Return of the Son of Van Halen v. Smiths!

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a) "Jamie's Cryin'" vs. "William It Was Really Nothing" (DLR wins for rhyming "send a letter" with "she knows what that'll get her"!)

b) Morrisey defenders cite George Formby. DLR defenders cite Cab Calloway and Louis Prima.

c) I recall a comment from Dave Davies re VH's Kinks kovers (heh) - "They've missed the point of the song, the original was by working-class kids fighting for something, this group sounds like they've already got everything they could ever need." He's stumbled onto something - the Brits are so addicted to their own petty misery that they reflexively rejected affluent suntanned overachievers and thus did two generations of rhythm sections become "disposable lawnmower parts". Joyce and Rourke are seen as actual instrumentalists in the UK! (Misquoting Howlin' Wolf - "Those English boys want to rock so badly - and boy do they ever rock BADLY!" Jesus, Mills and Berry were like Carter/Williams in comparison.) Perhaps if the English could get their head around the concept that having shitloads of money and talent aren't bad things in themselves then they'd less resemble the peasants in Kosinski's 'Painted Bird' and all their guitar music wouldn't be so relentlessly shitty!

― dave q, Friday, 7 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Isn't "Dirty Movies" a FAB tune! It's COLD, man. A song about porn that isn't remotely erotic, just sleazy and squalid. And the guitars shred the ones on "Meat is Murder" into HAMBURGER! (Letter from 'Creem' circa 80s, "I wanna force Morrisey to run his hands through raw beef mince, the perfect torture!")

― dave q, Friday, 7 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

'Mills and Berry were like Carter/Williams in comparison'!!

― Josh, Friday, 7 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Next time you are on a Peer2Peer look for a song called "Morrissey Must Die" by the Meatmen. It perfectly encapsulates my feelings on this.

― Lord Custos X, Friday, 7 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Maybe rich and talented isn't bad 'in itself' but when is it ever 'in itself'? Having shitloads of money is a 'bad' thing when others don't. Van Halen don't have 'talent' - if anybody does - they practise lots. The Kinks weren't being whining victims - whining victims would be like Mick Jagger crying about 'girls not liking him', poor fatty. The Kinks actually thought about things that went beyond the immediate circumstances of their own personal lives. They didn't rock, that's true - their first rock records were abysmal. I think Dave Davies was right that Van Halen couldn't 'get it,' but not because of the political thing - more because Van Halen was a rock band, not a band suffocating from etiquette. That 'The Kinks' think of themselves as sounding working class does seem pretty weird. To anyone who isn't English, they sound more like PG Wodehouse.

― maryann, Friday, 7 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

What Mills/Berry moments post-Murmur do you rate? I don't think Joyce/Rourke were mind-blowing or anything but I think they were solid and right for the songs. I can at least see more to their tracks on "What She Said" than to anything on Fables, let alone anything later than that.

― sundar subramanian, Saturday, 8 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Perhaps if you weren't American you wouldn't be such a cunt.

― Tommy Lee, Monday, 10 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Hmmm.

― Ned Raggett, Monday, 10 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

eight years pass...

this is a genius idea for a thread that sadly went nowhere. pretty much alpha & omega as far as 80s teen culture went (though there were more than a few secret VH fans in the Smiths-fan camp).

― i want to eat unicorn meat (Eisbaer), Sunday, 30 January 2011 06:16 (fourteen years ago)

http://www.vanhalen.8k.com/images/wolfie2.jpg

heads up Mozzer & co. b/c this dude is coming back to finish what he started

― beer, beer, beer (Pillbox), Sunday, 30 January 2011 08:16 (fourteen years ago)

c) I recall a comment from Dave Davies re VH's Kinks kovers (heh) - "They've missed the point of the song, the original was by working-class kids fighting for something, this group sounds like they've already got everything they could ever need."

Okay, I thought this was just vintage Dave Q rambling at the mouth, but

When I first heard Van Halen's version of "You Really Got Me," I laughed. It just seemed so exaggerated. It really missed the point of the whole meaning of the song: four working-class guys, struggling to do something different. In the original record, you can sense that in its energy, the roughness. It's very impure, the Van Halen thing; it's very accomplished and flashy, but what does it mean?

What a dickcheese.

― kkvgz, Sunday, 30 January 2011 12:04 (fourteen years ago)

Dave Davies - it is a song about a girl who's really got a guy and he doesn't know what he's doin'! Also, he can't sleep at night. You cannot read class struggle into that shit.

― kkvgz, Sunday, 30 January 2011 12:06 (fourteen years ago)

lol

― some dude, Sunday, 30 January 2011 16:15 (fourteen years ago)

mick jagger was never a "fatty"

― m0stlyClean, Tuesday, 1 February 2011 01:25 (fourteen years ago)

in case you were wondering...

― normal_fantasy-unicorns (contenderizer), Tuesday, 1 February 2011 03:05 (fourteen years ago)

best smiths thread on ILX, btw

― normal_fantasy-unicorns (contenderizer), Tuesday, 1 February 2011 03:05 (fourteen years ago)

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