Taking Sides: APPETITE FOR DESTRUCTION VS. NEVERMIND by Nirvana

nevermind has my favourite cover but did more harm

Hahaha. You completely got me on that one. I knew as soon as I hit "submit" that said sentence was wrong. In any event, ya get where I was goin' with that, I assume.

Nevermind may well be as good as any Bullet boys album, however.

And similar to its contest against Never Mind the Bollocks, Appetite for Destruction's cover art is woefully inferior to Nevermind's. Appetite's candy-colored comic book menace (deeply entrenched in the band's genre) is no match for Nevermind's concept. One glance at Appetite and you pretty much know exactly what's in store. This is not the case with Nevermind.

Taking it a step further, G'n'R's hirsute, bandana-laden, leather-swaddled biker outlaw aesthetic also seems so exhausted and rooted in the trappings of a bloated subculture that it completely dates itself. (Not that flannel & Doc Martens are exactly timeless, admittedly). It just seemed that Nirvana were less concerned with visually adhering to an afore-established uniform (they didn't even look especially punky).

They totally adhered to the post-punk-thrift-store uniform.

Yeah, but so do Bowery bums. You look at a member of G'n'R and think: "ah, I see....a rough-hewn, axe-wielding road warrior on a mission to get loud, laid and loaded with his wheels, whiskey and woman." You look at a member of Nirvana and think: "ah, there's someone I can buy pot from."

Well, I just think its more interesting to look at the entire package in context.

Anyways, I digress: The singles on Appetite are better than "Teen Spirit" and "Lithium" and "Come As You Are", but Nevermind is more consistently good with no real filler (even album-ending downer "Something In the Way" has its pull for me). In the event of a tie, the album I listened to in high school wins out. Nirvana, easy.

And Axl might as well have blown his own head off in '94, considering what we've got now.

xp: Jesus Chuck, you're getting all Bill James on us. (Though MPLS REPRESENT, yes Huskers/Mats > Nirvana, though not big-time)

Better than anything D Generation did, though, probably. And definitely better than Jesse Camp's album, or any solo album by anybody from Guns N Roses ever, INCUDING Slash's Snakepit!

wait, you're raiting Stink below Tim? that is SO WRONG!!!

10...

9....

8....

C'mon, that's kind of a cheap shot, isn't it? I like reading Chuck's obsessive compendiums of obscure bands that no one else remembers. It may seem like no matter what new band is under discussion, he can always remember an old one that was better, but it's probably true that there was an old one that was better, so why not say so if it's true?

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God you're a dipshit.

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0438/eddy.php

Nevermind would probably be #3 on my 2004 list because a 2004 major-label rock album that isn't entirely fucking lame would be an interesting novelty.

checkmate! i win!

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dude nate you can't change your name like that! some warning please! that was even more confusing than when chuck and cinniblount were posting the same way at the same time yesterday about axl (whose probably meditating by the Joshua Tree working over time to restore the new age karmic glow that's been dampered by all this judgemental harshery over his opus)

and this guy says *i'm* old, and *my* tastes are boring. how cute.

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I just gotta say, though -- the more I ponder friendly's paranoid and deluded (and seemingly sour-grapes-like even if he's never been in a band in his life) claim about my "lording over a ridiculous amount of power over what gets noticed in music in this town," the sillier it sounds. I mean, who are all the NY bands who he thinks I turned into big names, and who are all the ones he thinks my "power" prevented from being successes (and if he thinks neither, what the hell is he talking about)?? I'm really, really curious. The only one I'd imagine could fit at *all* in the former category would be Northern State, who wound up gettting signed a few months after they first sent me their great first demo EP, then whose second album (which I don't like) flopped (though *not* because I don't like it, I don't think.) As for the second category, I can't think of anybody! And there are PLENTY of NY bands who've gotten lots of press/MTV attention/dance club attention/etc in the past three or four years -- many of whom I like okay, but none of whom I noticed before anybody else did (well, I liked one Rapture EP before they were semi-famous, I think, but I don't remember telling anybody about it), and few of whom the *Voice* has especially fawned over, as I recall. Most of the countless bands I've raved about in the Voice (who generally tend to be noisier and weirder than the ones who've gotten sucessful, though there are exceptions) have gone absolutely nowhere. (I suppose the Voice has given consistently positive press to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, but I'm not a big fan of them, either -- there's one ILM thread a few months ago where I argue with Anthony Miccio, telling him they're way overrated no matter what he thinks -- so they can't be who friendly has in mind, right?) Maybe he wishes I liked Fiery Furnaces (who placed in Pazz and Jop) or Devendra Banhardt, or somebody, so they would've been given long positive reviews instead of short positive reviews?? I don't get it. We even ran a positive review of Liquid Tapedeck!!

okay, here goes. You're picky and choosy to a ridiculous degree over what you write off as just another example of a genre path and what you see as unique. I certainly can appreciate your eccentric obsessions - Guns N Roses as a disco band, that's novel and out there enough to impress me. But seems to me that if something doesn't strike you just right then it gets thrown in the "sounds like" pile.

We all do this - fuck there's too much shit out there, too many dinky little labels making too many dinky little records - but you'd be damned well served to dust off a little humility. That ability to question your own first impression has inevitably been lost as you've progressed down the career path to one of the more coveted music critic vantage points in the country.

This is only made worse by (and goes hand in hand with) the fact that there's a lot going on in music these days that's valid and being made by people too young to be your peers, and whom your smug "I seen it all before" attitude keeps you from investigating and understanding - so your knowledge of the context itself is lacking. I'd love to give you specific examples, and with a little time I'll cobble together a few, but really what I'm talking about is so endemic of your writing and so random and so determined by your own whim that it'd be hard to point out one definitive example. It's as much an eccentric part of your judgement / writing as the great little odd bullshit bits like the GNR-disco gem referenced above. Makes your writing and perspective interesting but doesn't lend itself to a global understanding of a whole rock scene in a big town. Basically said - dude you're too sure of your opinion and really, you shoudn't be.

okay, Black Dice remains the most overrated band in New York at the moment and has been for several years. Liars aren't good - they in fact suffer creatively from the same malady I'm ascribing to Chuck - misapplied confidence in their own genius. Interpol? come on, who cares? That one quiet Animal Collective record is really good, when it's not annoying. Again, a lot of bands should only release ten inches, but spend more time on them than they spend on LPs. How many records have AC put out now? Six??

Yeah, you have a lot of power over rock music, you edit the music section of the most prominent arts magazine in the most prominent city in the country. There's no talking around the fact that you have a powerful position, for what it's worth. You decide what gets attention from a very widely read source (despite the previously stated dwindling inches devoted to music within). Saying you're not responsible for the content of you section you're in charge of? What is this, Iran Contra?

This is kinda hilarious, too. I change my mind ALL THE TIME -- there are people out there who would tell you that that's my whole schtick (in fact, Phil Dellio wrote almost an entire essay about it once!)

...or does he?

This guy is asking to be taken seriously - he's gettin' paid to give his (boorish, scatterbrained, out of touch, random, clueless) opinion. He's the music editor of a big newspaper - not just some record collector posting to the list.

And anyhow, I don't give a shit about his writing, it's his management of that section that I have a beef with. He's hamfisted and out of the loop about what's going on - and the Time Out, hell, some weeks even the NY Post - are kicking his ass. That's just sad.

Still kinda wondering about this, too -- odd compliment, considering what a "curmudgeony old windbag" i am. (my new theory is that the guy once pitched me some ideas to *write* about, but he couldn't write for shit, and his pitch ideas were as incoherent as the ones he's expressed on this thread, so i assigned him nothing, and *that* hurt his feelings. but of course, i could be completely wrong about that.)

*runs and hides*

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(Besides, there are ALREADY a couple Chuck Eddy threads, I think.)

In the meantime, I pick Nevermind. While I hardly ever want to listen to it anymore (over-exposure) I can't deny its personal impact, and listening to Kurdt's stuff raises all sorts of conflicting emotions for me. Axl's stuff seems so silly, I can't imagine it having any kind of real emotional impact on *anybody* (tho I'm sure I'm wrong). Plus I like atonal noise shredding guitar solos more than Stones-riffage solos, so they win on that count too. I'm not gonna get into the drummer thing, especially not with chuck around...

Chuck is scretly prefers Nevermind! ;-)

Seriously though, was that intentional?

i am hallucinating or going crazy or something. jesus.

Nevermind, by the way. As was said upthread, fuck Guns & Roses.

guitar tech in the “amplified” Come As You Are:

“After Nirvana played "Lithium," Kurt went below the stage, where Axel and Elton John's
two pianos were mounted on a hydraulic lift awaiting their duet. Kurt spit up some pretty
nasty stuff upon the keys of what he thought was Axel’s piano, but when the pianos arose
for the duet's intro to "November Rain," Elton was seated at the piano whose keys Kurt
had spat upon. I'm not sure which was funnier, Kurt's horror at what he had done, or the
sight of Elton John hammering away on that piano.”