Dr. David Thorpe of Something Awful has compiled a penetrating tractate on albums, bands, genres, etc, and why they suck. Some excerpts from a view different articles:
Pet Sounds: "[A] syrupy and overblown testament to one man’s meticulous studio habits." (After all, Jan and Dean were the real innovators.)
Bob Dylan: "[R]ock and roll’s second-greatest poet-who-can’t-sing."
U2: "I wish I could write this review like The Edge plays the guitar. I’d just tap a few words into my delay pedal and let them echo and repeat for five minutes so I could leave and read Mad Magazine on the toilet." (This is unfair. The Edge does not read Mad Magazine.)
Television: "Tom Verlaine may sing like an amateur yodeler who got punched in the throat, but at least he had the balls to self-indulgently noodle away on a guitar like nobody was listening. Wait a minute, nobody was listening."
The Sex Pistols: "I wasn’t around in 1977, so I can’t pretend to know how magical it felt when a bunch of ugly, dirty guys got on a boat and made fun of The Queen."
Grunge: "[S]pecially engineered to sound good when listened to from big green bong water-stained couches with ripped upholstery."
Punk: "Punk, of course, is much more than a style of music. This is beneficial, considering how little punk has to offer as music."
Post-Punk: "[H]olds some sort of imaginary relevance to a certain type of guy in cuffed jeans." (And here I thought post-punk was music for anarchic mailmen.)
American Indie Rock: "[W]hite kids with guitars playing slapdash lo-fi pop songs about spatulas."
Hardcore fans: "They cut out the middleman [i.e., music] and headed straight for the part with ringing ears and drinking and getting laid."
Britpop: "[A]llowed English musicians to be as square and effeminate as they wanted while still doing enormous amounts of cocaine."
(Via Crooked Timber.)
One of the first Thorpe pieces I read over there was his rant about Coldplay. (It was one of the first ones he did.) It proved to be remarkably prescient.
Posted by: Phil | 07/15/2005 at 11:35 PM