2021-12-21 19:48 from IGnatius T Foobar
I use to like Pentatonix, but they have officially jumped the shark
and they completely suck now.
And what did Pentatonix use to be, and why did you use to like it?
I dont normally judge people by their looks, but often times bands do 'the look' of their genre as part of the marketing.
They look like a pop band to me.. *shudder*
We call them "sell-outs" where i come from :)
But to be fair, starving artist, suddenly offered money beyond their dreams.. its hard to resist for many people.
Fri Jan 07 2022 04:10:46 PM EST from IGnatius T FoobarThey were a highly-manufactured, highly-overproduced vocal band who did most of their work without instruments. Really tight harmony. Then suddenly, in an instant, they became talentless hacks -- posers, idiots, truly awful people.
But to be fair, starving artist, suddenly offered money beyond their
dreams.. its hard to resist for many people.
Meanwhile, the Sex Pistols singer has gone bankrupt trying to prevent the band from selling the rights for their music to a Disney subsidiary.
"Sex Pistols is now owned by Mickey fucking Mouse."
I am not a Sex Pistols fan, and I suspect this guy is an asshole, but I have gained some respect for him.
I guess meat loaf died recently?
I am hearing the same thing. Marvin Lee Aday, better known as Meat Loaf, has passed away at the age of 74.
Really a shame, I wanted Cher to die first.
John Lydon is an interesting fucker. He is one of those guys who is probably too brilliant for his own good, but so annoyed by it all that he can't just sit back and let the idiots be idiots without speaking up and speaking his mind.
This tends to put him at odds with everyone, eventually.
I imagine he is hard to get along with - and I'm sure he frequently hears the claim that he is "arrogant".
Most recently he and one of the remaining Marones... Er... Marky Ramone - got into it...
https://www.brooklynvegan.com/johnny-rotten-henry-rollins-marky-ramone-walk-into-a-panel-chaos-ensued/
And, I mean... from the outside, it wasn't a great look... but... punk is an underground culture - and thought it is more accessible now - there are some dynamics going on here that outsiders may not realize.
The Pistols absolutely have more punk legend credibility than the Ramones. The Ramones are generally kind of a gateway to more serious hardcore and skate punk. There is also a West Coast/East Coast dynamic going on here. Black Flag is a West Coast/OC punk band - and in the 80s, the OC scene was kind of the premier punk scene in the US. There were other scenes, DC was a big one... but... most of the biggest bands were West Coast... Black Flag, the Adolescents, Suicidal Tendencies, and the Dead Kennedys (Bay Area... also a big scene). Duff is from GnR - not really a punk band... but... Duff was kind of a train wreck, had a famous scene of heavy metal excess in The Decline of the Western Civilization II, by Penlope Speers - who directed Decline of the Wstern Civilization 1, an underground punk classic... and L7 is an L.A. band.
So... the Ramones are the odd one out up on that stage - and the West Coast punks always had an... at best, ambivalent relationship with East Coast punks. Too much cultural difference - the long hair... the whole Howard Stern kind of vibe... it isn't helped by how commercial the Ramones became at the end of the 80s, doing fucking a song for Stephen King and Pet Semetary... but all of their stuff has a... I dunno... all punk has a LOT of influence from 50s Rock N Roll, actually... It is where surf and skate punk picked up a lot of their riffs... but the Ramones always felt real heavy into the DoWop kinda shit.
When I was into the scene... and I was *into* the scene - The Ramones and the Clash were bands that posers who wore green army jackets were into. John Cussack kind of dudes who also listened to OMD and Bauhaus and Oingo Boingo and Wendy O Williams... stuff that wasn't considered *real* or *hardcore* punk... at least on the West Coast.
I watched bootleg videos back in the day where West Coast punks took the shit out of the NY scene as a bunch of vampires doing blow in Studio 54 and CBGBs with Andy Warhol. It was scene as more pretentious, full of fake people, and inaccessible to average people - it wasn't kids in a garage on busted up budget instruments.
The Ramones have *grown* in popularity among real punks across the world *after* the fact - and I think a large part of this is rock journalists, many of them East Coast - repeating that the Ramones are the Godfathers of Punk until it stuck. But at the time, it was controversial if they were really punk... they were one of those kind of crossover bands like Joan Jett or Billy Idol where the punks didn't necessarily like the association.
As far as I'm concerned, Belinda Carlisle and the Go Gos have more genuine *hardcore* punk credibility and history than the Ramones. I've seen them doing hardcore gigs in LA in the early 80s, and their shit was way more West Coast/OC hardcore than "Beat on the Brat" or "I wanna Be Sedated". Those are fun songs - but they're very pop-pey... they're actually kind of upbeat. Maybe they're pioneers who opened the door for punk - but what they did... what they do... isn't genuinely *punk* to me.
The Sex Pistols were *also* seen as a band that was very commercial and accessible to posers in the 80s - and also very popular in the same circles of wannabe punks who thrived on The Clash and The Ramones... guys who wore animal patterned creepers and rode Vespas and were generally considered "mod" or "ska" or "beat"... which was a little West Coast nod that they were *alternative* - put not fully committed to going all the way. Ducky from Pretty in Pink is kind of one of these guys. They still *cared* about things... their future, being socially acceptable... school... punk in the 80s was generally very nihilist, apathetic, and self-destructive. It was also angry, confrontational and thrived on shocking, disgusting, and offending.
And the Sex Pistols - though a lot of punks felt like posers listened to them - they still had a kind of unspoken respect and credibility even in 1983-1986... bootleg videos and music of theirs got passed around... Sid Vicious was very much a part of the zeitgeist of the scene still... I think the Sex Pistols were far more influential to the evolution of punk in the 80s... hardcore, skate and true underground punk genres and bands. The Ramones arguably have been more influential for what passes as punk today - which is mostly pop-punk emo boy bands aimed at angsty teen aged girls who shop at edgy mall stores. The Pistols are far more raw, unrehearsed, inconsistent, unreliable and harder edged in both the composition of their music and the topics, as well as in their behavior and activism - than the Ramones - and I think they were really *first* in making a MARK on society with THAT. If the Pistols are the Godfathers of punk... then the pistols are the genesis of it. They're directly responsible for shaping what punk became at its height.
So... I think Marky is out of line here - I think John Lydon kind of verbally hands him his ass, although it doesn't SEEM that way in the video. The crack about, "You would be selling fish and chips if not for the Ramones," gets a huge laugh... and Lydon's responses kind of seem to fall flat with the audience - but the audience isn't actually full of punks... it is probably full of the kind of people who do not know the difference between the Pistols, the Clash, the Police, Blondie, Devo, The Talking Heads, and the Ramones - and think they're probably all "punk" bands.
And although Rollins and Duff McWhatTheFuckEver are both kind of like, "Oh holy shit!" over there (which... that doesn't surprise me about Rollins at all... he looks like the kid in grade school having a shit when two other kids are going brutal on one another... and that kind of embodies who Rollins seems to be...) Lydon walks over to them and is whispering in their ears and they're interacting... While Marky is kind of off on his own with one guy by his side kind of playing ref.
The point is, the Sex Pistols are the most influential *uncontestedly PUNK* band in history. There are other bands that were bigger, that were very instrumental and influential to the evolution of punk, and the Ramones are absolutely one of those bands... but the Pistols kind of OWN the blueprint of what defines punk.
Part of the problem is that Lydon was a HUGE Trump supporter... I think like me, he is all for disruption and change, even painful and uncomfortable - maybe... ideally that - change. I think he knew Trump was something different - that would upset the status quo and cause turmoil and unrest and disruption in any case, and possibly positive change. I think he recognizes that Trump doesn't filter his thoughts very well - much like Lydon himself - and he liked the idea of having THAT in America's highest political office.
But punk today is absolutely dominated by the far Left. In the 80s - it was very anarchist, very libertarian - often left libertarian - but anarchist Libertarian foremost - with the idea that the Skinhead Nazis, thought they sucked, the straight edge, the hardcore, the skate punks... all the different ideologies - could all coexist. The Pistols kind of represented that from the start too. Sid Vicious was all the WORST things about punk... self-destructive, every extreme in self mutilation and disregard for the future, talentless - just moving forward on pure shock value. He worse swastikas, he was the one with safety pins in his ears, he wore dog chains... boots, leather jackets... he was ALMOST metal in his fashion before substance kind of persona. Lydon, as Johnny Rotten, was also very theatrical - but more reserved, more intellectual, more articulate and under his sneering disdain and contempt, reasoned and calculating. Jones, Cook and Matlock all just kind of looked like typical jocks - nothing very shocking about them - and a LOT of kids into the punk scene looked this part in the 80s. Just average high school and college kids living a double life. There were black punks, there were gay punks, there were TV punks (we didn't call them TG back then)... there were Mexican punks... There were girl punks. It was mostly white suburban kids - but it was always a more intellectual adolescent culture than the preppies, jocks, rockers, stoners, metalheads, vatos... whatever other scenes were going on. There was a lot of tolerance for diversity of opinion. I mean... people were outspoken... and there was violence... racist violence, violence against racists by SHARP, punks and mods fighting, skins beating up punks, punks beating up skaters... sexism, anti-sexism... whatever you can name... I knew a Patriot racist skinhead... and although Anti-American Leftism was a big part of the scene - it existed side by side with deeply patriotic skinhead bands... so... the entire spectrum of political ideology, value and belief existed in the 80s in the punk scene, side by side, generally co-existing peacefully.
Today's punk scene is woke AF and squarely on the Left and politically against the US Right, conservatism, patriotism, nationalism... and a lot of the people on the stage probably lean that way... so Lydon has kind of put a target on himself THERE by being an outspoken Trump supporter - although he dialed that back as Trump got more and more off the rails toward the end. Either way - that put a target on his head among those who control the current zeitgeist of the punk scene, without a doubt. Today's punk claims to be about unpopular opinions - but - only the RIGHT kind of unpopular opinions - the POPULAR unpopular opinions. Lydon scores very low on agreeability tests.
I find myself agreeing with him on the vast majority of issues he speaks out about.
But... he is almost certainly an asshole.
Fri Jan 21 2022 14:06:43 EST from darknetuserBut to be fair, starving artist, suddenly offered money beyond their
dreams.. its hard to resist for many people.
Meanwhile, the Sex Pistols singer has gone bankrupt trying to prevent the band from selling the rights for their music to a Disney subsidiary.
"Sex Pistols is now owned by Mickey fucking Mouse."
I am not a Sex Pistols fan, and I suspect this guy is an asshole, but I have gained some respect for him.
It's also possible that the bands who will be considered "the REAL punk of the early 21st century" are some acts you haven't even heard of yet.
Tuber. This week's find.
Another good band in that same genre as bands like Methadone Skies and Camel Driver.
As many of you know by now, heroin addict Neil Young wants his music removed from Spotify unless they cancel Joe Rogan's podcast. And now we've discovered that anyone's response to this depends on their age:
Age 0 to 30 : "Who is Neil Young?"
Age 31 to 60 : "Wait, Neil Young is still alive?"
Age 61 and up: "What is Spotify?"
Keep on rocking in a free world, everyone :)
2022-01-31 11:01 from IGnatius T Foobar
As many of you know by now, heroin addict Neil Young wants his music
removed from Spotify unless they cancel Joe Rogan's podcast. And now
we've discovered that anyone's response to this depends on their age:
Age 0 to 30 : "Who is Neil Young?"
Age 31 to 60 : "Wait, Neil Young is still alive?"
Age 61 and up: "What is Spotify?"
Keep on rocking in a free world, everyone :)
It is funny: they mentioned it in my regular Heavy Metal radio station and my inner reaction was around those lines.
Afaik, artists don't deal directly with Spotify, but they sign a deal with a distributor which is the one which ends up placing them in sites where people can listen to them (such as Spotify). I don't know how easy it might be to convince your distributor, with whom you have a signed contract, to remove your music from a certain channel if it is making money there.
It would be the equivalent of making a film, signing a deal with Lionsgate in order to distribute it worldwide, and then telling Lionsgate "No, I don't want this film in that corner cinema. Don't hand the movie to them or I will throw a tantrum." If they have you in the contract and they think they are going to make money out of having the movie in that cinema, Lionsgate is not going to play your silly game.
https://www.foxbusiness.com/media/joe-rogan-breaks-silence-after-neil-young-controversy
So, I'm not a huge fan of Rogan. He is not an incredible critical thinker. He is a lot like Henry Rollins in that he seems to think he takes pride in being a simple, common-sense sort of guy, but he also entertains the idea that he has the intellectual capacity to understand guys like Jordan Peterson. Because of this, he frequently seems transparently wishy-washy to me. You'll see it in an interview where he is trying to talk up to someone like Bret Weinstein, Peterson, or Musk and they've said something where he is just missing their point by 180 degrees. They'll correct him, and he will assert something like, "I see what you mean, I agree with you... that is exactly what I'm saying..." but it isn't. Eventually he usually tries to just move it along and leave that unaddressed, or he simply admits they're right - but you can often see it in his face, his tone, his attitude, that he just doesn't get it and is instead agreeing to avoid a confrontation with the person. He is very agreeable - but not necessarily because of comprehension of what he isn't understanding. Instead, he agrees for the sake of avoiding confrontation.
In most cases, it is just frustrating - and it is a frequent risk for moderates who score high on agreeability and want to be open minded. It is probably a sign of high emotional intelligence. It is also why a lot of moderates get accused of waffling, playing both sides of the field, and being unreliable and inconsistent. They tend to be easily swayed by persuasive argument and often do not critically analyze beyond the immediate question at hand.
I'm afraid Rogan is guilty of that here in particular in attempting to be conciliatory and offering to provide "alternative viewpoint" rebuttals on his show.
If others disagree with him, it is their responsibility to find a platform to reach audiences with that message. It isn't his obligation to provide anyone equal time. A broadcaster traditionally was required to do so - and it couldn't hurt Spotify to diversify their audience reach by offering a spectrum of opinions in their available podcasts. In fact - that is when media was reputable and respected - when they didn't have a clear and significant partisan lean but instead took the idea of Freedom of Speech and of the Press to heart as a responsibility to cover all opinions and perspectives.
What he is doing here by trying to understand, dialog and compromise with his opposition is dangerous. Neil Young is no more qualified to express an opinion on Covid or vaccines than Rogan is. Young is probably barely literate, like Carlos Santana and tons of other musicians from this era of rock and roll.
But what Young and other artists are doing is trying to de-platform Rogan and take away his voice. They want to silence someone they disagree with, who is saying things that they believe are dangerous...
The *same* kind of behavior that they accused the establishment of applying to Rock in the 60s. This isn't the disenfranchised voice of angry youth speaking out about injustice and inequity and unpopular war - it is the old and financially comfortable being threatened by the potential of disruption to the social status quo. Neil Young *is* The Man, and so are the Foo Fighters, and every other band that feels the need to remove Rogan's platform from him.
One has to wonder... Hey now, woo hoo... when did Rock and Roll become uncool?
The problem is - if Neil and his fellow artists get their way - they'll be emboldened to continue to silence voices that they simply disagree with. I'm not defending Rogan or his position on Vaccines - but I'm certainly defending his right to broadcast his opinions, however controversial they are. Crosby, Stills Nash and Young had LOTS of controversial ideas they published - and anyone trying to silence their voices when they were relevant to society was in the wrong. The Rock Stars are now the PMRC - but they don't just want to tell your KIDS what they can listen to. They want to tell EVERYONE what they can listen to.
And certainly, Young is even worse for his hypocrisy as an old man, trying to do to others what he felt was injustice when it was done to him when he was young.
Fuck that old hippy. Hopefully he joins the increasing list of past-their-prime former-glory rock stars reverting back to dust in the Earth soon. How did we lose Zeppa but we managed to keep this old, shrill scarecrow? The universe is unfair.
That's about the sum of it. Joe Rogan isn't hardcore *anything* but that's the problem -- the people who want him shut down won't tolerate balanced discussion; they insist on silencing anyone who isn't 100% on their side. I'm not a Rogan fan and I don't plan on starting to listen to him now.
And yes, as many have observed, there is so much hypocrisy in the boomer crowd transitioning from "stick it to the man" to "now we *are* the man" and not affording others the free speech they used to champion. Fortunately, most of the musicians in that group peaked 30 years ago and are not creating anything interesting anymore. Gen Z isn't exactly storming Spotify to hear the latest Neil Young or Joni Mitchell singles.
The latest word, though, is that Rogan is caving. Doesn't matter to me.
He was never one of "my" champions to begin with, and I've never had a Spotify account. My jukebox is YouTube with an ad blocker turned on.
Yep.
Tue Feb 01 2022 06:13:48 PM EST from IGnatius T Foobar
The latest word, though, is that Rogan is caving.
No idea if its good or bad ( yet ) but Jethro Tull put out an album.. in 2022.. wtf. not expecting that