Re: Bands I Loathe
 

I'm still extremely reluctant to buy mp3s and e-books when there is an affordable physical copy. I don't like reading on my kindle much (I hate that I'm looking at a screen for so much of modern life) and I've still to buy an mp3 player (no point in getting an iPod).

But to get some Art Zoyd, Lycia, Cardiacs, Trance To The Sun and Fauns albums I don't have a choice but mp3.
I think Foetus is only doing physical copies as limited collectors items and Jarboe is abandoning physical music altogether.

There's lots of eastern bands who would benefit from mp3 because cds are too much risk. Loads of P-Model/Hirasawa albums I would love but would cost too much on CD import. All those videogame soundtracks too.

Re: Bands I Loathe
 

Time to start a fight!

Nirvana and Pearl Jam.

The level of genuflective adulation and credibility these (terribly limited) bands received in the early to mid 90s and even to this day makes me facepalm. For anyone who wasn't around at the time, it's difficult to convey how seriously they were taken, as if they were political prisoners instead of musicians with limited repertoires. Does anyone remember Pearl Jam's epic "struggle" with Ticketmaster? I remember people talking about this like they were trying to stop a genocide or save starving orphans.

These bands initiated the trend in which nearly everyone was taken to task for ripping them off. Bands like Stone Temple Pilots were written off as derivative, even when they really sounded nothing like Nirvana and Pearl Jam, or had organically emerged from the same scene anyway. To make things worse, Nirvana and Pearl Jam were themselves completely derivative, often of contemporaries like the Pixies (which they admitted). So why was it okay for Kurt Cobain to steal "soft verse/loud chorus/screaming" from Black Francis, but not okay for Gavin Rossdale to steal vocal inflections from Kurt Cobain?

Yes, Gavin Rossdale from...BUSH. I know, right? BUSH, CREED, CANDLEBOX. You have a visceral reaction to these names, don't you? But that reaction is just a conditioned response. If you sent a random mixtape of Creed, Bush, Nirvana and Pearl Jam tracks back to ten years before any of the bands formed and asked people to choose their favorites, I guarantee that, with no context provided, at least as many people would "favorite" the Creed and Bush tracks as they would the Nirvana and Pearl Jam ones. Early Silverchair probably wouldn't fare too badly either.

Don't get me wrong, I don't like any of this music, but the "authenticity" politics were much worse than even the worst of the music.

Also, look at it this way. Pearl Jam is still around. Have you cared or even been aware of this fact at any point later than about 1998? No, I didn't think so.

As for Nirvana, their "legacy" is Nickelback, Seether, and endless reissues and remasters of their albums aimed at an aging audience with too much disposable income. Kurt didn't burn out, but he's still fading away, much too slowly, while recording industry executives continue to extract revenue from his corpse. Their greatest insult was always calling someone a "corporate band," and now they're one of the ultimate corporate bands of all time.

I'm out!

Re: Bands I Loathe
 

Nirvana came, synthesized, and epitomized the best of grunge. They topped the Meat Puppets musically in vocals, Mudhoney in lyrical ability, and were the best band out there representing that scene.

Pearl Jam's good, great with some of their *songs* (not albums), but will never approach what Nirvana accomplished with three albums.

Re: Bands I Loathe
 

I will never understand the people who say Kurt "sucked" as a guitarist but was a genius with melodies and vocals. Everything he plays is perfect for that song, he had taste, it was just punk taste so he wasn't trying to be technical. But look at the Unplugged performance: great tone, some vibrato, all on acoustic. He shouldn't be ranked above Rowland Howard or Nick McCabe, but he definitely had a non-technical virtuosity with his instrument.

Re: Bands I Loathe
 

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Re: Bands I Loathe
 

When I was younger and had less sense I would claim I hated this or that band so I wasn't associated with their fanbase, mostly in cases where said fanbase was unbelievably pretentious (e.g. Tool). But I don't think there's any band I loathe properly. Sure, there's countless bands or artists I'd rather not listen to, and I guess I'd prefer if people would choose to listen to something else, but all my hatred tends to focus on bad albums/songs by bands I otherwise enjoy. Those hurt more, I think.

Re: Bands I Loathe
 

In reference to the Nirvana comments above, I don't loathe Nirvana and am quite capable of enjoying some of their songs, but I do remember my first encounter with them as also my very first experience of having 'grown older' with reference to popular culture.

It was at a house party to which I'd been taken by a friend who was younger than me (I was 20, she was 16). Must have been 1992. Nirvana was played endlessly and everyone jumped on top of each other in a pile on the floor. I wasn't impressed by the heavy reliance on power chords, and the whole sound seemed to me to be snot-nosed and lacking in irony. (Though the scene wasn't much difference to parties I remembered of people jumping on top of each other on the floor while playing The World Won't Listen.) I thought, "What is this ####?" It seemed incredibly teenaged and enclosed in itself. 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' seemed like an ironic comment on the very scene from which the band had emerged, and their fanbase, which could be seen as self-awareness, I suppose. And yet, for me, it didn't seem self-aware. It seemed like a puppy-cult of death. I don't think I'll ever forget the perplexity of thinking, "What? This is youth culture now? This is meant to be alternative?"

Re: Bands I Loathe
 

In the case of Cardiacs, I didn't have to resort to mp3, I bought 13 of their albums for reasonable prices on their official shop. Hohoho! Happiness!

Re: Bands I Loathe
 

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Re: Bands I Loathe
 

When Nevermind came out, my upstairs neighbor played it at high volume daily, and sometimes more than once a day. I didn't know anything about the band at the time, but I certainly hated the album. After I got away from those forced-listening sessions, I started to like a few of the songs. Nirvana is one of the most overrated bands of all time, no question, but I think they were a pretty good band if you have any liking for the type of music they did.

An odd memory from back then: At least among the people I was around, you were supposed to think Nirvana was great and authentic, while Pearl Jam was horrible and phony. It seemed to be in fashion to hold this opinion FERVENTLY.