Heresy time...

My list of people/groups where I wonder what all the fuss is about...
NOT that I think these people completely suck or are totally talentless, just that for the most part I can't see what all the fuss is about. Too worshipped.

Marc Bolan
Jim Morrison
Queen
Lynyrd Skynyrd
Led Zepplin (ooooh!!)
Kanye West
Gram Parsons
The Clash
The Strokes
Oasis
Garth Brooks

there must be others... watch this space

I'm sure that some of my fave-raves are on other folks' What's The Fuss lists...

Good springboard for some considered conversation. Since we can't meet over the turntable with drink (or other depressant) in hand, maybe this'll do.

Some on your list I don't know well enough to comment: Lynyrd Skynyrd, Kanye West, Gram Parsons, Oasis, Garth Brooks. I've heard of each of them, and heard at least a track by each, but never motivated to learn more. That's its own pronouncement, of course.

The Clash and Led Zep I've often though is a case similar to the Beatles: they start out with a pronounced style or sound, and because they expand their palette and songcraft from there, they are lauded for it. In each case, this growth is much more than the typical band manages to pull off, so each becomes a Great Artist. This as much a commentary on what's "expected" from a pop artist generally, as on the specific artist. In each case, I understand why detractors would say what they say: much of what each band put out is no more than "good", and much is very much borrowed from others, though I think there's more than just one or two successes that speak to their genius. But if you aren't a particular fan of the style (Beatles or Clash or Led Zep), it's easy to overlook the band's praise. I'm more a fan of the Clash than the Beatles or Zeppelin, as it happens.

The Strokes and Marc Bolan / T. Rex are, for me, a case of a sound. Bolan is more a trailblazer for me than were the Strokes, but each puts out a recognizable sound that I like, and ascribe to them. (To be clear, I don't think it's the same sound for these two.) So they're dependable in providing that, and I don't get it in as pronounced a form with other artists, though I hear the Bolan influence on other bands much more than in the case of the Strokes.

I agree about Morrison, whose lyrics seem juvenile to me and whose rebel poet vibe just never captured me. I don't care enough to fight anyone over it, but generally find others who do it better than he did. Blixa Bargeld, for example, or Nick Cave.

I've always liked the Doors but I never looked at them as just Jim Morrison. That said I think Morrison is one of the better poets to come out of rock music. My other favorite 60's bands would be the Velvet Underground, The Who, The Kinks. A lot of the Motown sound is underrated as well.

I also liked the Clash a lot and the punk rock vibe is the closest to my vibe. That said--it's their first album whether the US or UK versions which carries the most weight with me. London Calling is good but they could easily have cut it back to a single LP which IMO would have made it a much better record---there's just too much superfluous material that's not even that good IMO. All the bombast about being the only band that matters---just hype and they would have been better off killing that shit.

The Ruts were a comparable band from that time period to the Clash but even better IMO. This week by the way I've been listening a bit to Vancouver's D.O.A. and the UK Subs. Also watching some Justin Johnson guitar videos on youtube and Lynyrd Skynyrd's 4 walls of Raiford is a particularly good guitar cover he does.

Speaking of overrated the Stones after Beggars Banquet went downhill hard. I never really could stand Rod Stewart either. Fleetwood Mac and the Eagles would also go into my overrated category.

>2 elenchus: I've seen the Clash. I have several of their albums. Sometimes I go around with Janie Jones running thru my head. But "The Only Band That Matters"? At least some of my list is me reacting to Hype Hype Hype.

Led Zep are ok. I enjoy them sometimes. Really like Gallows Pole. It's the folks who think they're gods, or that EVERYTHING pales in comparison. Does not compute.

Marc Bolan... well, I'm not English, didn't grow up watching him on TOTP, etc. But when I watch a clip nowadays of him performing, my tendency is to want to laugh, not rock. I think he had very little influence on any rock in the US. Give me Bowie or Roxy Music.

The Doors sound pretty good but Morrison is insufferable.

Gram Parsons fans tend to think he INVENTED country/rock, and becasue he died young (that is, died stupid) that he's some kind of saint or martyr. (Though he was a good songwriter, if a weak singer, and I like the Flying Burrito Brothers well enough.)

Kanye West apparently thinks he is the greatest artist of any kind to ever to have existed in the history of the world. I'm an old guy who doesn't listen to radio anymore so I went into Youtube and listened to 10 or so of his most popular songs. Most were ok, but I didn't see what the fuss was about. And I think that Shakespeare, Beethoven, and Miles Davis don't have anything to worry about.

Strokes fans and Oasis fans tend to think those guys are kings of their mountains. Some of their stuff is ok, but sounds unexceptional to me.

I love Janie Jones, White Man in Hammersmith Palais, What's my name and Police and Thieves off the Clash's first record. That record might lack the production quality of what followed but that raw immediate feel would not have come through if the band weren't really going for it with that fuck all the extras approach. Can't think of a better way to spend the night than speeding around underneath the yellow lights.

I like the Strokes--there's a bit of a Sweet Jane (not Sister Ray though) like Velvet Underground feel going on with them.

>3 lriley:

I agree about Rod Stewart for the most part, and about the Iggles except for maybe two songs, and later FMac, especially Stevie Nicks. We'll have to agree to disagree about Morrison.

Beggars Banquet is probably my favorite Stones album, but I'm surpised you don't like Let It Bleed. Much of Sticky and Exile is good... THEN they went down the terlet.

I really followed UK punk and wave when it was new (I was managing a rekkid store 1976-1986) and I liked a lot of this and that, but my very faves tended to be punk tangents -- Undertones, Soft Boys, Stranglers, Lurkers, Swell Maps. But then there's Never Mind the Bollocks -- one of God's perfect albums.

>5 lriley:
I've heard it said many times that the Strokes sound like the Velvets but I don't hear it. For Velvet influence give me Yo La Tengo, Luna, Spacemen Three, Subsonics.

Well with the Doors there are certain things I listen for as far as the songs I really like. Manzarek's piano mimicking rain falling in Riders--as well as Morrison's 'into this world were born, into this world we're thrown, like a dog without a bone, an actor out on loan' that shit puts pictures in my head......I love Krieger's flamenco style guitar on Spanish Caravan and there's a song where Densmore is just swishing the cymbal's Texas something or other. They could really rock but there were always these bluesy jazzish inflections but also something darker. It's a good combination.

It's not like the Stones didn't have some good songs after Beggars Banquet but for me their earlier works are their more interesting.

Some of my favorites from the late 70's early 80's--The Ruts, The Fall, the first record or two by Stiff Little Fingers and Gang of Four were outstanding. The first Bad Brains album (which was actually an ROIR cassette), D.O.A. for a while, UK Subs, anarcho-punks Crass, Joy Division and the first couple New Order LP's---when they went electronic they got more popular but they lost me. I liked the Jam. The Stranglers were musically kind of Doors-ish. The Raven is a really good record and Jean Jacques Burnel is a hell of a bass player. There are a bunch of more than less unknown bands from the USA that I liked like the Angry Samoans, Savage Republic and Agent Orange. Savage Republic incorporated a lot of Mediterranean and North African tones into their music and Agent Orange were really the first Surf Punk band.

#7--to me it's more like a post John Cale version of the Velvet Underground. There's more of a mellow vibe. John Cale was hands down the best musician in the band and they lost a bit after dropping him.

Great memories from the various mentions above. Strong overlap in my fav bands from 70s and 80s, I was cutting my teeth on rekkid-buying at the same time Crypto-Willobie was selling.

And a similar evaluation of how 80s punk hooked me but for the most part, it's the post-punk stuff that I still listen to. So I listen to DOA, SLF, and a lot of the SST stuff for nostalgia or a quick shot of adrenaline, but the longstanding admiration for bands like Stranglers, Yo La Tengo, This Heat are what remain.

I still listen to the Clash and bad brains, though. Their good stuff is incomparable for me.

Stones are another band I came to late, after reviling them as classic rock yawners. The stuff I like the best is the most derivative (read: Stollen Negro Hits, as I named one of my compilations), similar to my take on Led Zep.

And I think of the radio hits for Fleetwood Mac and Rod Stewart, and never felt the urge to get into deep cuts with them. The Eagles I've wondered a bit if I shouldn't give them a closer look: I appreciate their country rock / country blues groove more now than I did when I first heard them. But I suspect there are others who do it better, and so I try to keep an ear out for other good bands. I really like Over The Rhine, for example, and the best of Delbert McClinton's seems what the Eagles were after, anyway.

I like the first Jeff Beck Group album that had Rod on vocals.
But I like the Small Faces better -- it took two guys (Rod, Woody) to replace little Stevie Marriot.

I had forgotten about Joy Division -- add them to my yes list. Also the Dead Kennedys...

Draft of a Yes List

Some of these it's only certain periods or series of albums I'm into. For example I like the Hollies up to about 1967, that is, when they were still a beat group, but not thereafter. And I like Bon Scott AC/DC, but not thereafter. And many other caveats. And there are MANY MANY other artists that I LIKE but these are most of the ones I pay the most attention to. Sorted VERY Roughly by subgenre...

Dylan, The Band, John Prine, Jesse Winchester, Van Morrison, Elvis Costello

Velvet Undergrojund, Stooges, MC5, NYDolls, Modern Lovers, Pere Ubu, Cramps,

Robert Johnson, Howlin Wolf, Lightin Hopkins, Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy II

Beatles, Stones, Kinks, Who, Pretty Things, Them, Animals, Hollies, Small Faces, Yardbirds

Bowie, Roxy Music, Eno

Deviants, Pink Fairies, Hawkwind

Sex Pistols, Stranglers, Lurkers, Undertones, Soft Boys/Robyn Hitchcock (And yeah, i like the Jam, Clash, Buzzcocks, Fall, and many others though i was never much into the Oi or the more political bands.)

Soft Machine, Robert Wyatt, Caravan, Hatfield and the North, Gong, Kevin Ayers

Amon Duul II, Can, Tangerine Dream, Faust

Jefferson Airplane, Thirteenthth Floor Elevators, Sonics, Chocolate Watchband, Hendrix, Steppenwolf

AC/DC, Budgie, Monkees

Allman Brothers, Flying Burrito Brothers, Michael Nesmith

Milt Jackson, Oscar Peterson, Horace Silver, John Coltrane

Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Chopin

Alan Stivell

Drifters, Impressions, Temptations, early Funkadelic

hmm who did i miss?

>7 Crypto-Willobie: & >9 lriley:

Broken Social Scene, maybe?

https://youtu.be/WVe70xdcclU

#13--never actually heard of them before but the song is cool. Check them out some more later.

#12--The Specials were so cool and I'm a fan of the Pogues as well.

The Clash but even more so the Ruts were capable of playing some really good dub reggae--same with the Bad Brains. Speaking of which Bob Marley.

The Cramps--have a few of their records too.

Fugazi are great and by the way I have two Minor Threat LP's. Rancid and Sublime are two other favorites. I wore out multiple CD's of both those bands. I prefer Stone Roses easily over Oasis. Really like Alice in Chains and the older I get the more I like early Black Sabbath. I'd take them over any of Pink Floyd, Queen or Led Zeppelin. I also like RATM and one of my favorite rap tunes is Insane in the Membrane.

On the DK's I have the original Fresh fruit for rotting vegetables LP where on the back cover you see the lounge band with their real faces. Also have the first two Bad Religion LP's in vinyl--How can hell be any worse and Into the unknown (which the band tried to suppress).

From the post rock world I like Mogwai and Slint.

I don't know Classical very well--I've never really wanted to go there.

As far as Dylan---again it's the early stuff that I like best. Creedence is good.

Celtic Punk--Dropkicks, the Tossers and the Tosspints.

Country in general I don't care for---still Hank Williams, Patsy Cline--there's some good stuff. I like Willie Nelson's openmindedness. Steve Earle is cool. His son died a few months back--he was pretty good too and there's John Prine who kind of walks between folk and country.

.....and there's always Woody Guthrie whose guitar killed fascists.

I tend to respect Guthrie's art more than I want to listen to it, the exception being "Mean Talking Blues" which I find equally vicious and hilarious.

>15 lriley:

Prine died of covid a few months ago.

#17--yeah I know. 250,000+ now in the United States and still a good % of people here think it's a hoax.

>1 Crypto-Willobie: "Lynyrd Skynyrd"

Wikipedia says: "Knowing that Collins played guitar and owned his own equipment, the band decided to approach him about joining them. Van Zant and Burns both had a reputation for trouble, and Collins fled on his bicycle and hid up a tree when he saw them pull up in his driveway. They soon convinced him that they were not there to beat him up and he agreed to join the band . . ." How can you not love a creation story like that?!

"Free Bird" was voted the class song of my high school class. My classmates who performed it at our commencement ceremony attributed the extended version they played to the fact that they couldn't remember how it ended. I could count the Skynyrd songs I know on the fingers of one hand, but I recognize a certain "rawness" in their music that a lot of people interpret as authenticity. I'd attribute their popularity to regional loyalty, but the YouTube videos of them performing "Free Bird" at Knebworth in '76 and in Oakland in '77 suggest that there is a broadness to their appeal.

I don't hate Skynyrd. For instance I really like Simple Kind of Man. Just saying that FOR ME the Skynyrd worship in some quarters does not compute.

Those are some funny stories, about Collins up the tree, and the high school band not knowing where to end the song...

Willobie Willobie Willobie...I had an absurdly long rant rearing to go here yesterday, but had to run and lost the impetus to post it in the interim.

I think more than anything, it's how old you were and who you got into when the magic of music first grabbed you and that adrenaline rush of wonder and awe, so that wow-ness kicked in, giving you goosebumps galore upon first hearing that song—what song was that? what record is that on?—and you just had to find out who the band on the radio was, and go buy the album, so that the music became your music, the band your band, your tribe, a part of your dawning identity.

I was 14, a little late, when Led Zeppelin (there's a third "e" there, you see that, like a third eye, #1 Cryptid Willobie!) became one of those bands for me. And they'd been defunct almost four years by then. Had I been born 10 years earlier the bands would have likely been the Surfaris or Beach Boys, or the usual suspects, Beatles, Stones, Who, Kinks; ten years later, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, Nirvana (surprised not to see sacred Nirvana in this nascent list of the overrated). A couple of so far unmentioned Led Zeppelin alternatives, around during the same era, but overshadowed by the rigid airship, that you might actually enjoy, include:

Montrose (first two records only—1973-74—but especially their first)
UFO, every record during the first Michael Schenker era (1974-78), the link is their studio rendition of a classic by Love.

>21 absurdeist:
Montrose -- the original Van Halen? or so I'm told.

Yeah, I'm pretty old (though if I'm not mistaken lriley is the same age), and I have a limited capacity for appreciating conventional hard rock or - gasp - heavy metal. In spite of the presence of Budgie and AC/DC and Pink Fairies on my list.

I voted yes that calling something Overrated is Overrated. But all those bands I called overrated, I like something by all of them. Even the Doors!

All I can say is... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NC3ZIfK5rto

#22--I'm 63. Growing up my parents were very anti R&R--that wasn't played in the house. My dad liked military marching bands and Irish music--my mom christmas lp's, Herb Albert and the Tijuana brass, Moon River crooner kind of stuff. We were outside most of the time anyway. In school they use to pipe the local radio station into the lunch room--so that could be Janis Joplin, Seals and Croft, (Horse with no name) America, Beatles, Stairway to heaven, Proud Mary-CCR, Eric Carmen, House of the Rising Sun etc. etc.--a hodgepodge of popular radio rock. I liked it a lot more than what my parents had at home but it's not like I had favorite bands---it was more background until after I got out of high school in 1975 and started putting a few dollars together and at first I started buying Beatles, Stones and Dylan records but the Pistols were beginning to get notoriety along with some others and that's where I headed. Started with Elvis Costello--quickly moved on to the Clash, Pistols, Dead Kennedy's. I found the Fall's Live at the Witchtrials (knew nothing about them but loved the title) at the local mall and Wire's 154 (another great album) and Gang of Four's Entertainment and the Specials. That became my music. I went into the Coast Guard in 1981--picked up a bunch of stuff in the New Bedford Mass. area and then wound up on Governor's Island off the tip of Manhattan. Every week I would go into the city on a record run to Bleecker Bob's on McDougal and (I think) W. 3rd St. in the Village (next to the Bottom Line where Dylan use to play) and they were just stocked with everything I wanted.

On Nirvana---I like Nirvana--they wrote good songs---the hype was really too much and I think beyond Cobain's ability to handle something that had turned into a circus. Three piece bands--not that easy. I liked AOC (Alexandria Ocasio Cortez/Alice in Chains) better---the Dirt album. It's like that bass is falling off a cliff.

>23 lriley:
I don't know why I misremembered yr age. I'm 67.

Elvis Costello! how could I forget and leave him off my Yes List?
I've now added him and some others to my Yes List above in post 12.

Growing up our family (following my dad; my mom was non-musical) was into the classic "musicals" -- Oklahoma, South Pacific, My Fair Lady, Music Man, Guys and Dolls, Camelot, etcetc. My sister and I would perform them while washing and drying dishes. My dad also played ukulele, not only Hawaiian music (I have Hawaiian cousins) but also the 'old songs' -- Ain't She Sweet, April Showers, Two little Girls in Blueland, etcetc (stuff from his childhood that his father and siblings sang).

I encountered the Beatles in 3rd grade, the Monkees in 6th, and in high school (Class of '71) it was Dylan, the Band and Steppenwolf (Monster! I passed out the lyrics to Monster in civics class.) Of course by then I had heard lotsa stuff on the radio, but a lot of it went in one head and out the other. In college my roommates educated me in blues and soul, The Who and the Allmans. In '76 I started at the record store and learned about a lot of 'popular' music I hadn't previously paid any attention to. But the same year I was turned on to The Velvet Underground, which was a life-changing experience (I first heard the White Light/White Heat album while tripping), and of course just then (76-78) punk exploded. Since then I been a Zig-Zag Wanderer.

#24--I do remember the Beatles (like baseball cards) cards from grade school. I think my older sister had some. We had two television channels until my late teens. The news would come on at night (it was the Vietnam War era) and that's what was on. My dad liked to watch baseball. He was a Mets fan and I was a Yankees fan. I haven't really followed baseball though since the 80's.

I do remember seeing both The Kids are Alright (The Who) and The Last Waltz (The Band) when they came out in local movie theaters.

I started listening to the Velvets and Doors in earnest while I was in the Coast Guard. They were what I would listen to if I wasn't listening to punk rock. Speaking of the Doors--Manzarek produced the first several X albums and I really liked the first two--Los Angeles and the second one had White Girl which is my favorite X song.

It's a journey. We haven't jammed since March but a friend of mine has an old Ricky bass down in my basement and I have a bunch of guitars. He's got a better ear than I do for things he'll hear over the radio or whatnot. He'll start playing something and about 80% of the time I figure out what it is in a minute or so and he covers a very wide musical spectrum--could be Johnny Cash one day, Green Day or Blink the next, then the Clash to Pink Floyd to Sly and the family Stone to the Offspring to Rage against the Machine to the Stones or Kinks or Tool or Alice in Chains and it goes on and on and on. Well it did anyway. I tend to come up with my own jams or I'll look up guitar tutorials to help figure out something I want to play.

>25 lriley: He'll start playing something and about 80% of the time I figure out what it is in a minute or so

That sounds like an ideal way to jam, frankly. I have no musical performance ability, but I can imagine having one, and that's what I'd like to have.

#26--I'm pretty average really so it was always for fun and a bit of therapy and an excuse to knock back a few beers. He use to play in bands that gigged a lot. He's better with a bass though than with the guitar. His main issue on the guitar IMO is he wants to play everything perfectly the way it sounds on whatever recording device he heard it on and I tend to just get an idea and go for things. That said I have issues at times picking up rhythms. It's funny the things you invent yourself are the things you play the best.....and Peter Hook (Joy Division/New Order) tells this story that illustrates this. As he had it when Bill Wyman decided to retire his bass for the Rolling Stones--Jagger and Richards reached out to him (and to others too) to audition for that job and Hook though flattered turned them down flat because it was beyond his comfort level. He was a self taught guy (like Bernard Sumner JD's/NO's guitarist) who really didn't have a clue how to play anyone else's stuff and really if you look at Joy Division and New Order's catalog other than the Velvet's Sister Ray they really never did covers.

The Beatles are not only the most overrated band of the last century; they may actually be the most overrated thing of any kind in the history of planet earth.