Andrew Sullivan has been on quite an anti-Bono jag recently — see here, here, and here. I’m with Sully on this one and feel that all the great work Bono has done for Africa (and I think that it is great work) doesn’t make Bono’s lyrics and writing any more coherent (nor does it make the tune of the chorus of “Vertigo” sound any less like it was plagiarized from “You Just Keep Me Hanging On“).
So, Bono: just Hootie with a brogue and a social conscience, yes or no?
Consider this an open thread and feel free to engage in your anti-whoever jihads here.
jibeaux
No.
The Critic
I’ve never quite cottoned to Bono’s singing either. I tried in college, bought some CDs, listened, but something about his voice just goes all white-noisey in my head and the only thing I can remember from any U2 song is usually the chorus.
Comrade Jake
I don’t know about coherence, but there are some great lines in many a U2 song.
Hedley Lamarr
When I read his NYT piece I wondered what on earth he was trying to say. I thought the Irish were articulate when drunk.
DougJ
I don’t think he drinks that much. That’s part of the problem, IMHO.
Incertus
I’m with jibeaux. When you consider that the best thing Hootie ever did was cover "Hey, Hey, What Can I Do?" then Bono is considerably more than that. He’s not the rock god many would like him to be, but he’s more than Hootie with a brogue and a social conscience.
Evinfuilt
I honestly think Ricky Gervais has done more for Africa.
The Other Steve
Everybody knows U2 sold out when they released the Joshua Tree album and became popular. Only their music before that is any good. Back when nobody knew who the fuck they were and you were a frigging Elite Dude because you recognized Sunday, Bloody, Sunday.
The list of bands which used to be great until they sold out is long!
Greenday with Dookie
AC/DC with Back in Black
Van Halen with 5150
Def Lepard with Hysteria
Barenaked Ladies with Stunt
just some examples, the list is really much longer then that. Any time a band hits the top 100 charts, it is evidence that they have sold out and now suck.
Gus
Agree with jibeaux also. They have a couple of really good albums. He’s extremely annoying on a personal level, full of self-regard and bullshit, but there’s more there artistically than there was with Hootie.
Tom
So, Bono: just Hootie with a brogue and a social conscience, yes or no?
Bono may be overly earnest, and his worst music suffers from that, but there’s no denying he’s some sort of musical genius. "One" and "The Wanderer" confirm that.
Comrade Jake
Of course it helps that nobody plays guitar like The Edge.
DougJ
That’s even more of an overstatement than my Hootie comparison.
The Other Steve
The most remarkable example of this trend towards suckiness is the band Minni Vanilli, who were awesome until they released the US Remix version and hit the top 100 charts. It was at that point that they began to suck and were exposed as the frauds they were.
Josh Hueco
Bono is Trigg’s father.
/Sully bait
Incertus
@The Other Steve: You’re forgetting Johnny Hates Jazz. Everyone always forgets Johnny Hates Jazz!
DougJ
POTD
The Other Steve
The most remarkable transition is that of Sting. While a member of the Police he was awesome until they hit the US and started sucking royal ass, but his solo career where he was not nearly as successful placing albums on the top 100 charts he suddenly became much better.
Except for the Summers/Copeland Retirement Pension tour, where it was obvious that Sting was selling out and in which case he sucked ass once again.
paragonpark
"Glasses clinking clicking, clashing crashing in Gaelic revelry: swinging doors, sweethearts falling in and out of the season’s blessings, family feuds subsumed or resumed. Malt joy and ginger despair are all in the queue to be served on this, the quarter-of-a-millennium mark since Arthur Guinness first put velvety blackness in a pint glass. "
Are people seriously saying that ain’t some great prose?
Jennifer
oh, man, don’t be harshing on Bono. Ok, harsh on his celebrity humanitarian riff, but not on him or U2. These are guys who, like them or not, really had their own style and have written some really good songs. And I’m even ok with the later stuff too – love "It’s a Beautiful Day" and much prefer to see a band change as they mature than to see them doing the same old thing ala ZZ Top and the like.
Though I will admit that I can’t hear "Lemon" without imagining that it’s Adam Sandler imitating Bono singing it.
The Other Steve
@Incertus: You’re forgetting Johnny Hates Jazz. Everyone always forgets Johnny Hates Jazz!
Dude… that’s way before my time. I didn’t own a radio until 1980. :-)
DougJ
Afucking men. That guy is the anti-Christ now.
DougJ
@paragonpark
How could you possibly consider that great prose?
cleek
quite right. it’s hard to even get a guitar to sound like his.
U2 peaked 20 years ago, though.
these are both one album past the band’s respective peaks.
while these are the peaks.
i have no comment on the Barenaked Ladies. except that we can’t order Chinese food in my house without singing "chicken from China, the Chinese chicken".
Keith
In the immortal words of Bono, "YE-UH-HU-AAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!"
Scott H
Okay, now. If you’re going to talk about Bono instead of Andrew Sullivan, then you’ve missed Sullivan’s whole point.
Incertus
@The Other Steve: You can try to weasel out of it if you want, but everyone remembers that they really started sucking in 1986 when they sold out with their one medium hit.
AhabTRuler
I have always been partial to Negativeland’s mix of I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.
Linkies
nitpicker
Hey, I like U2! So leave Bono alone! You’re lucky he even performsf or you bastards! Leave Bono alone. PLEASE!
paragonpark
doug:
Apparently that prose is better either than my jokes or your ability to get jokes.
AhabTRuler
Lately I have been going through a period where I reexamine music I had previously rejected with a more open mind. I am making a real effort to be open to new ideas and experiences, but the Barenaked Ladies should be shot.
Johnny Pez
Hey, the guy writes rock lyrics. Being incoherent is all part of the job.
Mind you, that’s why you should never let a rock lyricist write a newspaper column.
Jennifer
For deep, meaningful literary rock prose, it just doesn’t get any better than Jim Morrison.
You just don’t find this kind of literary genius every day.
DougJ
I know people who do like that kind of prose. Sorry to lump you in with them.
Can I ask people this: why "ginger despair"? I get the "malt joy" part, because there’s malt in beer, but where’s the ginger come in? Are they drinking Shirley Temples?
low-tech cyclist
Even if Bono didn’t have a social conscience, he’d still blow the likes of Hootie away with ease.
Take his overlooked "New York," for instance.
feral1
Slagging Bono and U2 is so ’90s. Fact is few bands have both remained commercially popular, culturally relevant, and continued to evolve musically over multiple decades.
DougJ
@Jennifer
This sums up Morrison for me:
paragonpark
I’m assuming ginger is a reference to the color of Irish whiskey not the spicy root.
AhabTRuler
If you want to hear a rock musician engage in painfully unhip and awkward posturing, listen to the last 45 seconds of the Doors playing Close to You live.
Ray Manzarek is not the coolest rock star evar!
The Moar You Know
@The Other Steve: What you just said here is so wrong. His early work with the Police? Awesome. His latter work with the Police? Insufferable. His solo work?
Makes me want to drive tent stakes through my ears. Better? You really said and meant better? Ahhgggh.
The Other Steve, we shan’t work together again.
Back on topic, as to Bono, while he is also an insuffrable moralizing jerk, he is very good. Most assuredly not Hootie.
DougJ
Aha! It’s still shit writing, though.
Terri
I have my ipod loaded with their old stuff for long bike rides.
But he is the world’s biggest shit.
The Moar You Know
@DougJ: Doors. Worst band ever. Jim Morrison: worst member of the Doors.
TenguPhule
Anything by any boy band since 1990.
Tom
A lot of people mix gin and ginger ale.
paragonpark
No doubt, if you have catchy chorus, a good riff and a guitarist with a few good licks you can craft a song that sounds great. With rock and roll the words are often all about the sound, rhyme and meter not the meaning.
Criticizing rock lyrics for being obtuse or even nonsensical is like slamming candy for being sweet.
AhabTRuler
@DougJ: The mythology of Morrison and the Doors definately does not stand up to scrutiny. The broader collection of Doors music has more than a few songs with weak, silly, or vapid lyrics and repetitive music. "Love Street" alone makes me want to cry, to name one example.
However, many people are familiar with the Best of set alone (which is certainly where I became familiar with them). As a collection of songs it is pretty good and holds up well over time. When you add that in with the "mad, bad, & dangerous to know" narrative that has come to define Morrison, you get a LEGEND.
It’s not band music, it just can’t live up to the hype.
EDIT: It’s not BAD music…
The thought of some school’s marching band playing The End at halftime cracks me up, tho.
DougJ
Sure, but when the songwriter purports to be some kind of deep, literary dude….
cleek
the Doors first record is pretty solid. but they had a half-life of about 1 year; each year after 66, they lost half their quality. by the time Morrison died, they were down to about 1/8th of what they started with.
grimc
bono saving children
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
Jesus, Mary and Joseph.
First, the man’s name is not fucking Hootie, it’s Darius Rucker. Further, he just released a hit country album. (Yeah, I know, fucking country blows goats like Mickey Kaus wishes he could, but there just aren’t that many black guys that get accepted by the country establishment. AND, some of that album is very good and even flat out hilarious– almost like a parody of country music.)
Second, if you hate Sting you probably hate jazz too; the musicians are way too damn skilled. If you hate pop music, well, fine; but you cannot deny the man’s skill in the craft of pop songwriting.
Finally– of course U2’s lyrics are unintelligible. How many bloody rock outfits can anyone understand all the lyrics of?
Bloody elitist wankers.
DougJ
Krusty the Clown singing "Break On Through".
I’m not a big Simpsons fan, but God that cracked me up.
paragonpark
Actually the Doors were a good band when they stuck to straightforward rock and roll. Manzarek’s organ gave the band a unique sound that is instantly recognizable and is a reason why they probably would heave held up more than many of their contemporaries even without the Morrison legends.
I’ll agree Morrison wrote a lot of silly lyrics that were credited with poetic imagery or depth they did not deserve , but despite his lack of vocal range he was a good rock and roll singer (when in a semi-coherent state at least) and let’s face it, the ckicjks dug him which counts for a lot in pop music.
On pet peeves the introduction of the doors reminds me:
OLIVER STONE
If Jim Morrison is given too much credit for nonexistent artistic genius, Stone’s reputation is 100 times more undeserved.
Johnny Pez
My point exactly. "With or Without You" wouldn’t be the paragon of awesomeness it is if the lyrics made any sense.
And again I note that the ability to create awesome rock lyrics is an automatic disqualification for expressing coherent thoughts.
DougJ
Nope, I love jazz, been listening to Herbie Hancock’s Maiden Voyage all week. I just think Sting sucks. Listen to an actual jazz singer, say Kurt Elling or Betty Carter, and go back to Sting and tell me that his jazz vocal stylings don’t suck.
zzyzx
"(nor does it make the tune of the chorus of “Vertigo” sound any less like it was plagiarized from “You Just Keep Me Hanging On“)."
Thank the blerping Lord that I’m not the only one out there bothered by that.
AhabTRuler
I am some what ashamed to admit that I have been to Père Lachaise and seen Morrison’s grave.
Of course, he’s not really in it, its just the corpse of some wino they kidnapped, but…
Just Some Fuckhead
My anti- jihad is against music threads where everyone tries to pretend their musical tastes are better or cooler or more sophisticated than everyone else’s. Kudos to The Other Steve for successfully lampooning this crap.
DougJ
You really think that’s the paragon of awesomeness? I kind of like "Even Better Than the Real Thing" and a few others on the album it’s on, but "With Or Without You" is kind of slow and mopey, no?
DougJ
You do know this whole thread is kind of a joke, no?
Except for the stuff about Sting. I stand by my hatred of Sting and apologize if it strikes anyone as pretentious.
lovethebomb
Unforgettable Fire, Joshua Tree – ruled
Rattle and Hum – death throes
Achtung Baby – the end
gnomedad
You can’t expect pro Bono work from a conservative.
AhabTRuler
Yeah, but Sting in a codpiece? C’mon!
How the fuck do you overact in a David Lynch movie?
Genius!!
Johnny Pez
@DougJ: Duh! Slow and mopey is the whole point.
DUH!
paragonpark
Well, in a genre that is mostly built upon a handful of three chord progressions you are going to have a lot of "plagiarism." The number of songs over the years that are but variations (or even note for transcriptions) of traditional folk and blues tunes is astronomical. Half the world lifted Chuck Berry riffs. Even Dylan and Lennon "wrote" and copyrighted songs that are nothing but new words to traditional tunes.
Saragon
Not gonna lie – I really quite like U2, and have every album. But I definitely don’t buy the albums just for Bono’s lyrics; it’s the sound of his voice and the music that accompanies it that works for me. Bono has flashes of lyrical inspiration – someone mentioned New York, which is very good. Desire is solid, and The Fly is probably my favorite of all of their songs (Achtung Baby was remarkable.) But ultimately its the totality of the song that works for me. It’s almost fantastical – nonsensical lyrics that almost make sense in amongst resonant rock. What Bono actually says… eh, it’s not really quotable stuff, but it works in its musical context.
And really, sensible lyrics have never been a requirement for a good song. Anyone who doubts needs to remember eight simple words: "I am the walrus, goo goo ga joob."
Krista
I hate Hootie…how many fucking times are you going to talk about the fact that you’re crying on one fucking album? Come here and I’ll kick you in the nuts, and that’ll give you something to cry about.
WRT U2, my fave is "When Love Comes to Town," mainly because B.B. King sings on it. There’s also something about "Mysterious Ways" that appeals to me.
Just Some Fuckhead
@DougJ: Oh, I agree with that. All of it.
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
Well, Grady Sizemore ain’t Mickey Mantle, either, but he gets the job done.
Suck? I just can’t agree.
Andrew
I did enjoy the U2:3D movie. The director actually used 3D in an artistic manner, not just to be all 3D-ish and real. And I say that as a 3D display researcher.
Montysano (All Hail Marx & Lennon)
@paragonpark:
I’ve always wondered: is Dylan rilly, rilly, like, deep, man…… or is he just fucking with us? Sometimes, I suspect, he just likes the way certain words sound together.
Just picked up Stephen Stills "Just Roll The Tape". Pretty good, although the sound quality is not so great. Just Stills singing early Stills and CSN stuff, solo, while whipping the living shit out of some poor acoustic guitar.
theturtlemoves
This Pitchfork Media wankfest is all well and good, but if anyone starts extolling the wonders of Belle and Sebastian or some other pansy-ass indie band, blood will flow…
p.a.
My jihad isn’t against an artist/band but a process. The songs can be coherent or not, lyrical or not, topical or not, but if they can in any manner be described as ‘rock and roll’ they better not go over 5 minutes- at most. If artists can’t say what they need to in a rock song in 3:30, they need to find a new career.
paragonpark
I’d venture that Dylan is both — sometimes simultaneously.
Comrade Kevin
@Ivan Ivanovich Renko:
why do you insult jazz musicians by comparing them to Sting?
Sting is to jazz what Hootie and the Blowfish are to heavy metal.
theturtlemoves
I’m going to assume you aren’t a big prog-rock fan.
p.a.
Tales from Topographic Oceans cured me forever.
Montysano
@Comrade Kevin:
OK, I’ll play. Musically, a couple of his ’80s albums are OK: Blue Turtles and Nothing Like The Sun come to mind. As far as sonics, they’re superlative, some of the best engineered stuff ever.
Svensker
@The Moar You Know:
Thank you! They had a couple of interesting songs, otherwise, like shoving rotten fish hooks in your ears.
Krista
Speaking of metal, can I just say how annoying it is when decidedly NON-metal groups are described as being heavy metal? I once overheard someone saying that they liked metal groups, such as Aerosmith, and I almost choked.
paragonpark
Being a skilled musician does not necessarily translate into good music. Sometimes the ability leads to a lot of superfluous meandering and esoteric progressions that are undoubtedly hard to play, but there is a reason musical instruments are designed to make certain progressions easier to play.
dobrojutro
U2 made "Bullet the Blue Sky" and the rest I can do without.
Hootie’s debut sold more than Zeppelin’s. Think about that.
Incertus
@gnomedad: That makes me happy I came back to the thread.
Laura W
@Just Some Fuckhead: Speaking of sophisticated musical tastes, I listened to Sleepy Tigers again this morning and it made me happy.
I even went to his web site and read his bio. Quite sweet and touching, actually. You have broadened my musical appreciation horizons. (Do I have your daughter to thank?)
(You don’t need to link to any more ‘cuz I pretty much already clicked on the ones of interest. Sleepy Tigers is the best by far.)
John Cole
Bullshit. Until Creed is erased from history’s memory, there can only be one wost band ever, and Creed gets the honors.
Period.
No Debate.
Discussion over.
Besides, if you haven’t had a gallon of cheap whiskey during finals week, gone to bars until 3 am, come home and put on the Doors, Live in Concert to track 8 Disc 1, When the Music’s Over, cranked your stereo to earbleeding volumes until your roomate comes running out of his bedroom in his boxers and threatens to take a shotgun to your amplifier and screams irately about a test in the morning, you have not lived.
Just my two cents.
paragonpark
U2, the Doors and even Sting don’t even crack the top 1000 of worst acts ever. Not even worst 1000 acts people remember. I could probably name over a 100 just from former roomates’ record collections.
Catsy
This is the part where I open myself up to public crucifixion by saying that I loathe most jazz. Given the choice between listening to any given jazz radio station and conservative talk radio, I’d go with the Rush Limbaugh; at least then I’d get a laugh.
Now, don’t misunderstand. I realize there are a lot of different kinds of jazz and that not all of them push my buttons in this way. I get that good jazz musicians are some of the most technically talented people in music. I can appreciate the technical complexity of the genre, the skill required to improv.
I don’t care. I can’t listen to it for the same reason I can’t listen to most Yngwie Malmsteen anymore: it’s technical masturbation, scales and transitions that differ from random noise only in the general adherence to music theory. It’s like that godawful warbling vocalization that it pleases artists from the last 20 years to call "R&B". I don’t care if you managed to stay more or less in-key while producing semi-random noise, it still sounds like shit.
DougJ
John, once again, shouldn’t we be looking forward, not backwards? It’s not about erasing Creed from history, it’s about making sure we don’t produce another Creed.
Laura W
@Montysano: Surely this will come as no surprise to you given past discussions on music, but I am very fond of All this Time. All the more for having watched the documentary about a gazilion times back in 2001-2002.
Totally fucked up all the tricky shit. Suffice it to say it was filmed at his villa in Tuscany on 9/11/01. It was a pre-arranged web cast scheduled for that date, and you see all of the musicians from the time they hear about the attacks through the eventual concert. It is impossible to listen to him open that evening with Fragile and not get chills, for the sheer prescient factor alone that the lyrics hold.
J. Michael Neal
Try Andy Summers.
Quaker in a Basement
Bono: just Hootie with a brogue and a social conscience, yes or no?
No, of course not.
Bono is Hootie with a brogue, a social conscience, and stupid glasses.
Ecks
My SO, who is a big Dylan fan, claims she watched the "behind the music" on him when she was a young ‘un, and realized even then that he was completely obliviously clueless to the apparently deep things he had written.
Incertus
@Ecks: Wish I could remember where I’d read it, but a couple of years back I read an article claiming that most of Dylan’s really great work was basically ripped off of obscure writers which, if true, means he at least has interesting taste, if not much interesting going on in his own head.
Xanthippas
Uh, no. As in, hell no.
And what is Sully’s problem anyway? He’s like a dog that keeps coming back to mark the same spot over and over again. At least Hillary and Palin have something in common (that is, they’re both ambitious women) that can get under Sullivan’s skin, but Bono? Seriously? Is it because he’s Irish?
comrade rawshark
Edge taught himself to play guitar that and an echo machine explains his style.
Bono is the singer because he was a worse guitar player than Edge.
Adam still doesn’t know how to really play bass.
I can’t even begin to describe the song writing process they used. I’m not convince they had one. Sometimes Bono would add lyrics just to fill dead space in a tune. They didn’t know how to end songs. Some songs were thrown together in days when they realized they didn’t record a good song to start off a concert (ahem ‘Where The Streets Have No Name’ ahem) but the album was scheduled to be pressed.
Yet they succeeded. Heart and perseverance and love of music will do it. 30 years later and still going.
Xanthippas
Dare I ask why it is so offensive for celebrities to use their status for good? Should Bill Gates horde his money because it’s pompous of him to showboat us by helping all those sick Africans?
Maxwel
Let’s see, Sully ate Bush’s shit without complaint for how many years? Now he’s getting worked up by Bono.
South of I-10
I’m not a huge U2 fan, but I can think of much, much worse bands. Any 80’s hair band, for instance.
CT
Saragon nailed it-taking rock lyrics out of the context of the performance will make most of them look lame. Bono has some uninspired efforts (never liked "With or without you", for instance), but I never fail to get goosebumps during "One", and even songs like "A Sort of Homecoming" that make little lyrical sense stand up to repeated listening.
This is, I should point out, coming from a guy who thinks the greatest rock lyric of all time is Daltrey’s "Yeeeeeeaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!" in Won’t Get Fooled Again-about THAT, there can be no debate.
Xanthippas
That’s ridiculous. I think some on this thread are forgetting the fact that personal dislike of a band does not make them the "worst" band ever. There has to be some consensus, or you just sound like a ridiculous music snob. Ex: it is plausible to think that Creed is the worst band ever because a substantial number of us agree. It is completely implausible to think the the Doors are one of the 1000 worst acts ever, because there are probably five people on the planet who think such.
Ecks
Writing good songs is clearly hard. Even the absolute best bands have a fairly low hit rate of producing great ones – usually just a few great ones an album and a whole bunch of filler. And yeah, often the best songs are just thrown together really quickly. The Beatles said that once they had a title, the song was mostly written. The Guess Who apparently threw together American Woman in 15 minutes after some event sparked it. Heaven knows, I’m not a big U2 fan, but ‘the streets have no name" speaks to me… as does "the sweetest thing," which apparently they sat on for years because they thought it wasn’t any good.
Oh wait, I mean, "I peg my identity to what music floats my boat, so anyone who likes other stuff can suck it, moran!"
Bey
@Montysano (All Hail Marx & Lennon):
Bob Dylan to Jimmy Thudpucker: "I just want it to rhyme, man."
Just Some Fuckhead
@Laura W: Isn’t it wonderful? I listened to it at work today for a little afternoon pickmeup. I haven’t shared it with my daughter yet but I think she’ll probably like it.
Laura W
@Just Some Fuckhead: I think you should email it to John. Like, a few times.
Gus
I think you’re probably referring to "Time out of Mind" an unjustly critically acclaimed album Dylan put out about 10 years ago. Turns out a lot of themes and even lines were nicked from (I think) a Japanese writer. I’ve never heard anything about his earlier albums being stolen, though as Eliot said, something like "immature poets imitate, great poets steal."
Gus
I think you’re probably referring to "Time out of Mind" an unjustly critically acclaimed album Dylan put out about 10 years ago. Turns out a lot of themes and even lines were nicked from (I think) a Japanese writer. I’ve never heard anything about his earlier albums being stolen, though as Eliot said, something like "immature poets imitate, great poets steal."
Doug H. (Fausto no more)
@John Cole:
One word: Nickelback.
Laertes
Just one good song outweighs any amount of dreck.
It’s been decades since Elton John wrote anything that’s worth listening to, but it doesn’t matter. Madman Across The Water is an achievement that no amount of Reg Strikes Backs and The Ones can erase.
Much of the Jim Morrison’s work product is unlistenable junk, and yet there’s L A Woman.
See also: Stevie Wonder, Superstition, and Anything He Wrote After 1976.
Almost everything is crap. Any shining work of genius justifies every other near-miss or utter catastrophe from the artist. Others would probably reach for different examples, but I don’t have to look any farther than One to see the effort from Bono that justifies everything else. The weariness in his voice when he sings that "it’s too late / tonight / to drag the past out into the light" breaks my heart every time. Genius.
Laura W
@Laertes: Madman Across The Water is the one and only Elton anything I have on my iPod (and I was a pathological fan from the first time I heard Your Song on Los Angeles AM radio). He lost me after Yellow Brick Road.
There is nothing like walking out in the NC mountains when the Madman title song comes on. Never fails to haunt.
JGabriel
Elton John? Jim Morrison? Stevie Wonder?
Christ, I’m 43 years old, and even I think that shit’s fucking old.
Does anyone here like any music that isn’t… oh, say, old enough to run for Senate?
Jeepers.
.
MikeL
Bono is not the world record holder.
He’s the record.
Glocksman
@feral1:
Examples of groups/performers who fail.
The Rolling Stones:
They’ve been phoning it in for over 20 years now and should have retired back in 1984.
Madonna:
Her only real talent is shameless self-promotion and her ‘sell by’ date expired about a decade ago.
Sour Kraut
Until Creed is erased from history’s memory, there can only be one wost band ever, and Creed gets the honors.
Creed is a nightmare from which history cannot awake.
SLKRR
@John Cole:
I see your Creed and raise you a Styx.
Catsy
@Ecks:
Truth. This applies broadly to all sorts of creative efforts; a sudden strike of inspiration where you just end up becoming a conduit often produces the best work. I’ve worked for months to design and build models with varying success and acclaim, and one piece that I threw together in two afternoons of pure inspiration has gotten the most attention.
Cpl. Cam
I found Actung Baby and The Joshua Tree to both be pretty damn listenable but I don’t see what’s so great about all the shit Bono does in Africa. Get all the assholes, I’m sorry, westerners the fuck out of Africa and let the Africans figure their shit out for themselves. Will it be bad for some tribes? Yeah, probably. But it seems pretty shitty for all the tribes now, so… I just don’t get why we all think the problem with Africa is they’re not living enough like westerners.
neddie jingo
Dylan, yes. I’d like some evidence that Lennon ever did this.
Jee-
zis-
CHRIST!
I was, just last night, weeping — weeping! — at an obscure Dylan bootleg from 1983, "Blind Willie McTell," which sums up the alternative version of the American foundation myth better than Howard Zinn ever could.
If a Dylan lyric sounds to you like he’s just stringing words together, live a few more decades. It will become clear that he’s not. For professional reasons, I’ve been inhabiting the world of hillbilly records of the 1920s, and I’m utterly gobsmacked to find out how thoroughly Dylan lived that world before he ever started recording his own stuff.
This is, after all, the man who opened for Martin Luther King’s "I Have a Dream" speech.
Hemi
I don’t think that Bono has done that much for the world at all. It’s just a case of "Pictures of Starving Children Sell Records". He’s just got a messiah complex and a taste for good money.
The last good U2 album was their first. Everything since has sucked.
rachel
@The Other Steve: You’re that kid in Hooker with a Penis, aren’t you?
Ripley
Xanthippas@93:
We have a winner! Sullivan’s self-conscious, gratingly proud English gentleman/rogue shtick includes, by default, a pretty glaring derision of the Irish. The drunkenness, the sentimentality, "the troubles," all that: lower class, innit?
Sully’s not too keen on the ladies, either. That’s not a reference to his being gay – he just does not seem to like or respect women (ref. HRC).
Odd guy. I read his blog daily: Often dead on. Often a ravin’ arse.
theturtlemoves
I personally hate everything that has ever become even remotely popular. If someone other than me shows up at a show, that band automatically sucks. I am now reduced solely to dancing awkwardly to the voices in my head. Seriously, though, Nickelback sucks. I’m personally really getting into Dropkick Murphys lately. I love Social Distortion and I love bagpipes, so why not listen to essentially Social D with bagpipes? Yeah, that’s right, beeotches, I love bagpipes.
Montysano
@neddie jingo:
NJ: I should have qualified better. Sometimes I think he’s messing with me, and sometimes even then I don’t care. "Farewell Angelina" comes to mind. Does it mean anything? Who cares….
Other times, he speaks almost a little too clearly, his prescience is almost too much. "Ain’t Talkin’" and "Things Have Changed" give me the chills, and not in a good way.
kommrade reproductive vigor
I initially read this as Sully’s anti-boner jihad and it confused me a lot. Also.
Must. Find. Glasses.
And I see ya’ll just haaaaad to mention Cr33d.
When 666 slobbering Scott Stappinfection fans show up screaming OMG CREED IS THE BEST BAND EVAR U SUXXX! you’ll have no one to blame but yourselves.
spot check billy
I don’t think Sting is trying to be a jazz singer. He has jazz musicians in his band (Wynton and Branford Marsalis had a huge falling out about Branford’s willingness to work with him in the ’80’s), but he isn’t singing jazz with them.
neddie jingo
@Montysano:
Peace, brother.
Have you seen "I’m Not There"? The Richard Gere sequence, Riddle, Missouri, makes me weep for what we’ve lost. The identities between "Blind Willie McTell" and "Wisconsin Death Trip" make me weep copious rivers for the tragedy of American culture. We have lost so much… So much…
Huck Finn knows what I mean…
Montysano
@neddie jingo:
I tried, but just couldn’t hang in there and finish it. Maybe I should try again.
The Nevilles Brothers don’t even live in New Orleans anymore, which is about the most fucked up thing I know, and no one seems to give a shit. I’m with you…..
spot check billy
Worst band ever?
Journey
No contest.
I saw them open for the Stones at JFK stadium in Philly in ’81 (yes, about five minutes before they should have packed it in). Never saw 100,000 people stand so still for so long in my life. The place rocked for Thorogood (then a semi-obscure local act) before them and and Stones after, but just stood in dumbstruck boredom for Steve Perry’s "offerings".
This was the same tour that saw an unknown Prince get booed off the stage at several gigs. That would have been interesting.
wilfred
I’ve got one. How about this?
Sully’s anti-Bono jewish war on Palestinian children.
How’s that. See, I just substituted jihad with jewish war on Palestinian children, at once being more topical and religion/culture insulting inclusive.
Since you’ve been posting here you haven’t seen fit to mention anything about the jewish war on Palestinian children so I’d thought I’d help out.
All meant in good fun, of course. The way the Muslims are automatically expected to appreciate certain concepts of their own being incorporated into the language, and all.
Of course, jewish war on Palestinian children is a bit long, so how about:
Sully’s anti-Bono jewish kid killing.
That’s betterr – and it means exactly whay you mean when you use the word jihad, correct?
So now when I see the word jihad used like this, I’ll just substitute it with jewish kid killing, and everything will be ok.
neddie jingo
@Montysano:
Please, please, please check out the Wisconsin Death Trip. Dylan becomes a lot clearer after that.
The United States was in a serious depression in 1895. We don’t call it the Great Depression because there was a Greater one about to happen. Hordes of "tramps" (i.e., homeless people) were riding the rails, hitting on whatever town they came upon for food. The "Death Trip" tells the stories of the folks who experienced these "tramps," as well as many other people. Utterly compelling reading, especially if you want to understand the provenances of Bob Dylan….
Gemina13
Not just no, but hell fucking no. U2’s last few albums have been full of shit (with the exception of "Love And Peace Or Else" and "City Of Blinding Lights"), but their albums up to and including "Achtung Baby" have had some really good songs. Of course, to paraphrase a former rock critic, if U2 weren’t full of shit, they wouldn’t have been as great as they occasionally were.
I can sing many U2 songs by heart. I don’t know anything Hootie and the Blowjobs did that I could sing by heart, and any time I hear them on the radio, I get the strong desire to drive my Chevy into the back of a 16-wheeler.
Gemina13
Oh, yeah–why the hell would anyone take Sully’s opinion on anything as valid? The fucker’s flipped so often, he could be a pancake special at IHOP.
Gemina13
@JGabriel:
I’d like something young enough to go to kindergarten if it was any good. John Mayer, anyone? Nickelback? Fucking Creed? Bleah. Gimme my ’80s back and get the fuck off my lawn. :)
Montysano
@neddie jingo:
I’ll look for it tomorrow, although I’m not sure I need to read anything else that is described as "harrowing". I’m feeling thoroughly harrowed as it is.
JGabriel
@Gemina13:
TV on the Radio
Jenny Lewis / Rilo Kiley
Neko Case
New Pornographers
MIA
Arcade Fire
Just to name a few from this decade.
And yes, I love the 80’s too, could sit around listening all day long to The Replacements, Husker Du, New Order, REM, the Beastie Boys, Public Enemy, Mission of Burma, Yaz and the Buzzcocks, which is still a decade or two newer than most of the stuff being discussed in this thread, but there really is some good music from this decade and 90’s as well. (Pavement, Yo La Tengo, PJ Harvey, Liz Phair, et. al.).
.
seven
funny thing is that people who knock people who actually make a difference are usaully just cocksuckers who never will
slightly_peeved
Anyone talking about how good the Edge is as a guitarist needs to see this:
Bill Bailey – The Edge
paragonpark
Neddie:
Listen to Happy XMas, the War is Over and then listen to the Greenbriar Boys doing Stewball in the 1950s (an old traditional British song) .
Listen to Grow old With Me and then listen to Beethoven’s Sonata Pathetique.
I’ve read that even Imagine is closely based on the melody from a song his father recorded back in the 1940s.
There’s nothing really wrong with this, and with traditional folk music back in the days before music publishing companies were vigilant about protecting royalties, it was considered the norm. Tons of songs use old folk melodies or even classical melodies which the performers taught one another and each performer would personalize with altered or even completely new lyrics. It’s only when music became recorded and commercialized that borrowing became an issue.
Marshall
Wrong Bono. I save my scorn for Mary Bono, who inflicted the "Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act" upon us. That is much, much, worse than anything U2 has ever done.
neddie jingo
@paragonpark:
The Folk Process will always be with us, agreed. It can’t be eradicated, which I consider an entirely good thing. Lennon’s "Because" is no less beautiful a thing when considered as a variation of Beethoven’s "Moonlight Sonata." But there’s thievery and there’s thievery, and Lennon, as far as I know, never committed overt thievery of the blatant sort.
You’re right to call into question the modern fact that ownership of copyright has distorted musical discussion. Only for about 80 years has "ownership" of a particular string of notes and words meant anything at all — before that, before the advent of recorded music, when sheet music was the most common form of transmission, "borrowing" bits and pieces from another composer was not particularly taboo.
You may have misheard the business about "Imagine." Alf Lennon was a performer, in the sense that he sang in pubs, but he certainly didn’t record anything during the 1940s. He may have sung a tune similar to "Imagine" to John in his crib, but not for a record company. Alf was a ship’s steward for the duration of WWII and well after, away from home for very nearly all of it, and not much of a father while at home.
Will
There is hating, and then there is HATING, my friend. Damn, it’s too early to block that. All I can say is no.
paragonpark
Well, I’ve heard the Greenbriar Boys Stewball. It’s on one of the folk anthologies, maybe Harry Smiths’s but i’m not sure because I’ve got a bucnch of them and Happy Xmas is the identical melody and is played in either the same or a very close key.
I see nothing wrong with that as the Greenbriar Boys were recording a traditional song probably credited to "Trad/arranged by…" and original point was merely that calling such borrowing "plagiarism" is unfair because it’s always been part of the process of creating music and unlike words, given the finite combinations possible using western scales, its’s almost impossible not to use a melody that has been used before even if you don’t know you are doing it.
neddie jingo
Greenbriar Boys Stewball
I know the one you mean. Amusingly, Lennon may actually have been deliberate: http://www.usenet.com/newsgroups/rec-music-beatles/msg19767.html (I don’t believe he consciously "stole" it, but the Usenet post makes the connection.)
its’s almost impossible not to use a melody that has been used before even if you don’t know you are doing it.
True ’nuff. I’ve forgotten now which bio I read it in, but Ringo used to try his hand at songwriting. He’d bring in a new song, play it for the others, who’d crack up and congratulate him on having just rewritten "Walkin’ the Floor Over You" or something.
Recall, also, that McCartney had to ask all of his most trusted musical friends if they’d ever heard "Yesterday" before. He couldn’t believe that a melody so utterly original had just…occurred to him.
Joe Buck
While the Other Steve has a point, that there’s often a snobbish element in dismissing the popular, as an early follower of the band I was depressed by their personality change. I remember an early interview which might have been from the first US tour, when the band was just gushing with amazement in a radio interview that the American fans knew the words to the songs. And only a few years later the fame had gotten to their heads, and Bono started coming off like an arrogant asshole, like when he spray-painted the fountain in San Francisco and expected people to worship his artistic expression when it was just vandalism. A lot of the early fans were sickened by this kind of crap.
But "the Joshua Tree" is a great album.
bettina
Even more annoying than Bono is Camille Paglia, and Sullivan’s reverence of her. Bono’s lyrical failings are tempered somewhat with music that rocks. Paglia has nothing but pained, wilted references and a large vocabulary that explain nothing but her desire to get fucked by smarter and more dynamic faculty members of certain ivy league universities.
James Knight
Come back here and post when you have given 10% of what you earn, put your career on hold while you go out and champion a cause and can post a link to some sort of artistic efforts (good or bad). When last did any of you get off your arses to do some good for someone else?