jason from volo wrote: Sun Jun 20, 2021 8:00 pm

seby wrote: Sun Jun 20, 2021 4:58 pm This is a very tough call, but I am going to have to give the prize to Radiohead

Oof.

Is it really Radiohead's fault, or is it because they were put on such a high pedestal by so many??

It is really Radiohead's fault. All of it. They have pursued the exploitation of the ignorance of their intended audience (bored, musically illiterate squares) with fervour. Take "Burn the Witch" for example - It is Anthony Rother meets Cocteau Twins, but Radiohead know that their fan base will not know this. (Just like Finneas and Billie with "People are Strange", but there the angle is more "Our fans are super young so this is funny and meta".) Everything that they do is shamelessly manipulative. They are contrived posers and their music is just God-awful fake "oustider art". Yuk. No. I really cannot think of any band that I would like to listen to less. I would prefer to listen to trance. Like really really bad late-90's Israeli Goa trance. Pantera run a close second, but Radiohead takes the crown. Congratulations Radiohead!

seby wrote: Mon Jun 21, 2021 6:20 am It is really Radiohead's fault. All of it. They have pursued the exploitation of the ignorance of their intended audience (bored, musically illiterate squares) with fervour.

That's a really good way of putting it.

Also forgot to throw this in upstream: Lenny Kravitz.

I'm refusing to acknowledge any universe in which either REM or Radiohead can be considered the best band ever.

The Lenny Kravitz thing - and maybe this is finding blandness even more awful than being out and out terrible - is that I don't know what the fuck he is. Like, who listens to that, when you could listen to <long list of better takes on same thing>? I could understand it if the music were niche enough that there wasn't so much of it out there, but straight-up, radio-friendly guitar rock...how much of it do you need to exhaust before Lenny Kravitz hits? He's the scat incest porn of music.

seby wrote: Mon Jun 21, 2021 6:20 amIt is really Radiohead's fault. All of it. They have pursued the exploitation of the ignorance of their intended audience (bored, musically illiterate squares) with fervour. Take "Burn the Witch" for example - It is Anthony Rother meets Cocteau Twins, but Radiohead know that their fan base will not know this. (Just like Finneas and Billie with "People are Strange", but there the angle is more "Our fans are super young so this is funny and meta".) Everything that they do is shamelessly manipulative. They are contrived posers and their music is just God-awful fake "oustider art". Yuk. No. I really cannot think of any band that I would like to listen to less. I would prefer to listen to trance. Like really really bad late-90's Israeli Goa trance. Pantera run a close second, but Radiohead takes the crown. Congratulations Radiohead!

I don't get it. Is there something Radiohead have said in interviews or the like that makes you draw this conclusion? They might be unsubtle or lazy with their influences (I make no judgement there), but the idea that they are deliberately doing this to fool their fans? "Burn the Witch" sounds to me like a nicely arranged but musically dullish britpop tune with some adornments, not a "we are blatantly copying this and that and passing it off as our own" kinda thing.

re: "Bury a Friend", that one sounds 100% like its own song to me regardless of the similarity in motif with the Doors tune. I love that sort of thing when it's done well. If people don't know the Doors then the allusion means nothing anyway so if they were trying to elicit some kind of sympathy for the song through mere recognition with something earlier familiar they would have failed, no?

Radiohead is inoffensive, but the above reminds me that my vote should actually go straight to Pantera.

seby wrote: Mon Jun 21, 2021 6:20 am

jason from volo wrote: Sun Jun 20, 2021 8:00 pm

seby wrote: Sun Jun 20, 2021 4:58 pm This is a very tough call, but I am going to have to give the prize to Radiohead

Oof.

Is it really Radiohead's fault, or is it because they were put on such a high pedestal by so many??

It is really Radiohead's fault. All of it. They have pursued the exploitation of the ignorance of their intended audience (bored, musically illiterate squares) with fervour. Take "Burn the Witch" for example - It is Anthony Rother meets Cocteau Twins, but Radiohead know that their fan base will not know this. (Just like Finneas and Billie with "People are Strange", but there the angle is more "Our fans are super young so this is funny and meta".) Everything that they do is shamelessly manipulative. They are contrived posers and their music is just God-awful fake "oustider art". Yuk. No. I really cannot think of any band that I would like to listen to less. I would prefer to listen to trance. Like really really bad late-90's Israeli Goa trance. Pantera run a close second, but Radiohead takes the crown. Congratulations Radiohead!

Ha! This really made me chuckle! I've never hated Radiohead, though "OK Computer" was a watershed moment for me. SOmeone gave it to me when it came out, and... pffft, it just didn't sound very good, so I was just baffled by all the praise afterwards, and any other music using it as a benchmark was always going to be kinda shitty.

My Tivo recommended/recorded this the other night, and when the gig actually starts (at about 1.30) I wondered if it was actually a "shreds" video. Having watched loads of them, it really could be. Having given up after a couple of minutes, I'm still not convinced it isn't.

pb183max wrote: Mon Jun 21, 2021 2:59 am Greta Van Fleet

Cosplay bullshit.
Just awful.

Ooh, The Darkness surely have to get a mention in this thread.

Curry Pervert wrote: Mon Jun 21, 2021 3:46 pm Ooh, The Darkness surely have to get a mention in this thread.

I read the Pichfork review for the Greta Van Fleet debut because I went to hear some of their music and find out a bit about them, and that guy (who panned the album severely) contrasted it to The Darkness, who supposedly did GVF's thing "right". Like wtf even if you hate GVF you must agree that they are about 35,000 times better than The Darkness.

A_Man_Who_Tries wrote: Mon Jun 21, 2021 7:46 am I'm refusing to acknowledge any universe in which either REM or Radiohead can be considered the best band ever.

The Lenny Kravitz thing - and maybe this is finding blandness even more awful than being out and out terrible - is that I don't know what the fuck he is. Like, who listens to that, when you could listen to <long list of better takes on same thing>? I could understand it if the music were niche enough that there wasn't so much of it out there, but straight-up, radio-friendly guitar rock...how much of it do you need to exhaust before Lenny Kravitz hits? He's the scat incest porn of music.

So you love Lenny is what you are saying?