Bands/artists that get A LOT of credit, but you think are too pedestrian, really.

pigeonholing japanese "noise" artists because you don't like aube, merzbow and masonna or whatever is kinda weird. i mean, are you including like fushitsusha or boredoms or whatever in this analysis? i'd like some more specifics.

That's because your name is Nerd Balance, and YOU are a poser.

But to answer the original poster's question: System of a Down. I can't stop hearing the music press and such rave on about how great these guys are. I picked up a copy of their first album on the strength of a friend's recommendation, and I found it to be... well, pedestrian. With really irritating vocals and obnoxious political posturing.

Nothing I've heard since deviates from that one bit.

well, what are you gonna do? i mean, a lot of those bands aren't very similar, sonically. you're allowed to like whatever records you want! but i don't know how they're ALL pedestrian, since they don't really all sound the same. so i dunno what you mean. i kinda agree that aube-style "loud white noise" can be kind of pedestrian, totally. but someone like boreomds (where is jon williams??) who have done a whole lot of different sounding stuff as a band, i don't understand assessing the whole of their catalog as pedestrian. i think they're a really exciting and engaging group!

Btw, they fit perfectly into this thread. I'd also like to add Young Jeezy.

-- GET EQUIPPED WITH BUBBLE LEAD (dr_...), January 8th, 2006.

Anyone with different opinion = troll. Thanks for the tip.

i don't know how they're ALL pedestrian, since they don't really all sound the same.

I didn't say they all sound the same. I was trying to get across my POV that they get so much credit for being original, innovative and (especially) talented musicians, when they're not really doing anything that impressive or innovative. The most impressive thing about them is their perserverence for playing this music.

They are often praised to the detriment of other musicians, since they are frequently invoked as an argument for why x artist is a hack. In my opinion, it's often so much easier to make cool sounds/soundscapes like this than it is to write a decent 3 minute pop song. Isn't this the classic argument against Zappa? Or classic rock, prog, virtuosity "wank," in general? Just because something seems "weird" or "good" to you doesn't make it more interesting or innovative if it's been done in similar permutations before. That's why I used the term "pedestrian," rather than "these bands all sound the same." I'm not a big Zappa fan, but here you have a guy that knows quite a bit about music theory and he can actually sit down and write complex arrangements with a pen and paper. Then, he can play the stuff and hire the right musicians and tweak their live performance with hand signals to get it "just right." Then, he goes in the studio and makes all sorts of miraculous cuts and overdubs anyway. That's a lot of objective skill. On the other hand, you have the Boredoms who seem to rely on their ears and intuition. Can they even read music? Could they play Paganini on guitar? How about just a regular guitar solo? (If guitar solos have been done to death, what of guitar noise? Get some Hendrix bootlegs!) Whether Zappa or Boredoms is more interesting or more enjoyable is purely a matter of taste, but the Boredoms' various styles imply (to me) that these styles evolved from limitation, rather than restraint. So, to hear them praised at the expense of some more skillful musician is a bit like seeing Kurt Cobain on the Rolling Stone's Top 100 Guitarists of All Time.

There are some moments of the Boredoms catalog that I really like, which are definitely exciting and engaging. But some of the basic ideas were not very interesting and were presented way back on Onanami Bomb Meets The Sex Pistols, such as the idea to stop a riff just as you're getting into it or to interject clusters of noise, cacophonous yelling and studio cut-ups. Their later work was much different, but I don't particularly find it that compelling, impressive or innovative. I do like the Boredoms, don't get me wrong. I'm not even a fan of Beck, but I'd say his "Midnight Vultures" album distills the essence of the entire Boredoms catalog (from anal-chaos to sun-bliss) into one really well-crafted package, keeping all of the interesting elements and cutting off all the excess. But the Boredoms are all about excess?! That's what I mean: it's one basic idea and it's not that interesting. They approach this one idea of excess in different ways on each album. In fact, I think Zorn, Fantomas, Gong and AMT do the Boredom's various styles better. That's my opinion and I'm welcome to it. Check out Midnight Vultures on a pair of headphones and don't forget the secret song. It serves a totally different purpose and a different audience, but that doesn't make it any less impressive. And to me, it sounds very much like some of Boredoms best moments.

I'm not sure why I used the examples of Zappa and Beck, since as I said, I am not really much a fan of either. I listened to that Beck album for the first time in ages yesterday and the Zappa comparison just came easily.

But, enough about Japanoise. I was not baiting.

You're right, that's why I didn't say that. It is also k-lame to let subjective opinions be the sole determinant of quality.

if you wanna just talk about talent or technical ability, this becomes a different discussion. but when a big part of your original post is debunking the enjoyability of the boredoms et al, you're mostly courting subjectivity to begin with.

Point is: it's not as innovative or creative as its often made out to be and these musicians are not as talented as they are made out to be. Like the title suggests: "Bands/artists that get A LOT of credit, but you think are too pedestrian, really." I think a boatload more people could sound like any Japanoise band than could sound like Eric Clapton, to draw a weird comparison (another fucker I don't even like!).

What I am saying is that these people get too much credit for being great, interesting artists and musicians when, in reality, what they should be getting credit for is sticktoitiveness. Maybe you city dwellers had some trouble finding places to jam your little hearts out with your teenage buddies after or during a weekend of ingesting any substance you could get your hands on, but you must believe me when I tell you that this shit is not that creative and it is not that musical. It might be surprising to less "weird" people and, hey, maybe that's YOU. Maybe it appeals to you because you're not that weird. If so, by all means enjoy the fuck out of it. It's great, isn't it?! Doesn't shit like this rock?!?! You should hear it on two hits of acid, then drink a pint of whiskey, smoke a bong and listen to it again when you're coming down. But, if you've already done it, you've already done it. The shit's been done. It's been done, redone, cut-up and reassembled in the studio and sold over and over... and then it was done again by DJs and sold again to rebore you some more if you weren't bored enough the first time.

Is it my fault you can't understand what it means? It's a comparison of all things psychedelic with a specific reference to the Boredomes rebore dj mixes at the end.

Oh, and by the way, Nerd Balance, apparently you want to listen to BUCKETHEAD. You're welcome.

And you're a narrow-minded nitwit with apparently no imagination.

Or, maybe you just need to stop smoking shwag.

Haven't done drugs in umteen years. Much like rehashed noise music, the novelty wears off.

Coldplay is given too much credit by thousands.

Anyway, why should we care about your opinion?

You shouldn't. Why do you? Next band, please! Japanoise has been covered!

I was actually being serious about Buckethead, dude

Buckethead is not really anything like what I described because there is no pop song element. He just solos over stuff like a madman. I have plenty of Buckethead and I've decided to stop buying it, although the newest one Kaleidoscalp (or whatever) sounds refreshingly like his old rare Island of Lost Minds (still didn't buy it). But, yeah, if you could take Buckethead and make him less one dimensional, get better drum samples, add a lot more spacey holes, cut out 80% of the notes, add electronics and genuine 60s psych sounds (organ?), you MIGHT be getting close. But, a closer approximation would be AMT + DJ Shadow + Queens of The Stone Age. Or something.

are you bill laswell?

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00004L8D0.01._SCMZZZZZZZ_.jpg
No, but that reminds me... Permutation is closer to what I'm thinking of here than Buckethead. But squish it into several consecutive rock songs that bleed into each other. Thus, you have a bunch of short catchy songs acting as passages in one larger psychedelic soundscape.

a band that is really too pedestrian: animal collective.

that campfire songs album, though.. thy were doin somethin right, then

you thought we were cool
but you diden't know we hate you
you thought we were cool
fuck off all you fucking faggots

you diden't know we were a bunch of assholes
you thought we were liberal and arty
you tried to act wierd and pretend you were violent
when i whipped chairs at you, you can off and cried

you thought we were cool
but you diden't know we hate you
you thought we were cool
fuck off all you fucking faggots

once you realized we hate people like you
you finally stopped coming to our shows
now there's less faggots, less people with glasses
less know it all eggheads, no more jazz fags

you thought we were cool
but you diden't know we hate you
you thought we were cool
fuck off all you fucking faggots

Chump. Even Buckethead sells off his Buckethead promos.