| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| bumblebeeboy2 |
Posted - 12/04/2004 : 06:17:41
'The Guide' that comes with The Guardian today (my GF buys it, not me!) has a cover feature of 'overrated-ness' - basically a good few pages of writers/critics banging on about who/what they feel is overrated and why. have to say, it's genius and i agree with most of it! the cover photo is the strokes, so you know they're getting it first... anyway, here's who they believed were the main sinners of overrated-ness...
music
the strokes
james brown
pet sounds (album)
stone roses
elvis costello
u2
neil young
david bowie
bob marley
tom waits
elvis
prince
captain beefheart
the rolling stones
nirvana
the beatles
what's going on (album)
film
blade runner
star wars
lost in translation
manhattan
the royal tenenbaums
withnail and i
the godfather
brian de palma
television
spike milligan
six feet under
monty python
sex and the city
the sopranos
twin peaks
the west wing
frasier
writers
james ellroy
don delillo
shakespeare
dennis potter
beat writers
The Monkey Helper has arrived http://www.monkeyhelper.co.uk (that is my band) |
| 35 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| Homers_pet_monkey |
Posted - 12/27/2004 : 07:15:50
quote:
Originally posted by Tre
After reading all the reasons for the various over-rated status I almost like the beatles, what absolute sentationalist tripe! Reads like a bunch of people making random whinges to be confrontaional. No real reasons, series of soundbites and sillyness.
But how clever of the guardian to use such cool-speak
Frank Black ate my hamster
And you.
Help me! He keeps making me post!
|
| Homers_pet_monkey |
Posted - 12/27/2004 : 07:15:15
quote:
Originally posted by the thing
The "overrated" tag is a journo way of saying "overhyped" without having to admit that they were the buggers who created the darned bandwagon for us to jump on in the first place.
 Forget the cults I got me a whole church!
Well said.
Help me! He keeps making me post!
|
| Newo |
Posted - 12/27/2004 : 07:06:04
Discounting the teevee section and the Strokes, of whom I've only heard one song, I agree with Elvis, Shakespeare, U2, Star Wars and The Godfather being there but rather like all the rest mentioned.
And that 'Beat writing', which included a massive amount of authors and incorporated an even larger number of different styles, is dismissed entirely you should know that the piece was written by a particularly unevolved being. Girlfriend or no, you have no excuse for frittering away a perfectly good brain on this, Simon.
--
Maze rats dreamed of mazes, according to the latest studies. Maze rat scientists dreamed of rats. I was dreaming of cheese. |
| Homers_pet_monkey |
Posted - 12/27/2004 : 06:22:40
Thank god Elvis was on there.
Where was Shrek?
Help me! He keeps making me post!
|
| VoVat |
Posted - 12/11/2004 : 12:28:54
quote:
How can you say that Captain Beefheart is overrated? Most of people don't know anything about them.
I get the impression that both Beefheart and Waits are a lot more popular among musicians than with the general public.
quote:
The "overrated" tag is a journo way of saying "overhyped" without having to admit that they were the buggers who created the darned bandwagon for us to jump on in the first place.
Oh, you Brits and your crazy Britishisms! "Journo"? Is that the clown who entertains at the magazine writers' kids' birthday parties? <g>
Seriously, though, the list didn't bother me that much, and I agreed with a few of the items listed. Some of them really were just trying to turn sacred cows into sacrilegious hamburger, but I guess that needs to be done sometimes. I did get annoyed at the "Person X doesn't have a rock 'n' roll attitude" kinds of comments, though. Linking a genre of music to an attitude is lame, and SO twentieth-century.
"Signature quotes are so lame." --Nathan |
| whoreatthedoor |
Posted - 12/08/2004 : 11:29:54
It's true that there are some fine scenes in his movies, but I'm pretty tired of watching journalists licking his ass over and over again. That's the spanish way: If you suck but you have an international success then you're a genious. Alejandro Sanz is another good example.
If you could read this book in 3 hours, then I you have another virtue. At least in the way I see you.
I started reading it thinking "All those people cannot be wrong". Didn't like the first 50 pages. But I thought "Wait, wait! there must be something great in the next pages, go on!". More rubbish. But I didn't lose my faith and went on to the suposed surprising ending. Then I lost my faith in "all those people".
Caminar sobre las hojas del otoño es romántico y resbaladizo |
| BLT |
Posted - 12/08/2004 : 11:20:39
I'll tell you what's overrated: LISTS. Lists of all types about what people love, hate, listen to, etc., etc. They are the semen of self-importance masturbation. Especially as the end of the year grows near, there must be a moratorium on all lists. |
| kathryn |
Posted - 12/08/2004 : 10:54:41
quote:
Originally posted by whoreatthedoor
....
Add .....everything by Pedro Almodovar.
PS: Did you read the whole book in 3 hours, Kathryn?
Caminar sobre las hojas del otoño es romántico y resbaladizo
Whore, I love it when sacred cows get slaughter. Do you know that wonderful expression? I'm saying I'm glad to see that someone has the cojones to say the truth about the almighty Pedro. I have never cared for his "oeuvre." And your correctly negative assessment, coming from one of his own countrymen, means even more.
Yeah, I read that book in 3 hours. I read fast anyway, and it was not hard to read it fast. It's not exactly rocket science or literature.
 I still believe in the excellent joy of the Frank |
| GypsyDeath |
Posted - 12/06/2004 : 08:38:36
I have to say i totally 100% gree witht he U2 thing. I hate them so much, i spit with venom at them. sods.
Now I do as I please and lie through my teeth. Someone might get hurt but it won't be me. I should probably feel cheap but I just feel free and a little bit empty. No it isn't so hard to get close to me. There will be no arguments. We will always agree. And I will try and be kind when I ask you to leave. We will both take it easy. But if you stay too long inside my memory, I will trap you in a song tied to a melody and I will keep you there so you can't bother me. |
| n/a |
Posted - 12/06/2004 : 08:26:51
After reading all the reasons for the various over-rated status I almost like the beatles, what absolute sentationalist tripe! Reads like a bunch of people making random whinges to be confrontaional. No real reasons, series of soundbites and sillyness.
But how clever of the guardian to use such cool-speak
Frank Black ate my hamster |
| Scarla O |
Posted - 12/06/2004 : 06:28:05
quote:
Originally posted by the thing
For my money I'd much sooner have a darned good argument with someone about what they liked or hated about something I liked or hated rather than some kind of adoration society for it.
Yes, let's ban adoration societies! 
_________________________________________________
"What's your medicine today...what's your poison anyway?"
|
| the thing |
Posted - 12/06/2004 : 03:56:41
The "overrated" tag is a journo way of saying "overhyped" without having to admit that they were the buggers who created the darned bandwagon for us to jump on in the first place. Lost in Translation remains probably the best film (and soundtrack) I have seen this year, but I had several friends who were thoroughly unaffected by it (and one who downright loathed it) - hey ho thats the way it goes. The problem is there does seem to be this perceived pantheon of greatness which is beyond greatness. You can't dis Star Wars, or Tom Waits without fear of some kind of tyrannical critical wraith. For my money I'd much sooner have a darned good argument with someone about what they liked or hated about something I liked or hated rather than some kind of adoration society for it.
Forget the cults I got me a whole church! |
| GypsyDeath |
Posted - 12/06/2004 : 03:41:11
Monty Python
It may have seemed a corking wheeze at the Footlights in 1967, but Monty Python has not aged well. Time has exposed the supposed comedic innovators as masters only of serial gurning and weak surrealism: Dick Emery shot through with a deeply unpleasant Oxbridge superiority complex. The Society For Putting Things On Top Of Other Things and the Ministry Of Silly Walks may have appeared groundbreaking when the nearest competition was Father Dear Father but look short on chuckles today, and does anybody really like the Dead Parrot sketch? Monty Python gave the world Mrs Niggerbaiter Explodes, the Fish-Slapping Dance and Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life, the leitmotif for the terminally witless for nearly three decades. It's self-satisfied student humour from overgrown public schoolboys.
Ian Gittins
Spike Milligan
When the "tribute" programmes were broadcast after his death in 2002, there was one noticeable absence. Among the abundance of talking heads, there was precious little footage of Spike being funny. Were his finest comic moments lost in a vault? No, there's umpteen hours of ground-breaking, influential, surreal Milligan material. But try finding half an hour's worth that's actually funny. There's a reason why The Goons are never repeated now, and nor is the supposedly Python-inspiring Q - six series of spectacularly self-indulgent, tiresomely wacky dross-fests. We won't see his like again. And really, that's just as well.
Johnny Sharp
Six Feet Under
SFU is the Sonic Youth of TV - on a logical/credible level you know you should like it, but there are only occasional moments when you could truthfully say that you "enjoy" it. Mainly because there isn't a single character you give a toss about - between the tormented homosexual (very 80s), the slightly weird sister, Nate and his pet brain tumour, and the droning mum, it's like staring at papier mché for an hour. It even managed the incredible feat of making an aggressive, gay, black cop - a promising character if ever there was one - skull-crushingly boring. Even when he killed someone he was dull about it.
Justin Quick
Sex and the City
The way that Carrie Bradshaw and her cron(i)es have come to be regarded as role models in this country proves just how in the thrall of America British women really are. Four vain, vacuous, materialistic fashion victims, SATC's heroines spent most of their 5/6/7 series shopping, having lunch and cooing over men.Their taste in men by the way was, like their taste in clothes, depressingly conservative - very American, very 80s.They drooled over beefcakes who made lots of money. Admittedly they did work, but even their jobs were almost defiantly superficial: a sex columnist, PR and art gallery manager/owner? Even the token intelligent one was that reviled species: a lawyer. The wittering voice-over of the show's star, Carrie Bradshaw, had all the gravitas of John Boy Walton. (She regarded Vogue as "poetry".) As for the idea of Sarah Jessica Parker as a fashion icon, the fact that she is modelling for Gap says it all.
Jim Shelley
The Sopranos
Mutter reservations, and media types who wouldn't know a gangster if he, er, "whacked" them throw rocks at you. Yet HBO's "quality" drama hasn't managed a decent tune in years. It's become a sour, self-regarding drone; Ibsen on horse tranquillisers. Jump the shark? It wouldn't have the energy. How much longer will Gandolfini and Falco glower with weary resentment? Where else can the suppressed lust between Big Tone and his dippy shrink go? Will any of these New Jersey chavs evolve? Why rope in stunt names like Buscemi only to hand them go-nowhere-slowly roles? And could the pathos of mid-life crisis be shovelled on any less subtly? The trouble with such unsympathetic characters is: we don't care any more. Faced with any challenge, these "roguish" old-school hoods swear dopily then hit it with a baseball bat. They 're cowards. Thick, fat cowards. Something Goodfellas portrayed with colourful wit, ooh, 14 years ago.
Chris Roberts
Twin Peaks
David Lynch, auteur of this tiresome shambles, is essentially Captain Beefheart with a camera: that is, people who believe themselves superior proclaim his genius, but it is difficult to believe that any of these people, when alone in their own homes, ever think "Great! I'll grab a beer and crack out the Twin Peaks box set/Trout Mask Replica." Twin Peaks was a lengthy exploration of Lynch's lonely idea: that behind the white picket fences of smalltown America lurks weirdness, dysfunction, surreal violence, and all those other lurid traits spotted by, at last count, everybody ever. The trouble was that, give or take the running gags, post-modern self-referencing, and that bloody woman with the log, Twin Peaks was a slightly less enthralling detective drama than The Bill on a slow week. Who killed Laura Palmer? Who cares?
JS
The West Wing
The West Wing proceeds from the premise that eminences grises, yes-men, toadies, flunkies, nerds and wonks can mesmerise a TV audience so long as they keep walking down long corridors, zipping in and out of shots, and mouthing the latest politically correct banalities. Yes, Minister without the humour, the subversiveness or Nigel Hawthorne, The West Wing exists in a parallel universe in which Martin Sheen is not a bloated ham and big-screen has-been, but the "authentic" voice of high-minded American liberalism. Ceaselessly praised for its fine writing, The West Wing is in fact a weekly recycling of the cliches du jour proceeding from Los Angeles, New York and Washington: health care good, Republicans bad; peace good, war bad; Democrats good, Republicans bad. Republicans may in fact be very bad people but at least they are not smug and pious about it. The West Wing is television for people who think they're better than everyone else; if you want to know why Kerry lost, tune in to this sanctimonious blather next week.
Joe Queenan
Frasier
The pompous psychoanalyst was always the least likable regular in the Cheers bar, and one can only assume that Dr Frasier Crane was awarded his own spin-off series only after Carla, Norm and Cliff passed on the idea. Frasier typifies the fault in US sitcoms (see also:Will And Grace) that fail to engage because there is neither heart nor soul beneath the wiseass dialogue. The Frasier character just about worked in the ensemble of Cheers, but centre-stage, his smugness was too self-regarding and unctuous to stomach. And anybody who actually cared whether Niles and Daphne would finally get it on doubtless also finds dramatic intrigue in a Toyota Corolla ad. Goodnight and, frankly, good riddance, Seattle.
Ian Gittins
Now I do as I please and lie through my teeth. Someone might get hurt but it won't be me. I should probably feel cheap but I just feel free and a little bit empty. No it isn't so hard to get close to me. There will be no arguments. We will always agree. And I will try and be kind when I ask you to leave. We will both take it easy. But if you stay too long inside my memory, I will trap you in a song tied to a melody and I will keep you there so you can't bother me. |
| GypsyDeath |
Posted - 12/06/2004 : 03:39:15
James Ellroy
Ellroy. Dice this. Dame got juiced by her own .38. The DA 's chewing pretzels,and all I get is cold coffee and cigarettes. Jesus. Unfinished paperbacks. Or to put it in plain English, I have tried to appreciate James Ellroy's universally-acclaimed crime novels. But it's like cycling through porridge, because of his overwhelmingly stylised, staccato prose and monkey-puzzle plotting. He's also an originator of the now-ubiquitous fashion in books and films of jumping back and forth in time, viewpoint and plot strand just to show off. It's roughly equivalent to a prog-rock guitarist playing solos on his double-necked guitar - very impressive, but excuse me if I take a raincheck. Of course, if I had more patience I might find out what the plots mean - ie the world of crime is nasty and horrible.But as Ellroy might put it: Life - too short.
Johnny Sharp
Don DeLillo
Sometimes wisdoms are conventional because they 're true. Every critic hails the prologue of DeLillo's Underworld as exemplary, and they're right: the description of a 1951 Giants-Dodgers baseball match is a masterly evocation of a moment, and the ripples it creates. And sometimes wisdoms are conventional because people shy from challenging them. Every critic hails Underworld as a masterpiece, and they 're wrong. It sucks. Well, maybe it picks up after the first 6,000 pages, but who stuck with it that long? The urge to bellow "For God 's sake, get on with it!" becomes overwhelming. The intrepid souls who have voyaged towards the conclusion report, through lips trembling with the trauma of boredom, that it seems to be preoccupied with America's ungovernable production of stuff nobody needs. Years from now, opaque works will be written about the towers of unread DeLillo novels written in our time.
Andrew Mueller
Shakespeare
Whenever someone wants to be clever at a dinner party, they say: "Of course, if Shakespeare were alive today, he'd be writing EastEnders." And of course, they've got that dead right. Shakespeare, apart from writing completely unmatchable plays, is to blame for everything rubbish: the Reduced Shakespeare Company; Stratford-upon-Avon; Shakespeare's Sister; and the myriad terrible, tragic attempts to "update" his plays. I've devised a game that's a variation on the who's-the-ugliest-person-you'd-sleep-with? thing: what's the worst thing you 'd watch in preference to a Shakespeare play? Go on,be honest. I 'd rather see Midsomer Murders on ITV. Savage Garden in concert. Hell, I'd even prefer Shakespeare In Love. Shakespeare was no looker, either. More Bill Bailey with a pearl earring.
John Patterson
Dennis Potter
Dennis Potter's Pennies From Heaven, his sole stand-out work, is tragically but revealingly diminished by what came later. Pennies seemed to brood on questions of misanthropy and misogyny while the Singing Detective and the piss-poor Black Eyes read like nihilist manifestos. Potter was not a man pondering hate, he was in the grip of it. Potter was praised for innovatively shoehorning his favourite songs into the plot. This was certainly innovative but it was also (Pennies excepted) utterly pointless. The audience, weary with a dramatic device that owed nothing to drama and everything to gimmickry, switched off in their droves. In his latter years the increasingly bitter writer came to believe that all the world 's problems stemmed from satellite dishes and the moronising, mesmerising effect they had on the British public. He sounded for all the world like Hitler in his bunker blaming the demise of the Third Reich on the German people. Truly a preposterous man.
Ben Marshall
Beat writers
Pop-lore posits the Beat writer as a cartographer of social discomfort: a radical who refused literary constraints. The Beat writer was, in fact, a layabout who couldn't hold down a cogent idea. Kerouac, Ginsberg et al were self-aggrandising flaneurs, boozed-up alpha males who "became the work" by documenting their every brain-yawn like it was the declaration of a magic goose from the future. The "beat" that ensued was not America's heart condensed into chunks of polemic. It was the dull rhythm of flaccid egos being yanked by gits who never washed their trousers.
Sarah Dempster
Now I do as I please and lie through my teeth. Someone might get hurt but it won't be me. I should probably feel cheap but I just feel free and a little bit empty. No it isn't so hard to get close to me. There will be no arguments. We will always agree. And I will try and be kind when I ask you to leave. We will both take it easy. But if you stay too long inside my memory, I will trap you in a song tied to a melody and I will keep you there so you can't bother me. |
| GypsyDeath |
Posted - 12/06/2004 : 03:37:17
No more heroes: film
Saturday December 4, 2004
The Guardian
The Godfather
Don't get me wrong: I don't think it's a bad film, I just don't think it's a masterpiece. Perhaps it's the sheer weight of expectation. I didn't see it until I was 31, by which time I'd been led to believe my life was meaningless because I'd never got round to it. Eventually I set a Sunday afternoon aside and sat through it. And? Well, it's a bit slow, isn't it? That section in Sicily, with Italian dialogue? Probably should've been cut. And as for Marlon Brando, it's impossible to enjoy his performance without simultaneously recalling every bad comic impression of it you've ever seen. I have to point out I still haven't seen The Godfather Part II. If part one had been better, maybe I'd have got round to it by now. As it is, I can wait another 31 years, thanks.
Charlie Brooker
Withnail and I
I loathe this film. Two rich, yet slumming-it, highly-strung, self-pitying thesps huddle in a filthy flat, sipping lighter fluid and bickering. Much shouting and sighing later, the story slouches to the bumpkin-filled Lake District for a homophobic sub-plot about Uncle Monty. Something happens with a chicken. The end. A cult student movie. Especially during the 90s, when a Saturday night in my house wasn't complete without less cerebrally gifted alumni enjoying a full-scale shout-a-long, yelling "I demand to have some booze!" from the windows and rebelliously necking ashtrays of advocaat before spewing over my Soup Dragons vinyl.
Grace Dent
Lost In Translation
Described as "laugh out loud" but more swear out loud, Lost In Translation stars Bill Murray as a movie star in Tokyo shooting a whisky advert and Scarlett Johansson as Charlotte, who's doing nothing but mope about in her underwear exuding existential ennui. Unless you count a feeble string of anti-Japanese jokes ("Loger Moore"? We're meant to laugh out loud at "Loger Moore"?), Lost In Translation's mood is dictated by its wan, overbearing trip-hop soundtrack. These characters aren't culturally adrift, they're spoiled, bored, rich, utterly unsympathetic Americans. Murray's Bob scoffs jadedly that he's earning $2m for doing an advert "when I could be doing a play somewhere". Charlotte, pastily vapid, is in Japan because she had "nothing else to do". What sort of predicament is this? The aching poignancy of a freebie? Mopey, self-pitying drivel.
David Stubbs
Blade Runner
Some claim Ridley Scott's futuristic frightscape is a critique of the insidious loneliness of modern life. Others cite its cartwheeling fembots, "dream" unicorns and - wow! Look! - really slow rain as potent visual metaphors for the power of imagination and memory. Blade Runner is a steaming puddle of hopelessly muddled, abysmally dull wee-wee that means bugger-all with bells on. So why the praise? Because nobody wants to admit they don't get it, even though ladling meaning onto such hollow tosh is as smart as worshipping a potato.
Sarah Dempster
Brian De Palma
Martin Amis once noted that Brian De Palma's appeal is exclusive to the film purist and the hoodlum, meaning critics were enraptured by his stylistics, while streetpunks and wannabe ganglords were getting hard-ons from the bloodshed and misogyny. Any rapper who says Scarface is the best gangster movie of all time is either a jive-ass one-hit wonder or a moron who hasn't seen Goodfellas. And any film critic who thinks that quoting Eisenstein's Odessa Steps sequence to gussy up an eighth-rate Al Capone movie constitutes great film-making needs an intellectual enema. Sisters, Carrie, Blow Out: that's it with Brian, and none of them is at heart any less thuggish or infantile than his true trainwrecks, Body Double or Femme Fatale. De Palma is the scrag-end of the 1970s Hollywood renaissance, and possibly the worst major film-maker alive after Oliver Stone.
John Patterson
Manhattan
Made in 1979 when Woody Allen was stricken with Bergmanitis and the desire to gloss his increasingly repetitive comedy with a patina of arthouse prestige. Critics genuflected at the black and whiteness of the film, a visual hymn to New York. But this is reactionary nostalgia for the old world, not high art. There's a curious scene in which Allen looks on with something like horror as Africans walk down one of his beloved Manhattan avenues - intruders on his Gershwin-esque fantasy. Manhattan demonstrates Allen's perennial self-obsession and perverse wish fulfilment passed off as self-deprecation. Ageing writer beds improbably youthful female? Happens a lot in your movies doesn't it, Woody, you pathetic old goat. Lines like "people should mate for life, like pigeons or Catholics" may excite chuckles from sycophants but only a second's analysis yields the conclusion: not funny. He's incapable of creating characters more substantial than straw, to be blown down by his narcissistic patter.
David Stubbs
Star Wars
Interminable stretches of space-based loitering punctuated by the occasional sonic boom of insufferable sentimentality, Star Wars was, is and always will be a big, bellowing, black hole of tedium. Proof? The characters are rubbish. Luke Skywalker appears to have been hewn from the contents of Tony Hart's pencil case (clay, Clag paste and fluff). Han Solo is a hat-stand in jodhpurs. Even the alien sidekicks are useless, with Chewbacca's incessant wailing intolerable. Star Wars is nothing more than empty spectacle, its walloping success single-handedly ensuring that plot, point and soul would forever be sacrificed at the altar of commercial return.
Sarah Dempster
The Royal Tenenbaums
I wanted to like The Royal Tenenbaums. I really did. It had Gene Hackman in it! And Bill Murray! According to the critics, only an idiot wouldn't appreciate this, the single most sparkling comedy to hit the screen in years. Well, oh bugger: I must be an idiot. I thought it stank. There's a thin line between "quirky" and "self-indulgent" and The Royal Tenenbaums crossed it the moment the opening titles ended. There wasn't a single character I could relate to or even feel faintly curious about - and worse than that, no proper jokes, just the sort of wry non-funnies that ponces pretend to find deeply amusing in the theatre. There are more laughs in an episode of Countryfile. If you enjoyed it, your own laughing mouth is lying to you.
Charlie Brooker
Now I do as I please and lie through my teeth. Someone might get hurt but it won't be me. I should probably feel cheap but I just feel free and a little bit empty. No it isn't so hard to get close to me. There will be no arguments. We will always agree. And I will try and be kind when I ask you to leave. We will both take it easy. But if you stay too long inside my memory, I will trap you in a song tied to a melody and I will keep you there so you can't bother me. |
| GypsyDeath |
Posted - 12/06/2004 : 02:38:18
quote:
Originally posted by floop
any "overrated" list that doesn't have Wilco on it, doesn't have much credence in my book.
Wilco are so not overrated. Particularly over here....I guess they are pobably more accesble in the US? I dont know.
YOu really do have a passionate hate towards them, dont you?
Now I do as I please and lie through my teeth. Someone might get hurt but it won't be me. I should probably feel cheap but I just feel free and a little bit empty. No it isn't so hard to get close to me. There will be no arguments. We will always agree. And I will try and be kind when I ask you to leave. We will both take it easy. But if you stay too long inside my memory, I will trap you in a song tied to a melody and I will keep you there so you can't bother me. |
| GypsyDeath |
Posted - 12/06/2004 : 02:35:46
Of course if you was a clever boy, you would have realised that The Guardian (and why you appeared to be ashamed of buying, i shall never understand - this paper is god, GOD i tell you) put everything thats in the paper on their website - and so here is what the guardian had to say about all this;
No more heroes: music
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Don't believe the hype
Ever felt you're missing the point with some of our biggest cultural heroes? Admit it - everyone can name at least one hip, wildly praised band, album, film, TV show or author that they've never really rated. In this special issue, Guide writers get personal and demolish some of the greats they hate
Saturday December 4, 2004
The Guardian
The Strokes
Four bars guitar. Stop. Four bars guitar. Stop. Then a muffled vocal that sounds like it's been recorded on a 1912 telephone line under the Atlantic. Bit more de na na na. The end. This is the Strokes - Status Quo, minus the jokey self-awareness that every single one of their songs is exactly, absolutely, 100% the same. At least the Quo looked good. The Strokes are a kind of Top Shop version of the Ramones. With Amanda de Cadenet in tow. So manufactured, they make Busted look like the Sex Pistols; so east coast posh and quotably articulate, they're basically a highly punchable cross between Mia Farrow and David Starkey, minus the humility. What we ever saw in them I shall never know, but one thing's for sure: I'll be buying the third album, just as I bought the first two.
Jacques Peretti
James Brown
He's the godfather of soul, which is fine as long as "soul" is defined as funk workouts bereft of tunes. Brown is one of the most pernicious influences on pop for the last 50 years. His canon consists of little more than brass-driven aerobics workouts, over which he barks claims of his own magnificence, and were he to yell "Get up, I feel like a sex machine!" you'd be dialling 999 rather than leaping into bed. Apologists point to his work for the black community, but a former jailbird who has faced arraignments for armed robbery, tax evasion and spousal abuse looks exposed on the moral high ground. So say it loud: he's crap, and he's proud.
Ian Gittins
The Clash
They had white jeans and big gums and they went "WEUUUURRRGH " because they were punks. Only, unlike the Sex Pistols, who turned punk's musical limitations into a corking art-school pantomime, the Clash were beholden to cliche, their every discount riff, "spontaneous " guitar demolition and mucus-filled roar plucked from the lichen betwixt the flagstones of 60s rock. What's more, Sandinista! - a triple album of rubbish reggae, children's choirs and rub-a-dub dub - proved they were as prone to self-indulgence as the prog-rock braggards they had avowed to overthrow. "But," bleat the apologists, "they were political." The only sensible response to which being: "So was Enoch Powell, but even he'd have drawn the line at white jeans."
Sarah Dempster
Pet Sounds
The word genius has been incorrectly applied for so long it's lost all meaning. Brian Wilson is considered a genius. Pet Sounds is his cure for cancer, his theory of relativity. His particular genius lies in making songs about summer sound like songs about Christmas and spending the best years of his life in a sandpit full of dogshit. With this album he went into the studio with nothing except the cream of LA's session musicians and created an album that is basically a series of finicky arrangements hunting for a song. Hardly anyone bought it when it came out and you can't dance to it. Well that's because it's art. It's anti-rock'n'roll: all candy-striped shirts and songs about how they can't wait to get old. A pop star's life is supposed to be aspirational. The only enviable quality Wilson has is his deafness in one ear: he'll never experience the full horror of this.
Phelim O'Neill
The Stone Roses
"Just play it from time to time," advise the sleevenotes. "It gets better and better." But after 15 years I'm wondering when any small improvement might spring from it and, frankly, I'm beginning to lose patience. Which is obviously a worry, because I might never appreciate THE GREATEST ALBUM OF ALL TIME. Instead, I'm sitting here listening to an average rock album - lyrically pedestrian and with a sonic policy swerving from the play-safe to the over-indulgent. This from a group incapable of playing live and whose inability to follow their debut's alleged genius with a decent second album proved that if this album did have merits, they were just a fluke.
Peter Robinson
U2
U2 are probably the most over-rated band in history. Their debut, Boy, was a classic and still sounds fresh and impassioned. Fatally though, they became a band that believed their own (fawning) press and whose egotism has devoured their talent. The Joshua Tree showed what a good guitar group/stadium rock band U2 could be. Sadly, they had the sort of pretensions that usually afflict mediocre American outfits like the Chili Peppers. On Achtung Baby and Zooropa they started plundering other bands' innovations and moving into "dance music" - though only the whitest, geekiest student could dance to them. Bono's ego meanwhile became so over-inflated he made Robbie Williams look camera-shy. As a political mouthpiece, the effectiveness of what he's spoken out about has always been over-shadowed by the column inches he's received. His insistence on singing the key line in the new version of Band Aid for example hardly seems very... charitable.
Jim Shelley
Neil Young
Like the poor and Pauline Fowler, Neil Young is always with us, a reminder of the drearier things of life. Venerated by paunchy Mojo-reading types, Young - whose reedy voice is the exact timbre of a continental dial tone - has changed neither his riffs nor his plaid shirt since he left Buffalo Springfield in 1968. Forever droning on about a mythical, moral America, Young has even-handedly bored three generations equally thoroughly, and unleashed some unspeakable musical atrocities. His last record, Greendale, was a concept album apparently scripted by William McGonagall, the anti-communist dirge Rockin' In The Free World remains one of the direst songs ever penned, and so relentlessly maudlin is Young that poor, impressionable Kurt Cobain quoted him in his suicide note. The apologists who boast that Neil Young has "never sold out" forget the main reason things don't sell out: people don't want to buy them.
IG
Elvis Costello
He's done rock. He's done classical. He's written songs for the woman out of Transvision Vamp, and with Burt Bacharach. And really, anyone who has ever experienced discomfort with Elvis Costello (and there have been plenty of opportunities for this: his voice, his hats, his use of the expression "the work" to describe his albums) may need no explanation beyond the diversity of that list. For all his punk integrity, Elvis Costello is at base a jack-of-all-trades, occupied as much with his facility with music's form as with its heart. There have been great bits - the words to Shipbuilding, say - but his re-invention speaks less of creativity, more of someone who can't make up his mind. He was great on Larry Sanders, though - so maybe acting's next.
JR
David BowieThe finite possibilities of rock'n'roll and the law of averages ensure that it is impossible, during a career as long and prolific as Bowie's, not to create something passable, unless you're David Byrne. So Bowie has had his moments: Starman and Rebel Rebel (as good as anything by Wizzard or Mud) and the incandescent Heroes, an eternal anthem for everything. However, he's also had his hours. The paradox of Bowie is that the albums upon which his legend are founded are his worst. Station To Station is perhaps a great cocaine record, but only insofar as it unimprovably demonstrates the drug's ability to turn people into humourless, self-absorbed bores. And Ziggy Stardust? Ziggy Stardust is, basically, a musical, a genre of entertainment for which no excuse can ever be made. Bowie is essentially a mildly amusing purveyor of novelty pop who has struck lucky more than most. Less Ziggy Stardust, more Alvin.
Andrew Mueller
Elvis
Elvis is basically Shakin' Stevens writ large. Musically, the legacy Elvis left behind is abject. Shaky, Showaddywaddy and, let's not forget, of course, a million and one sorry impersonators. Elvis's voice may have been unique when he first emerged but it sums up what an overrated singer he is that anyone can do Elvis's voice. Elvis was of course the first. Fair enough. He was also the first Rick Astley or Gareth Gates - a one-man boy-band singing other people's songs, and being managed by a svengali. Elvis may have been the first pop star but he was also the first sell-out, making a series of god-awful movies before prostituting himself for Vegas, the icing on the cake (or the burger) for a career that had all the credibility and substance of Liberace - and with some of the same costumes. At least Frank Sinatra - another overrated cabaret singer - made a couple of good films.
JS
Bob Marley
No other figure in music is so reflexively fawned over as the man whose most tiresome fans insist on hailing him Robert Nesta Marley, as if having a middle name is a signifier of gravitas. Marley did fulfil two criteria for posthumous adoration - he looked cool and died early - but when contemplating his music and his lyrics, the only discussion to be had is about which was more boring, more witless. Despite the predictable three-chord plod to which every one of his songs was set, the wooden spliff goes to his words: rhyming-dictionary tosh unrivalled until the advent of Dolores O'Riordan. When Marley sang of being "Iron, like a lion, in Zion," one braced for the shout out to his mate Brian, who had a tie on. As one Marley fan said to another when the dope wore off: "Christ, this music's terrible." AM
Tom Waits
Writing about Bruce Springsteen, former MC5 manager John Sinclair found an excellent way of describing why The Boss's music wasn't rock'n'roll. Essentially, he said, it was about characters, not real people. Most damningly, that it was "like West Side Story". And really, that's Tom Waits all over. This isn't news to anyone, of course - Waits is a cool actor, who makes "dramatic" music - but if you value anything remotely like authenticity, or involvement with the music you listen to, then this is just clanking nonsense about dwarves. Of course, the fans maintain, "he's so far in character, it enables him to reveal more about himself". But so what? For all its supposed otherness, this is incredibly simple music, so boldly signposted ("what strange music", "what colourful characters") as to leave no grey areas in which your input, feelings, or responses are even necessary. If you like pantomime, it's fine. Just don't try to say it's rock'n'roll, that's all.
JR
Captain Beefheart
There's nothing so boring as affected "madness": it's just depressing and annoying. Same goes for Captain Beefheart. He's namechecked far more often than he is listened to, and his Trout Mask Replica album is deep-fried toss on toast. If you recorded Anne from Little Britain over a soundtrack of toddlers blowing saxophones at random, you could sell it as newly discovered Trout Mask Replica out-takes featuring a guest vocalist. Just call it Zoot Talon Cornflake Mama and hey presto! Instant classic!
Johnny Sharp
Prince
The little feller's inclusion requires qualification. Prince has made some great singles, though fewer than he thinks, and two albums worth owning (Parade, Sign O' The Times), both released when Reagan was still president. If Prince had jacked it in after Lovesexy, there would be no reason to regard him with anything but fondness. However, his failure to apply quality control, and hissy fits when record companies tried to restrict him from his preferred schedule of three albums of experimental funk and interminable guitar solos every month, have corrupted his legacy. The 80s albums have dated badly: 1999 sounds like the fifth-best rock group in Kiev, Purple Rain a riot of period pomposity in which you can hear the hair-spray. Diamonds And Pearls hasn't fared much better. Prince's extra-curricular buffoonery hasn't helped - insisting on being known by a squiggle like the sign on a toilet door, and declaring himself a "slave" of the record company which had paid him millions and indulged his turgid excesses. This was belief-beggaringly crass - the equivalent of claiming POW status because you got food poisoning at Butlins.
AM
Nirvana
Why did Kurt Cobain whine and grimace like a man with crippling haemorrhoids? Maybe it was because he was a genius who channelled the existential despair of an entire generation through his poetic songwriting. Maybe he did have haemorrhoids. Or maybe it was because he was embarrassed. Embarrassed by the fact that Generation X had mistaken his navel-gazing lyrics and tuneless, guitar-thrashing noises for something more meaningful. Embarrassed by his crappy old jumper and lifeless, can't-do-a-thing-with-it hair. Embarrassed by the knowledge that, yes, he was in the defining band of the early 90s; but that the early 90s was the most rubbish era in pop history. Who were the competition? Ned's Atomic Dustbin? Sven Vath? Soho? He must have felt like Daley Thompson winning We Are The Champions. Nirvana was heavy metal by the back door, heavy metal without the consolation of Spandex and hairspray. Kurt knew it and he was so embarrassed he blew his own brains out. I didn't blame him.
SD
The Rolling Stones
For years the debate raged - who's best: the Beatles or the Stones? Well, the debate raged between cretins, anyhow. Anyone with an ounce of sense and a pair of functioning ears knew there was no contest: the Beatles were better by a factor of 15,000. The Stones recorded some undeniably great tracks. But they also shat out a load of dull, ugly, clumsy rock. And don't start protesting that Mick Jagger is the most charismatic frontman the rock world has ever seen - he's a hideous, tulip-mouthed cadaver with nothing interesting to say, and the most grating voice this side of Sybil Fawlty. The most interesting thing about the Rolling Stones is the amount of drugs they took - and there's nothing more boring than that.
Charlie Brooker
Jim Morrison
Only a blowhard stockbroker's son like Oliver Stone could fall in love with a boorish, spoiled admiral's brat like Jim Morrison. He styled himself "the Lizard King - I can do anything". This lizard didn't even survive a strenuous wank in a hotel bathtub, but he popped his alligator boots just in time to secure unwarranted legend status. If he'd lived another two years they'd have found him out - as they would James Dean. Cool band, though, for two albums (out of seven) and a couple of singles; pity about the pretentious name and the ridiculous high-school revolutionary lyrics. I cite the album Waiting For The Sun and the alleged poetry on the RIP-exploitation disc, An American Prayer, as evidence of Jim's profound inch-deepness. The one time it all came together, on LA Woman, he had to screw it up with all that "Mr Mojo Rising" crap in the middle. Always the knob with Morrison. Arthur Lee's Love is the real 1967 LA band. Who are those fools at his grave?
John Patterson
The Beatles
Thanks to these four, Britain's high watermark of musical creativity is still considered to be pub rock made by white idiots. As if polluting the 1960s with their safe, insipid music wasn't bad enough, they've exerted a stranglehold on culture since, inspiring generations of terrible bands and being feted by Chris Evans and Alan Partridge. Between their toe-curling rhyming couplets, tax-dodging, horseshit "spirituality" and Octopus's Garden, the Beatles embody everything wrong with the 60s in general and hippies in particular.
Justin Quirk
What's Going On
Often cited as the all-time greatest album by music critics sent into convulsions of overpraise by any modicum of political awareness on the part of their black heroes. Borne on a tide of blathery sax, hotel lounge-bar cooing and light orchestral strings, What's Going On is the very inessence of wishy-washiness. Set against the backdrop of the continuing Vietnam war, it's replete with astute observations: "Brother, brother/There's far too many of you dyin'", coupled with bullet-hard, imaginative prescriptions to end the carnage that wouldn't embarrass a greetings-card copywriter: "You know we've got to find a way/To bring some loving here today." On Right On, Marvin invokes Jesus as the ultimate solution, religion as we know having been the surest antidote to war since time began. Mawkish, handwringing idiocy that vaporises on aural impact.
David Stubbs
Now I do as I please and lie through my teeth. Someone might get hurt but it won't be me. I should probably feel cheap but I just feel free and a little bit empty. No it isn't so hard to get close to me. There will be no arguments. We will always agree. And I will try and be kind when I ask you to leave. We will both take it easy. But if you stay too long inside my memory, I will trap you in a song tied to a melody and I will keep you there so you can't bother me. |
| offerw |
Posted - 12/05/2004 : 00:17:17
Tom Waits - Rain Dogs + Swordfishtrombones can never be overrated. His last few records may be a bit overrated (only a little)
Pet Sounds = genius
Niel Young = genius
The beat writers are overrated but I still love some of Kerouac's books (started me reading again) Ginsberg's poetry is way overrated except for Howl and Please Master.
Burroughs cannot be overrated.
I enjoyed Underworld, was maybe a bit too long. I'll read some more DeLillo anytime.
Most overrated band: White Stripes
wilhelm |
| billgoodman |
Posted - 12/04/2004 : 14:48:39
Pet Sounds overrated?
well I think SMiLE eats it's shorts
As much as I think the Beatles are being treated
to much like 4 Jesuses I still think you can never
call them overrated
Star Wars films are maybe overrated
as being good films (however I still think Empire is fantastic)
but in the means of making characters that millions of people like
I think it's brilliant
and besides, Lucas was new voice in marketing of movies
Neil Young is cool I even like his TRANS era
 "I joined the cult of Jon Tiven/Bye!" |
| floop |
Posted - 12/04/2004 : 14:36:51
quote:
Originally posted by kathryn
floop, I have read and disliked Players, The Names, Mao II, Cosmopolis, Underworld and Libra. A long list, huh? I have a good friend (who is a neighbor of yours, btw) who adores him and keeps recommending his books and I read them so I might finally get what she's raving about. Seeing how long that list is I now vow to never read another DeLillo novel, no matter how highly my friend recommends it! But I did like White Noise. Why do you ask? Are you his biggest fan?
you have to admit, for not liking the mans writing, you sure have read a lot of his novels. what compelled you to keep going, after that 5th bad book?
i'm not his biggest fan, but i like most of his novels. MAO II is probalby #2 on my list, then AMERICANA..
ist es möglich für ein quesadilla skrotum zu lecken? beim sprechen der quesadillas von LBF, ja. ja in der tatheheheheheheehehee! |
| n/a |
Posted - 12/04/2004 : 14:15:24
I'll agree with most of that list...
I totally disagree with Tom Waits, Blade runner, Withnail and I and beat writers but only because I'm entirely that way inclined.
I'm sure there is more there that irks me but this has irked me mostest of all
Frank Black ate my hamster |
| darwin |
Posted - 12/04/2004 : 14:00:43
Ones I really don't get:
James Brown (you can't judge him by today's act)
Neil Young (what's wrong with Neil Young, OK I can buy that his guitar playing is overrated, enough with the one note solos)
Bowie
Bob Marley (I only really know the Legends album, but those are some great songs)
The one I wholeheartedly agree with:
Twin Peaks
What I might add:
Citizen Kane (I'm no film expert and I don't really know how it compared to prior films, but the best ever?)
2001
Charlie Parker
Johnny Cash (I like Johnny Cash, maybe he doesn't belong here, but in the last few years his legend has eclipsed Willie Nelson, which just isn't right) |
| speedy_m |
Posted - 12/04/2004 : 13:35:54
I don't think it's possible to over rate the Beatles. |
| whoreatthedoor |
Posted - 12/04/2004 : 13:09:53
"Da Vinci Code" cannot be overrated because everybody with minimal taste knows that it sucks.
I agree with:
the strokes
pet sounds (album)
u2
bob marley
the rolling stones
nirvana
blade runner
the godfather
brian de palma
the sopranos
twin peaks
frasier
Add Nicholas Cage, Rousseau and everything by Pedro Almodovar.
I'll update it if I remember something, later.
PS: Did you read the whole book in 3 hours, Kathryn?
Caminar sobre las hojas del otoño es romántico y resbaladizo |
| hammerhands |
Posted - 12/04/2004 : 12:57:50
This is as stupid as the Rolling Stone lists. |
| kathryn |
Posted - 12/04/2004 : 12:14:42
quote:
Originally posted by jediroller
I'm truly sorry about the cliché but it's all in the eye of the beholder.
When in doubt, remember Sturgeon's Law:
"90% of anything is crud."
Which is all that will ever have to be said about human creations, in the end.
My new, shorter sig.
Except for Frank. No one can tell me that 90 percent of Frank's work is crud.
I still believe in the excellent joy of the Frank |
| NimrodsSon |
Posted - 12/04/2004 : 12:01:27
quote:
Originally posted by bumblebeeboy2
quote:
Originally posted by NimrodsSon
Yeah, seriously, is there anything good that they don't think is overrated?!
¡Viva los Católicos!
erm, yeah. loads of things? why? are they all your favourite things on there?
The Monkey Helper has arrived http://www.monkeyhelper.co.uk (that is my band)
Well that was a little bit of an exaggeration, but Tom Waits, Pet Sounds, David Bowie...what the Hell are these guys thinking!
¡Viva los Católicos! |
| jediroller |
Posted - 12/04/2004 : 11:52:50
I'm truly sorry about the cliché but it's all in the eye of the beholder.
When in doubt, remember Sturgeon's Law:
"90% of anything is crud."
Which is all that will ever have to be said about human creations, in the end.
I think a list of underrated artists/works would be way more constructive, but I guess it would be less fun for journalists to do. Sheesh.
My new, shorter sig. |
| kathryn |
Posted - 12/04/2004 : 11:11:24
God bless you, Sir Rock! My secret shame is that I could not sit through a whole screening of the Royal Tennenbaums. Could not do it. But if you didn't like it, then I am in excellent company!
floop, I have read and disliked Players, The Names, Mao II, Cosmopolis, Underworld and Libra. A long list, huh? I have a good friend (who is a neighbor of yours, btw) who adores him and keeps recommending his books and I read them so I might finally get what she's raving about. Seeing how long that list is I now vow to never read another DeLillo novel, no matter how highly my friend recommends it! But I did like White Noise. Why do you ask? Are you his biggest fan?
I still believe in the excellent joy of the Frank |
| bumblebeeboy2 |
Posted - 12/04/2004 : 11:09:54
"Don't get me wrong: I don't think it's a bad film, I just don't think it's a masterpiece. Perhaps it's the sheer weight of expectation. I didn't see it until I was 31, by which time I'd been led to believe my life was meaningless because I'd never got round to it. Eventually I set a Sunday afternoon aside and sat through it. And? Well, it's a bit slow, isn't it? That section in Sicily, with Italian dialogue? Probably should have been cut. And as for Marlon Brando, it's impossible to enjoy his performance without simultaneously recalling every bad comic impression of it you've ever seen. I have to point out that I still haven't see The Godfather Part II. If part one had been better, maybe I'd have got round to it by now. As it is, I can wait another 31 years, thanks." - Charlie Brooker
The Monkey Helper has arrived http://www.monkeyhelper.co.uk (that is my band) |
| Sir Rockabye |
Posted - 12/04/2004 : 11:05:09
I suppose you're right about the Bowie thing. I'm still relatively new to his material, so I've only been exposed to his best. And the Waits comment is equally valid. It took me a quite a while to get used to Rain Dogs, but since then I've loved everything I've heard from the man.
I will never say the word procrastinate again, I'll never see myself in the mirror with my eyes closed. |
| bumblebeeboy2 |
Posted - 12/04/2004 : 11:03:05
i didn't get the tom waits and bowie thing either... i guess it's because bowie has released a lot of stuff that's not top notch... and waits, well, he's hard to 'get' at times but the critics always seem to rate him highly.
The Monkey Helper has arrived http://www.monkeyhelper.co.uk (that is my band) |
| Sir Rockabye |
Posted - 12/04/2004 : 10:55:42
What is Tom Waits doing up there? Bowie? Ergh, this stuff makes me angry. Sure, there is some merit to certain decisions, and I completely agree with Lost in Translation and the Royal Tennenbaums, but Tom Waits? C'mon.
I will never say the word procrastinate again, I'll never see myself in the mirror with my eyes closed. |
| bumblebeeboy2 |
Posted - 12/04/2004 : 10:54:33
quote:
Originally posted by Cult_Of_Frank
I bet he watched them in reverse order and stopped in disgust after watching only one of the movies. Or he watched all three and was disgusted at how people kept coming back from the dead in what's otherwise a serious movie. :)
"Join the Cult of Frank 2.0 / And you'll be enlightened (free for 1.x members)"
referring to me?
The Monkey Helper has arrived http://www.monkeyhelper.co.uk (that is my band) |
| Cult_Of_Frank |
Posted - 12/04/2004 : 10:53:16
I bet he watched them in reverse order and stopped in disgust after watching only one of the movies. Or he watched all three and was disgusted at how people kept coming back from the dead in what's otherwise a serious movie. :)
"Join the Cult of Frank 2.0 / And you'll be enlightened (free for 1.x members)" |
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