Brandon Cruz-fronted Dead Kennedys is way superior to Biafra's.



psych!

indeed, music is so contrived, i prefer to listen to the music that naturaly arises from chance ambient sounds in my environment

I had my inner-ears removed - now I hear the environment the real way, like Beethoven: by feeling it. I particularly like tube stations for this reason.

Oh, and you speaking people really miss out on songs that are signed - that's the real way to understand lyrics.

I am a tree, so fuck off, you twat.

I liked this post. There are parts I disagree with, but generally it's the right idea. I particularly liked:


And:


This last bit particularly. I started listening to John Peel in about 1994 or so, and I remember him playing about a million bands that were near-identical to the Stripes - pared down garage/blues/pop sung by white guys with really, really thin voices. I thought all of them were shite, and it utterly mystifies me as to why the Stripes are popular. I remember watching them on some channel 4 programme with my Mum who couldn't stop laughing at how bad his singing was. She had tears streaming down her eyes by the end of it, it was a beautiful moment. "People don't take this seriously, do they?" "Yes Mum, they're very popular." Cue more laughter. And my Mum's got a great taste in music. Winner.

I'm the fucking sun you noob. rac[unt]ist.

i listen to music by forcing objects (e.g. a broom and some door keys) in through one ear hole and then out the other side, my inner ears are so developed that they calculate the musical properties of whatever objects and then feed that information to my brain which uses said info to create the ultimate sound equations, and no one else will ever hear them!

Tough shit, Mr Sun. I, The Big Bang, threw your sorry self near this planet so that you could illuminate this bunch of turds. You owe me your very own existence.

Yeah, whatever. Didn't you know I, the sun (or sol to my friends) am a Christian and therefore don't believe in you? Look at Earth - there's still monkeys around. If monkeys still exist, how can the big bang possibly be true, eh?

Glice beat me to it.

If Led Zeppelin have strong defaults (the sexism, the weak lyrics and the pompousness) they still rock (there's a strong cohesion between the band members and their music is well crafted and varied).

That may not true for the early Neil Young but surely not for the Neil Young of On the beach and Tonight's the night.

Hello, I'm Mrs Theory! Problems?

I don't think that too many people here don't like the Pixies.

my potentially unpopular musical opinions:

free improvisation is probably the greatest, most sophisticated and artistically supreme form of music. (and i'm not just talking about western free improv i.e anything from 1970s bailey/parker/bennick onward, i mean improvisation in all cultures and time periods, from korean sanjo to outer hebridean gaelic psalm singing to contemporary free improv, free jazz and electronic noise acts)
gamelan music is fantastic.
the pixies make brilliant rock music. my favourite album is "come on pilgrim" & the peel sessions are great.
talking about musicians being "talented" or "untalented" when discussing the musical/artistic worth of music is superflous. why is a concert pianist labelled as "talented" by the fierce majority of listeners for accurately following sheets of music that have been played in the same way for 300 years, when a saxophonist playing solo, freely improvised music utilising bizarre, high-pitched, warbling, atonal and previously unheard of sounds is labelled as "untalented" by the same critics? having more or less "talent" (if talent even exists) bears no correlation to the value or quality of the music in the slightest, and the whole concept of "talent" is completely man made.

once you've been to a few free improv gigs you'll see those "previously unheard sounds" are only previously unheard if you didn't go to any free improv gigs before, i.e. there are are only so many squeaky scratchy noises that eddie prevost and his lackeys can ellicit from their instruments before they all start to sound the same.

however, generally, i know what you're saying, if someone has mastery over their chosen instrument and a degree of imagination the sky is the limit.

yeah, i understand, but that is on a completely different scale to the pianist playing a baroque piece on the piano, where the 300 year old harmony has become so ingrained in the human consciousness that you can hum the next chord change a bar before it happens.
now, i'm not saying that that is entirely a bad thing, but when discussing predictability, free improv is in a completely different ball park.

I concur; free improv can be the very worst of boring, lifeless, stoic bollocks. It can also be life-affirmingly brilliant, but not terribly often.

pure and simple ignorance on yr part my friend, and I do not mean that as an insult, just as a statement of your lack of knowledge on this musical issue.

If you were to hear 20 recordings of beethoven's Violin concerto you would hear 20 different interpretations of the sheet music you assume they all follow by rote.
A concert violinist that can play this music as if it was just written, bringing vibrancy and showing nuances that others had not explored is something to be treasured, and is most aassuredly BRILLIANT and TALENTED.

You definitely have a point.

Christ, I HATE Zepplin!
Ahhh, that feels better.

UNPOPULAR MUSICAL OPINION

KISS RULES!!!!


KISS ARMY FOREVER!!!

Yeah, it's like reading a book written by a genius, re-typed painstakingly to the letter by someone a few hundred years down the line, who gets credit for a "brilliant re-interpratation" via underlining a word here or italicizing a sentence there.

A technical achievement, but yawn.

you are not alone.

oh come on, i wasn't at all saying that the hypothetical musician wasn't at all talented. i was raising a question, using those two analogies to demonstrate the confusion and dislike i have over the term "talent" when used by mainstream music literature and the listening public.

i wasn't relaying my personal opinions in the slightest. the vast majority of the listening public would call one musician talented and the other untalented. however, who are we to say which has a greater artistic value? that's all i was saying.

regarding classical music: to lend individual interpretation to a piece of music is obviously a skill that is hugely difficult to aquire, and takes a massive amount of sensitivity and creativity. this i agree with you on one hundred percent. i play the piano classically myself, and even if i don't do it very well, it really is the most wonderful aspect of playing.

p.s. when i said "following sheets of music that have been played in the same way for 300 years" i was regarding baroque piano/harpsichord music. it is actually almost impossible to perform a truly individual interpretation of most of the baroque keyboard works without actually altering the notes (something bach actually encouraged but which hardly anybody does). musicians have to inject personality with dynamics (which is impossible on a harpsichord) and these are dynamics which, for the most apart, are the dynamics widely encouraged and accepted by the scholarly institutions.
record labels, audiences and scholars obviously don't want to see their music slaughtered in this way so there is a limited creativity, which is on the opposite end of the spectrum of free improv. that is why i used the two examples.

:D

I'm not sure if it classifies as an unpopular opinion, but has anyone ever heard a so called muscian who's about to start to play some improv piece refering to their instrument as 'stuff'? I hate that. The 'stuff' in question is in most cases the rubbing of some paper or whatever against anything that amplifies its sound. That's not playing anything, that's just plain lack of musical skills.

Weezers Pinkerton makes me feel like I'm 15 again, and I love it.

also i like a lot of "goth" music from the early-mid 80s ie bauhaus, siouxsie etc which is probably an unpopular opinion.

bauhaus are awsome!

black flag 55% sucked.
other than damaged first four years, some of family man, semi my war, and a few other songs, most of their output with shite...
and the rollins band are one of the worst bands ever (imk not sure if thats unpopular or not)

I think 55% is being very generous. Pretty much everything after My War was garbage.

i thought of another one: the who.
surely no one here likes the who.

The Who were great. Jeff Beck era Yardbirds were great. I'm sure you can do better than that dear.

I like some Who. My Generation is one of the best songs to sloppily cover. Back when I had the time to be in a band in high school we would cover it and exaggerate the stuttering to ridiculous ends. Another time we played a recording of the bass solo becuz we weren't talented enough. It got laughs.

I like The Who over The Rolling Stones if that helps in some way.

The Who's The Kids Are Alright is one of my favourite films.

I prefer Elvis films to any other music-related films, including Spinal Tap.

Spinal Tap was not as comically ridiculous as Metallica's Some Kind of Monster (is this contentious? I have no idea).

I was really disappointed by Spinal Tap, I didn't find it funny actually.

i think some of the songs on Dinosaur Jr's green mind album are unnecessarily long.

For an unpopular music opinion amongst Dinosaur Jr fans, I prefer Without A Sound over Where You Been.