The Music thread

Would it be too gauche to name names? I know next to nothing about the genre, though I did, mostly inadvertantly, catch House Music icon Frankie Knuckles' first show outside his native Chicago.

 

What's interesting is, if Nirvana is just a copy of the Pixies (I have no reason to think otherwise, as I have been sternly reprimanded by the Council of Those Who Know Everyone Who Was The First To Do Something Musically But Couldn't Be Arsed To Produce/Market It Well Enough That It Would Reach Auria Thru Mainstream Radio), then that sound is no longer the sole property of the Hipgentsia. Nirvana brought it out of the shadows of the Cool Places Only The Cool People Know About and gave it to all of us. Bless them.

 

They’re not even remotely just a copy of the Pixies, but their sound was foundational to Nirvana’s. You can hear the difference on Bleach, which is probably before they heard much Pixies and has a vastly different sound (plus inferior songwriting and drumming).

But Nirvana’s influences were much wider than that. Like the Beatles and John Lennon in particular played a huge part in their sound. Cobain could write a hook better than anybody else of that era or genre.

 

I always had difficulties with the indie scene so to say. Whether it was rock, electronic, there always seemed to be a snobby element to it.

Red Hot Chili Peppers of all bands were good at having an open mind because they loved punk and funk. I don't think I'd be willing to expand my tastes when I was a teen if they don't talk about groups like P-Funk, The Meters, and such.

 

I don't know how to answer this. At first I was told that Nirvana was just the Pixies with superior people behind the marketing. Now I'm reading that Cobain is a savvy writer in his own right. Which is it (I'm gonna go with the latter, because that's what I believed all along)?

 

Who said that?

 

I saw the Pixes in the early 90s at the Seattle Center Coliseum which is a notoriously bad venue for acoustics and sound quality. They played at an ungodly volume and their instruments were out of tune, the vocal harmonies were out of tune and the rhythm section couldn't keep time. The mal-tuning, shitty time and excessive volume forced my exit after a couple tunes. It was the only show I've seen that caused intense nausea. The Pixes are vomitous.

 

Well, I added the "superior marketing" part, because Nirvana did break out.

 

If it was early 90’s then they were likely nearing the end of their first incarnation together. From what I’ve read they were not having a good time together by then, and that might’ve come across in the show. But it also sounds like other stuff was conspiring against it as well.

 

Yeah, their sound was heavily influenced by the Pixies, doesn’t mean they were carbon copies. Lots of artists have been influenced by other artists and then taken that sound in new directions.

IMO Nirvana made it bigger for a number of reasons, including Cobain being a better (and more accessible) songwriter and a more compelling frontman, and a producer who smoothed out their sound on Nevermind. Plus that album came out at JUST the right time when grunge was hitting the mainstream and the hair band scene had run its course.

 

He looks like rock right here.

 

Some wiseass online said that all Anthony Kiedis sings about is CALIFORNIA CALIFORNIA CALIFORNIA. We get it. You like California.

 

No song IMO captures the indie/punk rock ethos better than this DKs song. Let's see if @Auriaprottu gets it:

 

I'm trying to learn Ode an die Freude, otherwise known as Beethoven's Ode to Joy. (Scouse and I have both posted a really awesome flashmob singing this.) It's a hard sell. I'm finally good enough to be able to sing it, but singing in a foreign language is just f'ing hard for this monoglot.

But this gave me some hope.

 

New Order - Regret. This is 30 yrs old.

 

Anti Hair Metal. Bowie & T. Rex were glam and they're awesome.

JBJ sucks plus he was from Sayreville which is South Jersey

 

Born on this day in '55. One of my favorite drummers, Topper Headon.



…He did not play on the UK release of the band’s debut album. The Clash is stuffed with top tunes, over-flowing with snarling attitude. Terry Chimes did the job behind the drum kit. ‘Topper’, a decent drummer, had been told his playing was on the quiet side. He needed to toughen up a bit.

“I thought, I’m going to have to knock the shit out of those drums. As a result, I had to re-learn my style. In doing so, he made the transition from good to great. He kept his range of styles but had to add power to his playing. Real power (…) He was a drumming genius who propelled a good band to become the best around. It was inevitable, maybe, that such talent would come at a price. He had developed a heroin habit which soon escalated and led to having to leave the band in 1982...

...Months after being in one of the world’s biggest RnR bands, Headon was living in a freezing, windowless squat in Fulham, while The Clash were performing stadium shows in the US in support of the single “Rock the Casbah”, a song largely written by him and on which he played drums, bass and piano.

When he received £200,000 in royalties from The Clash, a sum roughly equivalent to £750,000 today, the money lasted less than 18 months. “My dealer used to come round and say, ‘I’ll take the rug,’ and a big Persian rug would walk out for a gram. He was left sitting on the floor of his empty, remortgaged Abbey Road flat watching a black-and-white television.

He got arrested on charges of supplying heroin and received a 15-month jail sentence. Then he took a mini cabbing job in the late ‘80s to fund his heroin addiction, since he would only appear for as long as it took him to earn the £25 he needed to buy drugs, so when work became too much for him, he took to the London Underground, busking with a set of bongos. "Every 100 people who passed, there’d be one who’d stop and ask, 'Are you Topper Headon from The Clash?’” He shrugs, “I’d have to say, 'Yeah, this is what I do now.’ It was so humiliating.”

By the turn of the 21st century Headon found himself in a hostel for the homeless, living on cans of Special Brew supplemented by twice-daily visits to soup kitchens. He returned to Dover, becoming the local drunk, cornering people in pubs and shouting at cars in the street until his doctor told him that his liver was “waving the white flag”. Some time during the '80s Topper had contracted hepatitis C.

He had been through rehab 13 times, but this time it worked. Why? “I don’t know. Something happened. I started feeling part of life again.”

https://www.google.com/amp/s/theund...-headon-the-human-drumming-machine-of-the/amp