Who is the biggest fuddyduddy in music?

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However you define the term.

Maybe it's a once-great artist with a dreary commitment to "maturity." Or somebody who keeps making the same record year in, year out. Perhaps they're too rockist. Or not rockist enough. Maybe they just suck now.

Who is the biggest fuddyduddy?

My vote is for Tom Verlaine. Nobody started out better than him, but now he's a charter member of the Old Fogies hall of fame. Last time I saw Television a few years back, they looked like they'd rather be playing shuffleboard.

― kornrulez6969 (TCBeing), Monday, 8 August 2005 20:19 (twenty years ago)

Alice Cooper says so much stupid crap on tv these days you'd never once believe he'd made a good record.

― Outsider Enter Port City (sexyDancer), Monday, 8 August 2005 20:24 (twenty years ago)

maybe an obvious answer but from every interview i've ever read, it seems like lou reed has been a fuddy duddy of walter matthauesque stutre since day one.

― Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Monday, 8 August 2005 20:31 (twenty years ago)

Lou Reed was the first guy I thought of too.

― n/a (Nick A.), Monday, 8 August 2005 20:31 (twenty years ago)

Paul Weller.

― Michael Lambert (Michael Lambert), Monday, 8 August 2005 20:35 (twenty years ago)

Donald Clarke

― Masked Gazza, Monday, 8 August 2005 20:36 (twenty years ago)

Van Morrison, a fuddyduddy with herculean amounts of grumpiness by all accounts.

Alice Cooper always seems quite witty whenever I've heard him speak, maybe it's a persona he cultivates it for us Brits.

― Billy Dods (Billy Dods), Monday, 8 August 2005 20:38 (twenty years ago)

Paul Mccartney

― Bobby Peru (Bobby Peru), Monday, 8 August 2005 20:38 (twenty years ago)

Tom Petty? When I think of him I think of 'Freefalling' and a bunch of boring, braying Americana blah. I wouldn't mind being corrected or anything but until then JEEZ SOMEBODY FUCKING SHOOT THAT OLD NAG.

― tremendoid (tremendoid), Monday, 8 August 2005 21:56 (twenty years ago)

Elvis Costello. Although I second all the above.

― Zazas Zazas Nasatanada Katzenellenbogen by the Sea (noodle vague), Monday, 8 August 2005 22:00 (twenty years ago)

i'm sorry, but Tom Petty is not a fuddyduddy. it simply cannot be.

― Susan Douglas (Susan Douglas), Monday, 8 August 2005 22:05 (twenty years ago)

I dunno, Costello still got it; he just developed a strangely condescending attitude toward his own gift as a rock songwriter. Which, come to think of it, would fall under fuddyduddydom.

― joseph cotten (joseph cotten), Monday, 8 August 2005 22:07 (twenty years ago)

Petty's too big of a stoner to count as a fuddyduddy.

― Shakey Mo Collier, Monday, 8 August 2005 22:08 (twenty years ago)

i'll take that.

― Susan Douglas (Susan Douglas), Monday, 8 August 2005 22:18 (twenty years ago)

Frank Zappa was a pretty big fuddy duddy. Don't drink, don't do drugs, hippies are dumb, don't use hairspray or shampoo, brown shoes don't make it, etc.

― walter kranz (walterkranz), Monday, 8 August 2005 22:21 (twenty years ago)

Wynton Marsalis definitely needs to loosen up his bow tie.

― earlnash, Monday, 8 August 2005 22:30 (twenty years ago)

Oh god, Wynton Marsalis seconded.

― walter kranz (walterkranz), Monday, 8 August 2005 22:32 (twenty years ago)

thirded

― oops (Oops), Monday, 8 August 2005 22:52 (twenty years ago)

fourthed

― Shakey Mo Collier, Monday, 8 August 2005 22:53 (twenty years ago)

Wynton Marsalis plays "A Fifth of Beethoven"

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Monday, 8 August 2005 22:55 (twenty years ago)

in a strict, reverent be-bop stylee

― Shakey Mo Collier, Monday, 8 August 2005 22:58 (twenty years ago)

Robert Fripp.

And Wynton Marsalis.

― electric derby, Tuesday, 9 August 2005 13:00 (twenty years ago)

alex in nyc

― 3, Tuesday, 9 August 2005 18:21 (twenty years ago)

Wynton Marsalis

― mcd (mcd), Tuesday, 9 August 2005 18:22 (twenty years ago)

The antithesis is probably Richard Thompson or Ringo Starr. What a couple of pleasant guys.

― PB, Tuesday, 9 August 2005 18:25 (twenty years ago)

i think id rather see a wynton marsalis show than an elvis costello show these days.

― petesmith (plsmith), Tuesday, 9 August 2005 18:25 (twenty years ago)

Biggest plunge into duddydom: Beastie Boys

I liked their Licensed to Ill incarnation, and little else.

― Rob Uptight. (Rob Uptight.), Tuesday, 9 August 2005 18:26 (twenty years ago)

bob mould

and as of this recent tirade on her site, juliana hatfield

are fuddyduddyish

but lou reed wins.

― b b, Tuesday, 9 August 2005 18:28 (twenty years ago)

If George Harrison was still alive, it would be him.

― Marxism Goes Better With Coke (Charles McCain), Tuesday, 9 August 2005 18:30 (twenty years ago)

Tom Petty? When I think of him I think of 'Freefalling' and a bunch of boring, braying Americana blah.

You think of him wrong.

He had albums out for 14 years before "Free Fallin'" and a few (s/t and "Damn the Torpedos") are hard to deny as classics. The Tom Petty image I could do without, but...

― Rob Uptight. (Rob Uptight.), Tuesday, 9 August 2005 18:38 (twenty years ago)

Yeah, early Tom Petty was awesome! Like Ramones meets Big Star!

― Ian Riese-Moraine: a casualty of social estrangement. (Eastern Mantra), Tuesday, 9 August 2005 18:45 (twenty years ago)

But at least Lou still likes to play his guitar loud. Tom Verlaine doesn't want to do much of anything.

― kornrulez6969 (TCBeing), Tuesday, 9 August 2005 19:17 (twenty years ago)

I think it is Randy Newman.

― The Mad Puffin (The Mad Puffin), Tuesday, 9 August 2005 19:19 (twenty years ago)

Eminem

― Huk-L (Huk-L), Tuesday, 9 August 2005 19:25 (twenty years ago)

that description makes him sound like the best thing ever, ian.

― petesmith (plsmith), Tuesday, 9 August 2005 19:57 (twenty years ago)

Fripp seconded. He generally makes good points, but in the most infuriating way possible.

― Truckdrivin' Buddha (Rock Hardy), Tuesday, 9 August 2005 20:01 (twenty years ago)

David Thomas, from all accounts.

― Matt #2 (Matt #2), Tuesday, 9 August 2005 20:03 (twenty years ago)

David Thomas, from all accounts.

Totally. Saw him in concert and he hit his drummer in the back of the knees with his cane (while drummer was standing up for a flute solo.) Which in most bands I would think was funny tough love, except for the expression on dude's face.

― Rob Uptight. (Rob Uptight.), Tuesday, 9 August 2005 20:45 (twenty years ago)

I saw him walk offstage once cos someone threw a foam coffee cup at him.

― Matt #2 (Matt #2), Tuesday, 9 August 2005 20:49 (twenty years ago)

the pere ubu website is FUDDY DUDDY CENTRAL

― latebloomer (latebloomer), Tuesday, 9 August 2005 20:50 (twenty years ago)

Although I guess some of these (Lou Reed, Davis Thomas etc) are curmudgeons rather than fuddy-duddys, if you want to split hairs.

Rock fuddy-duddy #1 - Mike Love.

― Matt #2 (Matt #2), Tuesday, 9 August 2005 21:30 (twenty years ago)

"Frank Zappa was a pretty big fuddy duddy. Don't drink, don't do drugs, hippies are dumb, don't use hairspray or shampoo, brown shoes don't make it, etc." Watch out where the huskies go, and don't you eat that yellow snow....

Frank Zappa was a fuddy duddy? How can the man responsible for Freak Out!, Absolutely Free, We're Only In It For The Money, Sheik Yerbouti and Joe's Garage and who championed Alice Cooper, Captain Beefheart and Wild Man Fischer be a fuddy-duddy?

Rampantly OCD obviously - and completely brim full of shit - but a fuddy-duddy?

"Some Scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe." FZ

― Stewart Osborne (Stewart Osborne), Wednesday, 10 August 2005 07:40 (twenty years ago)

Can't stand Zappa - no matter how catholic your tastes, how broad your musical church, there's always going to be a blind spot, and Zappa is mine.

Anyway, apropos Brit fuddy duddies - the Gallaghers surely the undisputed champions of duddyism?

― Marcello Carlin (nostudium), Wednesday, 10 August 2005 07:45 (twenty years ago)

"Can't stand Zappa - no matter how catholic your tastes, how broad your musical church, there's always going to be a blind spot, and Zappa is mine."

Does this blind spot also eclipse the original Mothers Of Invention, Marcello?

Completely different to (and infinitely preferable to imho) Zappa solo.

― Stewart Osborne (Stewart Osborne), Wednesday, 10 August 2005 08:15 (twenty years ago)

Can't abide the Mothers either, even if Don Preston does play and sing on Escalator Over The Hill. For me the Bonzos did that kind of thing better, and definitively.

― Marcello Carlin (nostudium), Wednesday, 10 August 2005 08:19 (twenty years ago)

".... Escalator Over The Hill."

That really is quite an extraordinary album btw. I must admit I was a bit put-off by some of Ms. Bley's more operatic moments the first time I listened; but didn't seem to even notice them the second time.

I think I'm going to need to listen to it a few more times; preferably quietly, uninteruppted and on a decent system; to let it sink in properly.... unfortunately this is something which seems unlikely to happen any time soon, as we're currently in the process of moving and my beloved hi fi, all my records and 90+% of my CD's are now in boxes and crates - but I'll make do and do the best I can!

― Stewart Osborne (Stewart Osborne), Wednesday, 10 August 2005 08:57 (twenty years ago)

It's definitely one for the headphones.

― Marcello Carlin (nostudium), Wednesday, 10 August 2005 08:59 (twenty years ago)

I don't actually own any headphones - and sadly it's definitely not one for the car, which is the only place I seem to have to listen to anything at present!

― Stewart Osborne (Stewart Osborne), Wednesday, 10 August 2005 09:27 (twenty years ago)

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