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On 3/8/2023 at 8:27 AM, locodos said:

Black Flag is a great brand not a good band...  Damaged was great, the rest was crap.  But you'd think they're the Beatles by how ubiquitous their symbol is....  I've seen rappers and tiny boppers with the black flag tat

 

These are some indy mofos

 

your post don't need some fixin

I'm not enough of a hardcore guy to even intelligently discuss the relative importance of black flag vs say minor threat but I think they kinda are a Beatles type band. At least in terms of what they did for defining a genre.

2 hours ago, Al_4_ISU said:

Limp Bizkit's cover of "Faith" fucking slams.

I was also 14 years old when it came out and that probably counts for something.  I can't really stand anything else they did, but they do seem to have some self awareness in their old age.

I'm just going to halfway agree with this. I was in 6th or 7th grade when that song came out and it was fun for me. I haven't listened to is since then but I can picture that CD spinning in my discman with the window. I'm glad that later when Enema of the State came out (a perfect pop album for a 13 year old in 1999), that was the one that made me go digging for the source material.

42 minutes ago, Al_4_ISU said:

I mean, I kinda get the Beatles argument.  When a band is almost universally lauded as the greatest ever, they're almost overrated by definition. 

Upopular opinion? This very understanding (which is a reasonable and widespread understanding) causes The Beatles to be slightly underrated, at least in discussions by informed to semi-informed people. I think that The Beatles were in exactly the right place at exactly the right time to be the type of band that they were and have the kind of far reaching influence on pop music that they have, but even past that they were a "more than the sum of the parts" band that contained 3 of the best songwriters from the era and very arguably any era to the extent that that can be known. I think that not liking pop music is fine and good and being mad at boomer music is fine and good but anyone who actually holds the opinion that The Beatles are bad is dumb, at least when it comes to music.

Related but not specific to the Prince argument (read: this comment is not at brickhorn) - if painters judged painters the way that many guitarists judge guitarists, you'd have internet forums full of whatever the painting equivalent of hawaiian shirt wearing fat middle aged white dudes is drooling over Thomas Kinkade bullshit. Maybe that exists, I dunno. Technical proficiency is not irrelevant but it is down the list on what makes a guitarist great.

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18 minutes ago, G650 said:

Yeah, Chopin is the highlight for me. I hope you got to see an obligatory wasted chick try and scale the barriers to Morrison's grave.

*cracks fingers*

As a piano learning child, Mozart and Bach (and you can Handel deez nuts) was mostly bullshit I had to get through in order to have fun with Chopin and Debussy.

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3 hours ago, G650 said:

Jesus. Nickleback, Limp Bizkit, a dude who listens to Octane. This thread is insane. I feel like I walked into a strip mall bar in Kissimmee Florida circa 2002.

If there’s a better option on Sirius for stuff like Parkway Drive, Architects, Falling in Reverse, Killswitch Engage, and similar — or, hell, even Ghost or MCR — with minimal to no growling “vocal” bullshit, I’d be all over that. Granted, I don’t have the musical sensibilities to understand The Cars and I think Dire Straits is more pop than Nirvana is, but I’m always open to the experts helping me to find better methods of finding music I like. 

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2 minutes ago, Doc Daneeka said:

If there’s a better option on Sirius for stuff like Parkway Drive, Architects, Falling in Reverse, Killswitch Engage, and similar

I would certainly agree there is not a better option to find that on Sirius.

 

I would also suggest if you ever are wanting to go to a Falling in Reverse show you contribute to their laptop fund so they can successfully pantomime their show for your listening pleasure.

2 minutes ago, Patricio Swayze said:

I had to go look up Falling in Reverse. Goddamn that is awful.

Oh brother. Go to TGP and a search them. Maximum lulz to ensue.

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1 minute ago, G650 said:

I would certainly agree there is not a better option to find that on Sirius.

 

I would also suggest if you ever are wanting to go to a Falling in Reverse show you contribute to their laptop fund so they can successfully pantomime their show for your listening pleasure.

Oh brother. Go to TGP and a search them. Maximum lulz to ensue.

I mention them because one of their songs seems to be in heavy rotation there so it’s what came to mind. Looking at my library, I have one song of theirs, so it wasn’t a great example but that probably doesn’t skew the station recommendations much. 

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I mention them because one of their songs seems to be in heavy rotation there so it’s what came to mind. Looking at my library, I have one song of theirs, so it wasn’t a great example but that probably doesn’t skew the station recommendations much. 

Write a strongly worded not to Sirius and ask them to create a Hot Topic station.
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44 minutes ago, Celery Man said:

Related but not specific to the Prince argument (read: this comment is not at brickhorn) - if painters judged painters the way that many guitarists judge guitarists, you'd have internet forums full of whatever the painting equivalent of hawaiian shirt wearing fat middle aged white dudes is drooling over Thomas Kinkade bullshit. Maybe that exists, I dunno. Technical proficiency is not irrelevant but it is down the list on what makes a guitarist great.

I get that. But skill is a prerequisite, imo. You can’t be great with only technical proficiency, but you also can’t be a great guitarist* without it.

So, in the context of my particular unpopular opinion: Prince doesn’t have the requisite proficiency and, in my view, that disqualifies him outright. I also find his guitar work to be uninspiring and heavy on gratuitous showy-but-not-skillful filler elements like slide-ups/slide-downs (ironically, a mainstay of 80s hair rockers) and basic finger taps. So to use your analogy, Prince is like adding a shitload of random JJ Abrams lens flares on top of a Thomas Kinkaid. Makes for a fun live show, I guess. But I’ve never criticized Prince as a performer. His stage presence and showmanship are undeniably world class.

And I’m still trying to find a video showing him playing the When Doves Cry intro live. There are some theories on Prince fan forums positing that he never played that solo live and that he played the studio track much slower and used an effect to speed it up for the album. 

A guitar player can be a great songwriter (and thus, in an important sense, a great musician) without being a great guitarist. Kurt Cobain was the former, but not the latter. Same for Jerry Cantrell and a bunch of others whose music I really respect.

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8 minutes ago, Patricio Swayze said:


Write a strongly worded not to Sirius and ask them to create a Hot Topic station.

Hell, if AMEX didn’t pay for it, I probably wouldn’t even have it. Apple Music discovery and stations — they play country on stations based on hard rock songs, FFS — are garbage. It felt like Spotify was better, but probably not enough to justify another subscription. 

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Cars suuuuuuucked after Panorama. Hell, the end of side one with Touch and Go and Don’t Tell Me Know was when they died, we just didn’t know it yet. We know it now. They turned into male Go-Gos. 
5BBE1F79-359B-46AF-A452-580085023195.png.a247ab39a42849a143ed31eee08ca7a8.png

As a side note. During the summer and holidays I used to DJ in Dallas and I would all kinds of new stuff from LA that hadn’t been played on radio.

My weak claim to fame is being the first person in Dallas to play The Cars “Down Boys”, the Motels “Only the Lonely” and “Mission of Mercy” and Soft Cells “Tainted Love”

Pete Thompson, who was the PD at 92.5fm offered me a DJ gig but I laughed and told him this was just for fun and to meet girls.

CSB!
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That’s pretty cool.

“Down Boys” makes me think of Warrant. Unfortunately. 

I kinda like the Motels.

”Tainted Love” makes me think of strip clubs. I’m not sure if that’s fortunate or unfortunate, but being tall in the time before IDing was a big thing was fortunate. 

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15 hours ago, Hefeweizen said:

Been laughing my ass off at some of these posts.  I’ll add the few that are probably unpopular but here goes:

1. Smashing Pumpkins is pretty terrible but one of the best concerts I ever attended (Southpark Meadows right after it opened).

2. 80s metal is pretty terrible outside of Megadeth, Metallica, and Maiden.  But I’ll listen to Ratt’s “Round and Round” or the Crues bangers any time they come on the radio.

3. The Cult is fantastic and anyone dissing them is wrong.

4. Linkin Park, Limp Bizkit, Fallout Boy, Imagine Dragons, Creed, and Nickelback can be put on a plane to Afghanistan and play concerts for the Taliban forever.

 5. Country music should have stopped at Willie, Merle Haggard, and generally should go away.

 6. Good pop music should stick in your head for a while after you hear it.  It’s supposed to be easy to listen to.  I would point to Prince here and say meh.
 

 

1.  1979 is okay.  The rest I can ignore.

2.  I like calling Motley Crue and the like "Buttrock," which makes it a better guilty pleasure.

3.  I'm okay with this.

4.  I'm okay with this.

5.  After the Urban Cowboy soundtrack, it's dead.  But the Highwaymen is a notable exception.

6.  Having seen him live, you can shut your whore mouth. :)

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On 3/8/2023 at 11:02 AM, BrickHorn said:

Nope. I can play okay, but I’m not remotely great and I don’t claim to be. Which is why the fact that even I—at best, a competent hobby guitarist—could learn one of Prince’s most lauded solos (which it’s not clear Prince himself could replicate or ever played full speed) without much difficulty indicates that his playing isn’t special. 

Catching up on this thread, but, this can't be a serious take. It just can't. If Prince was still alive and you got the chance to sit down with him and a few guitars he would blow your fucking mind. I don't think you understand how good at guitar you have to be to play and sing and dance at the same time while playing some of the shit he did (that, you know, he also wrote). I know a lot of really good guitarists who fucking suck at the playing and singing at the same time portion alone. 

Just curious - do you think you could do this in front of 100 million people? Just what he does on guitar. Live. In front of 100,000,000 people on TV. You can skip the singing and dancing. 

Okay now try doing it while it's pouring down rain and you're wearing high heels. And you're also singing. And dancing.

Then you might understand how good Prince is at playing guitar. 

Edited by ztejas
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4 hours ago, sidis said:

Welp, looks like brickhorn unlocked the cells in the insane asylum in this thread and the lunatics are now in charge. 

He's made the only take so far where I can't even accept it within the spirit of the thread. Even the Limp Bizkit one, I mean shit - there a few of their songs I like okay. 

I guess it's because it isn't really opinion. It's basically a fact that Prince was an insane guitarist. It's like arguing that LeBron James never played defense worth a shit. 

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18 minutes ago, ztejas said:

Catching up on this thread, but, this can't be a serious take. It just can't. If Prince was still alive and you got the chance to sit down with him and a few guitars he would blow your fucking mind. I don't think you understand how good at guitar you have to be to play and sing and dance at the same time while playing some of the shit he did (that, you know, he also wrote). I know a lot of really good guitarists who fucking suck at the playing and singing at the same time portion alone. 

That VH1 thing where he did an acoustic version of Cream showed that he had more touch than any of us.  And he was funny. 

 

I saw him a few months after that, and that concert was Top 5 for me without question.  Maceo playing sax in his band was the cherry on top.

 

 

 

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4 minutes ago, dcbc said:

That VH1 thing where he did an acoustic version of Cream showed that he had more touch than any of us.  I saw him a few months after that, and that concert was Top 5 for me without question.  Maceo playing sax in his band was the cherry on top.

 

 

 

Yeah I mean this is just fucking insane. He wasn't from this planet. 

Jimmy Page ain't never fucking did that shit in his life. 

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3 minutes ago, ztejas said:

Yeah I mean this is just fucking insane. He wasn't from this planet. 

Jimmy Page ain't never fucking did that shit in his life. 

There's not an emoji that can handle these two sentences together. 

 

But there's a meme.

 

full

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8 hours ago, dcbc said:

1.  1979 is okay.  The rest I can ignore.

9b3dca11-0d16-4b70-b779-36aadf4570fa_tex

1979 blows... Melancholy was such a let down save Zero and Bullet with Butterfly Wings

 

1a) Gish

1b) Siamese Dreams

After this it's just pop rock

Edited by locodos
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14 hours ago, Gil Bang said:

Johnny Cash is terribly overrated.  He's 90% personality, 10% music.  He's a "legend" but his catalog isn't "great".  Put him up against Willie or Merle or Kris, and he's Marty Cherry against a bunch of Vince Youngs.

I love Johnny Cash, but I kind of agree.  He has some great songs - iconic songs, but Willie has a lot more of them.  Cash never made a singular album that's anywhere in the hemisphere of Shotgun Willie, Phases & Stages, and Red Headed Stranger.

Cash was part of an insanely cool project in the last decade of his life, and that really brought him back into the public consciousness in a big.  There's a cult of the man based simply on this photo:

singers-johnny-cash-wallpaper-preview.jp

And you're god damn right I have a poster of said photo.

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1 hour ago, locodos said:

9b3dca11-0d16-4b70-b779-36aadf4570fa_tex

1979 blows... Melancholy was such a let down save Zero and Bullet with Butterfly Wings

 

1a) Gish

1b) Siamese Dreams

After this it's just pop rock

I got into the sauce.  I can do without all of it in the light of day.

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16 minutes ago, Buzzrock said:

That sounds like a good time. 

I envision that scenario as having a substantial buzz from beer and tequila, walking out at like 8:30 on a summer night with the sun still up and saying, “ok, now where are we going?” Could be much worse. Has been much worse. 

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27 minutes ago, Doc Daneeka said:

I envision that scenario as having a substantial buzz from beer and tequila, walking out at like 8:30 on a summer night with the sun still up and saying, “ok, now where are we going?” Could be much worse. Has been much worse. 

 

I don't know if they shut it down, but there was one of those places where they feed crocodiles by making them jump in the air and snatch whole goat carcasses from a rope. Seems like the logical next step.

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On 3/9/2023 at 11:15 AM, BrickHorn said:

I get that. But skill is a prerequisite, imo. You can’t be great with only technical proficiency, but you also can’t be a great guitarist* without it.

So, in the context of my particular unpopular opinion: Prince doesn’t have the requisite proficiency and, in my view, that disqualifies him outright. I also find his guitar work to be uninspiring and heavy on gratuitous showy-but-not-skillful filler elements like slide-ups/slide-downs (ironically, a mainstay of 80s hair rockers) and basic finger taps. So to use your analogy, Prince is like adding a shitload of random JJ Abrams lens flares on top of a Thomas Kinkaid. Makes for a fun live show, I guess. But I’ve never criticized Prince as a performer. His stage presence and showmanship are undeniably world class.

And I’m still trying to find a video showing him playing the When Doves Cry intro live. There are some theories on Prince fan forums positing that he never played that solo live and that he played the studio track much slower and used an effect to speed it up for the album. 

A guitar player can be a great songwriter (and thus, in an important sense, a great musician) without being a great guitarist. Kurt Cobain was the former, but not the latter. Same for Jerry Cantrell and a bunch of others whose music I really respect.

Are you saying that Jerry Cantrell is not technically proficient?

I think we have found the root of our differences. How do you define technical proficiency?

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12 hours ago, ztejas said:

Catching up on this thread, but, this can't be a serious take. It just can't. If Prince was still alive and you got the chance to sit down with him and a few guitars he would blow your fucking mind. I don't think you understand how good at guitar you have to be to play and sing and dance at the same time while playing some of the shit he did (that, you know, he also wrote)

Okay, I’ll admit y’all had me going for a while. But this one was too on-the-nose. “Skill isn’t important to guitar greatness. True guitar greats dance and sing! In the rain!”

I get it, I get it. 

If you think Prince is impressive, you should check out this guitar legend:

3817115551_ee649455e4_b.jpg
 

And Prince definitely played some cool fills in the acoustic Cream version. But if that’s “otherworldly” to you, well… you have low standards. (And note that he doesn’t sing over those fills, just in case you weren’t actually joking about the whole singing and dancing thing.)

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21 hours ago, BrickHorn said:

Okay, I’ll admit y’all had me going for a while. But this one was too on-the-nose. “Skill isn’t important to guitar greatness. True guitar greats dance and sing! In the rain!”

I get it, I get it. 

If you think Prince is impressive, you should check out this guitar legend:

3817115551_ee649455e4_b.jpg
 

And Prince definitely played some cool fills in the acoustic Cream version. But if that’s “otherworldly” to you, well… you have low standards. (And note that he doesn’t sing over those fills, just in case you weren’t actually joking about the whole singing and dancing thing.)

Jimmy Buffett has looked better, poor guy.

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Well, since the gloves are off with regard to Tom Petty and Prince, I think I have what will qualify as an unpopular opinion on this board.  When I was in high school, I listened to my share of Rush.  I had some friends who were a lot more into them than I was.  Anyway, we got a chance to go see them in the early 90s.  It was at the Summit.  Seats were good. 

 

That was the most boring concert I have been to in my entire life, before or since then.  It planted me firmly into the I never want to listen to this soulless band ever again camp.  I don't care how technically proficient any of them are.  There is no case that can be made to me to redeem them for stealing time from me with their unmemorable music. 

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1 minute ago, dcbc said:

Well, since the gloves are off with regard to Tom Petty and Prince, I think I have what will qualify as an unpopular opinion on this board.  When I was in high school, I listened to my share of Rush.  I had some friends who were a lot more into them than I was.  Anyway, we got a chance to go see them in the early 90s.  It was at the Summit.  Seats were good. 

 

That was the most boring concert I have been to in my entire life, before or since then.  It planted me firmly into the I never want to listen to this soulless band ever again camp.  I don't care how technically proficient any of them are.  There is no case that can be made to me to redeem them for stealing time from me with their unmemorable music. 

Wrong - wrong meme - Meme Generator

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1 hour ago, dcbc said:

Well, since the gloves are off with regard to Tom Petty and Prince, I think I have what will qualify as an unpopular opinion on this board.  When I was in high school, I listened to my share of Rush.  I had some friends who were a lot more into them than I was.  Anyway, we got a chance to go see them in the early 90s.  It was at the Summit.  Seats were good. 

 

That was the most boring concert I have been to in my entire life, before or since then.  It planted me firmly into the I never want to listen to this soulless band ever again camp.  I don't care how technically proficient any of them are.  There is no case that can be made to me to redeem them for stealing time from me with their unmemorable music. 

 

My brother

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2 hours ago, dcbc said:

Well, since the gloves are off with regard to Tom Petty and Prince, I think I have what will qualify as an unpopular opinion on this board.  When I was in high school, I listened to my share of Rush.  I had some friends who were a lot more into them than I was.  Anyway, we got a chance to go see them in the early 90s.  It was at the Summit.  Seats were good. 

 

That was the most boring concert I have been to in my entire life, before or since then.  It planted me firmly into the I never want to listen to this soulless band ever again camp.  I don't care how technically proficient any of them are.  There is no case that can be made to me to redeem them for stealing time from me with their unmemorable music. 

Prog rog in general is tedious. 

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23 minutes ago, Patricio Swayze said:


Surely I have mentioned it in this thread (I know I have on this site in general), Jimmy Buffet is the worst. Absolute dogshit.

Ha.  I'm not totally down with this opinion - I think he's got a few really good songs - but those Parrotheads... ugh.  

I have long held that with regards to the Grateful Dead, Jimmy Buffet, and Jesus - I'm down with the artist, but the followers are fucking insufferable.  

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