What's wrong with enjoying music from past generations or "dad rock"? Music was objectively better in the past, it was played with real instruments and the lyrics were meaningful. Nowadays everything is mass-marketed crap or hipster tryhard trash like Death Grips.
THERE WERE LESS NAGGY NIGGERS TOO
>music was objectively better in the past
>objectively
>music
Take a look at the Billboard charts from 1965. So much shit music has been forgotten. You only ever remember the good stuff.
>>65517011
The only wrong thing is posting this here, anon. You shouldn't expect /mu/ to have good taste, people come to this rathole for a reason.
I like how you state exactly why people dislike people who like older dad Rock music
>>65517011
This is bait but what ever...
There is a lot of great music right now, if you dont know how to find it or you dont have the ear to apreciate it go fuck yourself.
Also, tell me the reasons why it was objectively better.
>>65517011
>two fags posing
>le born in le wrong fucking generation :(
>>65517157
>Also, tell me the reasons why it was objectively better.
It was played with real instruments and had meaningful lyrics, like Stairway to Heaven or Bohemian Rhapsody; now you have a gay canadian kid "singing" baby baby ohhhh, a niggress "singing" about her big butt or a nigger screaming nonsense like that Death Grips guy.
>>65517011
>>65517037
>le queen=greatest band ever
>le freddie mercury>>>>>justin beaver
>le (c)rap music sucks
>am using term "music" loosly
>le remember when musicians actually played instruments
>le autotune ruining music
Fuck off m8s
>>65517228
Music right now is played with real instruments.
Also, why do you reduce nowadays music to that little faggot and death grips? you are just showing your ignorance. And another question: do you know any instrumental band?
>>65517011
1999 Toyota Tacoma
>Regular Cab
>2.4L 4-cylinder engine
>Manual 5-speed
>>65517228
this is 14 yr old youtube tier post. i really hope you're baiting, i don't want to share my board with autism havers
>>65517388
>Remember how great Toyota Tacomas were in the 90s
>This generation is screwed because of today's Toyota Tacomas
>>65517157
Not OP, but:
It's hard to argue, that in the past a lot more mainstream music was at least decent and far less streamlined. Take van halen - it was the shit that everybody talked about back in the day, and it was an excellent band. How many truly great artists can you talk about with your friends who are not that much into music?
Yeah, there's a bunch of great tunes out there, for sure. But the mainstream is absolute and utter shit and it's been like that for years. It happened in every era, sure, but I kinda get the feeling that utter shit became a much higher percentage of contemporary popular music around the late 90s and it just gets worse.
>>65517011
You're comparing today's (cherry picked) top 40 to the best songs in an entire couple decades of music. That's dumb, but I'll bite.
>http://top40charts.net/index.php?page=1970-music-charts
>http://top40charts.net/index.php?page=1971-music-charts
>http://top40charts.net/index.php?page=1972-music-charts
>etc.
Death Grips is a literal meme and it is better than nearly all of this.
Also, this,
>http://top40charts.net/index.php?page=number-ones-by-year
The most popular pop music was always pretty mediocre.
>>65517011
yeah go listen to Thundercat and then come back here
>>65517319
Computers and auto-tune are not real instruments, and the bands using real instruments are hipster garbage like Mumford and Sons or Imagine Dragons. There are no real bands anymore.
>>65517720
>What is Tame Impala
>>65517720
>computers and autotune are not real instruments
You must not have listened to Kid A. Both of the things you mentioned can sound immensely good in the right hands.
>>65517317
this is all true tho
>>65517720
>>65517918
This, and why does something need "real instruments" to be good?
And why does someone need to play an instrument to be a talented musician? Many of the best, many widely regarded musicians are very mediocre instrumentalists but are good songwriters or vocalists (see Brian Wilson, John Lennon).
>>65517720
Retard. Or bait. I hope everyone else sages this bait too.
>>65517918
Radiohead is hipster tryhard electro-crap, their only good song is Creep and that one doesn't have auto-tune or computers.
>>65517388
>>65517559
what went wrong
>>65518071
>their only good song is Creep
Yep, definitely bait. Pack it up guys.
>>65518074
Everything. It's ugly as fucking sin to start off with.
>>65518074
Designers: NEEDS MORE TRUCK
>>65517649
Imo Van Halen is shit. I don't care if they "know" how to play their instruments,the outcome result of their compositions is garbage to me. Good playing =/= good music.
>>65517720
Fucking troll... and if you are not a troll, that you are, you are just showing the lack of knowledge about bands from this time.
>>65517011
imagine being born in the 40s and being forced to only listen to the five good bands present at the time AND not being able to witness the fuckton of brilliant shit being released as I write this post. 0/10, made me waste my time.
>>65518583
It's just an example, although your opinion doesn't really matter - the sheer impact they made on music however, does.
You won't find a single artist in the last 20 years that even came close.
>Good playing =/= good music.
agreed, but it helps
>>65517011
lets get a few things straight
>the shit music from the 60's-90's is not remembered at all
>the beatles were slung into celebrity by record companies as much as justin bieber is nowadays
>creating electronic music takes about at much talent/effort as conventional instrumental music
>exposure to conventional musical instruments/digital musical instruments is much bigger now, anyone can be a musician, it just takes longer to weed out the shit ones
>exposure to music itself is much bigger now; radio, social media, youtube, spotify, bandcamp, soundcloud all that shit vs. radio back in the day
and this is coming from someone who enjoys 60's and 70's music. Im just not saying it's objectively better because I actually learned how to reason. I just enjoy it more. Most people who enjoyed zeppelin or queen back in the day were following trends just as much as beliebers/one direction crap nowadays. That does not mean either music is objectively bad. There are a fuckton of other reasons why modern music may be crap, but its not that.
Its usually just millenials trying to differentiate from the rest "lol im so unique"
>>65519023
just as an addition to myself:
arguably, musicians back in the day had to do a lot more with the composition of their own song than they do now. This I consider a valid argument
>>65518808
>40s
You nuts? I'd be listening to so much Fletcher Henderson, Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Billie Holliday, Louis Armstrong with his Hot 5s and 7s, not to mention being born in the 40s means being 10 in the 50s and coming of age in the 60s. You fucking nuts?
>>65518835
The impact of their music? come on.. they were just a pop/rock band with anything worth to remember...
>>65519125
dont forge that shit was considered blasphemous at the time
singing about love WHOOOAA
>>65517011
Go fuck yourself. Actually end your life, and apologize to everyone for not doing it sooner, you shitposting mongoloid.
>>65519023
>There are a fuckton of other reasons why modern music may be crap, but its not that.
At least said "modern mainstream music" because I can show you tons of modern musicians that are awesome but dont appear on Mtv
>>65519254
yes thats what I mean
thanks for the correction tho
>>65519153
Yeah, basically redefining how an electric guitar is supposed to be played is no big deal.
I get that you have your little meme contrarian fanclub full of people who couldn't play a cymbal note in key if your life depended on it over here, but holy shit /mu/, now you're just being silly.
>>65517011
here's your (You)
>>65518095
>implying that the op wasnt evidence enough to prove it was bait
btw, what do yall think of ben frost?
>>65519125
>implying you'd have had access to these
>>65519305
As I told you before: well played =/= good music. He did not redifine anything, he just invented a new "technique" and I can argue with that with this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmTQYquqxSY
Also rock music is just a tiny fraction of the total music in history is it really that important to influence just a tiny part of the total music that exist? I don't think so...
>>65517228
bait but still
>Hey baby, oh baby, pretty baby
>Tell me what you're doin', what you do to me
>Oh baby, pretty baby, oh baby
>Tell me won't you do me now, what you do to me, baby
>>65517011
autotune debacle is just this generation's acoustic vs electric guitars.
>>65517065
weak bait, m80
>>65519845
>i'm a retard who heard no more than 2 popular songs of a given artist and read a wiki article fragment to make claims on a topic I have no clue about to show my superior knowledge on an imageboard full of retarded wannabe music critics
yeah, have a nice day
>>65517011
>Music was objectively better in the past
yes
100 years ago
>>65520111
Ad hominen arguments are use when people don't know how to answer. Have a nice day too.
>>65517011
>What's wrong with enjoying music from past generations or "dad rock"?
Nothing, so stop being such an insecure dick about it.
>>65520257
>I cant formulate a decent response so I just say reddit XDXDXD
>>65517011
All I listen to is dad rock basically, trying to branch out
>>65517011
This bait shouldn't have worked. I'm disappointed in you /mu/
>>65521337
that post is more cringeworthy than rap in general
>>65517011
>Music was objectively better in the past
Fuck off boomer
>>65521683
And how the fuck can someone not have heard knockin on heaven's door? Anyone who's turned on a radio in the past 20 years has heard that song.
>>65521337
Guns and Roses suck big time, by nature I shut off the radio or flip to another station the minute I come across one of their songs they're that grating and unbearable.
Also GnR's cover is trash, Warren Zevon's version is 10,000,000X superior if you want to have any version of the song be considered "greatest song ever made".
>>65521337
>knocking on heavens door
>guns n roses
God i hope who ever posted that is raped
>>65521774
I heard it, but its not by guns and roses. thats a cover
>mass-marketed crap
Fucking look at the 70s dude. Mass-marketed crap everywhere.
>hipster tryhard trash
Progressive rock.
>lyrics were meaningful
haha yeah totally
>>65521900
LOOK AT THE BIG BRAINS ON ANON
>>65522080
that post is still cringeworthy
>all rap is shit
>the only good rap is eminem (2 of the worst songs)
>knocking on heavens door by guns n roses is the prime example of good music
this is the official /mu/ timeline
>>65517228
>Stairway to Heaven or Bohemian Rhapsody
normie filter
>>65517228
Obvious b8 but i chuckled
>>65517065
not that bad desu, not a lot of shit that got forgotten
>>65517011
True.
Music made nowadays is made for women and homosexuals to go clubbing to. Now everybody obsesses over Justin Beaver lip-synching when Jimmy Page used to be able to shred on guitar live and have it sound as good as most of today's recordings. The raw stage energy created by Led Zeppelin can no longer be replicated ever since sterile electronic "music" was invented in 1990.
>>65522385
you chose one date you moron
i'm pretty sure he meant the entire year
>>65522404
Uh, you do realize that Kraftwerk made the first "true" electronic music back in the 70s?
>>65521337
>talking about sex, drugs, and violence
Is this moron implying these things werent extremely popular as song topics back then? What an idiot
>white guy with a guitar singing about sex and drugs
"What an epic, classic, incredible song. Truly better than todays music"
>black guy talking over beats about sex and drugs
"Wow, Music is so trashy today. What happened to good music???"
>>65522596
>white guy with a guitar singing about sex and drugs
>"What an epic, classic, incredible song. Truly better than todays music"
>implying anyone with taste ever listened to AC/DC, Motley Crue, or Kiss
All the music publications like Rolling Stone laughed at them back then and they still laugh at them.
>>65522768
but anon
>>65519023
>Most people who enjoyed zeppelin or queen back in the day were following trends just as much as beliebers/one direction crap nowadays.
Do you think the Beatles worshiped Chuck Berry and Elvis because of their artistry or because they thought they were cool.
>>65522768
Don't music publications like Rolling Stone all glorify alternative/punk bands who mostly whine about Republicans?
>>65519023
>the shit music from the 60's-90's is not remembered at all
I'm quite sure AC/DC, Kiss, Motley Crue, and Def Leppard are pretty well remembered in the annals of popular music.
>>65517011
>Music was objectively better in the past,
>>65522895
So did guys like Christgau for that matter because he wrote for the Village Voice which was an infamous Marxist publication for decades. Well, I mean they gradually got neutered from the 80s onward when Rupert Murdoch bought them out, but still...
>>65522920
From an artistic standpoint, those bands are junk food and nothing more but they were good at writing catchy pop rock with huge hooks, so...meh.
>>65517011
I like the faces, but thank god for the internet
>>65522920
arguably, yes. But i mean mostly the stuff that slipped through the cracks like barclay james harvest. I still like em, but compared to their contemporaries (especially pink floyd) they're complete and utter shit
>>65521992
The 70s was literally the decade when mass-marketed buttrock came into being. The edgy, revolutionary late 60s-early 70s stuff gave way to stale, boring corporate rock like Eagles, Doobie Brothers, and Kiss.
Now Bruce Springsteen I will never get. I've never found one song of his that was listenable.
>>65517228
>meaningful lyrics, like Stairway to Heaven or Bohemian Rhapsody
what the fuck are either of these songs even about? a bunch of occulty sounding nonsense and a guy who killed a guy and is telling his mom about it? so meaningful lol
>>65522949
Ah, good old Xgau.
>write reviews that are so incomprehensible that nobody can understand what he's saying because he wants to show off his Oxford Dictionary fetish
>write reviews attacking the artist or his/her fans more than the music itself
>complete inconsistency
>claim on one hand that rock should be basic three chord jams and minimal production (keep rawk pure down with prog)
>then turn around and crap on Motley Crue and other buttrockers who do exactly that
>instead glorify pretentious college/alternative bands because they're in line with the politics of your Village Voice bosses
>>65523150
Christgau just goes a liiiitle too far up his own ass. Lester Bangs actually wrote more than two-sentence reviews on albums and he was a less opaque writer and had a better sense of humor.
>>65517396
>autism havers
I think we all know who really has autism here
>>65523051
I like I'm On Fire. Just a fan of the echo and reverb, but it's a go-to if I'm in a Springsteen mood.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzQvGz6_fvA
>>65523203
I would really like to know why he hates Black Sabbath? Hugely influential pioneers of heavy metal. The highest he's given them is a C.
Such weak b8, yet I'm compelled to reply.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcVnfh-epsI
>>65517317
Autotune IS ruining music though.
>>65523086
How is stairway to heaven "occulty ... nonsense?" Are you too dumb to understand the lyrics?
>>65523288
You do realize that if a bad singer's voice is made good via autotune, that's a good thing, right? It makes a shitty song that much better.
>le art is objective meme
>>65523256
The guy doesn't like metal and prog apparently because if the song doesn't have an immediately recognizable message (ie. the message of the song is couched in some metaphor about demons and wizards), he can't wrap his tiny brain around it. Like if you listened to any of Dio's songs, the meaning behind them is very...opaque.
>>65522446
Electronic music has, is, and always will be utter shit. Doesn't matter if it was made in 211 BC, it's shit.
Yeah he is a twat. Its almost like his blindly chooses a rating out of a hat. He conforms to popular demand - for example any led zeppelin fan will tell you that albums I and II are better than IV (in terms of innovation etc) but he scores IV higher. Furthermore, anyone who gives C- to black Sabbath's 1970 albums is an idiot (remember this was before ozzy was drugged up to fuck) – he was just a Beatles lover who couldn’t accept that the 60s were over.
>>65523341
>bad singer
Don't you see? That's the problem. No amount of autotune can fix bad singing because it just makes it sound like a fucking robot
>>65523051
Dancing in the dark
Also >>65523237
>>65523203
The only bands I could find that he had nothing but good things to say about, were The Clash and John Fogerty/CCR. So he's not a total stooge. But if he can't find anything good to say about Dire Straits, outside their first album, well he has no credibility in my eyes.
>>65523444
He gave Bs and As to all of Bonnie Rait's discography except for like one album. Also his Sleater-Kinney reviews. The fuck...?
>>65523320
>"occulty ... nonsense?"
damn, you are really good at pretending to be obnoxiously pretentious
How someone as brain-damaged as Christgau has held on so long baffles me. Testament I guess to NYC's love of self-important/appointed loudmouths. Thurston Moore should have killed him with his big fucking dick as planned.
>>65523504
thanks
Anyone can have a valid “opinion”. Valid opinions in themselves don’t guarantee worthwhile criticism. It isn’t Christgau’s “opinions” that make him such an asshole: it is the fact that his criticism is nothing more than a masturbatory indulgence in self-love. He is writing to hear the sound of his own voice and there is no way anyone can claim that they’ve ever extracted anything nourishing from his “reviews”. And that his what makes him such a cocksucker. I suspect that the people who defend him share his political sympathies: i.e., white Marxist eunuchs. If that’s the case, go read some Noam Chomsky while pleasuring yourselves. Leave discourse on music to people who know what the fuck they’re talking about.
>>65523051
I never liked most of his studio recordings since it always feels over-produced. Which is why I love Nebraska since it's literally demos that he recorded in his bedroom.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iir_xAbt-ak
>>65523551
>I suspect that the people who defend him share his political sympathies: i.e., white Marxist eunuchs
Wonder how much of a letdown it was for him to learn that Johnny Ramone was a Republican. :^)
>>65523051
That and Springsteen is an obnoxious liberal douche with a fake tax farm so he doesn't have to pay the huge Democrat taxes he loves so much.
>>65517011
>What's wrong with enjoying music from past generations or "dad rock"?
Because you say stupid shit like this
>Music was objectively better in the past
>>65523582
Yeah on his review of Pleasant Dreams, Christgau says "I wonder how history will remember that one of punk rock's first anti-KKK songs was written by a confirmed Reaganite."
I guess like most WLUs*, he doesn't actually know that the KKK was the terrorist wing of the Democrat Party in the South.
*WLU=White Liberal Eunuch
>>65523607
In all fairness, Bruce is relatively harmless. The guy's rarely had overtly political stuff in his songs nor does he spend half of every show haranguing the audience about dem evul RethugliKKKans like, say, Eddie Vedder,
>>65517011
I know this is b8 but why do people that make this argument always use bands like Led Zeppelin or The Beatles, They were two of the most marketed bands in history.
Christgau may have started writing about music with real interest and passion, but a listener with wide sampling over the ears, is still scratching the surface when summing up in a few lines, of the boatloads he must've heard even in 60s-80s timeframe. A few lines isn't going to take note of the struggles of matching musical ideas to still-developing technology especially in 70s (recording methods or synths), or the gradual fusion and overlapping of genres throughout the decades. What gets my goat is he often takes the glass half-empty view of a project, argues that is its whole existence, in completely oblivion of what the artist intended (especially in merging genres.) He also typifies the super-critic as personality, using a pithy music review, to showcase prowess with wordplay or self-imagined acerbic "wit" - which in itself is fine if it ever entertained like Dorothy Parker or Wilde, while actually giving some insight about what he reviews.
Instead, he spends most reviews trying to shoehorn everything into his narrow world view including musical expressions tied into ethnic, regional, gender, religious, and generational experiences very different from his own and he's completely unable to sympathize with them or put himself into the shoes of the people in question.
>>65523812
Led Zeppelin unlike the Beatles didn't even have an underground past. These guys were rock stars playing huge crowds from day one.
>>65523673
>inventing a shitty acronym that you have to tell people the meaning of when you use it
why even bother posting?
And closer to the point of original post, Christgau doesn't seem to understand the varied potentials and uses of humor in music. Ween, Weezer, Flaming Lips, and Queen (which is how I stumbled across Christgau and felt like poking my eyes out), all use humor as defense mechanisms in treating various subject matters for their songwriting. Christgau either reads against or stops right at the grain on the surface, never entertaining for once the subtext and context (which calls for some knowledge of band history, sociocultural context, and even business trends in the industry at time of record's release) or the TEXT he's re-viewing. What's light-hearted, irreverent, or "not serious/intellectual (enough)" MAY and often DO have much darker undercurrents wrapped in the euphemistic gesture of pop music entertainment. Just because the song doesn't have some whinefest about society's ills doesn't mean it's not "deep".
I dunno, I'm a fan of the Flaming Lips, King Crimson, Phish, Jane's Addiction, and Grizzly Bear, just a few of the bands I like that Xgau dismisses pretty curtly (despite giving an A- to both Embryonic and Red by the first two). Yet somehow he gives shit like the Backstreet Boys or Soulja Boy or Taylor Swift and her grating fucking voice good reviews. Whatever. He's recommended a lot of music I think is great and a lot I don't care for, and he's dismissed the same. Adults can agree to disagree, right? Let him be a pretentious asshole if he wants, he's made a living out of it.
Besides, he gave There's A Riot Goin' On an A+, so he can't be all bad. Also he did shit on a lot of bands that deserved to be shit on like Motley Crue, RHCP, and Journey, so good for him.
>>65517094
most reasonable response right here
>>65519469
frosty dude
The point where Xgau gave King Crimson and Genesis albums Ds and Cs while giving Backstreet Boys an A is where he lost any shred of credibility.
>>65524008
I think the man's biggest failing perhaps is that he tries a little too hard to use music critique to force the Village Voice's leftarded politics. I mean, come on. New York Dolls are okay, but to Christgau it's as if that band descended from Heaven. Well, okay; personally I think they're a few tuneful and rather sweet songs. I can't imagine repeatedly going back and listening to that kind of bread-and-butter guitar music — Christgau's "less is more" approach to ornamentation fails him here. Perhaps it really is just a matter of taste, but you get the sense that he's intentionally pushing this vision of pop music well beyond his honest rating of the music itself.
On the other hand, I do agree with his opinion that the Eagles suck and that GNR had a terrifying level of misogyny backed by sleek and powerful musicianship. On others, it's more annoying like his Soulja Boy reviews. I understand he liked the kid because his music was young, snappy, and precocious, but that doesn't translate into listenable music.
It's this need he has to aggressively push the VV's politics I think that can really grate on people. He'll very often rate a record based on its perceived import or the circumstances of the recording. It's completely a Marmite thing; you're either going to buy into that approach or run away from it.
I respect the man for not going with the grain when it comes to some artists (who may be seen as above criticism by many), however his rude utterly aggressive attitude really makes his reviews seem like rants. Even when he finds an album that he likes, his use of language is simply a mass of long words selected straight from the nearest thesaurus. His bomb and scissor symbols that so often plague wikipedia album entries are at odds with the standard 5-star system. Everything about this man reeks of pretentiousness; the very thing he accuses progressive rock of.
Fair point and yes his grasp of the English language is superior to my own. I just find that often his reviews are hard to follow. Here's an example...
Autobahn [Vertigo, 1975]
The Iron Butterfly of überrock--Mike Oldfield for unmitigated simpletons, sort of, and yet in my mitigated way I don't entirely disapprove. A melody or two worth hearing twice emanates from a machine determined to rule all music with a steel hand and some mylar, and the title track is longer than "In-a-Gadda-da-Vida" sans drum solo, with a lyric (trot provided) that could become the "What's Life? A magazine" of high school German classes all over America. B-
...what the shit is he on about?!? I get the gist of it, but what a meandering and frankly unclear way of stating his opinion. Oh, and this was found in the space of about a minute's searching on his website.
He can just be so smugly dismissive of anything that doesn't fit his subjective view of what should be listened to, even when he does decide to write a single paragraph explaining why as opposed to a symbol. He has the attitude of, "Well, I'm stating this opinion - which should be self evident as to why it is true after you read it." The same could be said for my assessment of him, and that's fair. But I feel his arrogance and condescension get in the way of his honesty, even when he tries to admit his biases. For example, Marilyn Manson (who isn't my personal favorite), he says "No big deal to have an I.Q. bigger than Ozzy", which is basically saying, the STYLE of music that he doesn't like can never be done well because he doesn't like it. Which is different from saying, I don't like this style of music.
Also, personally, I don't like Vampire Weekend. Bomb symbols for all albums.
Christgau was very influenced by pop art of post-war USA. He considers rock and roll, hip hop, punk, funk and pop (obviously) as pop art, and is against genres such as "art"-rock that fans claim imbue "art" into what they otherwise consider "sterile" genres. As someone who agrees with him, that's about as neutral a way as I can explain it.
>Audioslave [Epic/Interscope, 2002] *bomb*
>Out of Exile [Epic/Interscope, 2005] *bomb*
Into the trash it goes.
>In The Court Of The Crimson King [Atlantic, 1969]
"The plus is because Peter Townshend likes it. This can also be said of The Crazy World of Arthur Brown. Beware the forthcoming hype--this is ersatz shit. D+"
>>65524830
Christgau (who has long been hostile to virtually all progressive rock) gave King Crimson's album an absurd D+ rating. But he never bothered to explain in the slightest bit as to why the album deserved such a negative review. If you're going to slam an artist's work so viciously (calling it "shit"), you should at least bother to give a reason or two.
Time has not been kind to Christgau's opinion of In the Court of the Crimson King. The album is now regarded as a milestone. It's one of the all-time classics of the progressive rock genre. It features astonishingly skillful musicianship, epic songs, thought-provoking lyrics---in short, just about everything one could ask for in a classic rock album.
>>65517111
I like how you state exactly the same number with the last three digits of your post
>>65524896
Meanwhile, he slapped As on Spice Girls, Backstreet Boys, Janet Jackson, Beyonce, and Taylor Swift albums.
Fact: Alt-dadrock is worse than dadrock
>>65524953
Ok look, maybe those artists are ok if you're a white suburban 12 year old girl who enjoys buying hair scrunchies at Claire's, but shit, that's all their music is good for.
Spend some time with his reviews and you wonder why anyone would take his writings seriously. When he's not slamming important albums, ranging from Nick Cave to Scott Walker, he's gushing over lightweight artists that I don't believe will stand the test of time. (Take a bow, Taylor Swift).
To put that into context, that's more A ratings than Christgau has awarded to the entire combined works of the likes of The Smiths, The Jam, The Swans, Kraftwerk, Black Sabbath and AC/DC. That, of course, is insane. The Smiths alone have more talent, wit, integrity and intelligence in one song than Janet Jackson has in her entire catalog. Well, at least in my opinion.
Why does Christagau like Pavement so much
>>65525027
One thing that has always baffled me about Christgau (besides how anyone could take him seriously) are the so-called standards he uses in evaluating music. For one thing, he doesn't like songs about death (by his own admission). That pretty much rules out dark, challenging work by the likes of Nick Cave.
I guess my question on this is why? What, exactly, is wrong with writing a song about death? It's a fascinating topic, after all. God knows, I'd rather hear Cave sing a haunting song about death than Swift sing yet another syrupy love song with Hallmark lyrics. And, in any case, who needs Swift singing about love when you've got the collected works of Barry White and Prince awaiting your listening pleasure on YouTube?
>>65517011
some girl said to me that no music now is good and I told her to listen to Pom Pom by Ariel Pink did I do good
>>65525110
>For one thing, he doesn't like songs about death (by his own admission)
To be fair, songs about death (and by extension old age) don't appeal to me either. They kind of creep me out.
>>65523086
Better than a nigger screaming nonsense over a computer beat or a hipster tryhard dude "singing" about Jesus Christ and Anne Frank.
For some reason I have found the only artists/albums I've been obsessed with for the last several years or so are random older gems. Not really dad rock specifically though.
Maybe I'm just crazy, but I feel all the artists I thought were actually pushing things forward in the last ten years have just vanished. In that way I've been let down with the Internet and it's influence on music. It's weird I feel like an old man sometimes, most of the stuff my friends (mid20s) p4k, and now /mu/ push just sounds re-appropriated and redundant, and worst of all usually safe while it's all under the premise of the opposite.
thank you for reading my blog
>its been a long time since i rock and rolled
>had literally been playing music consistently for years just before writing this
fucking dad rock
>>65523407
robots are cool dude get with the times
>>65524960
Kill yourself
>>65525804
why though
>>65517065
> Take a look at the Billboard charts from 1965. So much shit music has been forgotten.
> You only ever remember the good stuff.
Sure, but the problem nowadays, is that there is so little newer stuff that's worth remembering,
>>65525852
It will take 10-20 years anyway to see what artists are still seen as memorable. Because really, the Osmonds had the most #1 hits of any 70s band, not Led Zeppelin/The Who/Black Sabbath.
>>65525852
If you're gonna post an example of "good" dadrock, you'll have to do a little better than Chicago.
>>65525027
What? He was if nothing very kind to Kraftwerk. Of five albums of theirs he reviewed, three got Bs, one an A and a one three stars.
>>65517388
Now this is memee
>>65523381
>Electronic music has, is, and always will be utter shit.
Wew, not even gonna spend the time to prove you wrong on that
Even if it's your opinion (which it is, in case you've become so absorbed within it that you think it's fact), just because you don't like something doesn't mean it isn't good. Currently blasting The Man-Machine by Kraftwerk throughout my house and enjoying the fuck out of it, too bad you can't because of your close-mindedness.
>>65523381
One of Christgau's apparent rules for anything he reviews is that it has to have a sense of humor about it, so of course he craps on Black Sabbath and Pink Floyd for being too grimdark.
The man is entitled to his opinions, yet at the same time when you see how much he jerked off the horribly overrated Nirvana and Sonic Youth and the latter barely had any sense of humor, at least not any more than PF, a band he denounced for their humorlessness. And I say this as someone who likes Sonic Youth.
Notice also that he criticized Sabbath and Floyd for having excessively long instrumental sections yet apparently had no problem with SY doing 10 minutes of guitar feedback. In his mind, 10 minutes of feedback takes more talent than 10 minutes of soloing? Speaking of having no sense of humor. I find it interesting that (like most "serious" critics) Christgau has zero interest of the pop gems of ABBA. I mean, wow. A straight white male rockist doesn't like ABBA. That's such a revelation.
>>65526732
>le humor trumps over all meme
Arrival [Atlantic, 1977]
Since this is already the best-selling group in the universe, I finally have an answer when people ask me to name the Next Big Thing. What I wonder is how we can head them off at the airport. Plan A: Offer Bjorn and Benny the leads in Beatlemania (how could they resist the honor?) and replace them with John Phillips and Denny Doherty. Plan B: Appoint Bjorn head of the U.N. and Benny his pilot (or vice versa) and replace them with John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Plan C: Overexpose them in singing commercials. Plan D: Institute democratic socialism in their native land, so that their money lust will meet with the scorn of their fellow citizens. C
ABBA is objectively shit though.
>>65527081
Well, Mamma Mia is kind of crap...
>>65526732
"In theory, metal is today's real rock and roll--the music of the people. It's basic, it's rude, kids love it, parents hate it. But the closer you look, the stupider and more delusory it seems. Metal isn't basic--it cultivates a pseudo-virtuosity that negates content. The dreams it promulgates are usually foolish and often destructive. Eighty per cent of the "people" who like it are male, and 98 per cent of them are white.
We get the feeling Penelope Spheeris went into this sequel to her L.A. punk documentary enamored of the theory and came out dismayed by the facts. After interviewing dozens of performers, several groupies, one self-promoting impresario, and a woman cop, she still obviously admires the manic dedication and hang-loose irreverence of metal's musicians and fans. But the evidence does pile up. Sex talk that at first seems purely bawdy is gradually revealed as the usual locker-room misogyny--musician after musician observes that a woman who'd sleep with him would sleep with anybody. Drugs have gone out of fashion, but not alcohol. In one truly horrifying sequence, W.A.S.P.'s Chris Holmes, reclining in a swimming pool wearing full leathers, pours two bottles of vodka down his throat as his mother looks on with a nervous smile.
L.A.'s atypically glam scene is where the hot American metal bands hail from these days, but that's a new development--of the six elder statesmen who volunteer their tarnished wisdom, only Alice Cooper got his start in the showbiz capital. Maybe that's why the old guys make so much more sense than the young ambition addicts whose mercifully truncated music is the film's ostenisble subject. More likely it's that they're successful enough to have turned into elder statesmen and smart enough to have succeeded. This movie bombed because it got panned in metal's word-of-mouth underground. Nonfans will learn a lot from it."
>>65527422
>music listened to by straight white males is evul
But Bob, you're a straight white male.
you guys do know he wrote that in 1988. the metal audience is far wider-ranging and more global today.
>>65517011
I remember shitposting with this image. Good times.
>>65527422
>The dreams it promulgates are usually foolish and often destructive
Though I fail to see how this hasn't been true of rawk since the 50s. Cripes, Little Richard's biggest-ever hit was an abridged version of a song about anal sex.
>Black Sabbath [Warner Bros., 1970]
"All the worst excesses of the counterculture on a plastic platter--drug-impaired reaction times, bullshit necromancy, lengthy solos. They claim to oppose war, but if I don't believe in loving my enemies, then I don't believe in loving my allies either and I've been worried that something like this was going to happen ever since I first saw a numerology column in an underground newspaper. D+"
>Paranoid [Warner Bros., 1970]
"They do take heavy to undreamt-of extremes, and I suppose I could enjoy them as camp, like a horror movie--the title cut is definitely screamworthy. After all, their audience can't take that Lucifer bit seriously, right? Well, depends on what you mean by serious. Personally, I've always suspected that horror movies catharsized stuff I was too rational to care about in the first place. C-"
>Master of Reality [Warner Bros., 1971]
"As an increasingly regretful spearhead of the great Grand Funk Railroad switch--in which I called Grand Funk a good ol' American white boy blues band of three years ago--although I knew of no critics, myself included, that actually played the records. Grand Funk are American--dull. Black Sabbath are English--dull and decadent. I don't care how many rebels and incipient groovers are buying. I don't even care if the band believes in their own Christian/liberal/Satanist muck. This is a dimwitted, amoral exploitation. C-"
Is this bait?
Well, whatever, why do people idolize 80's or 90's so much? there's a lot of really cool music before the 80's and a lot of really cool music after the 90's
[1956] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsZZkOgtMyI
[2012] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzX1LK80DPI
>>65517720
Using computers is not band, specially when your making stuff that is really hard to play with computers
>>65528689
"is not band", kek, I meant "is not bad".
>>65528689
>Well, whatever, why do people idolize 80's or 90's so much? there's a lot of really cool music before the 80's and a lot of really cool music after the 90's
Nostalgia? IDK.
>>65517388
if this was an album cover, what genre would it be?
>All electronic music is shit, they don't play an instrument!
>Classical? Oh, uh.........well composing is pretty impressive. Even though Mozart didn't play every single instrument in the orchestra.......he could still make art......even if it was predetermined and not preformed by him live
My conclusion is that if you hate electronic music, you hate classical music
>>65528987
>Mozart
>music
choose one and ONLY one
>>65528634
>Van Halen [Warner Bros., 1978]
"For some reason Warner wants us to know that this is the biggest bar band in the San Fernando Valley. This doesn't mean much--all new bands are bar bands, unless they're Boston. The term becomes honorific when the music belongs in a bar. This music belongs on an aircraft carrier. C+"
>>65529226
On an aircraft carrier? What does that even mean? Christgau's prose is often brilliant, but here he's either too smart for me or has no idea what he's talking about.
>>65529553
Fancy speak for VH being stadium rock, not barroom rock.
>Back In Black [Atlantic, 1980]
"Replacing Aerosmith as primitives of choice among admirers of heavy machinery, these Aussies are a little too archetypal for my tastes. Angus Young does come up with killer riffs, though not as consistently as a refined person like myself might hope, and fresh recruit Brian Johnson sings like there's a cattle prod at his scrotum, just the thing for fans who can't decide whether their newfound testosterone is agony or ecstasy. AC/DC can't decide either--"Shoot to Thrill," "Given [sic] the Dog a Bone," and "Let Me Put My Love Into You" all concern the unimaginative sexual acts you'd imagine, and "What Do You Do for Money Honey" has a more limited set of answers than the average secretary would prefer. My sister's glad they don't write fantasy and science fiction, and if you're female you're free to share her relief. Brothers are more deeply implicated in these matters. B-"
Whatever sympathy one might have with Christgau's assessment of AC/DC and Motley Crue's lyrics (and they are juvenile at best), that sympathy evaporates when you discover that he's given "artists" like Soulja Boy A grades . . . Soulja Boy makes AC/DC look like a bunch of intellectuals. So, I don't buy that it's the stupidity of the lyrics that he's unable to overcome.
>>65530323
He loved Big Black, who are every bit as dumb as AC/DC but play much worse.
>hammering out the same chord over and over for 3 minutes
Jeez, at least Malcolm and Angus could actually play something resembling music.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahYC-CwnVQM
This is what Xgau thinks is listenable music.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9kT37eIkaY
Apparently though this isn't listenable music.
I give you though, Big Black has aged MUCH better than the big arena metal from that era.
Dad rock is the only music I listen to.
The most recent artist I listen to is Guns N' Roses.
Modern music sucks fucking asshole.
