From: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org (loud-fans-digest) To: loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Subject: loud-fans-digest V2 #152 Reply-To: loud-fans@smoe.org Sender: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk loud-fans-digest Friday, April 26 2002 Volume 02 : Number 152 Today's Subjects: ----------------- RE: [loud-fans] This is no longer close to the topic ["Aaron Milenski" ] [loud-fans] RE: close to topic ["Brett Milano" ] RE: [loud-fans] This is no longer close to the topic ["Joseph M. Mallon" ] Re: [loud-fans] This is no longer close to the topic [jenny grover ] [loud-fans] If you use Yahoo Mail [Michael Mitton ] Re: [loud-fans] If you use Yahoo Mail [Miles Goosens ] Re: [loud-fans] This is no longer close to the topic [jenny grover ] [loud-fans] Liz Phair on TV tonight ["John Sharples" Subject: RE: [loud-fans] This is no longer close to the topic >I really can't agree that Cobain's "basically heavy metal." I guess what I'm saying here is that while grunge was discussed as an offshoot of punk, I think its origins were much more in heavy metal, due to the often slow paces, the crunching rhythms, the longer songs, the guitar solos. That's not a compliment or an insult. But I do think it explains why the genre was so popular. >but I'm not sure I >follow your comparison (implied) of punk and metal. The basic comparison is a simple one--critics like punk and don't like metal. I think that's somewhat short sighted of them (even though I generally agree.) >If Sabbath is the band >used to show that metal is bad, what's the common element that leads to >the "punk" comparison? I should mention that Sabbath is to metal what ELP is to prog: the band most singled out as being typical of their genre by people who dislike that genre. Put that in context--that isn't necessarily an insult, because it's coming from people who are already inclined against the music to begin with. The common element is that both forms of music are loud, distorted, raucous and simple (some metal is actually quite complex, but its detractors will never mention that fact, just as people who write about punk almost always incorrectly claim that the Ramones, the Sex Pistols, and so on always wrote songs with only three chords). >That is, you imply that Sabbath/metal and punk >aren't apples and oranges: they're similar enough fruits that somehow >comparing them makes sense. But I don't see that, really: I suppose I can >imagine early punk bands covering "Paranoid" (and for that matter, >"Communication Breakdown" - but I've never felt Zeppelin's "metal" at >all...), but...I'm confused. The Dickies did cover "Paranoid!" Chuck Eddy once claimed that "God Save The Queen" was based upon the "Communication Breakdown" hook, but SLOWED DOWN! Anyway, I'm not saying that the genres really do have much in common, just that rock criticism, especially around 1977, tended to often follow Christgau's model in saying that finally here's a loud, distorted type of music that is "good." But when it comes to 80s and 90s music, I think the genres did move much closer together, whether it be bands like Guns N' Roses and Metallica citing punk bands as their influences, or the entire grunge genre, which was something of a punk/metal fuse. It should also be noted that a lot of the bands considered as the biggest influences on punk (i.e. Dictators, MC5) were basically metal bands. It could easily be argued that the Stooges were a heavy metal band. How did I get onto this topic? Next I'll be making my argument for why the new wave has as much in common with prog and psych, genres it supposedly stood against, as it has differences. _________________________________________________________________ Send and receive Hotmail on your mobile device: http://mobile.msn.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002 10:28:32 -0400 (EDT) From: Aaron Mandel Subject: RE: [loud-fans] This is no longer close to the topic On Thu, 25 Apr 2002, Aaron Milenski wrote: > I should mention that Sabbath is to metal what ELP is to prog: the band > most singled out as being typical of their genre by people who dislike > that genre. I'm a little confused by this, because Sabbath (especially Paranoid) is the only traditional metal band most of my punk/indie snob friends like. a ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002 10:35:01 -0400 From: "Aaron Milenski" Subject: RE: [loud-fans] This is no longer close to the topic > > I should mention that Sabbath is to metal what ELP is to prog: the band > > most singled out as being typical of their genre by people who dislike > > that genre. > >I'm a little confused by this, because Sabbath (especially Paranoid) is >the only traditional metal band most of my punk/indie snob friends like. > All I can say is that I must really be behind the times (something I already knew), because in the 70s and early 80s most punks HATED Black Sabbath. It's certainly possible that it's changed over the years. I mean, who ever thought the Monkees would become hip one day? Who ever thought the Carpenters would become hip? Abba? What's next? Tiffany playing a punk on TV? (Oh, that happened already.) _________________________________________________________________ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002 11:13:19 -0400 (EDT) From: dmw Subject: [loud-fans] OT (blather): me and attachments hey it's come to my attention that at least a couple of people with whom i share mailing list subscriptions are getting things that look like e-mails with attachments from me. these are forgeries. in at least once case the apparent originating address has been defunct for years. i've got nothing to do with whatever these are, but they've probably got nasty payloads. if you can, if you get one, please forward with all headers attached to dmw@mwmw.com so i can analyze them, but don't risk infecting your system with whatever they contain. this is not a typical outlook express thing where it goes to everybody in my mailbox -- i don't even have a mailbox to be exploited. and i generally don't send attachments if i can help it -- i usually post something somewhere and send a link to it. much less overhead. sorry for the inconvenience/boring message. - -- d. - ------------------------------------------------- Mayo-Wells Media Workshop dmw@ http://www.mwmw.com mwmw.com Web Development * Multimedia Consulting * Hosting ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002 11:30:49 -0400 From: "Brett Milano" Subject: [loud-fans] RE: close to topic ....Although I suspect The Book of Songwriterly Advice does advise against rhyming "masses" with..."masses." Yeah, rhyming it with "cheap sunglasses" was LOTS better. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002 10:10:12 -0700 (PDT) From: "Joseph M. Mallon" Subject: RE: [loud-fans] This is no longer close to the topic On Thu, 25 Apr 2002, Aaron Mandel wrote: > On Thu, 25 Apr 2002, Aaron Milenski wrote: > > I should mention that Sabbath is to metal what ELP is to prog: the band > > most singled out as being typical of their genre by people who dislike > > that genre. > > I'm a little confused by this, because Sabbath (especially Paranoid) is > the only traditional metal band most of my punk/indie snob friends like. They've swung around to popular again, and here's how: In the mid '70s-early '80s, all the older brothers/cousins/younger uncles of what would become the grunge leaders played the early Sabs records for their younger relatives, and said youngsters dug the sound. (I got the first 2 records from my stoner uncle.) When they formed bands, that was their sound, and it became popular with others of their ilk. When grunge blew up, suddenly that sound (and its point of origin) were cool. This also applies to Metallica/New Wave Of British Heavy Metal axis, although the Sabs were always popular in the HM world, especially with the harder bands like Pantera. Add to that Ozzy's emergence (not just recently, but over the past 5-10 years) as a survivor/elder statesman of HM, and you've got even more cachet. In short, your snob friends like the Sabs because it's now cool to do so. Try being a Black Sabbath fan in 1987-90. "masses/masses" is a terrible rhyme. How great are they that "War Pigs" still kicks major ass? Ask Wilco, who've covered it live a number of times. And that brings two LF threads neatly together. J. Mallon ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002 13:56:29 -0400 From: jenny grover Subject: Re: [loud-fans] This is no longer close to the topic Aaron Milenski wrote: > > All I can say is that I must really be behind the times (something I already > knew), because in the 70s and early 80s most punks HATED Black Sabbath. > It's certainly possible that it's changed over the years. It did. Particularly in the mid to late 80's, with the advent of speed metal and speedcore, which fused hardcore with metal (think Motorhead's "Ace of Spades"). [Later that speed metal began to be slowed down to a Sabbath-esque pace, but retained punk elements that came in on the hardcore end of things. Thus "grunge" was born.] Speed metal was quite a strange and revolutionary thing, at least in the region of the country I lived in at the time. No one quite knew what to do about it. Punks liked it, even though they were supposed to hate metal. Metalheads liked it, even though they were supposed to hate punk. Two separate, often militantly so, camps started finding some common ground and an uneasy alliance started to form. Jen ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002 14:07:25 -0400 From: Stewart Mason Subject: RE: [loud-fans] This is no longer close to the topic At 10:35 AM 4/25/2002 -0400, Aaron Milenski wrote: >All I can say is that I must really be behind the times (something I already >knew), because in the 70s and early 80s most punks HATED Black Sabbath. Said it before and I'll say it again: grunge was born the moment Black Flag discovered Black Sabbath and weed. This was around 1984, just before the MY WAR album came out. (By my reckoning, this was exactly the moment that Black Flag finally and irretrivably Lost It, not because of any distaste for the Sabs, whose music I only barely know and have little room to comment on other than to say I always dug "Iron Man," but because they seemed to have misplaced their sense of humor during the whole Unicorn Records fiasco.) Stewart ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002 13:47:18 -0500 From: Miles Goosens Subject: RE: [loud-fans] This is no longer close to the topic At 02:07 PM 4/25/2002 -0400, Stewart Mason wrote: >Said it before and I'll say it again: grunge was born the moment Black Flag >discovered Black Sabbath and weed. This was around 1984, just before the >MY WAR album came out. I was about to say something along those lines in response to Jen's post, maybe because a listen a couple of weeks ago to LIVE '84 (as far as Black Flag live albums go, IMO this one has it all over the more well-known WHO'S GOT THE 10 1/2?, but that's probably a function of LIVE '84's initial cassette-only release more than anything), and the plodding tempos can't help but recall Sabbath. Unlike Stewart, I enjoy this Black Flag period. I think I liked SLIP IT IN better than MY WAR, but I'd have to give them both a listen again to remember which was which. Kira's got the 10 1/2, Miles ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002 15:41:48 -0400 (EDT) From: dmw Subject: [loud-fans] punkmetal warning: contains name dropping I got to talk to Ronnie James Dio, one of the post-osbourne Sab vocalists in about 1986 or so, when I was listening to a lot of stuff like Broken Bones, Straw Dogs, and Dirty Rotten Imbeciles where speed metal and hardcore became indistinguishable. He was pretty vehement in his distaste for "crossover." Heavy metal, he said, should be about "magic and gods and demons" not about politics. I wrote a really bad, mean-spirited song about our conversation called R.J.D.E.S.A.D.; it was never performed.* My impression is that a lot of punks always had respect for (at least the early) Sabs. Add to list of Sabs covers: Sacred Reich did a (really swell) version of "war pigs" on the (really swell) "Surf Nicaragua" EP. Metal or punk? Hard to say -- political lyrics, but featured guitar solos. I didn't think Rollins lost his sense of humor until he went solo, personally -- a coupla weeks ago when I played that tribute show, one of the best of the other bands was "Loose Nutz" with pretty credible Rollins' and Ginn both, reminding me how much I liked that stuff. Family Man, putting up your Christmas lights! you're one of them! You're one of them! Drinking black coffee! black coffee! black coffee! stare at the walls! Like "if a double-decker bus kills the both of us," my perception of how seriously it was all meant has changed with time. pleasure and privilege are mine, you betcha - -- d. * lesson learned: if you're in a band heavily influenced by leonard cohen, bob dylan and jethro tull, you're not in a band that will take to your new speedmetal/hardcore compositions. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002 16:04:09 -0400 (EDT) From: Michael Mitton Subject: [loud-fans] If you use Yahoo Mail A message for those who use Yahoo mail, or have sent email to Yahoo accounts. One of Yahoo's mail servers has apparently been down for 5 days now, and some people sending you messages may have received a notice saying "that account has been deactivated." Yahoo doesn't know how to fix it, and they aren't doing anything to let people know there's a problem. (I've been on phone support for a $1.99 per minute, and each time, all they've said is: Let me look into it..." I haven't been able to access my Yahoo account for 24 hours now, and the last time I was in, it told me that my account had been deactivated and all of my emails deleted. I'm sure you can fill in my rage from here... - --Michael http://www.filmatters.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002 15:20:37 -0500 From: Miles Goosens Subject: Re: [loud-fans] If you use Yahoo Mail At 04:04 PM 4/25/2002 -0400, Michael Mitton wrote: >A message for those who use Yahoo mail, or have sent email to Yahoo >accounts. One of Yahoo's mail servers has apparently been down for 5 days >now, and some people sending you messages may have received a notice >saying "that account has been deactivated." Yahoo doesn't know how to fix >it, and they aren't doing anything to let people know there's a problem. >(I've been on phone support for a $1.99 per minute, and each time, all >they've said is: Let me look into it..." > >I haven't been able to access my Yahoo account for 24 hours now, and the >last time I was in, it told me that my account had been deactivated and >all of my emails deleted. I'm sure you can fill in my rage from here... This doesn't shed any light on the problem, but as the listowner for another smoe.org list (idealcopy, the Wire list), I can tell you that I got bounce messages for my Yahoo Mail subscribers for most of the day yesterday, and it had that "account has been deactivated" note of explanation. I didn't unsub anyone, since Yahoo Mail and Hotmail regularly have some sort of hiccup or another. Today the idealcopy listmail hasn't generated any bounces for these folks at all. Also, some yahoo.co.uk folks who were having trouble yesterday seem able to post today, so *maybe* Yahoo is making progress on this. later, Miles, who couldn't get into his mail until 10 AM today because of a power outage at Earthlink's Atlanta nerve center ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002 13:27:39 -0700 (PDT) From: "Pete O." Subject: Re: [loud-fans] If you use Yahoo Mail Take heart. Late last year, Yahoo was kind enough to compress my older messages to the point where most were unreadable or blank. They "looked into it" and managed to restore everything, albeit several months later. You get what you pay for, I guess. Now back to our regularly scheduled off-topic. - --- Michael Mitton wrote: > A message for those who use Yahoo mail, or have sent email to Yahoo > accounts. One of Yahoo's mail servers has apparently been down for 5 days > now, and some people sending you messages may have received a notice > saying "that account has been deactivated." Yahoo doesn't know how to fix > it, and they aren't doing anything to let people know there's a problem. > (I've been on phone support for a $1.99 per minute, and each time, all > they've said is: Let me look into it..." > > I haven't been able to access my Yahoo account for 24 hours now, and the > last time I was in, it told me that my account had been deactivated and > all of my emails deleted. I'm sure you can fill in my rage from here... > > --Michael > > http://www.filmatters.com Yahoo! Games - play chess, backgammon, pool and more http://games.yahoo.com/ ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002 15:48:50 -0500 From: Miles Goosens Subject: Re: [loud-fans] If you use Yahoo Mail Yahoo Mail may be even more amazing than we suspect -- perhaps because the "Date" and "From" fields were combined (see below), trying to reply to this e-mail crashed my Eudora. Twice. Plus the mail shows as having no sender - - totally awesome service! munge me, smoe me, Miles >Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002 13:27:39 -0700 (PDT)From: "Pete O." > >Subject: Re: [loud-fans] If you use Yahoo Mail >To: loud-fans@smoe.org >Sender: owner-loud-fans@smoe.org > >Take heart. Late last year, Yahoo was kind enough to compress my older >messages to the >point where most were unreadable or blank. They "looked into it" and >managed to restore >everything, albeit several months later. You get what you pay for, I guess. >Now back to our regularly scheduled off-topic. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002 13:43:59 -0700 From: "me" Subject: [loud-fans] music - really! Dear Music Lovers, This is to invite you to a special concert - a double-bill - this Sunday, once again at our favorite living-roomy space, TUVA. I am excited about this concert because not only do we get a chance to play our own made-up music, but we get to share the night with a killer new band from LA, the Wendel-Endsley Group. They are innovative & extremely grooving & a treat to hear. Hope you can come! Here's the info: _______________________________ | | | TODD SICKAFOOSE GROUP | | & | | WENDEL-ENDSLEY GROUP | | | | @ TUVA in Berkeley | | | | this SUNDAY, APRIL 28 2002 | | 8:00PM, all ages, $10 | |_____________________________| "These are two of the freshest, most imaginative, category-defying bands around, not to mention a stellar cast of individual musicians. The two groups include musicians who have performed and recorded with artists as diverse as STEVE COLEMAN, OMAR SOSA, RAVI COLTRANE, MACY GRAY, ANI DIFRANCO, and TOM WAITS. We are excited just to have all these musicians in the same room for a night!" _________ Musicians: TODD SICKAFOOSE GROUP includes JUSTIN MORELL (guitar), ERIC CRYSTAL (saxophones), JOHN GOVE (trombone), ART HIRAHARA (rhodes), special guest ANDREW BORGER (drums), TODD SICKAFOOSE (bass). The WENDEL-ENDSLEY GROUP includes BEN WENDEL (sax), ADAM BENJAMIN (piano-rhodes), SCOTT SEIVER (drums), KAVEH RASTEGAR (el. bass), DAVEY CHEGWIDDEN (percussion), SHANE ENDSLEY (trumpet). The concert begins right at 8:00PM (with the Todd Sickafoose Group) and each band will play a long set. __________ Directions: TUVA is located at 3192 Adeline St. in Berkeley, directly across from the Ashby Bart Station, where Adeline meets MLK. Loads of street parking nearby, and Bart is a frisbee throw away. The place is pretty easy to find, especially once you know to look for "ANT" (the first three letters of TUVA's former line of work), but take the directions as more than one potential audience member last time became intimately acquainted with the entirety of MLK Blvd during our set. More TUVA info at: http://www.throatsinger.com/Tuva_General.html . Further information available at these websites: http://home.earthlink.net/~tsickafoose http://www.wendel-endsleygroup.com thanks, ts - -- "Drag me, drop me, treat me like an object." - -- ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002 17:17:56 -0400 From: jenny grover Subject: Re: [loud-fans] This is no longer close to the topic Miles Goosens wrote: > > I was about to say something along those lines in response to Jen's post, > maybe because a listen a couple of weeks ago to LIVE '84 (as far as Black > Flag live albums go, IMO this one has it all over the more well-known WHO'S > GOT THE 10 1/2?, but that's probably a function of LIVE '84's initial > cassette-only release more than anything), and the plodding tempos can't > help but recall Sabbath. Yeah. Black Flag. Nobody was quite sure what to think about their metamorphosis at the time either (and some people still don't). A lot of Black Flag fans weren't too happy. A lot of other listeners wrote them off. Others were rather intrigued, but I'm not sure too many people actually enjoyed listening to My War, or at least the whole thing in one sitting. Of course, enjoyable probably wasn't the point. Jen ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002 14:27:55 -0700 From: Steve Holtebeck Subject: [loud-fans] Re: Just for kicks, something on-topic Roger Winston wrote: > January 26, 2003 is the 10th anniversary of the release of PLANTS AND > BIRDS AND ROCKS AND THINGS. (At least I think that's the right > date - someone correct me if I'm wrong.) The record release show was on Monday February 1st, and I don't think the album was widely available before then, so I thought it came out in February. At least I didn't have my copy until February, and would've definitely bought it earlier if it was available. Jeffrey with 2fs wrote: > What's interesting - and what lends support to the old "shoulda stayed > 'Game Theory'" argument - is to look at Wire's numbers. If you ignore > their first three, Phase I records (_Pink Flag_, _Chairs Missing_, and > _154_), which made their reputation, all of Wire's titles are either in > the same range as Loud Family in terms of rankings, or are considerably > lower. And yet, Wire were able to sustain a second career (1985-91ish) and > now a third (2000-present), plus a series of solo albums. I rather suspect > that a lot of that was possible from trading off the recognition and > cachet of the Wire brandname. Even if calling the band "Game Theory" > wouldn't have improved sales, it likely would have insured more numerous > and better-placed reviews, as well as more college radio airplay... I think the band name was changed out of necessity. In the early 90s, after the Michael Quercio GT lineup didn't get signed, Scott felt, perhaps wrongly, that the band "Game Theory" had run its course, and they'd have better luck testing the waters with a new band name. The music business is built around finding fresh new artists, so in 1990-1991 Game Theory Mach2 was a tough sell, and this fresh new band called the Loud Family, featuring Scott Miller of Game Theory, was an easier sell. Probably they should've stayed Game Theory in the long run, but changing the name made more sense at the time they did it. Scott lives in enough of a musical vacuum these days, that I'm sure he thought his decision to cover "Paranoid" at the Starry Plough last year was some wacky left-field idea that no one had thought of before (either that or he was pandering to the higher-ups at 125 records), but covering Sabbath has become kind of de rigueur lately, and most bands have moved on to covering solo Ozzy songs. Linus of Hollywood did "Goodbye to Romance" on his/their last album, and if I had a nickel for every cover of "Crazy Train" I've heard lately, I'd have at least a dime now! I don't like most Black Sabbath songs (too slow and too long), but the first side of PARANOID (the album) is fairly flawless: "War Pigs", "Paranoid", "Iron Man", and my favorite Black Sabbath song "Planet Caravan". All the Sabbath I'll ever need is on one side of one album.. Steve ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002 17:49:30 -0400 From: "Francis J H Park" Subject: Re: [loud-fans] gayometer 26%. I guess that's about consistent for a semi-generic combat arms ground pounder who jumps out of planes and crushes things in tracked vehicles. That was the best laugh I've had all week! I feel tempted to send the URL to a few folks at their work address... Narf. Francis J. H. Park http://home.sprintmail.com/~durandal - -- "Ask for my honesty and you'll have my loyalty. Ask for my loyalty and you'll (only) have my honesty." - COL(Ret) John R. Boyd, USAF (1927-1997) ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002 20:21:34 -0400 From: "John Sharples" Subject: [loud-fans] Liz Phair on TV tonight Card7 tells me: >tonight's Leno is actually Sheryl Crow and Liz Phair together. > > >Which *I'd* pay to see . . . I'll admit...their recent collabs on the GAP/REO commercial and Crow's single are guilty pleasures for me. JS ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002 18:47:39 -0600 From: Roger Winston Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Re: Just for kicks, something on-topic At Thursday 4/25/2002 02:27 PM -0700, Steve Holtebeck wrote: >The record release show was on Monday February 1st, and I don't think >the album was widely available before then, so I thought it came out in >February. At least I didn't have my copy until February, and would've >definitely bought it earlier if it was available. According to my CD database, which I anal-retentively keep up-to-date at all times, I bought PABARAT on 1/29/93. That's a Friday, which, back in those days, was when I would do my weekly trek to the record store. This was in the time before online retailers. Usually new stuff came out on Tuesdays, which is why I said it came out on the 26th. And I seem to remember my friend John Ridges going to the store earlier that week and getting the disc before I did. It's pretty astounding that a local Mom & Pop shop in Denver would get that disc so early! Of course, I think I may have told them to be on the lookout for it for me. Was ICE around in those days? BTW, my ISP has gone spam-blocking crazy lately and has caused me to miss messages from a few friends and loved ones. If you try to send to me and get a bounce-back (which may not come for days later), please forward the bounce-back message back to me (at rog@reignoffrogs.com instead of the regular address) with the FULL header of the message, showing the IP address of your SMTP server. Thanks much! And if you're expecting an urgent reply from me and haven't gotten it... your message may've gotten lost and you should try resending to the reignoffrogs.com address. Sorry... Sue, Sharples, Lorrie, Steve S... your messages are coming through okay, as far as I can tell. Luckily, messages relayed through the List don't seem to be affected either. Latre. --Rog n.s. (now smelling): the Snaking Fire, 30 miles from my house. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002 22:45:04 -0500 (CDT) From: Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey Subject: RE: [loud-fans] This is no longer close to the topic On Thu, 25 Apr 2002, Aaron Milenski wrote: > I guess what I'm saying here is that while grunge was discussed as an > offshoot of punk, I think its origins were much more in heavy metal, due to > the often slow paces, the crunching rhythms, the longer songs, the guitar > solos. That's not a compliment or an insult. But I do think it explains > why the genre was so popular. (emerges from beneath the vehicle's hood): Ah - now I see what your problem is. You've put your Nirvana device in the grunge chamber - doesn't belong there. Following Stewart on this, "grunge" is basically '70s heavy metal (as exemplified by Black Sabbath) crossbred with a vaguely punkish sociological view (American version: thus, Black Flag - who also added apparent interests in avant-garde jazz - the odd chordings; plus the kind of stuff SST, Ginn's label, was signing at the time - and (maybe indirectly) Robert Fripp: a lot of lines and even rhythms on _My War_ and _Slip it In_ sound cribbed from _Larks' Tongues_/_Starless_-era Crimson). Not only does Nirvana lack the metalloid guitar tone, it also pretty strongly lacks that '70s hard-rock fetish (Soundgarden is pretty obviously Zeppelin-influenced, for example - and Pearl Jam basically returned mainstream rock to where it was when punk so rudely interrupted). Nirvana takes that VPSV alluded to above, goes back a bit further to a Beatles/Bowie melodicism, and cribs an interest in noise whose closest referent is early Sonic Youth. Plus you've got all your early British avant-punk namedropping and song-covering, telling part of Cobain's influences. I think they got lumped in with "grunge" by geography and chronology (Okay, there's the Melvins thing...but they never sounded alike). But Jen Grover will chime in with other connections: I'll just say that ur-grunge before its mass popularity was a different, and more interesting to me, beast than the commercial thing derived from watered-down Soundgarden and Pearl Jam: the whole Alice in Chains, Stone Pimple Toilets, etc. - and worse yet, the next generation, of bands I can't even remember anymnore except they were all over so-called "alternative rock radio" in the mid-nineties. - --Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey J e f f r e y N o r m a n The Architectural Dance Society www.uwm.edu/~jenor/ADS.html ::Drive ten thousand miles across America and you will know more about ::the country than all the institutes of sociology and political science ::put together. __Jean Baudrillard__ last played Elvis Costello _When I Was Cruel_ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2002 00:02:02 -0400 From: "John Sharples" Subject: Re: [loud-fans] This is no longer close to the topic F2: >Not only does Nirvana lack the metalloid guitar tone, it also pretty >strongly lacks that '70s hard-rock fetish (Soundgarden is pretty obviously >Zeppelin-influenced, for example - and Pearl Jam basically returned >mainstream rock to where it was when punk so rudely interrupted). Nirvana >takes that VPSV alluded to above, goes back a bit further to a >Beatles/Bowie melodicism THANK you for finally bringing that up. I was too lazy. Oh, Cheap Trick, too. Crow/Phair, just minutes away... JS ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2002 01:46:17 -0400 From: jenny grover Subject: Re: [loud-fans] This is no longer close to the topic Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey wrote: > > I think they got lumped in with "grunge" by geography and chronology > (Okay, there's the Melvins thing...but they never sounded alike). But Jen > Grover will chime in with other connections: I'll just say that ur-grunge > before its mass popularity was a different, and more interesting to me, > beast than the commercial thing derived from watered-down Soundgarden and > Pearl Jam: the whole Alice in Chains, Stone Pimple Toilets, etc. - and > worse yet, the next generation, of bands I can't even remember anymnore > except they were all over so-called "alternative rock radio" in the > mid-nineties. Actually Jen will just give her stock answer that "grunge" is a largely meaningless term that did have as much to do with geography, at least initially, and marketing angles as anything, that the Seattle bands didn't like it or think it had much meaning, that fans of the music that gets lumped into it largely dislike it and think it has little meaning, and that the idea that there was such a cohesive thing as "grunge" is what helped spawn a lot of those awful second and third generation copycat bands, as well as spurring on the carpetbagger band syndrome. As for Nirvana, Kurt claims to have only ever really wanted to write good pop songs and that the Beach Boys were a major influence. Soundgarden was more Sabbath influenced than Zeppelin influenced (Chris' voice had a lot to do with the Zep comparisons, and while he could do a wicked cover of "Communication Breakdown", that just pretty much was his voice at the age he was when they got noticed). Mudhoney was more rooted in 60's garage bands and punk. Alice in Chains really did start out as a metal band, called Diamond Lie, and boy, did they look the part then, too! I agree with Jeffrey that Pearl Jam are pretty much a rock band with pre-punk references, and despite what the latter day tales of brotherhood in Seattle are (perhaps other musicians were nicer and more accepting than the scenesters), when I lived out there, which is when they were still Mookie Blalock, I heard a lot of nasty remarks about them just being in it for the money and that they were "ruining the scene". Of course these days everybody and his uncle likes to pretend they know Eddie. The Screaming Trees were largely a psychedelic band. Mother Love Bone was a glam rock band. Tad was just, well, scary. Skin Yard had some strange jazz and funk things thrown in. Jen ------------------------------ End of loud-fans-digest V2 #152 *******************************