NO! :mad:

Hey NR, you like The Breeders' All Nerve a lot, right? Perhaps you could press the pause button on the wretchedness and give Amon Düül's Yeti a spin instead? Just sayin'. Amon feel the noize!

Vomitific Theory & Appreciation is the first thing they teach you at Bobness School. Anyway, Dylan went all LGBTQ+R/-R/RW and stuff:



Listen to Same Sex Wedding EP Featuring St. Vincent, Benjamin Gibbard, Bob Dylan, and More
Universal Love EP Also Features Kesha, Kele Okereke, and Valerie June Doing New Takes on Classic Love Songs

Also in 24-bit!
https://us.7digital.com/artist/vario...agined-7685149

Guaranteed to piss off Mike Pence!

I did! I listen to these things so y'all don't have to. It was pretty lousy. Sounds like, well, Weiland singing over Guns N Roses tracks. Which is not good.

I'll overlook your usual disparaging comments and just jump to the Amon Duul thing. Isn't that a heavy metal band? I don't know anything about them. But what do they have to do w/ the new Breeders album?

Dude! "Archangels Thunderbird" is originally an Amon Düül song, from that album. :)

Ooohhh woah. I had no idea haha

The album is "Yeti," the band is Amon Duul II and it is not remotely a heavy metal thing. It's one of the greatest records ever recorded and maybe a better use of your time than listen to Some Velvet Revolver bullshit. Trust me, your ears will thank you. I'm dying over here..

If you never heard the Breeders again and only listened to Yeti over and over your life would be better.

Seriously, this forum used to be where I came to find out about music I wanted to listen to and at this point I cannot believe the level to which it has devolved. This isn't disparaging anyone personally, as personal taste as personal taste, but there has been a serious and detrimental shift here. I used to feel I was among peers. This is no longer the case, aside from the precious few that are still here.

nostalgia is always a kind of laziness. i was gonna post this link somewhere else but here you go:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...5a2_story.html

some choice quotes:

The Pulitzer for Lamar might confuse or anger those reared on the great canon of rock, but perhaps we will no longer have to endure the cloudy reveries of middle-aged men bemoaning the fact that fewer people seem to appreciate the brilliance of a 20-minute Clapton or Hendrix solo anymore. Didn’t millions of us, after all, live out our arena-rock fantasies with the Guitar Hero video game just a few years ago?

[...]

Hip-hop has cornered the market on innovation. No present-day rock musician can compete with Lamar’s astonishing verbal dexterity or his ability to articulate the inchoate rage of his listeners in tracks that take in the full sweep of vernacular music. But superstars such as Lamar don’t really drive hip-hop culture anyway, not when obscure and iconic artists are posting mind-blowing tracks online at a rate that makes rock seem sclerotic by comparison. To take the measure of forward thinking in popular music, you have to pay attention to every culvert and tributary of hip-hop.

[...]

At its best, rock opens an aperture into new ways of thinking about the personal and the political; but in its present state, it’s a black mirror, reflecting nothing. Until rock musicians can figure out new ways to tap into the way we live now, and dissect the psyche of a fractious, angry and fearful country, hip-hop will remain the only genre that matters.

damn!

so it looks like the party has moved on...

Meh.

Innovation exists everywhere. Journalists just want to seem like they know everything. Hip hop has now been around longer then classic rock was when baby boomers started to control everything in society, so that argument doesn't wash with me. And I started listening to hip-hop in 1981. So saying I have blinders on doesn't really wash either.

Also, Clapton was always garbage. Just for the record.

ha ha ha ha

yes. i never understood the appeal of clapton.

but i don’t get hiphop either.

i’m gonna go listen to some dead cubans and i won’t be sorry

Technically this is correct — recording. But Bob Dylan won the Pulitzer and he's not "classical" or "jazz". He can get jazzy LAMF, though.





Courtney Barnett's "verbal dexterity" on "Depreston" alone is better than everything you'll find on that Anna Kendrick godDAMN album.

That article is the definition of rubbish music writing. It reads like one of Severian's posts if a mainstream music magazine bothered to pay him good money to write some crap about how ''cutting edge'' hip hop is these days.

The same guy who wrote that article is the author of this gem: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opin...ticle37455129/

LOL. Ageing, posh geezer trying to fit in with the hip hop/grime kids innit?

it may be ‘rubbish music writing,” but the point that it makes about the party having moved on elsewhere is pretty obvious.

i don’t know about the cutting edge of hip hop really—i don’t know 3 shits about hip hop—but if anything, the fact that this genre is getting all these prizes from stolid cultural institutions might be a sign of its impending demise. soon we’ll have severian complaining about how “back in his day...” and shaking his fist at whatever comes next.

which would put the rockist crowd... 2 generations behind already? yeah. i’m ready for the grave, but i’m going under without tears.

one thing is to listen to a certain kind of music because you like it. another very different is to listen to music because it makes you believe you’re one of the special chosen few and therefore people owe you some kind of deference and worship.

whatever is “special” changes with time. if you’re in it for the status, you’re just a hipster.

which of course ties with the other article you linked:


well, everybody ages, and we all die in the end, but i read it differently.

i read it like he knows he can’t fit in with the kids anymore (he does describe his daughters’ behaviors as alien to him), and that he feels sorry that his special mandarin status is now a thing of the past.

and while i don’t agree with his conclusion that somehow it was better when it was harder, some of the self-awarenes and self-deprecation in the article was very funny.

the guy demonstrates he knows two things about himself: that he’s obsolete, and that he misses the loss of status pre-internet scarcity allowed him. well, three things: that snobs are obnoxious is the actual first one.

and with this awareness comes a sort of liberation, no? he’s fading into the past, his function is becoming irrelevant, the kids are taking over, but at least he has a sense of humor about it, so his nostalgia doesn’t come across as bitter (or worse).

I think it comes down to a vastly lower userbase than we had a good decade ago.

You spelled aging weird. Not important, but funny.

Most hip-hop is utter shit, just like most of everything else. I’m not of the opinion that the genre is at all “cutting edge.” Just some great artists in the sea shitty ones.
Boring ass.

You’re boring, Genteel Death. More or less (more).

Just to clarify, I wasn't giving The Breeders any crap whatsoever; I just thought the "Archangels Thunderbird" cover could and should be a portal for NR to check out something fabulous with which he wasn't familiar due to spending so much time letting Billy motherfucking Corgan wipe out his neurons. I love The Breeders, I've seen 'em live (Kim to audience, about Kelley [who was standing right next to her sister]: "She's impossible!"), the new album is bitchen, and Kim strikes me as the kinda gal who listens to Yeti while watching a lava lamp. :D

SNOB!


i was listening to “damn” on this morning’s hike, and i like the music. but i found that the least i understand the words, the more i like the whole thing. the beats and loops and samples etc.— great. the way he applies words to the beat like an instrument is great too.

but the words themselves not so much. i mean i get that what he’s saying is important for the culture. the guy is not in some rarefied dungeon of pure guitarness (or whatever) with his head up his ass— he’s talking about police killings and extermination and other serious shit. so, yeah, it’s important stuff, socially or whatever.

i’m just... ha ha ha im, i just... i don’t like the poetry slam i guess.

the shot though at the beginning fucking it shook my spine. twice.

ok.

what is “dna” about? i need a translator.

Rock wasn't created as a tool for social justice, despite what the writer of "Sorry rock fans, hip hop is the only genre that matters now" seems to think.

Rock only really got political in the 1960s as a response to the Vietnam war. It never was the entirety of what rock music was about. And if "Won't Get Fooled Again" sounds aged, well yeah, because the Vietnam era is long over, fella.

Another thing: rock used to be about singles. The Beatles, The Smiths, a lot of great rock bands started out as singles bands.

But yeah, it's hard to argue that rock music is in the dumps right now. My favourite new band is one that makes retro 80s music. It's a lean time for rock.

Well, there's girlSperm. And they FUCKING ROCK.

https://thrillingliving.bandcamp.com/album/12

https://www.thrillingliving.com/collection/gsp-12

I would need more time to talk through this with you in a way that does justice to the material.

But... YES! It’s amazing. It’s better than TPAB. It’s representative of a “moment” — not for hip-hop because SO much of it is SO shit — but for Kendrick. Who is now very realistically a Dylan figure for rap music.

“DNA.” is about what he is and what he’s supposed to be. Half of what he says is deliberately mercurial, about a quarter is genuine answer-seeking, and the rest is him reflecting back at the world what he thinks the world wants him to be.

The lyrics are good. They require multiple listens. The highlights are DNA and XXX and DUCKWORTH though. Those songs tell a story.

It’s the Finnegan’s Wake to TPAB’s Ulysses.

We’ll talk more later. No time. Gotta go waste my life writing poorly for a living. Right, boring ass? GD? Never mind, don’t care.

Dinosaur Jr - Don't

in the most brilliant live version.
(even though it's not the one with Kim on vocals)

Big Audio Dynamite, 1st LP

One of the most underrated LPs of the 80s and a great summer album. E=Mc2, Bottom Line and Medicine Show aren't obvious summer anthems but somehow always manage to evoke, for me, London in a heatwave without ever trying to be remotely 'sunny'.

he doesn’t think that. he’s talking about cultural relevance. and maybe exaggerating to make a point, but his point i think is valid.


he wasn’t speaking exclusively about politics. rock (and at times roll) used to be the soundtrack of many many many many young people’s lives.

when the sexual revolution came around it was about sex. when the war happened it was about war. when everybody was experimenting with drugs it was about drugs. when everybody got cynical about the broken promises it was cynical. and so forth.

and you could dance to it at parties too. well, some of it.

now however shit is different.

the last time you can say that rock was historically at the middle of some kind of “youth” movement it was the 90s.

that was 20 years ago, or more— say if you take kurt cobain’s suicide as the death of the last rock icon, it’s been 24 years already. full quarter century on april 2019.


well times are also lean for jazz and classical music. but it doesn’t mean that you can’t listen to any of that.

you can listen to whatever you want these days. nothing is hidden anymore. the future and the past are wide open to everyone. you need no pope’s blessing. the present is an orgy.

just... enjoy whatever you want.

Good points, symbols.

And interesting question, was Kurt the last ROCK icon?

i think he was chronologically. there are other “icons” that have survived him, but their glory time came earlier.

if you recall kurt’s suicide it was a huge deal globally. kids crying, street memorials, conspiracy theories, the end of an era.

when chris cornell killed himself decades later sure was a bummer to hear the news but it wasn’t a culturally defining moment with children weeping in the streets.

now when mick jagger dies in 2070 it will sure make the news as a medical miracle that he died at all, but i don’t think a bunch of kids are gonna be all shook up about it or anything.

Kurt was also the last real rock star to emerge before the internet properly took hold. I'm not sure why that makes a difference but I'm sure it must.

What about Manson? He's not relevant now, but I feel like he was an "icon" after Kurt?

Still, symbols example of Kurt's death and people being affected by it is a strong example.

manson lol not even close

next you’re gonna say dave matthews? bha ha ha

kurt was the last rocker to change the mainstream world

when i say icons i mean icons. people for the history books.

after kurt died rock started to get smaller. and it will keep shrinking.

like jazz in the 50s and jazz now. jazz didn’t “die”, it just shrank. it will go on forever.

speaking of mainstream rockers changing the world... bono tried to end world hunger. how is that going? lol

Yeah I guess I'm thinking more like rock STARs, like what's fashionable or just household names as opposed to actual icons. You got me there.

As much as I don't care about his music at all and never really did, I would have to say that Jack White probably counts for being someone who really should have remained underground and somehow busted out and everybody's dad knows who he is now and he's doing some things with his money to further the actual physical production of music media. I was as surprised as anyone when the White Stripes became a super big deal. Musically, not my bag really, but I think he counts as a rockstar, at least by today's sense of the term. He's the Gen Xer that boomers like for some reason too.

Yeah but he sucks now.

I didn’t like the Stripes for the longest time either, but they won me over in concert. Kicked some ass, seriously.