what's the most critically acclaimed band...

[bedouin]

Rolling Stones

the Stones is no longer (and haven't been for a long time) a music band. they're a corporation, with offshore accounts, private jets, and industry analysts. having said that they did rock everyone back in the day. i wouldn't dump them here.



in the silk sheet of time, i will find peace of mind. love is a bed full of blues
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43zALQhwdQU

[Gerardo A]

Yeah, man. It's just that whenever I've tried to spend time listening to them, nothing really clicks. But I can see the appeal for sure.

Just thought of another one for this thread:

Grateful Dead

[bedouin]

Grateful Dead

agreed

[jpeatt]

Grateful Dead

agreed

X10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

[schiksalgemeinschaft]

The Doors

[Daniel Jones]

The Doors

Yep, I've never got The Doors.

[jon abbey]

Rolling Stones up through Exile on Main Street shouldn't really be lumped in with Rolling Stones since then. to each their own, of course, but they were pretty fantastic in the first part, especially towards the end of that era.

[carlos]

Unleashed -- all of my friends who dig Swedish death like them, I hate 'em.

Gerardo- i'm sure your metal friends have tried to talk to you about this- but have you heard their first two LPs? i saw Unleashed live right after their 3rd LP (in 1994) and they were probably one of the best live death metal bands i've ever seen- very tight. the 3rd LP is a little different- more "rock and roll" chugging- but those first 2 LPs are classic thrashy death metal- i can't believe you don't dig them! but no accounting for taste- i know...

[Gerardo A]

Hahaha yeah man, I seriously have tried several times to like "Shadows in the Deep" and all of those tunes... I can definitely hear their sound and regard them as a good band, but no, there's just something about (what sounds to me as) the sluggish pace of their riffing (something that I actually love in other bands) plus the combination of a voice I don't like and a general lack of melody (again, something like that I love in other bands) that really prevents me from enjoying them...

The same thing kinda happened to me with Benediction.

But I do like Asphyx, Grave, Bolt Thrower, Obituary (to name some bands that kind of fit the previous description).

[barry]

Rolling Stones up through Exile on Main Street shouldn't really be lumped in with Rolling Stones since then. to each their own, of course, but they were pretty fantastic in the first part, especially towards the end of that era.

id even go further to the first few albums with ronnie wood. even tattoo you had some great things on it. after that, it was over.

[horaflora]

Neat thread!

This might not count so much, but neither of those Kai Fagichinski pop albums really did anything for me, and they were rather touted here as I recall...
...though "her name" by alessandro bosetti I've listened to to death, which seems to be in a similar mode of playing...

Other than that, all rock except for love, ween, and talk talk.

Never got into sonic youth, though opened for thursten a few times.
I mention that one as it seems to be a pretty widely used gateway into noise and other weird music.... My gateway was skinny puppy's "last rights".

Gotta go read through this whole thread now!

[carlos]

Hahaha yeah man, I seriously have tried several times to like "Shadows in the Deep" and all of those tunes... I can definitely hear their sound and regard them as a good band.

that's cool- i know you're a death metal fan, so i thought i would ask about Unleashed-

[Stevo]

Radiohead

The critical and youth attention lavished on them seems misplaced. Sure there are more deserving bands out there. But do the general public need things predigested hence their popularity?
Is that too precious?
Stevo

WAT?

just seen this and thought it was pretty obvious. Radiohead seemed to be 99% regurgitating pre-existing ideas for people who hadn't checked out the originals.

[negative potential]

adding in the Red Hot Chili Peppers is just confusing the issue.

I disagree. I think by way of Red Hot Chili Peppers, who basically admit to directly ripping off Gang of Four, Gang of Four have an influence on basically every crappy funk-rock band since, but instead of Situationist-inspired intellectuals playing jagged angular rock 'n' roll, it all comes across as drunken, pot-smoking frat boys play plodding funk. Even Rage Against the Machine are this shitty, despite the best intentions. They copped the Marxism, but in the most knuckle-headed, histrionic and humorless way.

GoF are basically my favorite rock 'n' roll band ever, even right through Songs of the Free, which has the underrated Sara Lee playing the bass. I even dare assert that "Hard" has its moments. I don't like any of the 1990s or 2000s reunion albums, though I thought it was a splendid move of them to release an album of slick, re-recorded versions of their early songs.

I saw David Bowie's name pop up a couple of times on this thread. I think if there is an artist well-suited to "Best Of" collections, it's Bowie. Definitely a singles-type artist anachronistically working in the LP area. I wouldn't want to part with the handful of Bowie CDs in my collection (basically a "Best Of" of the 1969-74 period plus the Eno/Berlin albums), but I definitely think the ratio of uninteresting filler to inspired brilliance is quite high.

also a new love are the last 2 Dinosaur records - if mostly for the great sound and melodies of J Mascis

Gah. Count Dinosaur Jr. among the bands from that era that I loathe. Ugh. Ugh. Ugh. Every pseudo-cultured nitwit that I went to High School with thought that was such a profound band. The late-80s and early-90s were a bleak time for guitar-based rock music (yeah, I think the Pixies suck too).

Jon says earlier in this thread that a long time ago he thought the whole Portishead type of stuff coming out of England in the early-90s would eventually prove to be more significant in the long term than Nirvana et al. I think in Europe, that is actually long since the case. I dunno if that's so in America, where the centrality of the guitar-based rock band as the central motif of youth-demographic music seems so stubbornly rooted.

Re: schicksalsgemeinschaft and Daniel Jones on The Doors. I think to enjoy the Doors they have to be thought of as a bubblegum psychedelic band, like the Strawberry Alarm Clock or something along those lines. If you listen to them within the interpretative matrix of "rock poetry" or "rock legends" or whatever then they also suck.

Jon, regarding your earliest post in this thread, in the case of Joy Division, do they belong to the "never did anything for me" category or the "I haven't heard them" category?

[jon abbey]

adding in the Red Hot Chili Peppers is just confusing the issue.

I disagree. I think by way of Red Hot Chili Peppers, who basically admit to directly ripping off Gang of Four, Gang of Four have an influence on basically every crappy funk-rock band since, but instead of Situationist-inspired intellectuals playing jagged angular rock 'n' roll, it all comes across as drunken, pot-smoking frat boys play plodding funk. Even Rage Against the Machine are this shitty, despite the best intentions. They copped the Marxism, but in the most knuckle-headed, histrionic and humorless way.

yes, this part is all true, but I still don't see what the Minutemen have to do with it. to me they were doing something entirely different from Gang of Four, starting with track lengths.

also, GoF and the Minutemen were close to contemporaneous, with the former releasing Entertainment! in 1979 and the latter releasing their first EP in 1980. RHCP formed in 1983.

Jon, regarding your earliest post in this thread, in the case of Joy Division, do they belong to the "never did anything for me" category or the "I haven't heard them" category?

I had the Substance comp and it did nothing for me, including numerous plays of the much-touted Love Will Tear Us Apart. if someone who knows my taste wants to make a strong case for me checking out something else (Unknown Pleasures?), I could do that sometime but I doubt I'd make it all the way through.

[jon abbey]

also, just because Alex probably hasn't seen it;



Oren Ambarchi, sitting in with the Red Hot Chili Peppers in Melbourne, April 2007.

[Moon]

I saw David Bowie's name pop up a couple of times on this thread.

Ah, I was trying to think who I felt like thread topic about, thanks.
It's the weirdest thing, I know people find it quality music and I can recognise elements in his music that is good stuff, but listening to it feels like licking paper. It's like he's a really nicely written generative code for composing rock ballads, but still a code.
And it annoys me a little when he does that thing where he wants to change to a chord he don't want you to expect, except he always goes for the same one.
Weird stuff.

Regarding Sonic Youth, they used to make me feel like thread topic too, but now I likes them for their fun catchy pop tunes. Anything too experimental from them does not agree with me, nor does any of Thurston's projects. When they start to go into experimental territory I can't shake the feeling that they're just emulating what they're doing.
You know when you have a friend that just completely does not get improvised music at all and says "everyone can do this"; that kind of feeling.
It's a mean thing to say, I'm very sorry. They're awesome people and I'd love to be in their band any day. I'd play with a cheese grater.

[leroysghost]

Love Will Tear Us Apart

yeah this is probably their worst song, but it's saved by some delicious junk electronics on the live Les Bains Douches thing. Les Bains Douches might actually be the best place to start listening to Joy Division, but i suspect that (like David Bowie and a lot of the other bands mentioned in this thread) they are one of those bands that if you liked them as a kid you still like them but trying to get into them as an adult is near impossible.

[Steve Reynolds]

there is no reason that I would like Dinosaur Jr except that I like them


they are routine and nothing out of the ordinary but the 2 newer CD just *sound* good to me - and it makes me want to move up my purchase date on a new car with a state of the art kinda really loud stereo so I can hear everything from Contact to Beyond and as high a volume as I like.


for thrills I bought 2 CD's that Pitchfork listed as best of the best of and I havn't been able to listen to either of them all the way through yet - but maybe it is me:

Sigur Ros - Agaetis Byrjum - they list it as the #9 recording of the 2000's
Arcade Fire - Funeral - they list it as the #2 recording of the 2000's

I think my first impression is that Funeral might be real terrible but I will try it again


the other one is just simply pretentious, I think but who knows

[Gaendaal]

I had the Substance comp and it did nothing for me, including numerous plays of the much-touted Love Will Tear Us Apart. if someone who knows my taste wants to make a strong case for me checking out something else (Unknown Pleasures?), I could do that sometime but I doubt I'd make it all the way through.

Listen to 'The Eternal' off Closer. If you don't like that then just give up on it...unless you want to try the Nau Ensemble's chamber orchestra reinterpration of Joy Division's stuff.

(BTW, the link's not an endorsement of the £100+ price tag Amazon has for it... )

On topic, I can't think of any bands that haven't done anything for me. I don't think that The Beatles, for example, are the best band in the world but they have some good tunes.