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Your Favorite Band Sucks
There. I said it. All you classic rock types can fight me. The following bands are overrated and are hereby banned from their never-ending song rotations on the radio:
Rush. Canada’s greatest export? Sure. But still not good.
The Eagles. Prolific, yes. Good? Maybe in the beginning. Still good after all this time? Nope. They’re old and Hotel California is probably still the most overplayed song ever.
Nirvana. Did they become the poster boys for Grunge? Yes. Was it a new sound that they were advancing? Yes. But after two albums, it was enough. If Cobain hadn’t self-destructed, there’s still no guarantee that he would’ve done anything of value. He was already tired of playing and his lyrics and music were getting too predictable.
Bob Dylan. Inventive. Useful. Interesting. Nonsensical. The man hasn’t done anything good in years. This includes having a son that also became famous on his dad’s coattails (see, “The Wallflowers”). While his initial poetry turned folk-jam was good in its time, that time has been passed for a very long time. People continue to see him for nostalgia purposes. Not because he’s good anymore or has produced anything of value.
There are others, but I think four will do. Who is on your list? Why are they awful? Vent your spleen here!
Published in Culture
My favorite band don’t suck. Why you be dissing Savatage?
Because their video is not available!
Odd. It’s playing for me.
A location issue perhaps?
My hate for “the eagles” knows no bounds.
You know that reaction You get when a song comes on the radio and within the first few seconds You git the urge to change the channel?
By the second note of an eagles’ song I punch the radio… hard.
How dare you slander M.C. Hammer like that?!
Eh … what do you know ’bout music?
I think I saw those guys at Germanfest.
I don’t care for Lou Reed, Led Zeppelin, Boston, Van Halen, but if they float your boat listen all you want. Just not around me, please.
Weird Al Yankovic can point the way to how bad the band you like is indeed bad. Star Wars and Don Maclean is skewered in one song.
Oh, yeah…Germanfest…
I’m a blasphemer. I don’t like the Beatles.
The only problem with that approach is that you have to listen to Weird Al Yankovic. Who sucks.
Might as well go to the source. One half hour tearing apart the wrapping on one Yankovic CD, versus multiple CD purchases of one hit wonders saves time and money.
Go big or go home. A great band can make a bad album, and the greatest overhyped album of all time belongs, without doubt, to The Beatles.
First, I’ll praise the band. Ringo: knew just what a song needed in terms of drums. Not as good a drummer as Paul, but a more musically intuitive one, and in that, one of the best. Speaking of Paul on drums, bass, piano, etc., all of those guys were solid musicians, and when I hear them covering Chuck Berry in early recordings, it’s fantastic. John was a better guitarist than most give credit for because people are still wound up about that stolen harmonica. Hear that slide guitar? It’s probably John while George stays on the lead. George is my favorite because he wrote the most interesting songs and really gave the band some range. They’re not just good individually, they had chemistry as an ensemble.
But…for every deserving bit of praise I could offer for Rubber Soul, I would like to rain disdain on Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, at one time the so-called “most influential” album of all time. Good gracious, I doubt it. In terms of musicians polled, Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue crashes the barriers of genre and seems mentioned much more often, but that was years before many rock critics had their teenage coming-of-age stories set to a Beatles soundtrack.
Some say it was the first concept album, but Ringo and John said, “er, not really,” adding only the first two songs are truly connected, along with the reprise of the first song.
George did some really interesting stuff with the sitar on “Norwegian Wood,” (on Rubber Soul, again) but not on “Within You, Without You” which seems to drone on forever. When he finally sings “arrive without traveling” it’s a signal that you’ve mercifully arrived at the end. But if there is a theme to the album, his contribution is a solid representation of it. The theme? Whimsy.
There is value in it. “When I’m Sixty-Four” is fun, lighthearted as is “Lovely Rita.” “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite” is just random, and “Fixing a Hole” depressingly so. When does whimsy become disjointed? Easy, on “Good Morning, Good Morning” and “Getting Better,” in part an abusive confessional. Yeow!
The only thing I can figure is there must have been a ton of hype at the time, and everyone loved the Beatles so they invented innumerable ways to label the album a classic. The band is, without question, but not this album. And with that…I’m prepared to be convinced otherwise.
Let’s try this lovely little Beethoven:
Gawd, I hate the beatles.
The band I can’t stand that many people like is U2. Their music is overproduced and too melodramatic. I change the station or hit the skip arrow as soon as I hear one of their songs.
ETA: Nirvana doesn’t count as classic rock in my book. The “Classic Rock” period dates from the 60s through the 80s. Nirvana didn’t hit it big till the 90s (as far as I can recall) and is too late and too grunge to qualify.
Awwww shoot, Jimmah. I was so hoping we could be friends.
:-)
Ringo was a WAY better drummer than Paul. Listen to any of Paul’s one man band records for definitive proof.
I could do without the Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd.
It plays on the stations now. It’s been 30 years…
Hotel California plays at least once every time I am in the car for. More than 10 minutes.
That’s a lot of airplay.
Depends on the station you listen to. The Classic Rock station I mostly hear has a better rotation, but most “top 40” type stations, even among the “classic rock” genre, base their playlist on the marketing theory that their entire audience changes every 30 minutes or whatever.
As for myself, if I had never heard – or never hear again – anything by Michael Jackson, it wouldn’t change my life at all.
I especially don’t understand why I hear Thriller in the middle of summer.
Mine’s a singer and he only comes out at Christmas time these days… but my hate for Bing Crosby is high. I like his movies, I can’t stand his singing.
I know a group of family singers that perform at Octoberfest and they are better than that :p
The only one I’d fight you on is Dylan. I know some people go way overboard, and most of his recent stuff is not great, but I think his contribution to music and literature, and the combination of those things, make it difficult to overrate him. Plus, he’s rarely on the radio, even on classic stations.
And to be fair, he is 80 years old, so he’s not going to be able to do much for you lately. That said, he did have one new song last year that I think is really great called Key West (Philosopher Pirate). He sounds like an 80 year old man on that one, but that’s alright because it fits with the song, which seems to be about an old man, who knows the end is near, dreaming of a place where he can rest and think back on his life and be surrounded by calmness and beauty. That’s what I get from it anyway.
Isn’t Dylan’s best stuff what was written by him but performed (“covered”) by others who are actually understandable?
I take issue with your outrageous dissing of Very Important Rock Icons and am outraged by the callous criticisms of Classic Bands in the name of Conservatism, Tradition, Drugs and Apple Pie!
I mean, you’re absolutely right, but still.
Good! Be outraged!
Best things some of those people did was retire…
There’s a special place in hell for Dave Matthews Band fans.