What bands or performers were the least competent on their instruments when they started? Like they were great even though they really couldn't play yet?

Sex Pistols? Though they were maybe better than they pretended to be (total supposition).

Does Half Japanese count? I mean, if that lack of conventional skill was a deliberate aesthetic component?

Sex Pistols' so-called lack of talent = a combination of McLaren hype and Vicious' image. Cook, Jones and Matlock were a tight combo.

Yeah, I suspected something like that might be the case. I don't know much about them beyond the stuff everybody knows.

Arto Lindsay

The Who

New Order

The Go-Betweens

The Cramps

i guess greg ginn? not that he stunk by any means at the beginning of the black flag, but towards the end when they came out with the process of weeding out, ginn was at top form with the guitar.

Lydia Lunch in Teenage Jesus & the Jerks

beastie boys have probably gotten way better at playing live instruments, even if the music is worse.

The original eX-Girl lineup were all talented singers, but new to their instruments.

(They've since rotated in more talented guitarists & drummers.)

Beat Happening obvy

http://www.subvulture.com/archive/mka_zac_hanson.jpg

some canonical so-"bad"-they-were-genius bands: 1/2 japanese, ramones, shaggs, guitar wolf, the kingsmen

Dunno. Ramones played pretty tight, just not complex stuff. Some way less competent punk bands around at the time.

Isn't Johnny Thunders meant to be the ultimate bad guitarist?

the germs!

The band's first live performance was at the Orpheum Theater. Pat Smear recalled:

"We made noise. Darby stuck the mic in a jar of peanut butter. It was a dare, we had no songs or anything! Lorna wore her pants inside out, and Darby covered himself in red licorice...we made noise for five minutes until they threw us off."

I saw Thunders circa 86/7 and he was so messed up he kept forgetting which song he was playing would start playing pipeline.

He played it quite well though, and it even worked OK sometimes - I thin get off the phone really suited it. He also looked like he was made of old wax too.

Also, another vote for New Order.

Worst ever case of sheer incompetence though was a '78ish gig by Wreckless Erik. I mean its something when people who have come to see you actually climb on the stage and try to physically stop you playing something nearly indestructible as whole wide world because you are playing it so badly.

Pussy Galore!

early Stooges

I never understood why New Order was so sloppy early on. Live boots of JD aren't nearly as sloppy. Were early NO songs that much harder to play than JD songs?

playing live along with sequencers not easy

early Kinks, especially Dave Davies and the drummer Mick Avory.

I'd say almost every single one of the people listed here could definitely manage a power chord. I think the early Slits is definitely the best in terms of seriously not knowing anything and making something awesome out of it.

Also Dee Dee Ramone was supposed to be completely 100% incompetent when he first started. There's a story in Please Kill Me about him auditioning for some band and him just moving his index finger up and down a bass while grimacing and trying to make a sound.

The Who
The Stooges
Sex Pistols
The Ramones
Greg Ginn

Absurd answers. (Unless you mean incompetent when they first started to play, years before they made a record. And if that's the case, include EVERY fucking musician who ever picked up an instrument for the first time, aside from the occasional freak genius.)

Yeah, when I think about answers to this question, I think about people who REALLY couldn't play, like, they were worse than I am, and I'm fucking terrible. Like Thai Elephant Orchestra kind of shit.

Psychedelic Furs

Joey Santiago of the Pixies

by the way, we did this before, here:

Can't Play Their Instruments

I knew there was a reason the Thai Elephant Orchestra came to mind.

Depeche Mode were pretty amateur synth players from the get-go iirc (with the possible exception of Vince)

Absurd answers.

When I said the Who, I meant it in terms of "couldn't play in the accepted sense of having a lot of facility in traditional modes of playing." So, Townshend, Moon, and Entwistle could play...but what they were playing ran counter to how those instruments were normally approached (for the most part), leading casual observers to conclude that they couldn't play. One of the funnier passages in Tony Fletcher's Keith Moon book is Ginger Baker desperately trying to convince himself that he is superior to Moon specifically because of Baker's formal training. And Townshend's limitations on the fretboard led him to radically de-emphasize it by developing a vast and theretofore unheard-of vocabulary of feedback.

Basically, the Who "couldn't play" in the same way Albert Ayler "couldn't play."

Pussy Galore!

absolutely ridiculous - their guitar playing is really something else, quite complex, lots of weird tunings, tons of riffage.

Raincoats

Basically, the Who "couldn't play" in the same way Albert Ayler "couldn't play."

Now that I'll agree to! This reminds me of my first exposure to Trout Mask Replica and was repulsed by the 'terrible' musicianship. "These guys can't play at all, can they?" It took me a few more listenings to realize that, far from being incompetent, they actually had AMAZING chops.

I saw Thunders circa 86/7 and he was so messed up he kept forgetting which song he was playing would start playing pipeline

same thing circa 79/80 except he would just stop playing and start fucking w/the audience. rip and all but i think johnny couldn't play that well but got away with faking it thru attitude and volume. as opposed to arto lindsay in DNA who really did invent his own approach -- nothing random about his skronk n scrape.

Alex James

I don't know, Sara, I'm not saying it's Paganini or anything, but don't you think e.g. "The Kids Are Alright" sounds like a pretty tight band who can play and sing in perfect harmony at the same time?

Johnny Thunders couldn't play? Maybe live, but on record he is tearing shit up.

we could always ask producer todd rundgren what the dolls were like in the studio...

johnny certainly makes the right noises at the right time in this (presumably pre-heroin) video

I agree with the Kinks suggestion

The thing about New Order was that most of their stuff wasn't clocked together or synced or any such shit. Kraftwerk was impressed with blue monday and visited them and were shocked by how non-technical their setup was

the pistol w. matlock were pretty damn tight

JT was an amazing guitarist. Totally unique approach -- he'd play through a song horizontally, variously playing rhythm or lead or some combination at any given moment, commenting on the melody, inserting little asides and hooks, cajoling the other guitar, egging the song along. No verse, chorus, verse for this guy. His parts were through-composed.

And the Who? Those guys were virtuosos. How old was Entwhistle when he did the bass break in My Generation? 20? I've never heard another living soul who could play like that, including the folks who've replaced him in the band.

That's what I thought about the Who, of varying skill levels at the start...Entwistle surely wasn't learning on the job, was he?

The Pixies used to boast in interviews about how Joey S. learned on the job. Then the Breeders said very similar things about Kelley Deal. Made me wonder if it was some shtick Kim invented to give reporters a hook.

Flipper, Mekons, Arthur Doyle...

The real answer is the Worst - they never got better, and they were amazing; say them support the Buzzcocks 30 years ago and have never forgotten it.

And Townshend played in a Jazz group before the who didn't he? so he must have known a few chords.

'saw them'

Flipper? I remember hearing a couple of the most serious musos going on at great length about just how unique and astonishing Ted Falconi was. Something like 'Love Canal' still holds it's own against the latest extreme/black/drone/doom releases.

sorry 'most serious musos I know' . . one of them is currently teaching sitar.

As a serial Flipper fan, I can vouch that they were shit musically.
Having said that, I've never heard anything like Ted---'Cement mixer ,'Nam Vet'== Falconi's guitar

Let Flipper teach Sitar!!!!

That was Flipper's appeal.

Gone Fishin' though sounded quite 'musical' to me. I was wrong x-post

I'm far from the first person to point this out (check that other thread), but the Shaggs definitely had some clue what they were doing, guitarwise - how else were they able to keep their voices and instruments in sync perfectly enough to sing/play the same note at the same time? And do it over and over throughout a song, no matter how skewed and irregular (or nonexistent) the bar lengths were. They weren't as untrained as Arto Lindsay or Jad Fair for example.