There are many terrible bands today which people persist in listening to despite the mounting evidence they suk. Rather than look for the reasons behind this maningrey has made this easy to follow chart of current terrible bands and a better alternative.
The Red Hot Chili Peppers:
This fratboy rabble of Homer Simpson lookalikes really get on my goat. About as lithe and slinky as John Candy and John Belushi mud wrestling never has a such a supposedly danceable band cut the rug with such ineptitude. The only answer must have been that they played all their Parliament records at the wrong speed to get that cement mixer groove they have going on. Flea in particular looks like one of those night creatures you were convinced lived under your bed when you were a kid. Despite harping on about Gang of Four and Bootsy his playing sounds not a million miles away from Level 42.
The Alternative - The Meters
Where the Chili's swiped most of their ideas, four funky muthas from the Crescent City they backed everyone from Dr John to Labelle (that's them on Lady Marmalade and Right Time Wrong Place). The drumming in particular sounds like its played by God's pet octopus. Simultaneously laid back and funky these guys work for both doing the Shing-a-ling and post coital cabbaging.
Radiohead:
Even less easy on the eye than the above if that were possible, this Oxford collective of David Mitchell lookalikes approach all the joy and excitment of making music with the studied enthusiasm of Jeremy Paxman doing The Times crossword. Lacking the soul or humour to make simple appealing music they dove head first into brain searing complexity which has proved bewilderingly popular. There must be more skinny white teens who can't get laid and bald Germans with beards in the record buying public than we first assumed. Enevitably the only "progressive" or "experimental" CD in most people's collections, Radiohead provide a sort of "avant lite" for anyone without the balls to investigate Charles Mingus or Bitches Brew. To be fair Radiohead do make a point of digging up cool stuff and talking about it but its all so humourless, when you listern to one of their CDs you feel like you are in a cold dark library with a particulaly strict librarian shouting at you with a high keening voice.
The Alternative - Can and Roxy:
I was stuck for a moment so I have plumbed for two. Firstly Can, admitedly beardy and flare wearing but these guys were the real deal, studying under Stockhausen and also digging the VU and Zappa. After some noisy patience testing LPs they mellowed out and recording the georgeously sensual swirls of "Future Days" and "Ege Bamyasi". As they are actually great players they don't have to show off, they just settle back into a narcotic groove propelled by the world greatest drummer:Jaki Liebezeit. Vocalist Damo Suzuki chants strange melodic verses as keys and guitar shimmer into oceanic bliss, bassist and producer Holger Czukay generaly only play about two notes per songs but when he goes "boingggg" you feel it in your guts.
Second option is early Roxy Music, again basically prog but done with a demented humour and aggression that meant they were Steve Jones of The Sex Pistols favourite band and popular with both beard strokers and teeny boppers. Just imagine Radiohead dressed in leopard skin, covered in glitter while covering a top ten hit in randomly generated clouds of moog...actually rather not. The divide between what is considered "serious" music and what is considered "pop" is now a mile wide when back in Roxy's time you did not need to play down for your audience to get popular, you just needed to have the guts to coat avant ideas in make up and have a quiff.
Beck:
Aka Beck Hansen who to my mind should have been in Hanson for all the good he brought to music. Beck specialises in doing lots of things to hide the fact he does none of them well. His albums are littered with unfunky hip hop, souless country, unrocking rock and lyrics that make acid crazed Syd Barrett's solo ramblings sound like a Shakespeare sonnet. He finaly came a cropper with his "ironic" "tribute" to Prince, Midnite Vultures. The problem was people actually liked Prince and did not need a dwarfish Amish orphan parodying the purple poet when Prince already did such a good job himself. He was promptly dumped by Winona, who probaly lost her virginity to Purple Rain and fled into a career dive of tedious "Winona come back to me" folk.
The Alternative - Harry Nilsson:
Harry Nilsson, best know for "ironic" but mega selling MOR standard "Without You", hard drinking Harry was actually a pop polymath who wrote hard rock ("Jump Into The Fire", covered by LCD Sound System), charming children's songs (the brilliant kids cartoon sound track "The Point" complete with Harry reading a story between tracks) , demented career suicide meltdowns (Son of Schmilsson, featuring the odd "I'd Rather Be Dead" sung with 50 pensioners) and actually amusing novelty hits ("Coconut" as featured in Reservoir Dogs). A genuine talent with a huge voice he was The Beatles favourite artist, their publicist writing the sleeve notes to the great "Ariel Ballet".
Nine Inch Nails:
I can never take these guys seriously after Courtney Love's quote about how they should be renamed "Three Inch Nails" after her brief fling with Trent Reznor...come back Courtney all is forgiven for having Kurt wacked! This is just a personal thing as I remember a guy I was friends with who was obsessed with these noiseniks and never had a girlfriend despite being a lovely guy, I always thought if he had dumped the industrial and cut his hair his life would have been so much more fun...
The Alternative - The Stooges and The Velvets:
The Stooges or The Velvets of "White Light, White Heat". These guys made a fucking terrible racket but it was somehow slinky and sexy and all about getting laid. To these miscreants the sounds they were terrorising audiences with was pop music but pop music from another planet. So it all had a nice groove despite the noise and lyrics about getting wasted at the best party you don't remember. These guys were not moaning about imagined slights they just wanted to have a party, a really fucking noisy degenerate party but at least they made you want to go out and shake it about rather than sit in your bedsit getting pale and popping zits.
Metallica
I am glad "Some Kind Of Monster" showed this collection of manhamsters and "Deliverence" extras up as the pussies they really are. Not content with producing numbingly dull post prog wankathons they then decided to sue the very wey faced morons who had made their unappealing racket big in the first place. The humunculetic drummer now "keeps it real" by playing tennis and collecting art...how very yawn making..and to think they were once promisingly called "Alchoholica".
The Alternative - Motorhead:
Easy really, Motorhead! Its all in the umlaut with the emphasis on LOUT. Once again no self pity or moaning just gruff celebrations of speed, groupies (did Motorhead have groupies?) and more speed (metal). A bunch of hard headed London lads who would top every historical metal chart if it came to bar brawling and consumption of narcotics, Lemmy being thrown out of Hawkwind for fucks sake for doing too much speed. You knew that everything they sung about they did and there was a grainy reality to their sound that went beyond metal and influenced hard core punk and even some more extreme techno.
I hope this has helped you despite the poor grammar, I expect Music and Video exchange to receive a deluge of Beck and Radiohead CDs in the next few days as people clammer to exchange them for the maningrey's choices...
maningrey
"maningrey saves your record collection from boredom" > read the full post
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