - vocals, harmony vocals
* Bill Cuomo - synthesizer, percussion
* Martha Davis - vocals, chant, harmony vocals
* Tim Drummond - bass
* Marie Pascale Elfman - vocals, ensemble
* Albhy Galuten - synthesizer, synclavier
* Jerry Hey - horn
* Jim Keltner - drums
* Larry Klein - bass
* Danny "Kootch" Kortchmar - organ, synthesizer, bass, guitar, percussion, keyboards, synthesizer guitar, chant, omnichord
* Dominique Mancinelli - vocals, ensemble
* Kevin McCormick - African drums
* Sam Moore - harmony vocals
* Randy Newman - synthesizer
* Michael O'Donahue - vocals, chant
* Carla Olson - vocals, chant
* David Paich - synthesizer, piano, keyboards
* Pino Palladino - bass
* Steve Porcaro - synthesizer
* Charlie Sexton - guitar
* Patty Smyth - vocals, chant, harmony vocals
* J.D. Souther - vocals, chant
* Benmont Tench - synthesizer, piano, keyboards
* Waddy Wachtel - vocals, chant
* Ian Wallace - drums

* Charlie Sexton - guitar

CONSPIRACY

an aching vocal that'll tug at the heartstrings of anyone who ever bid a soulful sayonara to a bikinied baby lol

man, that must've been an expensive record to make

I dunno, half of it seems to be chanting.

an aching vocal that'll tug at the heartstrings of anyone who ever bid a soulful sayonara to a bikinied baby lol
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0janfcZ8LUw

Wachtel charged at least 10 grand per chant iirc

cowboy junkies? i guess that was a couple years later...

Heck no ... if anything, they're still madly underrated. They invented slowcore! (kinda) I guess their crossover into proper mainstream success makes sense next to bands like Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians (who probably deserve a mention on this thread), I think Margo Timmins even made People's 50 Most Beautiful People list one year. They eventually hit the jam band circuit, which might be the rough equivalent of being banished to critics' purgatory, but they're still a damn fine sounding live band!

Anyway, I don't remember anybody lumping them in with the "rootsy" bands being mentioned here. Recording an album on one mic in a church might be a bit cliche now, but it wasn't the case in 1987.

"an aching vocal that'll tug at the heartstrings of anyone who ever bid a soulful sayonara to a bikinied baby"

http://www.avaglamour.com/merchant/uploads/m6t8i4y3c8x4z5k7a1l0.jpg

This was the year I discovered Steve Forbert. I didn't like him much.

Alive on Arrival Nemperor/CBS Records, 1978

Rolling Country 2009 Thread

Actually, earlier in that thread I actually kinda like his new album a little bit for two days, then decide otherwise. (Don't worry, I won't link to it, but it's searchable if anybody really cares.)

Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians (who probably deserve a mention on this thread)

My god they were actually legitimately huge, I remember now. There was some story I read in 88/89 talking about how Geffen felt plenty smug because they had two powerhouse sales acts in her and Guns'n'Roses and I honestly forget who they listed first.

If the Cowboy Junkies had never covered "Sweet Jane" they'd have developed into a monster band. It really unseated their potential. Edie was huge popularly but critics were very, very reserved on that band. Geffen had a huge amount of money behind that record.

no way, that's crazy sauce

One for the ILE unusual details thread:

Her father, Eddie Brickell, "the Fort Worth Southpaw", was posthumously inducted into the Texas State Bowling Association Hall of Fame in 1988.

dying over here

If hip-hop is to survive, it must move beyond pseudo-nationalistic dogma and the gangsta gibberish spouted more often than not for the sake of shock value and a quick dollar. In the past, visionary groups like Public Enemy, De la Soul and last year's conformity busters in Arrested Development jumped into the fray just when it seemed rap was set to rap itself over the head. Digable Planets follow in this tradition with their debut album, Reachin' (A New Refutation of Time and Space), and methodically strip hip-hop to the bone with Afro-chic witticisms backed by a trunkload of retro jazz and funk beats.

Digable Planets – Butterfly, Ladybug and Doodle Bug – flaunt and manipulate hip-hop culture (attitude, vernacular, dress) in ways only true rap enthusiasts could appreciate. As if on cue from its be-bop predecessors, this trio strikes a slick pose straight out of New York City and crushes stereotypes in the process. Yes, they are quirky bohemians, but rest assured they've got crisp ghetto flavor to boot. And no, the presence of the lady Ladybug is not a gimmick; rapwise, she is the best performer in the group and could hold her own with the best on the scene.

As in the jazz aesthetic they pay homage to on their first single, the bass-driven "Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat)," Digable Planets' modus operandi is to elevate a rebellious and oft-misunderstood music to universal recognition. The group's name signifies that each individual is a planet that is, well, "digable," and the timid insect handles highlight the group's social thrust and concern for community.

Aptly titled, the album reaches into one area heretofore untouched by most male rappers. On the darkly poetic "La Femme Fétal," Butterfly speaks delicately of his belief in abortion rights. Light songs like "Pacifics" present a twentysomething kaleidoscope of New York City, while "Escapism (Gettin' Free)" celebrates the wonders of music. "Jimmi Diggin Cats" is a playful tribute to Jimi Hendrix and other icons of yesteryear often sampled by rappers and their DJs but rarely understood. Butterfly insists that if Hendrix were around today he "would have dug us."

Reachin' (A New Refutation of Time and Space) is everything hip-hop should be: artistically sound, unabashedly conscious and downright cool. And Digable Planets is the kind of rap act every fan should cram to understand. (RS 650)

KEVIN POWELL

is that the guy from the Real World

ladybug was a total babe

x-post: YES!

he taught me a lot, rapwise

he recently ran for office in NY don't know if he won

Didn't win, will run again next year.

my pal king britt used to tour with digable planets. i'd take them over arrested development anyday.

I'm not laughing at that review at all, it seems like something he would write, and it was, and there ya go.

also, just so it doesn't get lost in the shuffle it is awesome that edie brickell's bowler dad is named eddie

c'mon, ned, not even at this?

the timid insect handles highlight the group's social thrust and concern for community

I remember SPIN preferred DP's abortion song to AD's abortion song. But they would.

woah king britt!! crazy

c'mon, ned, not even at this?

He's no drummer for Gay Dad.

i remember him writing some good articles for the source back in the day

I call myself doodle bug because I am socially conscious

i believe Kevin Powell collaborated w/ Reigndance though

Digable Planets' two albums are amazing (second one moreso than the first). that review is solid lolz tho

He's right though -- all hip-hop should be artistically sound.

oh god don't get me started about andre that guy was such a whiney bitch when he got the flu.

HI DERE is missing out on all this Real World action.

Wrong about this though: "If hip-hop is to survive, it must move beyond pseudo-nationalistic dogma and the gangsta gibberish spouted more often than not for the sake of shock value and a quick dollar."

it would be interesting to get together a comp of all the musical projects featured on the real world. but i digress.

and then maybe do a big benefit concert for the real world with all those bands

"We Are The Real World"

lol yes

the dude with dreads from season three was in some kinda "funky hip hop jazz" sub-brand new heavies type deal i think

second season had a bunch of music ... girl in the en vogue kinda group ...