what's the most critically acclaimed band...

[nirav]

that you never got anything out of personally, or have intentionally ignored?

I'll start with Joy Division/New Order.

Sacrilege! This friendship is *over* dude.

I dunno, you probably don't like "Pretty in Pink" as much as I do. And "Closer" is going to be played when I die. Yeah......but, not even that song, "The Atrocity Exhibition" or "She's Lost Control" or "New Dawn Fades"? Oh well.

I don't particularly like Van Morrison though, and I know yr a fan.

[user_32]

i came late but ive said that radiohead are the most overrated band of our era...i just dont see much to get excited about.

ill second what people said about loveless being overrated...though i still enjoy it.

beefheart's trout mask replica i just dont get. though, i enjoy safe as milk (which are completely different).

[joe]

the beatles

[Watt]

david bowie and elvis costello

my girlfriend is an obsessed bowie fan but i just cna't get into him. as far as i'm concerned, low is his only great album (thanks to eno) and he has always been style over substance.

i just find elvis costello really boring, and i'll never forgive him for what he did to the pogues' 'rum sodomy & the lash.'

[user_109]

I will say Pavement (aside from CRCR), The Flaming Lips, Yo La Tengo, and Belle and Sebastian, and pretty much anything that sounds like any of those three bands. I just find all of them, and most "indie rock" for that matter, incredibly bland/boring.

Pavement have a few good songs, the Lips have Zaireeka (which is a really, really hard record to dislike) and the Soft Bulletin, and I like a good 75% of everything Belle and Sebastian's done. However, I agree with you on Yo La Tengo, and the sentiment expressed in your post; that kind of "indie rock" is one of my least favorite genres of music. I'm talking about the meandering, not-very-catchy, "aural wallpaper" type stuff, which would include, in my book, bands like Yo La Tengo, Ida, Sea and Cake, MBV, Beat Happening (and most of the K Records roster), Summerteeth and YHF era Wilco, Stereolab, and a million other ones I can't think of right now. It all just sounds really insincere and dispassoinate to me.

As far as more mainstream bands go...I really don't like Steely Dan, Peter Gabriel, and, outside of Remain in Light, the Talking Heads. I get too much of a pasty-white, wannabe "world"/funk vibe from those three. Brian Eno's another. Just horribly dull.

Also, people have trashed many of my favorite bands in this thread.

[michael]

built to spill

[user_178]

Also, people have trashed many of my favorite bands in this thread.

That is the initial reason why I have avoided posting anything on this thread.

Unless we really do hate music. I, for one, do not. Sure, there are plenty of artists that I can't stand to hear, and plenty more that make me sick, but I don't want to waste my time bashing other peoples taste in music. I know, this thread was not originally about this. It does kind of piss me off to have my favorite artists bashed, even by people I work with. It goes without saying that their opinions about music shouldn't really matter to me, yet I would rather they kept their mouths shut.

I think the opinions of most of the members of IHM are valid and interesting from time to time, so it stings especially bad to have to read about it here. Although I do agree with some of you on this thread (hell, some of the bands bashed are not even interesting to me, but I'd like to somehow prevent this from happening), I'd still rather not have to read dismissals of the records that I've grown to love, or see them put down and/or torn apart unless it's done in a clever and amusing way (and maybe not even in this case): Remember the Forced Esposure mags? Even when I did have an inkling about what the hell Byron, Jimmy, Meltzer, nedelkoff(?) and the rest, were talking about, it still kind of sucked to have to read some of the harsh comments, funny though some of them were. Albini always had very nasty things to say, if memory serves. But, anyway...

I like all kinds of music for many, many reasons. For example, I would say that YLT have done some cool shit on some of their records (they have also done things of which I must have missed the point) and other songs just didn't grab me. For an even better example: Sonic Youth. They have done a lot of things that I consider interesting, but anyone could criticise them for a number of different reasons (I'm sure that among all the bands I admire, they are one of the easiest to take shots at... then again, whether you like their music or not, they have been very important in other ways that I don't have the time to get into now). My point is, a large number of bands that I've seen written about in these pages (outside this thread, too) are attempting to do something with substance and complexity* (am I wrong?... or just vague) and it just seems weird for me to dismiss them because I don't like the way an album was recorded, or maybe I don't like the arrogance of a certain band member (it could really be anything, if you think hard enough). I would not consider the Coachwhips and Robert Ashley as practitioners(?) of the same art-form (not to mention so many other obvious examples). I guess I'm just trying to say that it's a little weird (for me) to write about music in such a general way. Nothing is more hostile on a site like this (without getting personal... maybe it is personal) than putting down another persons taste in music. And I wouldn't, or shouldn't expect any of you to take my limited (as Jon said: no one can possibly hear all the music in this world) views on music too seriously, if all I'm doing is bashing. There is nothing wrong with critcism, mind you, as long as it's specific. But, having said all this, I can't imagine any thread, or any post, for that matter, on IHM degenerating to the level of a popular Soulseek chatroom.

I hope that this made a little sense... if not, it would be funny take a little shit for being so damn preachy (I don't mean to sound that way). Writing this is kinda like masturbation to me. I enjoy it, simply put. But I do hope that sombody gets something out of it other than a headache, or a good laugh (at my expense).

But enough of my whining... Let's get on with something more constructive.

*Substance and complexity... now it really starts to sound like I know what I'm talking about. Yeah, right. I just want to note that 'complexity' is a very complex word in and of itself (that's deep, man). There are so many different levels to many of the bands/artists that we have all written about at IHM and I think a great deal of the bands that have been written about in this thread are creative, whether you want to listen to them or not. Whether it's Radiohead (they puzzle me, but I have heard a few of their songs that are actually pretty great), Velvet Underground (I happen to like them, not just for the sounds on their records, another thing that can't be written about briefly) or Billy Childish (although I dont' think he was mentioned, but I bring it up because I think there is a [deceptive] complexity to his work) or whomever else you could care to tear down.

[user_178]

I couldn't resist posting this. A few minutes after the previous post I reread the following two quotes:

mnemonists wrote:

But, fuck Genesis P... He lost me a long time ago. I don't really follow his activities anymore. Not since PTV started to suck (to my ears) many years ago. Happy hunting.

mnemonists also wrote:

Also.... E.N. did some cool stuff. They would have been so much cooler if Blixa had shut his mouth more often

I had you all thinking I was a boy scout.

[jon abbey]

mnemonists, I hear you, I respect your right to feel that way, but I don't really understand that position.

a message board like this consists of a wide variety of people (hopefully), each with their own sets of likes and dislikes. in order to know how closely your taste relates to someone else and how much you can trust their recommendations, it's interesting (for me) to hear what people don't care about as well as what they love. not everybody loves all of the same things, and they shouldn't, it would be a dull world if they did. if dismissals of artists you love really matter to you so much, maybe you need to examine your own feelings about those artists.

if someone posts that they get nothing out of the rolling stones or bob dylan or the stooges, all artists I personally have gotten so much out of, that I kind of laugh to myself, think "their loss", and don't give it another thought. if someone posted the same thing about can or funkadelic or even keith rowe (an artist I feel so strongly about that I've devoted my professional life to building a label around him and his legacy), that's cool, different strokes.

if I really felt strongly about someone being slammed unfairly, either I'd post a specific answer to that, or start an entire new thread to discuss that artist more in depth, like the beatles one that just started.

the point of the thread to begin with wasn't bands you love something by but hate the rest, or bands you used to love but now hate, but bands you never connected with at all. to me, that's a very valid and interesting topic.

[user_169]

Jon Spenser Blues Explosion
Sun Ra- Makes Ace Frehley look like Einstein !!!
Smiths
Death
Cannibal Corpse
Raekwon (solo albums only, he fits in with regular Wu-Tang records)
Whitehouse

[user_32]

ill agree with Sun Ra.

[user_178]

I gotcha, Jon.

I was really just trying to urge people to be specific about why they don't 'connect' with certain artists (that's a good way to put it). I think constructive criticism is great, but when people are careless about the things they post, particularly the negative comments, it seems counter productive. Actually, I either should have thought out (er... worked on) my original post a little more carefully, or I shouldn't have posted it at all. 'Different strokes,' that's cool... I didn't mean to come off as, um, fascistic... I just wanted to curb all the bashing.
Although, since I posted that, I went back and read through the thread again (something I hadn't done since early today) and have noticed that there aren't any extremely nasty things said about anyone in particular. I had just read Clay's entry and his comment struck me, so I thought I'd try to elaborate on that a bit. His comment, I'm sure, had very little to do with where I tried to take it. I do believe there is a distinction (however fine) between insults and negative criticism. I just wanted to, however pedantically, point that out. Something everybody probably already knew anyway. Also, I didn't mean to claim that the thread wasn't 'valid.'

[user_52]

i can't believe no one has taken a pot shot at gy!be yet.

[user_125]

Death
Cannibal Corpse
Whitehouse

these are critically acclaimed?

[mshiflet]

Death
Cannibal Corpse
Whitehouse

these are critically acclaimed?

if you're of the 'everyone's a critic' school, yes. whitehouse in particular might not be on every critics top ten lists, but they are pretty much universally praised in the noise community. i don't get it really either.

[grisha]

i like death. one of my favourite bands.
i don't like stones and beatles, though. but to say any of them overrated? oh, c'mon.
rated is rated. period. if people think it's good - it's good. if they see their influence in younger artists - they are influential. they might not influence artists that are important to you. well, thaen it's you. that simple. and try to prove me wrong.
i think it's good to know what people around here don't like, and not only what they like. but it's true only when it doesn't come to something stupid like "they just suck/overrated", which inevitably happens every time. don't like it? more power to you. explain why, if you can, that'd be nice. suck? who are you to judge for the others?
i don't care. i can decide what's good for me, and everyone should. pointless remarks only piss some people off, and it's the opposite of good discussion.

[user_3]

i can't believe no one has taken a pot shot at gy!be yet.

They were pretty much critically dismissed after that last piece of rubbish.

[user_49]

By who? PFM?

The Wire fuckin loves GY!BE and all their incarnations. It's an eternal bond of love they have.

I never heard it, though. Sometimes I just pull out my flattened penny from the first gybe slab and then I get all sniffly and think about sad ephrim.

[user_113]

I'm with Lakespeed on Beefheart.

This thread reminds me of that one on EP that you dudes got all upset about.

[user_29]

Cannibal Corpse

Highly seconded. Don't see the appeal of this band at all, and I like me some death metal.