replies to previous posts
Rather late to this - in no special order and I could not possibly keep track of who said what.
From the barrell.
"NRC" = not real canon fodder" as I see it:
that is no-one would seriously put them in a canon would they?
I reckon age might be important here, I am in my early fourties.
Boards of Canada (NRC):
one of the few new electronic acts worth listening to. Not Eno, not Biosphere, but good (I prefer BoC over Autehcre).
REM - first album was good when it came. Still have Murmur on tape, together with some Wall Of Vodoo.
New Order - love them. Lyrics are featherweight compared to Joy Division, but still ...
Bob Dylan - spot on (good songs though: "All Along the Watchtower" (XTC/Hendrix) ...
I understand why people like him, I just hate his delivery.
Michael Jackson: "Off the Wall" stands proudly in my record collection and has done so since it came out. It will stand there with La Ross' "Diana", EW&F and the Jackson 5 from that area. But that was it - I didn't like "Thriller" ...
Courtcase starts Monday.
Hendrix - I like him. Vini Reilly (my own personal guitar hero) played "Voodoo Chile" last year on a gig. Vini apoligised (to us? to Jimi?) for his version (nothing to apologise for Mr Reilly), so I went back and checked my very small (two albums) Jimi collection. Nothing wrong with those.
Rolling Stones. Hallelujah! YES. Awful! (I love The Who though).
Kraftwerk - well. One of the three acts which I reckon has shaped me (add the Pistols and before that Alice Cooper). I love them - (elitist mode here) specially when hearing them in German.
Phil Collins (Seriously NRC!) - "In the air tonight", agree on that one song. It is a good pop song. A little H-Bomb for whoever asked for it (a little thing I wrote in June last year):
"I don’t own a single Phil Collins record, but watching the John Martyn programme on BBC4 a couple of weeks ago and reading a recent interview with John I am reminded of how Phil features on classics like Another Green World and Music For Films. John says "Phil is the hardest working man I ever knew. We just get on very well. The guy is actually very talented. I don’t know why people are so jealous of his success. What is uncool about that?" (Record Collector 298).
John Martyn, Peter Gabriel, Brian Eno, Robert Fripp (I quite like "Exposure"), John Cale and even Thin Lizzy; it’s quite a list (most from the tail end of the ’70s though). Plus Phil gave us "that moment" in Miami Vice.
Writing about Phil Collins and Miami Vice: how uncool is that? Coolness and credibility — don’t care, won’t know, too old. "
> i'll certainly second
neil young - . i don't understand what all the fuss is about. at all.
oh dear. I love the fucker. I hate Dylan, but Young ... One of the very few of the old guard who bigs up punk/John Lydon when punk is more or less happening ("Hey Hey, My My", Bill Nelson wrote a similar song). The other thing with Neil is that he _tries_ to do new things. Even if he sometimes falls on his (electronic?) arse.
Pink Floyd - : early stuff with Syd is great. I adore "Wish You Were Here" and I like "Dark Side of The Moon" (after watching the documentary yesterday on the beeb I like it even more, Alan Parsons brought out shit himself but he did a good job with DotM).
> so influential that without their existence huge chunks of their respective genres would never have happened?
Duran Duran (NRC) - and to a lesser degree
Gary Numan.
But then I come from the Ultravox!/John Foxx camp (bought "Ha!Ha!Ha!" in 78).
I have to laugh when I see people on telly telling me how great these were or that "New Order" or "Bowie" invented electronic music (I am not claiming that Ultravox! created electronic music, just that Bowie wasn't the first one to do electronic music or even "electronica". Bowie was the great vacuum-cleaning chameleon and we all loved him for it. But the rock press (to their honour) dug out his influences pretty good at the time (late seventies/early 80s).
> Is the canon in flux?
Yes. Always. I got a top 100 list from the NME around 1982 somewhere (quite a good list compiled but some of the best writers in the business, but I would say that given my age). But "Marquee Moon" is in there already (if I remember correctly and rightly so). A great record, but Television as a "live" experience was not much when I saw them a couple of years ago. See also the inclusion of a band like Coldplay (Codplay) on recent top 100 lists (I did see Coldplay on one of these?).
Radiohead - - spot on. I had "OK computer" for five years. I could see what they were trying to do, but they don't touch me at all.
Costello - - OK and brave (C&W record) for four years or so.
Still brave, but I just don't care about his output anymore. The two great pop albums from that period (78ish) is not Costello, but "Parallell Lines"/Blondie and "Jesus of Cool"/Nick Lowe.
Sex Pistols - - "you had to be there" (or be at the right age anyway). I will never forget hearing "God Save the Queen" coming out of the speakers of my dads stereo. I was around fourteen at the time, staying with my dad for the summer. And I could not BELIEVE what came out of the speakers. Did I hear THAT? This was electric tentangles tapping directly into my brain. Hitting it. Telling me there was more to life than Alice Cooper and Steve Harley. It was actually "life changing". It totally changed my perception of what music could be. I taped all these radio shows on my dads 8-track. I played that track over and over that summer, taped whatever punk I could find on the radio and bought the first punk album I could find (it took ages, but eventually a sampler simply called "New Wave" with Ramones, Talking Heads, Little Bob Story, Patti Smith ("Piss Factory" - still amazing, some of Patti's stuff has aged - but someone could do a grime version of "Piss Factory") etc arrived in the local record shop (where I would later get a part-time job, one of the reasons I know a bit about this period). You might be right on the "moment of time stuff". The album was heavily critisized when it came out (too many singles on the album - you were not supposed to do that). But looking back now NMTB is "the bollocks". I never owned a copy at the time though (I was the local guy having The Damned's first). One album+singles, forget all that shit which came afterwards in the name of "Sex Pistols").
Marley - agree. But why do I like Steel Pulse and Linton Kwesi Johnson?
