posted
Ouch, I kind of like "True," "The Boys Are Back" and "Smells Like Teen Spirit."
Anyway, it's just hard to believe this thread hit four pages without "We Built This City" by Starship being brought up for eternal damnation. It talks about Rock and Roll while doing nothing like it at all. It's like something assembled by commitee, focus grouped, approved by a network Standards and Practices board and finally deemed safe for a general audience.
I'm not a particular fan of Jefferson Airplane but it's just sad that through attrition they morphed into anything that could result in this unholy insincere noise. I know I'm shooting fish in a barrel on this one but seriously this is a special kind of awful.
I was able to not listen to this through vigilance and quick reflexes. What must it have done to Grace Slick to have to go out and perform this song-like compost heap of sounds in front of paying customers? Who could live with themselves after that? She retired within a few short years of this atrocity, presumably because of the guilt... me, I would've preferred a quick, clean death.
Dishonorable mention: "Hello" by Lionel Ritchie. I can't even greet people with the word any more. If he had written follow-ups called "Hey," "Howdy," "'sup?" and "Yo" I suppose I'd never be able to answer a phone much less initiate a conversation.
From: Douglasville, GA | Registered: Jul 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
Anything by Sixpence None the Richer. I've had to suffer thru there stuff on Muzak for YEARS at my workplaces. "Kiss Me" and their cruddy remakes of "Don't Dream It's Over" and "There She Goes" are just the awfullest pieces of sugary dreck!
posted
Lardy...I used to dread going to work at the big K in the day because of the hour loop track that went going. Sure, the customers thought the music was a nice little background thing...but they didn't have to listen to the same frackin songs 9 - 10 times a day.
I feel your pain buddy.
From: Turn around... | Registered: Jul 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
Yeah, working in retail = Muzak Purgatory! Luckily, there are some songs in rotation I don't mind listing to upteen times a day like Cee-lo's "Forget You", some Maroon 5 and a few others.
-------------------- "Suck it, depressos!"--M. Lash
From: The Underbelly of Society | Registered: Jul 2003
| IP: Logged |
Even Bobby Darin later admitted he considered it a travesty he was forced to record to get his career going.
From: If you don't want my peaches, honey... | Registered: Sep 2003
| IP: Logged |
cleome46
or you can do the confusion 'til your head falls off
posted
quote:Originally posted by matlock: ...Anyway, it's just hard to believe this thread hit four pages without "We Built This City" by Starship being brought up for eternal damnation. It talks about Rock and Roll while doing nothing like it at all. It's like something assembled by commitee, focus grouped, approved by a network Standards and Practices board and finally deemed safe for a general audience...
I think I already bagged on "City" in a similar thread a year or so back, but I'll give you a pat on the back for this description anyway.
-------------------- Hey, Kids! My "Cranky and Kitschy" collage art is now viewable on flickr. Drop by and tell me that I sent you.
From: Vanity, OR | Registered: Dec 2008
| IP: Logged |
cleome46
or you can do the confusion 'til your head falls off
posted
[snip]
quote:Originally posted by Fanfic Lady: Seriously, I think "Smells Like Teen Spirit" is an abomination. If it hadn't been sold as Something Earth-Shaking/Important/Subversive I could merely dismiss it as a lame song, but the accolades it got and continues to get make me sick.
I used to have a similar reaction to a lot of Sixties anthems, but I guess at some point I tried to parse the hype from the work's actual content. It's not always easy. I neither overly like nor dislike "Spirit," but then again I don't really think one song can ever really be more than a superficial snapshot of how an entire generation thinks, no matter how good it is.
I wasn't a teenager in the Nineties, anyway. If you'd asked me even then what song I thought summed up my generation at that particular hour, I'd be much more likely to name a song like Calexico's Service and Repair. It was all about trying to maintain a veneer of calm, even if optimism was already out of the question. Or trying to maintain a sense of detachment even when seeing people much like yourself meeting up with tragic fates because of forces beyond their control.
I was actually very prosperous (for me) in those days, but because of the work I did, I had a window into the misfortunes of others. And as it turned out, that song was a warning about what was waiting down the road for me, and a whole lot of other people struggling to get blood from a stone nowadays.
Man, I seriously need to hire an editor. But I'd have to pay them in granola. :/
-------------------- Hey, Kids! My "Cranky and Kitschy" collage art is now viewable on flickr. Drop by and tell me that I sent you.
From: Vanity, OR | Registered: Dec 2008
| IP: Logged |
posted
I liked and still liked "Smells Like Teen Spirit" for what it is--a good song to rock out to. I don't think, though, that it's all it's cracked up to be as such an iconic thing.
I guess, though, it sorta sums up the prevailing myth of what the teenager was at the time--the nihilistic, angry and directionless youth. But I think the older generations usually tend to think that about the younger generations, anyway. So that myth is waaay overblown.
But as an angry rocker to just jam, headbang and mosh to, it's a pretty rollicking tune.
-------------------- "Suck it, depressos!"--M. Lash
From: The Underbelly of Society | Registered: Jul 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
Gawd! My parents overdosed me on some Anne Murray as a kid! They had this 8-Track they played over and over on trips to see my grandparents. Such depressing zingers as "Let's Keep It That Way", "Tennesee Waltz", "You Needed Me" and "A Little Good News" haunted me even as I was choking on their constant cigarette smoke for four hours!
-------------------- "Suck it, depressos!"--M. Lash
From: The Underbelly of Society | Registered: Jul 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
What I liked about Nirvana was that they represented a return to no-frills guitar-based rock, without the overproduction of the corporate big hair pretty boy bands that characterized the late 1980s (Poison, Bon Jovi, etc.). Whatever you think of Cobain you have to admit that he wasn't pretty.
-------------------- First comic books ever bought: A DC four-for-47-cents grab bag that included Adventure #331. Been addicted ever since.
From: Stuck in the Psychedelic Era | Registered: Jan 2010
| IP: Logged |
cleome46
or you can do the confusion 'til your head falls off
posted
Yeah, I think given the choice between hair metal and Nirvana, I'd probably go with the latter.
-------------------- Hey, Kids! My "Cranky and Kitschy" collage art is now viewable on flickr. Drop by and tell me that I sent you.
From: Vanity, OR | Registered: Dec 2008
| IP: Logged |
posted
I really can't help it, I love hair metal. Even the late 80's stuff though it pales in comparision to the early stuff which is around 22 shades of awesome by any standard.
RE: Smells like Teens Spirit. I liked (and still like) the song, but it never really got overplayed in my area. Oddly enough I recently read some stuff Cobain himself reportedly said about the song. His opinion of the song was actually very similiar to Fanfie's. Apparently he wrote the song as a joke, mocking the entire "teen anthem" type of tune and was horrified when it became a hit. Don't know if that is actually true, but I think it is pretty interesting if it is.
From: Fort McMurray | Registered: Nov 2004
| IP: Logged |
Set
There's not a word yet, for old friends who've just met.
quote:Originally posted by matlock: It's like something assembled by commitee, focus grouped, approved by a network Standards and Practices board and finally deemed safe for a general audience.
That's how I felt about a lot of supposedly "alternative" rock in the 90s. If the musicians involved had been a little more honest about their careerism, I might have more easily forgiven their shrill, self-righteous posturing.
quote:Originally posted by cleome45: I wasn't a teenager in the Nineties, anyway. If you'd asked me even then what song I thought summed up my generation at that particular hour, I'd be much more likely to name a song like Calexico's Service and Repair. It was all about trying to maintain a veneer of calm, even if optimism was already out of the question. Or trying to maintain a sense of detachment even when seeing people much like yourself meeting up with tragic fates because of forces beyond their control.
In my opinion, Morrissey's "Glamorous Glue", which came out a year after "Teen Spirit", fits that description to a T. Among other grim subjects, it dealt with globalization long before the mainstream media was talking about it, but instead of wallowing in nihilism and self-pity, it took a dignified, stiff-upper-lip stance. I saw him perform the song on Saturday Night Live at the time, and I thought it really stood out from the musical chaff around it. And it rocked, albeit in a self-consciously (but honestly) retro way, with him glammed up in gold lame' and his backing band decked out like rockabillies.
quote:Originally posted by Lard Lad: I guess, though, it sorta sums up the prevailing myth of what the teenager was at the time--the nihilistic, angry and directionless youth. But I think the older generations usually tend to think that about the younger generations, anyway. So that myth is waaay overblown.
What was depressing to me at the time was how many of my peers seemingly bought into the myth. I myself was angry for sure, but not nihilistic.
quote:Originally posted by the Hermit: What I liked about Nirvana was that they represented a return to no-frills guitar-based rock, without the overproduction of the corporate big hair pretty boy bands that characterized the late 1980s (Poison, Bon Jovi, etc.). Whatever you think of Cobain you have to admit that he wasn't pretty.
I have to disagree. Underneath the dirty hair and the five o'clock shadow, he was as pretty a pin-up as they come. And his music was IMO every bit as overproduced as the hair bands, that's what I found so hypocritical about it.
It's interesting you should mention Bon Jovi, because they're one of the few hair bands that I unambiguously hate, and I feel that Jon Bon Jovi is a lot like Cobain was: a cynical, calculating careerist who dragged an entire musical genre kicking and screaming into the realm of mass-appeal mediocrity.
quote:Originally posted by Viridis Lament: I really can't help it, I love hair metal. Even the late 80's stuff though it pales in comparision to the early stuff which is around 22 shades of awesome by any standard.
I loved hair metal at the time, because it was pure escapism which didn't pretend to be anything it wasn't. Plus I was in my mid-to-late-teens, the perfect age for it. I don't listen to much of it these days, though, except for Def Leppard. I think they were much more musically accomplished than most of the other hair bands, and they had great taste in influences, as shown by their covers album "YEAH!" and by Joe Elliott's Mott the Hoople tribute side project, the Down n Outz.
quote:Originally posted by Viridis Lament: RE: Smells like Teens Spirit. I liked (and still like) the song, but it never really got overplayed in my area. Oddly enough I recently read some stuff Cobain himself reportedly said about the song. His opinion of the song was actually very similiar to Fanfie's. Apparently he wrote the song as a joke, mocking the entire "teen anthem" type of tune and was horrified when it became a hit. Don't know if that is actually true, but I think it is pretty interesting if it is.
quote:Originally posted by Set: It's a secret shame, that I like several covers of Bowie songs (like that, and the Wallflowers cover of Heroes) more than I like Bowie's originals...
Nothing to be ashamed of. I like Def Leppard's "Drive In Saturday," Bauhaus' "Ziggy Stardust", and Dead or Alive's "Rebel Rebel" much more than the originals.
quote:Originally posted by Set: My least favorite songs ever include...'Keep 'em Separated' by the Offspring.
Agreed 100%. Whereas Cobain took punk's ideals too much at face value, bands like the Offspring utterly betrayed those ideals, even if they fooled a lot of people thanks to such superficial things as their haircuts and the brevity of their songs.
[ June 11, 2012, 03:18 PM: Message edited by: Fanfic Lady ]
Hyperpath: Email this page to someone!
Printer-friendly view of this topic | Subscribe To Topic
![[Disgusting]](graemlins/puke.gif)
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
![[Embarrassed]](redface.gif)
