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Carl
- A 'Fifth' Catholic -
Ireland
11546 Posts |
 Posted - 01/20/2007 : 09:19:21
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http://rayvanhornjr.blogspot.com/2007/01/music-in-90s-re-evaluated.html
Friday, January 19, 2007
Music in the 90s Re-Evaluated
Before I begin, I know there's a lot of Fu Manchu fans out there, and I just wanted to let you know I have the advance promo of the new album "We Must Obey." I've played it all week, and it's red-hot! I'll do a separate blog piece on it for you guys if you so desire....
I often used to refer to the nineties as a dead zone for modern rock and particularly metal. I won't be boring and drag on about how Kurt Cobain single-handedly destroyed heavy metal. It's common knowledge, however, there's an underscored fact missing from the equation here... Despite the fact that Pantera, Slayer, Megadeth and Metallica all continued to keep the metal flag going in the United States, as an art form it was nearly extinct here except in the underground. What we all missed (including myself) was that metal was flourishing in other parts of the world, namely Europe, Japan and South America. Because the United States has a Roman-like pomposity about itself where we at-large consider ourselves the pulse of the world, we forget that legions of fans exist in other sections of the world. More on that in a bit...
Let's talk a little bit about what happened in the nineties. Okay, so one summer day, Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" changed the world. By then, everyone had grown tired of the excessive eighties, no matter what genre you're referring to, be it metal, pop, new wave, what-have-you... It was all over, said-with, done because America lost its feelgood vibes in the midst of the first Bush administration that forced us into a war-like atmosphere. The sounds of Ministry, Skinny Puppy and Nine Inch Nails became the frontline of protest, while grunge began its fuck-it-all deconstruction of rock. It was The Melvins, Sonic Youth and The Pixies, not Nirvana, that changed the course of American rock. Yes, it's true. Kurt Cobain idolized The Melvins so much he hung in their basement before there ever was a Nirvana, and he admitted that The Pixies and Sonic Youth were two of his core inspirations. I was listening to The Pixies' Surfer Rosa on the way home tonight and it was more clear than when I reviewed a Pixies DVD a couple months back that this is one of the most important bands the modern American rock scene has ever birthed.
I think it's The Pixies' daring androgyous post-punk fury that makes them great. They're masculine and effeminine in a roughhouse, spit-on-your-shoe kind of manner that is full of grit as it is teemed with sexual angst, and though The Pixies started in 1986, it's their early nineties output that really helped set the course of rock music in this country. Unfortunately, it's taken until today's pop punk and alt rock scenes to realize that not only The Buzzcocks are to be credited for the new cycle, but in their own way--particularly in punk that matters today--it's The Pixies who really show that the nineties had more to offer than the confused apathy of Pearl Jam.
Then we have The Melvins, who, if you really listen carefully, you'll note that they deserve the majority of the credit for re-ushering the sludge rock that Pentagram and Black Sabbath made famous into a new era that was soon subdivided between punk, doom and stoner rock. It's The Melvins who not only created Nirvana, but also Crowbar and Cathedral and as the nineties wore on, bands of great significance in the underground such as Clutch, Kyuss and Fu Manchu. The Melvins can also be traced in the hypnotic sonic crush of Isis, Neurosis, Red Sparowes and Pelican, and the cycle has grown stronger in the early 2000s with Wolfmother and underground up-and-comers like Totimoshi, Mouth of the Architect, The Autumn Project and Priestess. Of course, The Melvins themselves put out a career-defining album last year with A Senile Animal.
And then there's one of the most underrated contemporary rock bands of all-time, Faith No More. I remember seeing them and Soundgarden open for Voivod, the second greatest show I've been witness to, and I told my friends that Faith No More was destined for greatness and that they would all be owning a copy of The Real Thing within days of the concert. I got laughed at the entire ride, but I was proven right. Faith No More displayed why they were far ahead of their time, especially as openers with everything to prove. As I predicted, my friends saw the light. As excellent as Soundgarden was (and filled with a memorable story I'll save for another day), and as supremely as Voivod regaled the club, Faith No More had such sheer hunger that it woke many music fans out of their grunge narcolepsy, particularly when the pivotal Angel Dust came out.
If there's a band I still lament its passing, it's Faith No More. By the time they put out (my personal favorite) King For a Day, Fool For a Lifetime, this band had established itself as one of metal and hard rock's undeniable genius groups, and their farewell shot, the equally great Album of the Year. Perhaps Faith No More was too singular and isolated for the expressionistic visions of vocalist Mike Patton, who is really on a tear with Fantomas these days, but in a quiet way--particularly amongst the real heads of the music scene--the influence FNM bestowed upon the metal revival is pretty special.
Like them or hate them, Korn should at least be given thanks for making metal cool again. Yes, Pantera and Metallica had the huger fanbases (no thanks to the jughead straights who once ridiculed these bands), but that first Korn album is pretty devastating for its time, and okay, so the short-lived and frequently ridiculed nu-metal scene is largely blamed on Korn, but hey, those vibrating bass strings of Fieldy are some of the most menacing licks ever put down. Perhaps Korn was once trapped by its own infrastructure to the point of being derivitive off of the same riff lines, however, I can't help but say that their last album See You On the Other Side is as visionary for this band as was Life is Peachy. Even better, I was graciously given tickets by their label to see Korn last year and I was floored by their production and precision. Besides, there are still a few renegade bands of the nu-metal era that are still worthy such as The Deftones, Static-X, Society 1 and Sevendust. If you really want to blame someone, you know who to give it to, right up their chocolate starfishes...
Korn given the South Park treatment
I remember the mid-nineties being an era where I started tuning out to the mainstream and most things rock because Soundgarden was about as good as it got, in my opinion then. I was taking this time to seek my roots of music such as jazz, the blues, classical music, international, and I came to terms with bands I once ridiculed in my thrash years as redneck bands like Rush and Led Zeppelin. I got myself on the right course, all the way adoring The Red Hot Chili Peppers (despite initially pissing me off with the downtoned Blood Sugar Sex Magic after the intensely fun Mother's Milk album). I remember U2 sort of struggling to change with the times, yet Achtung Baby was one of their finest efforts and I still have a soft spot for Zooropa despite its inert problems. Pop I can still only play the first half of. Perhaps it was better than much of what was offered on the surface of music in the nineties (sorry, I just will never come to dig Counting Crows), so much the majority of that music is a blur and horribly forgettable. When Live is the most I can remember of that mid-nineties wormhole in mainstream rock...
In the very early nineties, I had converted to the alternative scene when I saw metal dying out from commercialism. I always needed to rebel, and while I was still clinging to the Bad Brains, GBH, Expoited, Dead Kennedys and some metal that refused to die like Helloween and King Diamond, I was enamored with Depeche Mode, The Cure, Echo and the Bunnymen, Psychedelic Furs, Peter Murphy, Young Fresh Fellows, Sisters of Mercy, Lush, Julianna Hatfield, PJ Harvey, Kitchens of Distinction, Violent Femmes, The Ocean Blue, The Cramps and so on... Of course, in the midst of this dizzying array of eccentric and personally fulfilling music, came one of the most important sounds the decade saw: Jane's Addiction.
I'm a little sad to see what's happened in the aftermath of what this incredible quartet gave, more so that Dave Navarro could've been one of the real legends of guitar without him knowing he's a legend. I'm sad he became a prefab pop idol and reality t.v. facade because when I think of the psychedlic webs he could weave and how indispensable both Nothing's Shocking and Ritual de lo Habitual were to the rock world, it's a damn shame. I thought Navarro gave the Red Hot Chili Peppers amazing vitality on One Hot Minute, yet there was apparently the wrong chemistry internally. Even when Jane's Addiction put out the rather strong Strays album a few years back, it was too much too late, a welcome wave back from the band, but ultimately nothing that could stand in the shadow of "Three Days" from Ritual. Still, the omnipresence of what Jane's Addiction left in the nineties is subliminally felt, and it's not from Lollapalooza.
In the nineties, rap was trying to maintain the course that it set for itself in the eighties. I think the culture shock in rap had vanished in the nineties, so much that Public Enemy was losing some of its intense rage that made them the greatest rap act of all-time, and it was starting to lose some of its fun, despite the awesome quick-lipped delivery of the Fu Schnickens and the greasy chill of Coolio. Dr. Dre was a huge talent, yet him and his proteges Snoop and Eminem are the catalysts for why rap has become a sellout commodity now, and why it's the dominant music genre today. Okay, so the Leaders of the New School and NWA gave us some west coast building block rappers who also altered the course, perhaps none more so than Ice Cube. I'm not sure if it's his music or doing a stupendous job in Boyz in the Hood that turned the tide, since gangsta rap was already hot with Ice-T and Above the Law, yet this point of no return where fly guys and fly girls were out and gumby gold was in set the tone of excessiveness that has unfortunately hurt the genre's cred, even though it's inflated the bank considerably.
Let's wrap this lengthy overview up by making a return point that not only have I found that a hell of a lot went on in the nineties in America that I used to disregard (why I ignored The Black Crowes, I'll never know, but I've since remedied that and I do believe I grossly underestimated Phish along the lines, and in the past couple of years I've had an Oasis and Blur epiphany), but overseas, metal flourished as never before. It's amazing to see bands like In Flames and At the Gates or any of the Swedish and Scandinavian metal acts that kept the blood boiling for metal started in the early nineties. Even black metal acts like Emperor swirled in dark underbellies for quite a long time, and now they're all being given their due. It's incredible when you sit down and realize that there's plenty of substance to the adage never judge a book by its cover, or maybe for the sake of this discussion, an album cover...
posted by Ray Van Horn, Jr. @ 4:26 PM
http://www.godsofmusic.com/gom/articles.php?action=detail&ID=159
The 10-step guide to being a cool music snob
By: Josh Richmond
Email: Jorobot@aol.com
Step 1: Learn these snob vocabulary terms:
Sellout---any popular band that was once unpopular.
Poseur---anyone who likes a sellout. Alternatively, it could mean someone who has not been a fan of a band as long as you.
Underground—Excellent
Commercial---Evil
Sounds like…meets….---as in, “Band X sounds like Band Y meets Band Z.” This means Band X sounds nothing like either Band Y or Band Z. Example: “I love Moby! He sort of sound like Pantera meets Alanis Morrisette.”
Lo-fi, indie, nu-metal, poppy, retro, anarchist, authentic, awesome, infectious, experimental---terms with no meaning that can be applied to almost anything. Use as often as possible.
Step 2: Familiarize yourself with these bands;
The Pixies
The Velvet Underground
Sonic Youth
Beck
Fugazi
You must love these bands. If you don’t, then you are not cool.
Step 3: Familiarize yourself with these bands;
Goo Goo Dolls
Blink 182
Limp Bizkit
The Strokes
Linkin Park
You must hate these bands. If you don’t, then you are not cool.
Step 4: Familiarize yourself with these bands;
Nirvana
Tool
Radiohead
Metallica
The Beatles
The Who
R.E.M.
Pearl Jam
Moby
The Beastie Boys
You are allowed to have your own opinion on these bands, but they must be expert opinions, backed up by absolute proof that your theory is correct. For example “Nirvana is a good band, but they aren’t Pixies good. Too poppy. Just listen to Incesticide, and you’ll see that their songwriting capabilities are far inferior, despite their best efforts.” You should be able to name every one of their songs, albums, concerts and members. You must also like their first albums far better than their last albums. If you don’t, then you are not cool.
Step 5: Discover at least 5 bands that no one has ever heard of. Memorize them, and brag to other music snobs about how great they are and how you saw them in concert, and how you are the first to know about them. I, personally, was a System of a Down fan even before they released their first, self titled album. I can now simultaneously mock other so-called SOAD poseur fans who had barely heard of them before “Chop Suey!” feel superior to them, AND despise SOAD for being sellouts to the Man.
Step 6: Realize that every other aspiring music snob is trying to do the same thing as you, and find unknown bands to become fans of. Therefore, you must familiarize yourself with every band that has ever existed. Then, when someone says to you, “I saw this band Queens of the Stone Age, who you have probably never heard of, in concert, and they were awesome! Their self titled album is great!”, you can say “You only know their self titles album? I’ve been a QOTSA fan ever since their first EP! Poseur.”
Step 7: If you abbreviate the name of a band for no reason, you are obviously knowledgeable about this band, and are not one to be messed with. When you refer to And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead as AYWKUBTTOD, and actually pronounce it correctly, it is immediately clear that your knowledge of the band is immense.
Step 8: Create your own genres when referring to music. It’s really easy, here are some examples:
Rapmetalcore
Ambientoid Technotic Trance
Austro-Zimbabwean Crazed Drumming
The Cosmic Super Happy Retro Sound
The Nu-Reggae Movement
Try to fit every type of your music into your genre, so it encompasses all recorded music.
Step 9: Start a band. It doesn’t matter if you are not talented…that shouldn’t hinder your chances of getting on MTV, in theory. But you don’t want to get on MTV. You don’t even really want to write or perform music. You just want to be able to say you are part of a band, one far superior to every other band ever. You should also (www.mp3.com/sadistic_smurf) promote your band (www.mp3.com/sadistic_smurf) relentlessly. (www.mp3.com/sadistic_smurf)
Step 10: Keep in mind that you are the world’s resident musical expert. No one knows more than you, and no one should even dare challenge you. You are a force to be reckoned with. You are a cool music snob. |
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A couple of music articles.
