Aha.. couldn't agree more. Rem are anything BUT tired. To say they havent moved on since AFP is ludicrous... they constantly produce top quality stuff, and the sales reflect that.
If its music for jaded people, then long may I be so.
Jeff/Matt, I cant take anything you say about music seriously...
"In questions of taste, quality, art etc then who's to say what's good and what's bad? maybe not the masses (bunch of ignorant shit kickers that we are) but not the few either. I get sick of hearing people saying, "You're all wrong, it's crap!" and then going on to 'prove' it's crap by citing its popularity! everyone likes it so it must be rubbish!"
I didn't say Elvis is crap because he is popular, I only said that Elvis' popularity has made him into something else, which I find rather repelling. And I didn't blame Elvis for that but indeed us "ignorant bunch of shit kickers".
To categorically dislike what's popular is one thing, but it works both ways and it personally sets my alarm bells ringing a bit more brightly when it goes the other way round: I categorically dislike what's not popular because if no one else likes it it must be crap.
It's an attitude of sheep that only feel secure within the fold, and yes, we've all got it in us, because it's so much more comforting to stand in line rather than to step out of it and be on our own.
Maybe we could agree that neither attitude is particularly constructive and that at the heart of this popularity/unpopularity contest is a choice each and every one of us has to make, ideally based on some common sense between the extremes.
Denver:
"This amounts to an argument, essentially the same as..."I don't like something because it is green, and idiots are attracted to green." It has no depth nor reasonable perspective nor basis in anything other than emotion."
On the contrary, I think it's only half as emotional as your response.
Why can't I differentiate? Why is it so imperative to buy the whole package, the whole thing? Why does it have to be "either - or", rather than "I like bits and certain aspects and others I dislike"?
"Elvis was the prototype of every “Rock & Roll” performer to follow. One could argue that there were those that came before him as well as his peers at the time, but Elvis became the initial aggregate carved sculpture from which all others copied and emulated. To ridicule the tastes of the millions and millions of people from every culture the 50’s, a time when the western world was building bomb shelters and preparing for nuclear war and the moral standards were so Elizabethan it would make you vomit, it shows a total ignorance of what Elvis represents in modern terms and the impact on our culture that resulted from his existence."
I appreciate that but at the same time can't help thinking that Elvis was just one fragment among thousands of others before him and after him. To allocate this role of "musical Messiah" to him and thus single him out seems to me neither justified nor fair to Elvis the musician himself. As I said earlier, I wonder what he would have to say to that...
Also, I believe the importance given to any musical hero is a very subjective and therefore emotional one and it pretty much depends on where you're standing and when you're born.
Oh, and no, I'm not getting on my knees and won't beg forgiveness, because if Elvis was really watching, I don't think he would ask me to.
(And in case I should be wrong I would have the clearest conscience in the world by calling him an utter twat.)
[%sig%]
I've never thought of Elvis as a Musical Messiah...Interesting concept.
I've always thought more in terms his monolithic presence in our culture and his meteoric rise to that place. Musically, he wasn't that good a musician and his rise to fame was by performing others music. He was larger than life, not the definition of life. Everybody (I use that word loosely) then and even to this day want's to see a piece of it. He stands in our minds as monolithic as the pyramids in Egypt. We don't have to worship them to appreciate what they signify and how they came to be.
I never rated Elvis, but in my formative years (late 60s) he was tired and fat and old and a reactionary redneck when the Beatles and Paul Simon and Dylan and Cohen and Joni Mitchell and Jim Morrison and CSNY and a host of others were writing songs which seemed to matter. But when I listened to the appalling crooning junk my parents appreciated in the 1950s, and look at the 50s Elvis compared to the stuff which filled the charts in those days, there's the vitality and style and sexiness which white kids had never seen before, and which we take for granted now. But, no, I wouldn't listen to it today.
In support of Hen, I do sort of wonder when the last time Stormy et al went to an indie nightclub to see what young people are dancing to...
We are getting into the usual limp sort of music argument where things I like equal good, things I don't are for pathetic sad losers. Shame.
I actually spent the weekend in indie nightclubs (in Rekjavik) dancing along with the young people and am happy provide a list.
I don't know what Al did, I'll ask him.
Hello Dan - how was rekjavik? I always fancied it, but going to Norway put me off the entire snowy expensive scene. Norway is very dull, but I hear Rekjavik isnt. My grandad used to live there, but I dont imagine he was much into the club scene.
Rekjavik was probably the most fun I've ever managed to squeeze into 48 hours. We were there for the iceland airways music festival which meant we had a wristband and could just wander around from venue to venue checking out bands and getting progessively drunker. Met loads of really nice people and everyone was chatty and friendly and Icelandic people are absolutely nuts. I met a man who I was assured was a famous author (anyone know any famous Icelandic authors?) who breathed an overbowering stench of booze and cigar smoke at me and announced "I am sorry for the drunken state of my countrymen." and then started hitting on the girl we were with.
I had about six hours of sleep total, saw at least a dozen different bands, and I haven't totted up how much I spent on beer yet but it wasn't cheap and we drank a lot of it.
I have some notes scrawled on hotel stationary so will try and write something up about it when I recover. Until then there's some pictures at , kitten racing too.
I'm going to see REM in January. I imagine I will ruin my trousers when I get to see the God in the flesh. There are tickets on ebay at the moment for their gig in Hyde Park, offering VIP status with a band meeting afterward. Price stands presently at £1,500.
I am selling my children.
I'll have Olivia. She and Will make a beautiful pair. She'd keep him quiet and devoted for years...
:0)
(I'd have a problem with Peter being jealous though)
"Then like an epiphany, I realise that the song is about his girlfriend being dead and him trying desperately to hang on to his memories of her, and realising that there can't be a God or fairness in the world, or she wouldn't have died. "
I think in this case it would be a "boyfriend", Andrew.
[%sig%]
Because they don't join in with this rock star stuff. Because Stipe is beautifulugly, with masses of charisma.Because their songs are impenetrable and no matter how long you listen, you still cant get completely inside.. you could take a song from REM and crit it in much the same way as you could an Eliot poem (come on, let me have it then all you lit crit arses)
Because they are brilliant.
thanks pschmitt. (did i mention i have a ticket to see them in January?hahahaha... *twirls in glee*)
Flash, you really don't need to worry. I think you are safe from the stipe.
Thank heavens for that.......he's all yours darling.
No it was the horrible thought that you the lovely Liana was more male than me........you don't scratch your arse in public do you?
And when Mr Stipe gets his mitts on you, will you feed him up a bit...poor chap looks likes he needs a few roast dinners or quorn burgers or tofu salad.
And yes they REM are fucking brilliant and you're a lucky mare to be seeing them live. Jammy Bi...
didn't one of their members get off a criminal charge recently?
I think it was because they have a bisexual member in their band.
It was a case of...
bi one- get one free!
sorry.
Pages