Music Villains (1 Viewer)

[Charles Gurganus]

Larry, please explain

"Terry Kath for screwing over Grand Funk Railroad."

I am a fan of both and never knew of any connection. Did Kath steal a song or something?

Scot Sax for NOT keeping his band Wanderlust together. He is on his 3rd or 4th band since then and none of them are as good as Wanderlust. He needs the guitar player Robert Bonfiglio back.

Yoko Ono for screaming and calling it art/music.

Yoko Ono for always being around the Beatles and changing the dynamics forever.

The Hollies for letting anyone replace Alan Clarke and still calling them the Hollies.

On the other hand, I THANK Graham Nash for leaving the Hollies as it gave them a kick start and gave us CS&N.

David Bowie for that terrible 45 min concert I paid good money to see.

Richard and Linda Thompson for not staying together....DARN.

Karen Carpenter for not taking care of herself. I miss her voice.

 

[John Watson]

I wasn't aiming for serious dissections here, tho that's ok. (I started the thread with a tongue-in-cheek attitude, but was sure I'd bother a few fans.)

Of what's been offered, I definitely agree on the malevolence of the forces that murder radio diversity, and on the utter evil of the manufacturers of PreFabPopTarts.

Wasn't quite sure how to handle Madonna - I still like to say her best work was in the pages of Penthouse Mag decades ago.

"Boney M" - reminds me that no one has mentioned Disco. Can it be pinned on any one business or musical force?

Janis Joplin, for making histrionics and shrieking an acceptable female vocal style. (Maybe Yoko should get some of the credit.)

Michael Jackson -for the culture of surrealistic excess that leads to single songs being turned into $15 million music videos.

Another MAJOR nomination - Engineers, for turning composers and arrangers into lever jockeys...

 

[Marvin]

I think he may have meant their ex-manager
Terry KNIGHT.

Not that screwing over, or anything having to do with, Grand Funk is particularly important as far as I'm concerned.

 

[Charles Gurganus]

Thanks Marvin. For the life of me I couldn't think of a connection between Kath (lead guitar for the great Chicago) and GFR. Seems Kath got screwed over by shooting himself accidently....

 

[Marvin]

Maybe GFR had something to do with that...

 

[Rob Gillespie]

Whomever decided to put the name 'R&B' to the tuneless wailing crap heard nowadays.

 

[Lewis Besze]

Frank Farian of Munich. He also shepherded "Eruption" and the infamous "Mili Vanili".Interestingly the "lip syncing" started at Boney M[Frank Farian sang all Bobby Farrel's lyrics],but nobody cared at the time.

 

[Matt Butler]

- For corporate a-holes trying to decide what we listen to.

- Yoko Ono....Nuff said

- Gangster rap for creating an image that is corrupting our youth.

 

[Carl Miller]

My problem isn't with what people consider art, but rather what we consider musicians.

Britney, and far too many popular artists today aren't musicians at all. They're entertainers.

Play an instrument or sing, accepting the idea the human voice is an instrument, and you're a musician...Composers are almost always musicians because they not only compose, but play an instrument. Write lyrics but play nothing, and you're a songwriter. Many play instruments and are musicians, some don't and are simply songwriters.

Since Britney does none of the above, it's difficult for me to accept that she is a musician. Her product could be art, that's cool. The end product could even be called music, which it is....But she doesn't play any role in making the music.

The 60 or so people it takes to create a Britney Spears album are responsible for the creation of her sound and without them, you'd have an empty CD jewel case with a picture of Britney on it.

All you need to do to determine who are musicians and who are not is ask yourself what kind of album people like Britney would make if they had to make the music on their own.

She is, like some other artists out there on MTV today, the 21st century equivlalent of Milli Vanilli...The only difference being that the studio vocalists singing for Milli Vanilli have been replaced by computers and machines. These computers now do the same work for Britney Spears as those vocalists did for Milli Vanilli.

 

[Colin Jacobson]

??? Where and when was this?

 

[Tony-B]

No, because what about the hair, makeup, and wardrobe people?! Oh, and don't forget the photographer.

 

[Grant B]

This says it all

 

[Erik.Ha]

You stepped over the line with this one...

 

[FeisalK]

Lewis

thanks re: Frank/Boney M and now that you've reminded me, Milli Vanilli as well

I think you can blame disco on The Bee Gees (n Saturday Night Fever) Travolta and Newton-John co-conspirators. in fact Robert Stigwood oughtta take the rap for this one.

 

[Charles Gurganus]

Colin, the Bowie concert was in support of his Station to Station record and it was at the Norfolk Scope. It was so bad that not enough fans even yelled for any encore. Maybe they were dazed and didn't realize the concert had ended. I was with a small vocal group from Greenville NC and we TRIED to get them to come back out but we didn't get any support from other fans. There was no warm up band and they played 6 or 7 songs and left.

 

[TheLongshot]

Actually, they just jumped on the bandwagon, since Disco was around before SNF. Too bad too, because before then, they were a pretty good band.

My choices:

Metallica - for losing total perspective of how they got where they are now.

Kurt Cobain - for starting the trend of whiny singers becoming pop stars

RIAA - For not supporting the one thing they should be supporting: the artists.

Clear Channel - for ruining radio stations across the country.

P. Diddy (or whatever he calls himself this week) - for being a no talent hack who makes his career on the backs of songs that are much better than his own.

Jason

 

[Carl Miller]

The stylists! Clearly the most under appreciated cogs in the music business today. Does Britney ever thank her stylist when she wins an award?

 

[Colin Jacobson]

Hmmm... that's very odd. I tried to find a specific setlist for the concert but failed. All the setlists I COULD find ran between 14 and 17 songs, so it seems weird Bowie'd only do 6-7 at the Norfolk show. Maybe he was ill - or too coked up that night?

Personally, I'd KILL to see one of those shows. Station to Station is maybe Bowie's best album, and the material I've heard from the tour sounds great. Sorry you had a bad experience, but from the 60+ Bowie shows I've seen, I think he's as good as it gets live...

 

[Aaron D]

[useless rant on]
While I truly agree with some of the postings here (especially those regarding Clear Channel, the RIAA, etc.), I think maybe the blame for this mess lies somewhere a little closer to home-- namely us, the fans.

Before I'm flamed off the board, consider the fact that the entire entertainment industry is, for better or worse, driven by market economics. Being no sort of business minded whatsoever, I tend to simply boil it down to supply and demand.

The people making Britney, Backstreet, P. Ditty, et. al. huge megastars (tongue in cheek) are the persons actually buying the albums. I don't blame the talentless hacks, their agents, producers, or (did someone actually blast the sound engineers? ) for wanting to be rich, I blame the utterly tasteless "teen culture" (hate the reference, but here it applies) for having no sense of sonic identity or the personality to venture out to find new meaningful music to spend their Sonic-drive-in-job money on.

Here's a mission statement to everyone here in this thread-- take something breathtaking and magical to your pupils (younger, less informed) and show them Miles Davis, Marvin Gaye, and early Bob Dylan. Give them a copy of Norah Jones, Van Morrison, or Al Green. Eventually, when the misinformed teen angst wears off, people may actually wake up and speak with their wallets-- and those huge corporate "tastemakers" will be forced to listen.

[/useless rant off]

Villians: singers that can't sustain their notes (ie- faaawaaoooohhoooohhhhhooohhhhhyeeeeeaaaaaah). I like jazz, soul, blues, r&b too, but stop already.

A

(sorry everyone)

 

[TheLongshot]

To be honest, I think most kids, including myself when I was one, have horrible taste in music. Usually, it has something to do with the acceptance thing with other people. Other times, it is all you hear around you.

I was raised on pretty good music: Beach Boys, Kingston Trio, Oak Ridge Boys, Statler Bros., but in the end, I still bought into pop big time in the 80s. It wasn't until college that things changed for me. To be honest, I think most kids go through the same thing.

This is why I don't list the big record companies as villans. They are what they are, makers of lowest common denominator crap that will sell millions of copies. Nothing wrong with that. What I am annoyed with, tho, is that that's all the distribution channels are filled with, thanks to Clear Channel. It makes it harder to find the "real" music. Thank god for the internet...

Jason