padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
I will but I don't want to get into it until it's fully complete or near to. I have about half the entries rn.

it takes awhile cos it involves going back and listening to a ton of things I haven't in a varying number of years.

there are a few total no-brainers - i.e. "Mother Sky", "Marquee Moon" - but once you get past the first 15 or so it gets murkier, so I have to refresh my memory
 

version

Well-known member
oh yeah and The Sonics - definitely in the very highest tier of garage rock, and what people mean they call it 60s punk or whatever

idk for me garage rock is wading through a hundred mediocrities to find one gem, it's more pointing the way but occasionally it gets there

"Cinderella" is the one from them for sure

They still sound pretty good too. The current singer's decent,

 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
also I find myself listening the guitar specifically more closely, which is nice cos I like to figure out how they're doing it if I can

actually some of the post-punk guitar work is quite interesting, especially when it's more about innovation or being part of a whole than technical ability

the sublimation of the guitar hero in service of the groove, picked up from funk/disco/etc or in some cases from avant-classical ideas, or both

Keith Levene, John McGeoch, Geordie from Killing Joke, Roger Miller from Mission of Burma, etc

anyway

I think many of the entries will surprise, hopefully in a good way, tho undoubtedly some will be expectedly canonical
 

mvuent

Void Dweller
oh yeah I guess it's relevant to mention that one thing I've done with quarantine is work on my own Dissensus Top 100 Guitar Canon

it's a comparatively low-priority project obv but once it's done I will do a thread and everything

it won't just be heavy psychedelic guitars/hardcore/etc either, but a union of where I think Dissensus and I meet on guitars
looking forward to this

still listen to this regularly after you posted it in choon of the day

 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
still listen to this regularly after you posted it in choon of the day
glad you enjoy it, always nice to know people actually get something out of these things. that one is definitely a jam.

and btw I'm not trying to shit on anyone's personal opinions, I just argue my position. I am admittedly a blunt man.
 

mvuent

Void Dweller
ironic then how this thread has been driven entirely by you shitting on various guitar music and other people coming to its defense haha
haha you're clever
just for the record, wasn't trying to "have a go at you" as the brits here would say, just thought there is a sense in which this thread's a funny tables have turned moment.

like imagine if one day thirdform started talking about how much he disliked pre-2007 speedcore and then barty jumped to its defense. ok granted thats a more farfetched example but still...

but more seriously, disliking stuff is great thread material imo, it's interesting to see where people who know the material well draw lines.
 

mvuent

Void Dweller

love the contrast between the rhythm section and the sparse, understated guitar that periodically comes in.
 
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mvuent

Void Dweller

some of this stuff has a prowling quality that you don't get as much in rock later on. hence, i guess, the fear that it would incite violence.
 
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okzharp

Well-known member
at this last year Jeff Laster said that he was the dj for the Weathermen in the early days and he would spin the Doors at the afterparties of all the SDC and early Weathermen meetings and it would be the trigger for people to let loose... he said they were "our band"
 

catalog

Well-known member
here's another big early touchstone that I forget

not in terms of heaviness or rawness - even for 66 - but the idea of just playing a single hypnotic groove with some nonsense over it for 14 goddamn minutes

live of course Floyd, the early Dead, etc were playing all kinds of marathon tranced-out thing, but it wasn't making it to record yet

Do you actually really like this, or are you saying it's more that it's an important/influential song?
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
Do you actually really like this, or are you saying it's more that it's an important/influential song?
I like it. I wouldn't say I "really like" it, and definitely not in the way I love/find deep meaning in all the long VU jams, Spacemen 3, etc.

I also don't know/doubt if it was particularly influential. The Seeds definitely were, but more for "Pushin' Too Hard" etc getting cited as protopunk avant la lettre.

I'm more citing it as the earliest recorded instance that I know, of that particular idea - an endless hypnotic guitar groove that is also at least kind of a song

predating Sister Ray, Black to Comm, and so on (the recorded version of Interstellar Overdrive is more of a freakout/noise thing)

it is, as I keep repeating, pointing the way

for me the true magic is in marrying the endless hypnotic groove to at some kind of song/melodic structure

Spacemen 3's 3 chords good 2 chords better 1 chord best ethos married to their wall of noise (and their love of gospel)

Lou Reed's genius pop instincts (he started off as a in-house pop songwriter) and John Cale scraping drone genius over endless Mo Tucker 1-2 stomp
 
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padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
btw talking about early heavy guitars I fortuitously got this as a YT rec last night

the exceedingly rare garage rock tune that not only lives up to but exceeds the promise of WILD RAW FUZZ 60's PUNK etc

I think the Black Flag version of Louie Louie is still my fave for Greg Ginn's noise rock antisoloing but this is a close run
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
btw I should note, given all the 50s talk, that Lou Reed had a background in 50s rocknroll and specifically doo-wop

which isn't surprising, as virtually all major rock figures of that era - besides those few coming from academia like Cale or Holger Czukay - did

Bowie of course was first inspired by Little Richard (and then Presley, Chuck Berry etc)

it's not like I'm denying the importance of these things, just that I don't think they're interesting to listen to
 

mvuent

Void Dweller
guess this post was going off one of mine a bit, so might as well chime in again.

I'm not the one insisting on evaluating Morrison as a poet: he was

it's in every single thing the guy ever did, a sub-10th rate Rimbaud knockoff without the a whit of the talent or the conviction

to put what i was getting at another way: the above is an interesting character interpretation, but it doesn't change the fact that he, in the most literal sense, was the frontman for a famous band. and that's the only context in which i care about him one way or another. i'm sure plenty of people in bands feel that they aren't "just" a singer, bassist, etc. without those pretensions somehow counting against their music. i don't think it elevates the music either. but fandom aside, i still don't see why his purported shortcomings when evaluated as a Serious Poet should affect anyone's opinion of the doors' musical output.

I agree 100% being a frontperson, rock or otherwise, doesn't require deep insight into the human condition

there is no cult of Reed in the same way there is a cult of Morrison, b/c Reed never tried to come across as some otherworldly figure

i.e. you'd never have caught him in a million years referring to himself as Mr Mojo Risin, let alone the Lizard King
yeah those are badass nicknames. i don't have a problem there: it all seems quite consistent with being a rock star. or is there some kind of historical precedent that i don't know about? did wordsworth refer to himself as "Mr. Mojo Risin'"???

he's difficult in the way asshole renowned Picassoid white male artists often were, albeit complicated somewhat by his queerness/attitudes/milieu

but it's not in his art the same way Morrison is in the Doors. Reed was mostly a (very good) purveyor of other (more interesting) people's stories.

and he was very, very much of this world - bitchy, canny, a working musician

whereas Morrison aspired to mythopoesis
interesting analysis. that's a compelling distinction imo.
 
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thirdform

pass the sick bucket
LoL sorry that was a bit snarky. I felt attacked, as is always the way with these matters of opinion, especially when expressed so bluntly: "his films are fucking boring'. Well, to you maybe.

I guess that's the way minority/iconoclastic opinions are often expressed, with a defensive aggression preempting the inevitable barrage of rejoinders.

I'm on the other side of this coin with plenty of things, the best example that springs to mind being football. I appreciate things about it but it's fundamentally uninteresting to me. But most of my friends are obsessed with it. Do I think football is innately boring? Of course not. I think I'm missing out on something.

Still, you've got to draw the line somewhere haven't you or we'd be unable to describe James Blunt as fucking terrible.

who said football is interesting? 70s-80s-90s-mid 00s sure, now it's achingly boring. it's just cultural loyalty. something you are just incapable of understanding, but at the same time you can't be a true cosmopolitan and hop from culture to culture, so you just get stuck in this classic English limbo of having no beliefs or convictions.

I respect people who have 0 cultural loyalty and hop from one experience to another, but I also respect the fiercely loyal. it's that mediocre inbetween space that makes me cringe.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
yeah those are badass nicknames. i don't have a problem there: it seems quite consistent with being a rock star. or is there some kind of historical precedent that i don't know about? did wordsworth refer to himself as "Mr. Mojo Risin'"???

badass? hardly. the precedent for badass didn't exist in 60s white rock culture and Morrison was not a gangster.

It's like saying Aesop Rock is a bad ass, even though his main identity grounding is being a nerd. We all have nerd aspects to our personality but there is a certain male conceit that privileges that aspect above all else.

That's the problem with Morrison. if he was a cynical egoist we'd all laugh. but he believed in the sub-modernist crap he was spouting.
 
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thirdform

pass the sick bucket
anyway for me its not that the doors are uninteresting, they are just plane boring. which is worse. it's like finding a turd in your dinner.
 
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