People You Suspect Are Frighteningly Overrated But Don't Actually Know Enough About To Say So

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Zappa, Freud and Jung.

― nathalie, Thursday, 6 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Prefab Sprout

― Arthur, Thursday, 6 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

alt country

― dave q, Thursday, 6 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

can i guve props to billy budd

― anthony, Thursday, 6 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

I bet that Alex Rodriguez is overrated.

― Ally, Thursday, 6 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Alex Rodriguez is underrated, if anything. Overpaid, maybe.

― Kris, Thursday, 6 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Oh, to answer the question, Condoleeza Rice.

― Kris, Thursday, 6 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Overpaid is a good word, yeah.

― Ally, Thursday, 6 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

I'll vote Stephen Merritt.

Saw him open for the Tindersticks maybe 5 years ago, and thought, "my, how boring." Now everybody wets themselves over him. It also didn't help when I read an interview with him in which he slams Rufus Wainwright, then admits he's never heard him.

― Sean, Thursday, 6 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

he slams Rufus Wainwright, then admits he's never heard him.

Assuming he does hear him and maintains his judgment, Mr. Merritt has just shot up eight million places in my estimation.

― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 6 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Mr. Merritt has just shot up eight million places in my estimation.

But what if Ned has some estimation chart on which ALL SIX BILLION of the world's population are ranked. On that basis an eight-million place shift is hardly seismic.

― Tom, Friday, 7 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

gothic archies.

― jel, Friday, 7 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Leave alt country out of this. It's not really that rated in fairness, except the flagship type people like Ryan Adams. And even if he is over-rated he's still great. Will Oldham, Son Volt, Whiskeytown, Jim White, Lucinda Williams are all class in my opinion. *were* class in Son Volts case.

― Ronan, Friday, 7 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

I'll leave alt.country out of this but only because I do feel like I know enough to say it's overrated.

― Tom, Friday, 7 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Is it rated that highly? I mean unless you read Uncut magazine?

― Ronan, Friday, 7 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Actually the fact that alt country is not a person disqualifies it

― Ronan, Friday, 7 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Ronan, what constitutes being 'rated' is obviously a slippery subject but it's not just Uncut (although they do go doolally for it). The critical thing here is that it may not be raved about all over the place but it's not slagged off anywhere much either. There's a kind of unquestioning stamp of respectibility afforded to alt.country among the rock cognoscenti. I think this is changing, with people are finally plucking up the courage to say 'this is boring'.

― Nick, Friday, 7 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

The Avalanches.

i own an alt.country album, but i hid it at the back so no one ever sees it.

― gareth, Friday, 7 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Ok when you put it like that I agree. It's a bit of a sacred cow because hacks don't seem to know that much about it. Also perhaps, the fact that the masses tend to think "oh country is shit" makes it oh so trendy for people to go, "I know better". God I'm giving away all my secretes here. I'm not saying all alt-country is good, but as far as I'm concerned the good stuff is a nice breath of fresh air. As you probably gathered I'm a giant Ryan Adams fan.

― Ronan, Friday, 7 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

secrets, not secretes, how unfortunate.

― Ronan, Friday, 7 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Colin Powell.

― Tadeusz Suchodolski, Friday, 7 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

The Smiths. Lloyd Cole. Douglas Coupland. James Joyce. Courtney Love. Armando Ianuccis new show. Didn't watch it last night due to playing Final Fantasy 8 till a ridiculous time in the morning, but last weeks show only funny in parts and not the awe inspiring behemoth mentioned on other threads. Defintely preferred Friday/Saturday Night Armistice. Will take this back if programme gets funnier. Perhaps is a possible grower.

Also sad to say, Joe Cornish without Adam Buxton. DUD DUD DUD.

― Sarah, Friday, 7 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

I'm not a Whiskeytown/Ryan Adams fan. I think *he's* overrated. Ronan, have you heard the Old 97s? the Gourds?

― Sam, Friday, 7 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

I like the Gourds yeah. I haven't heard of the other band you mentioned. I think Whiskeytown have some amazing songs and some real duds, but I tend to listen through the duds a bit. As for Ryan, I think Heartbreaker was an amazing album, however his new album doesn't sound quite as good, and the Dylan comparisons and things he gets are absurd, but its only in Uncut magazine I feel I've read excessive praise about him. Will Oldham is under-rated I reckon, he just keeps churning out the good albums.

― Ronan, Friday, 7 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

There used to be a bit of a rivalry btw Whiskeytown/R.Adams and Old 97s/Rhett Butler. I guess I've always stuck to the 97s side. You should definitely check them out. For god sakes don't get their two most recent albums - Fight Songs, Satiellte Rides - unless you really appreciate catchy over-produced pop songs. which you might, i dunno. but their first 3 records, especially Wreck Your Life, are fantastic.

― Sam, Friday, 7 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

No when country starts turning into over produced power pop its truly awful. See half of Pneumonia by Whiskeytown.

― Ronan, Friday, 7 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

i like robbie fulks.

― ethan, Friday, 7 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

I'm assuming Wilco aren't still alt.country. I quite like them.

― Tom, Friday, 7 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Bob Dylan. Josh Davis

― gareth, Friday, 7 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

The newest Old 97's is really awful. Nothing country about it. Are they wearing makeup on the cover? Sheesh!!

I'm actually a big alt-country fan, even have a Bloodshot records shirt! Although I do like Rufus Wainwright too. I think Ned secretly does as well.

― Sean, Friday, 7 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

I love Wilco actually. Sometime around Summer Teeth they kind of moved away from alt-country. Still pretty great though.

― Ronan, Friday, 7 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Charles Dickens. Charlie Chaplin. Also like Tom I have a feeling that Bill Hicks is horribly overrated. I own one of his albums on CD, and it's not very funny. But then maybe you have to see him to properly appreciate his talents. Maybe.

― Ally C, Friday, 7 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Aaliyah. A recent development, in fairness.

― Andrew Farrell, Saturday, 8 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Oh, and Jay-Z. Morpheus is fixing my lack of the new album, but my attitude to him (and Aaliyah) is if they are these transcendental artists, how come I can't remember anything I've heard by them, apart from Gangster's Paradise Pt 2 (Hard Knock Life)?

― Andrew Farrell, Saturday, 8 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Alex Rodriguez: overpaid, but worth it. :)

― Tracer Hand, Monday, 10 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

four months pass...

Tony Kushner. Saul Bellow. Noam Chomsky. Todd Solondz. Lars von Trier. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

― Michael Daddino, Sunday, 20 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Now that's a way to revive a thread! You might as well throw Todd Gitlin and Judy Chicago in there as well.

Although I do like Rufus Wainwright too. I think Ned secretly does as well.

A bit long distance to respond to this, but in a word -- no.

― Ned Raggett, Sunday, 20 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

let me really get the fire started by saying anyone working in the theater circa 2002. what's the bloody point?

(also: visual and performance artists, writers, people in film and tv, poets, novelists, people who make creepily kitsch folk art on the sides of rural route 9, people who make video games [producers? what the hell do you call these people?], singer-songwriters...)

― jess, Sunday, 20 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Care to elborate on that theatre point, old boy?

― DG, Sunday, 20 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Jess in Scorched Earth shocker!

― David Raposa, Sunday, 20 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

[I'm interested, Jess, cos LC is a theatre buff and I do so like to wind her up by saying similar things]

― DG, Sunday, 20 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

i just loathe the theater in all it's forms, legit and illegit. i hate the acting, the actors, the writing, the patrons, the prices, aiiiigh all of it. i promise this has nothing whatsoever to do with living with and around theater majors for several years. arrogant twits. i hope they all get a scary red pox on their bum holes. bastards. oh, and i hate UNDERGROUND THEATER even moreso! take yr dominatrix fantasies and daddy didnt love me monologues back to the bbs's where they belong you anne rice reading chuckleheads!

bah!

― jess, Sunday, 20 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Just sing some Pet Shop Boys to yourself. "We're...the bums...you step over...as you leave the theatre."

― Ned Raggett, Sunday, 20 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

har! i think gauss is over-rated too! but definitely underpaid.

― roger, Monday, 21 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

WG Sebald, George Steiner, Susan Sontag, Don DeLillo, Lacan, Ian McEwan, Iris Murdoch, Robert Musil, James Woods, Paul de Man, Tolstoy, Juan-Sebastian Veron, John Peel, Steve Albini, Kurt Cobain, Diamanda Galas, Jimi Hendrix, Jackson Pollock, JRR Tolkein, Des Lynam, Germaine Greer, Philip Roth.

― Edna Welthorpe, Mrs, Monday, 21 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Just a reminder that the thread title had the bit about "You Don't Actually Know Enough About XXXX to say whether they are over-rated or not".

― Alan Trewartha, Monday, 21 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

six months pass...

Mathematicians are never "over-" or "underrated". They formulate, they calculate, they advance their field a bit, hello tombstone. Whether the ideas are useful = important, who came up with them = vacuous.

If it's not too much trouble all the same, could you explain how, in the strange universe you call home, Gauss manages to come out overrated?

― , Thursday, 1 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link

haha mark it's like the bizarro world version of a nas vs jay-z google!

― Josh, Thursday, 1 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link

ABBA

― Ron, Thursday, 1 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link

If it's not too much trouble all the same, could you explain how, in the strange universe you call home, Gauss manages to come out overrated?

what?? of course mathematicians can be over/under-rated. were i to rate gauss the worst mathematician ever i'd be underrating him; were i to rate myself the best ever i'd be (dramatically) overrating myself.

― toby, Friday, 2 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link

Skipping 557 messages at this point... Click here if you want to load them all.

I just listened to 45 seconds of 'Drowning in the Sound' and it immediately silenced the part of me that wants to give every musician a fair shake. The album it's culled from reportedly last 78 minutes.

― pomenitul, Tuesday, 19 May 2020 21:52 (three years ago) link

"Amanda Palmer has 15,674 patrons on Patreon"

I calculate that I had probably had that at least that many dumps by the age of 36 if I had a dump average of 1.2 a day.

― calzino, Tuesday, 19 May 2020 21:56 (three years ago) link

her lowest tier is $1 and her highest is $250, if her average supporter is giving $5 then that's $78,370 per month, for Patreon alone, no I am not obsessed by this

― Wuhan!! Got You All in Check (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Tuesday, 19 May 2020 22:10 (three years ago) link

imagine getting paid $250 a dump, but only once every 6400 dumps
show your math

― Fuck the NRA (ulysses), Wednesday, 20 May 2020 00:17 (three years ago) link

If I get backpaid calzino’s $3.2milli now, I bet I can make it last until the next big dump drop. Even if I lash out with that bounty and eat meat twice a week, it shouldn’t bring my average down to 1.2/day.

― Bleeqwot (sic), Wednesday, 20 May 2020 00:42 (three years ago) link

it's the .2 that really gets ya

― Fuck the NRA (ulysses), Wednesday, 20 May 2020 01:12 (three years ago) link

Eileen Myles is awesome

Every time I've housesit for a homo friend I always see some Dennis Cooper novel on the shelf called Scum or Tripe or Bum or something and I crack it open thinking "ok maybe this is the one that everybody says I simply must read" and I suffer for twenty-odd pages of utter illegible nonsense before giving up and thinking that maybe JT Leroy wasn't so bad after all

― it’s been one week since you pissed on me (flamboyant goon tie included), Wednesday, 20 May 2020 02:42 (three years ago) link

I did pause when one of the members of my book club asked whether or not I would want to know Dennis Cooper personally

― Dan S, Wednesday, 20 May 2020 02:53 (three years ago) link

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