shifts in popular opinion you have noticed

noticed this with The Clash over time. to people my brother's age (the forgotten Foghat tail-end of Boomerdom) they were the only band that mattered and now to a lot of younger folks they are forgotten/dismissed in favor of sayyyyyyy...Wire? someone like that.

and today on the FB record freaks and geeks page i am on every day people were going OFF on Tom Waits. in a way that i don't think i would have heard in years past. he's a hokey maudlin goofball to some people now. of course i had to post a link to that made-up waits lyrics thread on here because it just might be my favorite ilm thread ever.

anyway, i think these shifts are healthy. i like the back and forth of generations/time.

obviously, it goes both ways. i never in a million years would have thought i would be selling hoyt axton and paul williams albums to 20 and 30-somethings in the 21st century.

the first time I saw a woman wear fur on the NYC subway and no one bitched her out or glared at her, sometime in the late 90s, was when I knew the leftward tilt in this country was gone gone gone--and I was right

The Dead is the biggest one that comes to mind -- they were much more divisive when I was younger -- you were either the hippie deadhead type or you hated them, with the occasional "guilty pleasure" straggler.

yeah Dead resuscitation is def a thing

ppl that hate the Clash are fools

At one time, Deep Purple were considered part of an early-70s heavy rock trinity with Zeppelin and Sabbath iirc. I don't think they're quite seen in the same regard as the other two these days.

No one really thinks of Clapton as God anymore, do they?

Every Picture Tells a Story used to be listed as one of the top essential classic rock albums of all time, alongside the Beatles and Stones.

Shift away from Beatles -- they're still loved by many but no one bothers talking about them, and it became a cool guy thing not to like them.

re: the Dead, their rep probably benefited from stopping touring, I would think. One of the most unappealing things about them was their shitty-fan-travelling-circus-of-burnouts, which have now been dispersed/diversified across the jamband spectrum. Now the Dead can be safely enjoyed without all that baggage.

I still hate them tho

The shift wrt at least the last of those would have occurred too early for me to have noticed as it was happening, though.
2xp

i guess it's cool to malign pavement now?

obviously, i can still sell Clash records. in the same way that i sell Springsteen records. they are classic rock now. but you certainly don't get that feverish coveting going on like you see with the Smiths or Joy Division. that's partially derived from scarcity (Clash records not uncommon here cuz they sold a bunch...). but it's also a deep fandom you see with JD and Smiths among people who were not around for those band's heydays that is definitely not there for Clash. but maybe that's too apples and oranges...

in any case, i think Clash have faded from view over time. and the youngsters are the ones who have to carry those old banners.

70s lite rock going from the enemy to ironic "yacht rock" to essential.

That's a good one.

I haven't experienced it personally, but I keep seeing mentions here that those damn kids today malign REM. Which is just nuts.

I don't think they malign REM as much as they don't know or care about them.

"I'd like to do my presentation/paper on REM"/"I'd like to learn an REM song": things I have literally never heard from anyone born after the 80s

(in years of teaching popular music-related classes and guitar lessons)

Fleetwood Mac becoming a hip influence to cite.

I said this before but that P4k 80s list where like Flipper and Devo are garbage for old dorks and like Womack & Womack and George Benson are cool, is a world I never could have predicted

Yeah, a few younger kids at the local record store think of U2 and REM as "oldies." Don't even mention Bob Dylan or Neil Young to these guys, it'd be like someone convincing 12 year old me to jam some Burl Ives or something

Obvious answer here is embrace of corporate pop / poptimism etc. Most people who bought Clinic and Arab on Radar albums ten years ago didn't give a shit what the new Janet Jackson single sounded like. For better or worse, feel like we've sorta witnessed the death of the "guilty pleasure," for better or worse (except, like, praise and worship music, or Michael Bolton or something - the final frontiers)

anyway, i think these shifts are healthy. i like the back and forth of generations/time.

this is why i should never ever have discarded any album.
at periods in my life i have hated hip hop/techno/industrial/80s electro etc,
and so, at the time trimmed the collection accordingly, only to massively regret it a few years later.
but yeah, the in/out spin re certain bands/genres is fascinating.
and the clash idea is interesting.
i have wondered this myself recently.
BH loved them with a passion, whereas me, i always preferred B.A.D + variants thereof.
those 4 years difference clearly made a difference in how we saw the band/off-shoots.

i actually revived that REM thread not long ago to mention the lack of caring among younger people. but they were big and kinda boring for longer than they were indie and shadowy. that makes a difference. someone in their 30's only remembers the later stuff.

Every Picture Tells a Story used to be listed as one of the top essential classic rock albums of all time, alongside the Beatles and Stones.

― Hi! I'm twice-coloured! (Sund4r), Tuesday, April 5, 2016 7:13 PM (7 minutes ago)

i still rate this as one of my favorite albums ever, but yeah i've hardly met anyone else who's even heard it. most ppl i know, even major music buffs, think of stewart as a kitschy figure and seem shocked that anyone would take him seriously.

"i always preferred B.A.D + variants thereof."

lol, the only clash-related stuff i own is the first BAD album/medicine show 12 inch/cmon every beatbox 12 inch.

70s lite rock going from the enemy to ironic "yacht rock" to essential.

― human life won't become a cat (man alive), Tuesday, April 5, 2016 3:16 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Isn't designed-for-radio pop kind of experiencing the same trajectory? Dismissed as disposable and/or ironic novelty listening for years, now people are truly valuing the more successful examples or going out of their way to champion it. Not saying there's anything wrong with this!

and yet ABBA still hasn't become a cool favorite

ABBA has tunes. intricate melodies have never been less cool than now

the intensity of clash fandom seemed to have a big element of personal identification with the band, where you really cared about joe, mick, etc., maybe closer to the way ppl care/cared about the beatles than the way they care about wire. and that's something which might be hard for younger ppl to embrace, since the clash are gone and will never play again and their story is kind of messy and sprawling, not short and neat like the smiths or joy division. i've always loved them but always wondered if i would've loved them even more if i'd gotten to live through their existence, seen a couple shows, etc.

he's a hokey maudlin goofball to some people now

I've always kind of felt this way about Tom Waits but felt like I was very much in the minority and was missing something that everyone else apparently saw.

A couple of years ago me and another guy my age (41) talking to some people 10 years younger who all thought Guns and Roses were no different than Poison and Winger while we were trying to argue how different they felt when we were kids but I don't know how true this really is in retrospect.

Acceptance and fandom of New Age was not even close to a thing for record snob types two decades ago was it?

xp Those lines are p blurred now, yeah. Why was Soundgarden good and Ugly Kid Joe and Silverchair terrible? They just were, kid, OK? I can't explain it.

it's interesting if people are starting to diss Tom Waits now, because even though I like a lot of his stuff, it's always amazed me the kind of critical free pass he seemed to get. Like, every time an album came out, boom, 4 1/2 stars. In the 80s, what he was doing was so different than what you normally got from even underground pop acts, he was seen as breath of fresh (rotten stinking) air. Like, there was the moment when something like Capt Beefheart aesthetics broke into the mainstream, and in the context of the time, that was a pretty cool thing to happen. And yeah, he WAS hokey -- it seemed he went out of his way to be hokey sometimes, and that's part of his thing.

"and yet ABBA still hasn't become a cool favorite"

they were for people my age kinda. along with the carpenters. i think mamma mia! might have ruined them for later generations.

yeah, was gonna say ABBA was cool in the 90s, fwiw

most ppl i know, even major music buffs, think of stewart as a kitschy figure and seem shocked that anyone would take him seriously.

Hasn't this been the case since at least the early '80s, though?

abba prob would be cool again if not for the nazi stuff.

well I didn't know anyone who liked them but me and my one music nerd friend. I actually pitched a big ABBA retrospective to a certain popular indie music site about 15 years ago, and they passed. Ended up writing it for Stylus

oh wait, that was ace of base. sorry, abba.

GnR is totally better than Poison and Winger, Soundgarden is totally better Ugly Kid Joe and Silverchair. I don't think there's even any subjectivity to those declarations, they just are.

One of the weirdest hip namedrops of our time, for me, is Enya.

I guess I don't know who her actual fanbase was in the early to mid 90s, but at the time she sort of seemed like vapid earth mom music to me.

Really? Huh. So what you're saying is that there's hope for the eventual validation of my evergreen Basia fandom.

I never thought I'd see a festival headlined by Radiohead, LCD Soundsystem, and Lionel Richie and yet here we are.

Similarly the whole new age thing. My parents used to make fun of new age stuff, and I associated it with this one hippieish friend of my parents who wrote her own feminist Jewish songs for holidays. One of the Passover songs included the word "afterbirth" and I think it was my introduction to that word.

tori amos

One of the weirdest hip namedrops of our time, for me, is Enya.

― human life won't become a cat (man alive), Tuesday, 5 April 2016 19:51 (9 minutes ago) Permalink

I guess I don't know who her actual fanbase was in the early to mid 90s, but at the time she sort of seemed like vapid earth mom music to me.

― human life won't become a cat (man alive), Tuesday, 5 April 2016 19:53 (7 minutes ago) Permalink

i think this has to do with Grimes. also Brad wrote a pretty positive review of her album on pitchfork

enya probably due to "only time" reaching the age of millennial nostalgia

One of the weirdest hip namedrops of our time, for me, is Enya.

i have had a new age/ambient groove recently,
and after the recent critical love-in for enya i picked up a couple of their cds from the cheap bins.
nope.
still aint feeling it.
give me the relative mad sonic non-excess of enigma anyday over her dreary nothingness.
summary : next time i catch up with luke from tQ i will be having words.

young'uns don't care about REM now because they are totally boring + irrelevant to modern musical landscape

my piano and guitar teachers in middle/high school fucking loved enya

I have bad associations with her, because for some reason Orinoco Flow and the video for it caused me nightmares when I was a teenager. The song has a suffocating effect on me.

terius is really easy to explain because it's as simple as him falling the fuck off. he's still "influential" on young r&b songwriters as d40 says but his solo work just got really bad really fast

Yep

and at the same time his peak stuff isn't old enough to get a second wave of canonisation, which is usually some sort of confluence of young people discovering it for the first time AND nostalgia from the people who loved it at the time

not sure if an entire generation has passed such that there are young people yet to discover terius (i mean he's still active and pretty prominent as a songwriter), and terius's original stans are mostly trying to ignore his current output. give it another 5 years or so though.

Jefferson Airplane strike me as a band whose reputation has definitely suffered over time, even among people my age (mid-30s) who like '60s hippie-ish stuff like The Doors, Love, Byrds I've never met anyone into them. I think they're OK myself. (several xposts)

― Gavin, Leeds, Wednesday, April 20, 2016 4:20 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

at least part of it is that I think Airplane is such a high/low band, like their best stuff when they are flying high is super unreal great but then they can get really tacky almost like a characicature of "hippie" music...they had an odd mix of experimental & heavy psych out & corniness

and I think Gracy is divisive like Patti is

as far as the Doors I think they are psychedelic but actually not hippies if that makes sense, they are more LA sleazy, drunk, louche, and death vibes....i align them more with VU in a way even though I'm sure Lou would hate that

the monkees have more critical respect these days than they ever did.

some years ago, I got ahold of this Hot tuna comp, which is terrific if you are allergic to Grace, Paul and Marrty as I am but like Jorma and above all want to hear Jack…

I need to get into Hot Tuna haven't gotten to then yet. Seriously though Volunteers is so hype, listened to that last night, Jorma is killing it all over that record

Spencer Dryden era JA were pretty awesome. Especially Baxters.

Patti Smith is great up to at least Radio Ethiopia. Live stuff with band from that era is great too.

Richard Hell created a lot of the punk style. Brought in the safety pin particularly. Malcolm Mclaren tried to get him in for a proto Pistols apparently. & I've read of 1st wave Brit punk bands having to nearly apologise for overt borrowings from his music. 1st lp is great, wish there was more. 2nd doesn't have him playing bass does it?

Wonder to what extent Manzarek fits non (or anti) hippy view of the Doors. Isn't his book a bit Age of Aquariusy?
Still, do love the music.

It's Jim's trip man we're all just passengers on the crystal ship

I interviewed Ray manzarek twice: he spouted old faithful amounts of 60s's were great maaannn doggerel, both times insisting that acid was fine and everyone should do it… he occasionally said stuff that was marginally off message as such, but he was hippie as they come. Don't have firsthand experience with Densmore or Krieger, but it seems like all three were/are hippie dream diehards.

yeah if you are not into the over the top (at times) vocals, hot tuna a good thing. jack casady just as talented as jorma.

What sales figures do you use to show that love king was his breakout album? His first two albums sold better in their first weeks than love king, and love king's sales seem to have dropped off faster than either previous record. He didn't do Beyoncé and Madonna business, but he was doing well critically and commercially before love king.

― bamcquern, Tuesday, April 19, 2016 9:16 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i guess i meant shifts in critical opinion. i guess with contemporary artists shifts in popular opinion are observable through sales. i don't think he had much critical attention before love king though

just watch that footage of them doing white rabbit for the kids on american bandstand in 1967. evil drug hippies totally took over that day. they sold a zillion records. pretty unreal. and they look pretty punk doing it.

when i first heard all the brit folk bands like fairport and all those guys they seemed familiar to me and i realized it was because of those airplane records i had when i was a kid. i dig the dueling lead vocals, but i can get that it might seem hippy dippy now to people. at their best marty and grace would entwine themeselves in a jazz-like way around the instruments. i dig that. uh, man.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuwMEiNg3B8

(i have been totally obsessed with Spirit the last few years. a band i had records by when i was a kid and who i always liked but there records really speak to me NOW. you know? so great.)

Man, I used to hear Spirit all the time on "classic rock" radio in the '80s and '90s (just "Nature's Way" and "I Got A Line On You") but I can't remember the last time I heard them on the radio. It's been decades.

12 Dreams of Dr Sardonicus rules

Great band.

xposting a little. I'm not really a bigger Patti Smith fan than anyone else, but her last album Banga from 2012 was flat out great, which really took me by surprise. I like it for the music, but she can also still pull off a kind of lyrical gravitas that you don't see as much these days (I don't think). I like the post above that mentions her and Kristin Hersh, as they do have a lot in common on some level.

JA's "high flying bird" is so so good

he actually thinks 1970s Chicago was about "tolerance and free speech"

wrong thread lol

....or what if i posted it in the RIGHT thread and agents of the SJW technocracy moved it into the wrong thread in an effort to discredit me?????? #staywoke #infowars #stayastute

Tolerance for excellent horn arrangements

Spirit have elements I keep hearing in later rock music so wonder if they were majorly influential or if it is just coincidental.
Do like what i've heard of them anyway. But do need to pick up another couple of the original line up run on cd.

Spirit have elements I keep hearing in later rock music so wonder if they were majorly influential or if it is just coincidental.

Will be able to answer that when the court case is finished.

they were so varied. Spirit. which might have been a detriment in some ways, i dunno. i mean they had a huge hit, but the albums really go all over the place. people definitely buy their albums faster now when i put them out than 5 years ago or so. and hepcats have latched onto that randy solo album. the kaptain kopter album. for its over the top guitar squall. there is great crazy stuff on the 70's albums too. even on the 80's albums!

Spirit's original lineup split just a couple months after Dr. Sardonicis came out. The groups mix of pop, psych and jazz was unique and if perhaps if they would have kept touring, they might have finally clicked in the early 70s prog/hard rock album rock period.

I think they suffered a bit from not having a "frontman".

I remember when a P!nk song came out a bunch of years ago that Beck produced, and it was essentially "Fresh Garbage" with P!nk singing different lyrics/melody. OK, fine, that's cool...except in accompanying interviews, P!nk talked about "that fun track Beck recorded...it's such a typical Beck song!" Beck didn't rush to correct her, either.

Beck ripped off Fresh Garbage wholesale himself

maybe this is the same as the P!nk song idk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJZkVNQBVYw

Same song. I didn't know Beck did it though!

Looking for a place to ask. Has anybody ever called 13 Songs (i.e. The 1st 2 mini lps) by Fugazi Math Rock?
I thought it was material that was massively influential, along with the group ethos on the more punk end of the independent /alternative scene since it came out. Just surprised to see it dismissed as such in a riposte to the Rolling Stone list.

&with Spirit I think I was hearing vocal mannerisms echoed in late 70s hardish rock.
Also possibly some song structure stuff from 12 Dreams echoed elsewhere.

I don't think Patti Smith fits here at all. At Field Day in Victoria Park, last year, on the Sunday playing before Ride she got an ecstatic reception. She played all of Horses, plus more. It was fucking great. I don't understand why there is an issue here with her - she's always been fantastic. I don't get how she is dated.

Playing before Ride may have been a bit strange but she got that dusk hour just damn right.

JUst been knocked out by that Fugazi are Math rock and therefore don't fit on a list of 40 top punk records put together by Rolling Stone, whereas Nirvana apparently do according to the same writer.
As far as I can remember in the early days of Fugazi as represented on the material on those 2 mini lps or their later reissue as 13 songs the band were mainly playing on a punk circuit to crowds with a large punk content. Is that wrong?

That's how I remember it: almost everyone I knew in Louisville in the later nineties who was into mathrock was also into Fugazi, but it's a very strange editorial move to separate them from their punk context.

that fugazi thing really fucking irritates me

kinda see what you guys are talking about b/c it sounds baffling

The full description among a series of responses to the individual entries on the RS list was 'Math Rock. Yawn.'
i can't see much ambiguity in that comment.
It's up at the Ugly Things site which I find quite disappointing.

Many of those 90s math rock groups came out of the same punk/hardcore scenes anyway, especially in Louisville and Chicago. For some of those musicians, it was often their second known band after an earlier more trad. punk sounding band.

uh, meant "kinda WANNA see what you guys are talking about" above. left a word out there.

Fugazi doesn't even particularly strike me as much as math rock other than a few tunes like Stacks or Arpeggiator. Definitely not as much as say Jesus Lizard.

I don't remember seeing them called math rock before. & certainly think they came out of a scene at least based in punk. So do find it a bit baffling that they're supposed to be one thing they may have touched on to the exclusion of something I know they were influential in the contemporary version of.
Wonder how widespread that 'corrected' list view of them is. Seems as misguided to me as the writer finds the original list.

i guess like steady diet of nothing was the only fugazi album than maybe

i just don't put them in the same category as don cab, a minor forest etc

It didn't seem like a leap in 90s post-hxc circles (esp. keeping in mind the more discontinuous songs on Red Medicine and End Hits), but that doesn't mean they weren't accepted as punk.

I think the 'math' was built up originally in the rhythm section, then the guitars gradually followed esp Guy

Fugazi is too cool to be popular. maybe if in 10 years "Merchandise" is on an Apple ad they will get onto the Rolling Stone top 40.

They're on the list. I'd think deservedly so. Writer correcting the list seems to be saying they don't belong and it's a foregone conclusion hence Yawn.
I think there is fantastic material on that set. Think a lot of punks worldwide think so too.

ONe could assume taht at any point in a history dealing with revival of certain styles or the influence of certain styles there will inevitably be some parts of the original style or that associated with it that are no longer deemed cool. So certain trappings won't be brought to the surface or will just be laughed at and swiftly shelved. Would hope that one would maintain the cool aspects and recognise what made it of inherent worth in the first place, but would also think that one has to look at things from a current perspective.
JUst trying to think what Gadamer says about tradition which is something about it not being a monolithically solid entity but something in conversation/communication with the current era so under continual flux. With some new elements coming in and some older bits fading out, possibly to be revived later if the tehn current focus deems them of interest.

So looking at things like punk or mod or whatever other youth culture keeps being revived those involved will never be back at the starting point so things relevant at the time, motivations etc will never be quite the same. & if they were they would tend to ossify and probably be seen as more of a joke than something cool. Though would hope taht the spirit of both of those scenes I mentioned would be more into continual reinvention so would avoid that. Which might be why md gave way to what ever other stylish egocentric fashions it gave way to and punk begat postpunk begat whatever. But both got revived as something more static.
If you see what I mean. Or at least that's what I'd think, like.