Sugar Kane, for reasons stated in the other thread, but cool if Wish Fulfillment wins. YAF is alright, but no better than the 5th or 6th best song on this record, in my opinion.
― grandavis, Wednesday, 17 February 2010 15:26 (fifteen years ago)
Huh, from the SY site, pretty sure these aren't right either, but in a way, we're all right:
YER AN IMPOTENT SQUIRT
SLEG HEILIN JERK
YEH FASCIST TWERP
IT’S THE SONG I HATE
IT’S THE SONG I HATE
― grandavis, Wednesday, 17 February 2010 18:15 (fifteen years ago)
a lot of posts on the original poll thread (and btw is anyone going to do the Jet Set poll or should I set it up?)seem to comment on how corny/adolescent it is, and since I still think it is top 10 at least of the 90s I figure maybe I should explain this in further detail:
the thing about Dirty is...actually, let me start over...
the thing about Fun House, my favourite record ever, is that when I listen to it, I don't just hear the garage-punk of the '60s pushed to outrageous excess so that its tropes express a sort of negative transcendence...to me, the sound of that record is what punk/hardcore should have sounded like. Now punk certainly took a lot from the Stooges; I think it's very possible that the pure vastness of what the Stooges accomplish with only a few chords on this record was the very origin-point of punk's assumption that technical skill limits creativity, and I definitely think that the history of punk could be seen as a series of failed attempts to top this record. But failed attempts they are, and that's bcz while punk certainly did latch onto the radical hysteria of this record, most of them refused to swing. Fun House was grounded in boogie which allowed it to blur the lines between ecstasy and shrieking despair (as opposed to a lot of 70s classic rock, which was grounded in the blues and funk and boogie, but neglected to go as far into the extreme catharsis that Fun House did). There are great albums, usually of the postpunk ca. 1979 variety, that realized this and corrected it, but I really really wish that I lived in a world where punk was basically white noise shaped by the priorities of black pop, with its emphasis on rhythm and bass (more rhythm than bass here, just as it's more bass than rhythm on White Light/White Heat, another album that I wish more punk sounded like)...
now Dirty does not approach Fun House's greatness, but when I rank it highly it's because it definitely opens up to a sound that I wish grunge sounded like. The album's nods to shoegazer (Theresa's Sound-World), hardcore (Nic Fit), and riot-grrl (Orange Rolls, Angel's Spit) undercuts this a little bit, but only when you fail to consider that a lot of those musics were still too fringe to make it on alternaradio stations. Dirty envisions an modern-rock worldview that is a teenage-riot of styles and rebellions, both more experimental and more overtly political than alternarock ever actually ended up becoming. Indie, and especially indie in the 00s, corrected this, but at the cost of a sort of elitism, a draining of potency, a withdrawal from the teenage DIY-GFY impetus that drove most of the American 80s underground.
I guess, the best way to put it is that Dirty is one of the few albums that dare to imagine that punk/grunge's disaffected youth revolt & nu-indie's sophisticated eclecticism & radical politics could not only co-exist, but could symbiotically feed off each other...plus I really like a lot of the tunes....
that's what I got for now; it's possible I might be able to clarify it better later...
― ha! (Drugs A. Money), Tuesday, 23 February 2010 17:46 (fifteen years ago)
YOUTH AGAINST FASCISM
First Known Performance: 06/29/92
Last Known Performance: 03/06/93
Would it have been lame or awesome if they had brought this song back for a brief period between 2001 and 2008?
― billstevejim, Tuesday, 23 February 2010 18:12 (fifteen years ago)