Diminishing expectations: the most disgraceful sonic acts right now
With iPods and personal playlists never more prevalent, one can really engineer and customise their listening to their own tastes and quirks. If you like Merzbow and Merz you are now more normal than those who like to line up Parashits, A Rush of Cum to the Head and X&Why? next to each other in the CD rack. Even HMV is planning a FOPP-style more niched approach now. So this hate-list arguably may never be less relevant, but this lot by virtue of their tedious but ubiquitous product still go beyond the pale…
FOO FIGHTERS Dave Grohl is the Archpriest of low-expectation chart rock. They turned out to be the antithesis of their actually rasping/highly engaged first single/manifesto: “This is a Call [to our past resignation]". Grohl stains the ghost and cult of Cobain. His grunge is liked by radges like Chris Moyles, who just because the guitars growl here and there and isn’t technically poodle rock like the 80s stuff (just the new version of it off the production line) think that it’s somehow ‘cool’. Then, remembering he was slacker-rock, Grohl will make like he’s not trying in a video, when actually it’s an admission that he knows this stuff is pisspoor. Do yourself a favour, be like Novoselic, acknowledge that the Nirvana moment will never be repeated (at least not by you) and get out of the ‘industry’.
ORDINARY BOYS Boys will be boys = "Cun£s will be Cun£s". The faux-ska white love-in/I love 1979 is bad enough but there’s a lot more than the classic posturing of prepubescent ladness that mid-20something male adults indulge in. It comes across like a middle-class tourist midget sails in a retro vessel, which is of course completely consistent with the PR campaign and the subsequent relationship with the Ilford Dunce, which his outlook might have once turned him against... See also Hard-Fi.
PETE TONG, 60, AND GENERAL RADIO 1 ‘DANCE’ Even though most people have stopped listening and started to take control of their own rave/narcotic experiences, the repetitive beat keeps turning by these shameless weekend programmers/dictators. The smart licencepayers money is not on career djs like Tong or Westwood but Ann-Hobbs or those via DAB on 1Xtra.
OASIS Yes a good comp could be knocked up of their early stuff and b-sides but Joyeux Noel himself would acknowledge that he had a few months of inspiration and the rest is dreck. Their stadium gigs are virtually national front rallies these days. Still able to inspire a welter of noisy rock laddishness.
PHARRELL/SNOOP and co. Drop it like it’s sh!t. Applicable to any number of ‘urban’ self pornographers, it’s high time to disconnect from this MTV stream of rabid r&b. Never was their ‘reality’ part of the solution.
JACK JOHNSON (US), JAMES BLUNT (UK) and the new chart-faced singer-songwriter/MOR/folk. Jus’ me and m’coustic, strumming it like it is. These artists bring real-life experience to their work. Indeed, Blunt is happy to have Kosovo footage exploited in his videos. Downhome, naturalist prostitutes, get their music court martialled. Bore of duty, etc.
BLACK-EYED PEAS It’s been said before on blogs whose identities escape me but their forced multicultural popist take on r&b is extremely grating. This elite squad of chart arrivistes are fearlessly capable of appropriating the latest modes and releasing new virii within weeks. A pain in the humps, all told.
GORILLAZ (oh alright then, maybe the strength of the tunes just about outweighs the crapness of the postmodern concepts, it is annoying how they have taken the craze of 80s-flecked electro dance and bettered it).
SNOW PATROL If Keane’s loser-prock (pop rock) can occasionally reach a good emotive melody and the ‘Play once reached a reasonable sonic plateau (then stayed there forever), then the Snow are a blizzard of blunt-edge ‘indie’ flakes, very much like Feeder or any of those quiet/loud four-square acts. Music that sells enough to get these guys their dream hideaway In Highgate or Crouch End.
U2 Slogans and logos where the words mean nothing, loud-not-loud music – only Edge can make a big riff seem so neutered – the papist stance of Bongo, Adam Clayton, the self-appointed guardians of the rock flame, etc. The reasons for despising this band are endless. Their quasi industrial rock which was introduced in Joshua and became their trademark from Zoo Station onwards is just so lame to any reasonably educated ears. Please confine yourself to campaigning (in doing so getting out of our faces like Thom Yorke).
JOOLS HOLLAND [Hand extended out in presentation mode] “Stephen Polliakoff! Sings the songs of Eddie Cochrane! – Get hot new acts, world acts and novelty shit on, ask obvious questions. Let them play next to The Sure. Get a bunch of bourgeois consumers in comfortable shoe-trainers as a controlled audience, as well as a few ‘famous’ faces who are effectively the same people but allowed to sit down, to dole out the apprecipence. Cheapen the value of their work. Beautiful.
ROLLING STONES “You got to go and see the Stones once in your life man. What a show!” Only the same sort of disability wheelchair that Jaggered and Rich-hards came in would get me there. Thanks for the tunes and epoch eventing guys, but please enter Dignitysville whence you came.
FOO FIGHTERS Dave Grohl is the Archpriest of low-expectation chart rock. They turned out to be the antithesis of their actually rasping/highly engaged first single/manifesto: “This is a Call [to our past resignation]". Grohl stains the ghost and cult of Cobain. His grunge is liked by radges like Chris Moyles, who just because the guitars growl here and there and isn’t technically poodle rock like the 80s stuff (just the new version of it off the production line) think that it’s somehow ‘cool’. Then, remembering he was slacker-rock, Grohl will make like he’s not trying in a video, when actually it’s an admission that he knows this stuff is pisspoor. Do yourself a favour, be like Novoselic, acknowledge that the Nirvana moment will never be repeated (at least not by you) and get out of the ‘industry’.
ORDINARY BOYS Boys will be boys = "Cun£s will be Cun£s". The faux-ska white love-in/I love 1979 is bad enough but there’s a lot more than the classic posturing of prepubescent ladness that mid-20something male adults indulge in. It comes across like a middle-class tourist midget sails in a retro vessel, which is of course completely consistent with the PR campaign and the subsequent relationship with the Ilford Dunce, which his outlook might have once turned him against... See also Hard-Fi.
PETE TONG, 60, AND GENERAL RADIO 1 ‘DANCE’ Even though most people have stopped listening and started to take control of their own rave/narcotic experiences, the repetitive beat keeps turning by these shameless weekend programmers/dictators. The smart licencepayers money is not on career djs like Tong or Westwood but Ann-Hobbs or those via DAB on 1Xtra.
OASIS Yes a good comp could be knocked up of their early stuff and b-sides but Joyeux Noel himself would acknowledge that he had a few months of inspiration and the rest is dreck. Their stadium gigs are virtually national front rallies these days. Still able to inspire a welter of noisy rock laddishness.
PHARRELL/SNOOP and co. Drop it like it’s sh!t. Applicable to any number of ‘urban’ self pornographers, it’s high time to disconnect from this MTV stream of rabid r&b. Never was their ‘reality’ part of the solution.
JACK JOHNSON (US), JAMES BLUNT (UK) and the new chart-faced singer-songwriter/MOR/folk. Jus’ me and m’coustic, strumming it like it is. These artists bring real-life experience to their work. Indeed, Blunt is happy to have Kosovo footage exploited in his videos. Downhome, naturalist prostitutes, get their music court martialled. Bore of duty, etc.
BLACK-EYED PEAS It’s been said before on blogs whose identities escape me but their forced multicultural popist take on r&b is extremely grating. This elite squad of chart arrivistes are fearlessly capable of appropriating the latest modes and releasing new virii within weeks. A pain in the humps, all told.
GORILLAZ (oh alright then, maybe the strength of the tunes just about outweighs the crapness of the postmodern concepts, it is annoying how they have taken the craze of 80s-flecked electro dance and bettered it).
SNOW PATROL If Keane’s loser-prock (pop rock) can occasionally reach a good emotive melody and the ‘Play once reached a reasonable sonic plateau (then stayed there forever), then the Snow are a blizzard of blunt-edge ‘indie’ flakes, very much like Feeder or any of those quiet/loud four-square acts. Music that sells enough to get these guys their dream hideaway In Highgate or Crouch End.
U2 Slogans and logos where the words mean nothing, loud-not-loud music – only Edge can make a big riff seem so neutered – the papist stance of Bongo, Adam Clayton, the self-appointed guardians of the rock flame, etc. The reasons for despising this band are endless. Their quasi industrial rock which was introduced in Joshua and became their trademark from Zoo Station onwards is just so lame to any reasonably educated ears. Please confine yourself to campaigning (in doing so getting out of our faces like Thom Yorke).
JOOLS HOLLAND [Hand extended out in presentation mode] “Stephen Polliakoff! Sings the songs of Eddie Cochrane! – Get hot new acts, world acts and novelty shit on, ask obvious questions. Let them play next to The Sure. Get a bunch of bourgeois consumers in comfortable shoe-trainers as a controlled audience, as well as a few ‘famous’ faces who are effectively the same people but allowed to sit down, to dole out the apprecipence. Cheapen the value of their work. Beautiful.
ROLLING STONES “You got to go and see the Stones once in your life man. What a show!” Only the same sort of disability wheelchair that Jaggered and Rich-hards came in would get me there. Thanks for the tunes and epoch eventing guys, but please enter Dignitysville whence you came.
posted by Culla at 6:33 pm
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