GUIDED BY VOICES vs STONE TEMPLE PILOTS

This time I went for the indie rock. STP never did much for me outside of a couple tunes.

i love this matchup in theory but gbv fuckin flatten stp

there's probably 50 gbv songs i like more than my favorite stp song

possibly 150

They played 100 in a row on NYE, here in LA. Anyone here go see it?

STP has probably 20 good songs out of 150, whereas GBV has probably 20 good songs out of 125,000.

almost giving STP a sympathy vote for the funniest music video of the '90s, "Sour Girl"

GBV was actually pretty damn consistent in the prime era

Does Pollard have a "Range Life" type song

"Clownin' on Weiland" unfortunately sounds like a crap Flaming Lips song from about 1989

anyway brb making a POISON IDEA vs. UNREST poll

"Sour Girl" starring Sarah Michelle Gellar
vs
"Teenage FBI" featured on the Buffy soundtrack

definitely goes to GBV

These polls are making me realize how many storied alt-rock bands have (sadly) deceased singers.

sorry, GBV never pushed a single pleasure button for me, something Interstate Love Song does with ease

Never got around to exploring GBV and I doubt I’ll do it in the next six days so STP it is. Overplayed as it is, interstate love song remains undeniable. Big Empty too.

interstate love song is incredible, but so are like two dozen gbv songs

fuck you all

i have a really tough time getting through purple great as its singles are. tiny music is their best i think. i owned shangri la-dee-da (i lmao every time i get to type that album title out) when i was a teenager and played it enough to like just about every track on it but i feel like i'm the only one

Purple is great, 'Interstate Love Song' is fantastic, but this match-up is Henry the STP Hawk taking futile swings at a bemused Foghorn GBV. That, I say, that band ain't right!

The funny thing is that none of the bands in these recent polls seem like they would GAF about a “fight.”

Future polls:
PJ Harvey vs. Garbage
Dino Jr. vs. Guns 'n' Roses
Sonic Youth vs. Genesis

Placebo vs. My Chemical Romance

Not a lot of productive dissonance in a few of those...

but... huh?

JIMMY RAY VS FINLEY QUAYE

Jimmie's Chicken Shack vs Sugar Ray

Stone Temple Voices

jesus christ, Jimmie's Chicken Shack. the music industry could not have come up with a more sterile, faceless band if they tried.

and yet at the time, I loved "High" *shrug*. i suspect I liked anything by this band cos it had something food related in the name and I am always hungry

Yeah I bought that CD :-( they were on MTV’s oddville

me and my brother used to joke that "Falling Out" was about taking a shit. it kind of is, musically.

Bush vs Live

hmm.

for good music or for LOLs?

cos Live wins the latter easily

Yeah but do they have an album produced by Steve Albini?

Bush actually hand a handful of songs that I still actually like a lot. and a bunch I thought were armpit funk

"Greedy Fly", "Everything Zen", "Tendency to Start Fires" were fun tho

"Machine Head" was awful for its "oh lookie octave guitar riff meant to sound intense and edgy and sounds like a kid in a Sam Ash showing off for his dimwitted friend"

"Swim" was a good deep cut too I guess

Bush vs. Sutter

I was fond of 'Bonedriven' at the time and still vaguely am.

"Swallowed" is aight and has the '90s edgelord neon cross video

Live , I actually like Secret Samadhi and lots of Throwing Copper, but Ed Kowalczyk had some of the weirdest intonation of any singer ever.

lightning "creshes"?

Both bands had good songs

Both bands played hard

and yeah I know the hall of fame thread it inspired. but I remember thinking "why does he think that word has more than one syllable" half the time

xxpost

"Dolphin's Cry" was a bridge too far

Bush was a bigger influence on fashion (with those shotbead necklaces) than any band in these polls too

Sponge vs Afghan Whigs

Sublime vs Smashmouth

No idea why but 'I rushed the lady's room / Took the water from the toilet / Washed her feet and blessed her name' left an indelible mark on me.

Silverchair vs I Mother Earth

Smog vs The Toadies

Smile vs Hum

Vic Chesnutt vs Tim McGraw

I genuinely want us to poll all of these.

Foo Fighters vs Built to Spill

Days of the New vs Sebadoh

interstate love song is incredible, but so are like two dozen gbv songs

― mookieproof, Thursday, January 2, 2020 7:00 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is how i break it down to some extent

this is unfair. both are dope and STP is clearly gonna lose by a lot.

isn't there supposed to be some kind of seeding process so matchups like this don't happen

in the finals yes but this is merely the 3 seed vs 14 seed match

GBV, by default, as 10 minutes ago I wasn't 100% sure I'd heard STP. Turns out that I know "Vasoline" and "Plush", at least. The former is... not bad, actually.

(Also discovered a weirdly pertinent upcoming local event: "together for the first time in Australia will be Live, Bush and Stone Temple Pilots!" Bless.)

GBV has songs that sound like "Still Remains."

I probably like "Lady Picture Show" better than "As We Go Up We Go Down"

There are about 35 bands mentioned in this thread that are worse than the two being polled.

These are two of my favorite bands and I hate this poll.

High-functioning alcoholism vs. you name it.

Neko Case vs Kenny Rogers

Pearl Jam vs Fugazi, battle of the principled ticket sellers

I'm not sure I've ever heard Stone Temple Pilots.

... LOL Britishes.

Tbh this is obv a disaster as a poll but I did think GBV worked as a great foil for STP, maybe teasing out what the latter band actually did well rather than just their rep

...like I def expect STP would've done a killer version of Buzzards and Dreadful Crows or even Smothered in Hugs

The Beatles vs. The Jump in the Saddle Band

If I were going to do another of these, I'd probably go with Helium vs. Belly

GBV
Those who would vote for STP are uncultured swine

dave q come home

this poll is insulting

anyone itt who think GBV have <100 great songs just doesn't know the catalogue

which is obv no easy task but pls

Hell, there are 100+ great songs on Alien Lanes alone.

just in terms of polished "big" rock

Isolation Dills >>>>>>> STP greatest hits

^Drills

anyone looking for a starting point, Human Amusements at Hourly Rates has to be one of the two or three best indie rock "greatest hits" ever (not much competition, I know)

If your band doesn't have an album that tops GBV's odd-and-sods boxset bonus disc King Shit and the Golden Boys then your discography in general is likely to pale in comparison.

if "big bang baby" were 1.5 minutes long it'd be a pretty sick gbv song maybe

And also recorded on a minicassette that someone accidentally dropped in the bathtub.

Alternately, STP could've done a swell 'Postal Blowfish'.

Soundgarden voter here that will begrudgingly admit there are about 2-4 good STP songs that were murdered by MTV in the 93-95 era.

I have seen GBV at least 8 times.

If we put GBV up against P’ment, who would win?

Who else would be a worthy adversary for the Stockton kids?

Spiral Stairs doesn't really compare to Tobin Sprout

yeah it's pretty notable, he leaves right after Mag Warwhig, they still do a lot of good stuff after that but the classic era is over, he probably doesn't get enough credit

Not sure exactly HOW correlated Tobin is to the shift in sound exactly, but when he was involved with GBV there was more sonic variety and experiments. More and more songs just sounded like the Who after Mag Earwhig!.

isolation drills and earthquake glue are still good records front to back but yeah

I got off the boat after Mag Earwig. Classic stuff too good. Doug Gillard is my least favorite guitarist

Mag is their peak imo. It's just a perfect blend of everything I love about them (except for the lo-fi fifteen-second fuckaroundary, obvs).

interesting, esp considering the fuckaroundary is part of the charm. Even enhances the bigger moments in context of many of their albums.

Oh no, I love the fuckaroundary. Just saying that it's the major charming element missing from the otherwise perfect Mag Earwhig.

tower to the skies
an academy of lies

oh! I thought you were vaguely referring to the weirder little moments that ARE in Mag Earwhig! Gotcha.

The weird moments on Mag feel like a different animal to me than the earlier 4-track loops of a dude snoring his brains out and what have you.

fair

omg i have not read the thread just here to lol at the proposition! serious honest lol, thank you :) i have never enjoyed a STP song in my life.

Imagining bulldog skin played by the Alien Lanes crew, hot sh1t

If you're actually curious what that kind of thing would sound like, here is a really early version of Glad Girls:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvXzY5DE5OE

was my impression that Tobin was kind of on the way out during the making of Mag Warwhig?

afaict, bob dissolved the og gbv, made mag earwhig with cobra verde as his backing band, was dissatisfied with the record while sequencing it, and rehired the old band to record more songs

MAG EARWHIG

After recording 15 songs, Bob went back to Dayton, locked himself in the Monument Club, a customized garage in his backyard used for partying, and started sequencing and resequencing the record--36 different ways. But he couldn’t fight the urge to record more songs--first, with an actual producer, John Croslin (Spoon, Dumptruck), and then some spontaneous, basement-sounding stuff--both sessions with Jim Pollard and Tobin Sprout.

from an archived url on the matador website

Hey Brad (& everyone else), metal noms for the 2019 poll are closing tonight. Last call!

oh thanks for heads up, i wanted to nominate/vote in that!

a customized garage in his backyard used for partying

Is there a thread for things that you didn't know but probably could've guessed?

I’ve gone thru the Thank You and Human Amusements... comps over the past few days (via this thread); these are prime examples of bands whose songs I can “appreciate” but just can’t into on a personal-taste level. I’ll give the nod to STP, they were quite a singles band, and something about GBV’s sound really doesn’t mesh with me.

I'll take Thank You over most of GBV's output tbh, even though the latter are the better overall band.

Do the Challops

I cannot fathom making a judgment on the music of GBV on the basis of an album-length best-of. You gotta do the full 45,816-song plunge.

Re: curation of their respective retrospectives, STP is only helped by the exclusion of off-putting frivolities like 'Wet My Bed' while GBV is ill-served by every 'Chicken Blows' that gets dropped.

Sure but that would entail listening to nearly an hour of music! Who has the time?

xp

one of my things with stp is i absolutely hate core, singles included

i wanna drank from your naked fountain

i guess "creep" walked so "big empty" could run but i still don't like "creep" at all

Bob devalued the catalogue as a whole when he decided to carry on post breakup

xpost Yeah, say what you will about them otherwise but it's hard to argue that Purple wasn't a freakin' quantum leap from STP's debut.

I don't know that I've heard a second of post-breakup GBV.

even if it was, it was a quantum leap into a place i had no interest in visiting

like sub-sub-zero interest

The best of is shit, just listen to bee thousand ffs. If you don’t like it IT’S OK we don’t need to hear about it

stone temple pilots are dumb and bad

listening to the first Tobin Sprout solo album, pretty good stuff never checked his solo stuff out

Okay, now I need to check the tracklisting for the GBV greatest hits now and see just how wrong they got it.

xp yeah the first solo album is great, also the eyesinweasel double lp of demos.

human amusements has a great tracklist imo

like, freakin "exit flagger" is on it thank god

14 cheerleader coldfront

Don’t forget, It’s like soul, man

it is missing "quality of armor" tho

Doesn’t it have the shitty Tigerbomb re-recordings of Hunting Knife and Motor Away tho? Blech

Re: Hourly Amusements...Hmmm, okay, they included most of the obvious 'hits', way too much focus on later years, surprisingly includes a couple cuts off the early albums, some weird inclusions. I approve of kicking it off with the intro to Alien Lanes. Yeah, it could be worse but you're missing a helluva lot of nuance if you're basing your opinion of the band on this relatively random collection of songs.

i actually love the tigerbomb versions

And too much post-alien lanes stuff but that’s just my taste

"hunting knife" is the alien lanes version btw

calstars at 2:31 3 Jan 20

14 cheerleader coldfront

❤️❤️❤️❤️

They should've done a couple comps, best-ofs from the various eras. You could easily slap together a tremendous collection just from stuff on the first handful of albums/EPs/7-inches, for instance.

'Paper Girl'! 'Long Distance Man'! That solo at the end of 'Earful o' Wax' (one of the best in rock imo)!

there is enough creative energy in the ancient box set of pre-Bee GBV albums to fuel a zillion more albums
STP's creative energy sounds like the barely audible beep of a battery running out of juice by comparison

listening to the first Tobin Sprout solo album, pretty good stuff never checked his solo stuff out

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, January 3, 2020 3:28 PM (five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Most of his solo stuff is great!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVmzNVUAuuI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l66BzacTSkY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUgBa4ewzcg

GBV is one of those “You’re just not listening to the right stuff...” bands. :P

I’ve been there! Like, tell me you don’t like The Fall — “well, what have you heard?” etc.

one of my things with stp is i absolutely hate core, singles included

― american bradass (BradNelson), Friday, January 3, 2020 1:15 PM (nineteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

dead and bloated is tons o fun imo. could leave the rest on core tho.

purple is a personal classic. i like every song on it. still remains is my fav tho.

listening to the first Tobin Sprout solo album, pretty good stuff never checked his solo stuff out

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, January 3, 2020 3:28 PM (five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I will vouch for the first two albums, especially Maid to Order and 100% Delay off Let's Welcome the Circus People and the title track, Beast of Souls, and Angels Hang Their Socks on the Moon off Moonflower Plastic.

I cannot fathom making a judgment on the music of GBV on the basis of an album-length best-of. You gotta do the full 45,816-song plunge.

The Fall vs GBV

^that would get me to vote for GBV

The Fall and GBV are my two favorite bands and if nothing else have frontman monomania in common

but I can't for the life of me understand how both are “You’re just not listening to the right stuff...” bands

If you don't dig The Fall you probably don't like that brand of repetition and MES' delivery, whether they're doing dance, rockabilly, krautrock whatever

But not liking *any* GBV is just weird...Bob doesn't have any one thing he does. He sings and writes in a range of styles and makes records in every conceivable production mode. He's a great singer. Unless there are ppl who just don't like hooks? Is that a type? But even if you don't like hooks...do you like Acid folk? Classic rock? Prog? Noise? Punk?

OR DO YOU REALLY LIKE ROCK AND ROLL?

Into the Bro-known: One Dude’s ‘Frozen’ Podcast (morrisp) at 2:53 3 Jan 20

GBV is one of those “You’re just not listening to the right stuff...” bands. :P

I’ve been there! Like, tell me you don’t like The Fall — “well, what have you heard?” etc.

honestly, if you listen to Bee Thousand and Alien Lanes and don't like em yr probably good on not going farther

I'm listening to Purple right now, most likely for the first time in 20+ years. I had it on cassette, this must have been one of the last cassettes I bought, I switched to CD somewhere in 94-95 and mostly left my cassette collection behind. This isn't bad, I actually remember all of these songs so far. Actually enjoying this way more than when I revisited Soundgarden due to that other thread.

This is the only album by either of these bands that I've ever owned. What I've heard of Guided By Voices here and there has never really pushed me to seek out their stuff.

Defending gbv feels so 20 years ago

They released like 5 albums last year! (and at least one was good)

honestly, if you listen to Bee Thousand and Alien Lanes and don't like em yr probably good on not going farther
― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, January 3, 2020 4:21 PM (eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Nah these two are too similar, if you don't like B000 OR Vampire On Titus OR Mag Earwhig OR Isolation Drills...then I don't know, maybe there's some kind of corrective surgery

no hes right

Defending gbv feels so 20 years ago

― calstars, Friday, January 3, 2020 1:25 PM (eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

srsly its like defending the vu... some things just arent for everyone

honestly, if you listen to Bee Thousand and Alien Lanes and don't like em yr probably good on not going farther

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, January 3, 2020 4:21 PM (eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I can see someone loving Earthquake Glue and then checking out those two albums and not really being down with the lo-fi, low-attention-span weirdness despite the tunes.

exactly

xp not if you're turned off by the production on those two albums

14 cheerleader coldfront

― calstars, Friday, January 3, 2020 3:31 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

dunno exactly what my gbv pox would look like and i'll never put myself through the pain of trying to make one but i'm certain this would be on it

i just think the songwriting and general "frission" took a major nosedive after '95.. it doesn't appeal to me

And now we see eye to eye
That another man's trash is collectible
And every weakness is correctable

Speaking of highlights, just want to share this great piano version of Wondering Boy Poet:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSggyzJH9nI

lotta gems on the first suitcase.. full band version of "spring tigers" <3 <3 <3

kinda wish scott weiland wouldve recorded a whole loungey album a la "and so i know"

Assuming you already have, but check out Weiland's solo records if you haven't. Quite a few more loungey leaning moments on those, iirc.

lol I actually haven’t, thx for the tip

12 Bar Blues is a really good record, I actually come back to it more often than STP proper these days - start there. Happy in Galoshes is a bloated mess with some great gems. I haven't heard Blaster since it came out, but I don't recall liking it much at all.

agreed that 12 bar blues is v good

Unless there are ppl who just don't like hooks? Is that a type?

It’s something about his kind of hooks, and his singing/songwriting style... idk. I guess he’s heavily influenced by older British bands (not really my bag)?

But that's the thing, I think maybe this is a misconception by ppl who haven't dug very deeply—yeah he's totally influenced by the Davies bros and the Who etc., but at least as much by Wire, Genesis, Rocket From The Tombs, loads of stuff that isn't remotely British Invasion

I guess this where I should say that, beyond Purple, I wouldn't stump for more than a couple STP/Weiland tracks, and I certainly wouldn't stump that hard.

i think tiny music is better than purple and i find it weird that ppl don't agree

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjLiO7BlpuI

this is my fuckin favorite stp song

I've listened to a couple of the post-Purple joints, Weiland's 12-Bar Blues, even the Talk Show album, and my feeling is they pretty much shot all they had that second time out.

It's a good one, for sure.

xp

I didnt like his voice as much after purple

Tiny Music has the best ratio of great/good non-singles.

One of my favorite 2010s songs is a non-Pollard from the double LP
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQzw0kn-GfU

Pollard would write a lyric with the phrase "humble kidney pie."

re: tiny music, i routinely forget how good "adhesive" is too. it sounds like a psych emo song with a trumpet solo

best album track on purple is "unglued" imo

which my best friend and I loved when it first aired cos "masturbation" is the third word

I loved "Lounge Fly", but only cos I recognized the part of the song that was used on MTV

"Adhesive" is rad

young me had a hard time adjusting to Tiny Music's expansion into other genres and wearing more of their 70s influences on their sleeves

adult me is all about that shit. like I hated "And So I Know" with a passion then, but right now this shit makes me wanna get in a goddamn jacuzzi with a mai tai

I love "Adhesive", it was one of the many tracks where I wondered if he sucked helium out of a balloon before recording though.

also hate the Ju-On esque "i told you five or four times" gross vocal thing at the end of "Art School Girl"

The move toward Bowie/Zeppelin/Lennon was exactly what pulled me in.

yeah I was just spinning through Tiny Music and I really dig it much more now than I did as a kid. really let the DeLeos play to their strengths

which my best friend and I loved when it first aired cos "masturbation" is the third word

Barbarella is masturbation

lol

Btw unglued is awesome and super fun to play on guitar. Same w silvergun superman.

Kitchenware & candybars is a good tool song

Tiny Music has the best ratio of great/good non-singles

I kinda think this might be No. 4 instead actually

Brad, just have to say real quick that I have mad respect for your musical opinions even when they diverge wildly from my own. Your enthusiasm is palpable.

huh, never read the credits for 12 bar blues before

Sheryl Crow – accordion
Brad Mehldau – piano

also thanks to this thread i'm listening to a ton of stp and i think i've been underrating no. 4 for ages. "down," "heaven & hot rods," "church on tuesday," "sour girl," all pretty great. lmao that "no way out" is basically a nu-metal song though

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smzWHzRzWfc

good new song, must be a Tuesday

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Shart Temple Fartlets

KING SHIT AND THE GOLDEN BOYS vs VELVET REVOLVER

voted STP to help the ratio a bit but im probably ready to do a gbv deep dive here soon.

i think tiny music is better than purple and i find it weird that ppl don't agree

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

not a wide enough margin

STP was robbed.

JCLC otm

EZOTM

17 Inbreeder Coldfront

Time to take ILX home

Stone Temple Pilots: A thinkings man's Candlebox.

Lol anybody with a pulse is a thinking man's Candlebox

this must be the poll that comes right before Led Zeppelin vs crying babies on airplanes

Crying baby on an airplane v. Weiland's millionth rendition of the chorus on the 12" dance mix of Interstate Love Song.

Lol, I just looked up that song and it's only 2:52. I could have sworn it was close to 5 minutes.

The second album
12 gracious melodieesss

"interstate love song"'s economy is part of why i think it's a really awesome song. two verses + two choruses + that riff

obv i do not begrudge stp haters, i've been there

they're so funny tho. look at all the good jokes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OimhTa1hoU

between the start and end dates of this poll, another GBV album was announced

While you wrote your post, Bob recorded seven new songs.