h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Guns and Roses..Bon Jovi...Michael Jackson..Whitney Houston...Oasis...U2..Paul Weller..Boy George...anyone from Pop Idol,X Factor...and so on.

BTW I have no respect for anyone who despises a brand or genre of music.I like it all from Gregorian chants,Opera,Classical,Jazz,R&B.

Have to admit some Rave music from the 80s left me cold.Too for me but I never have dismissed it outright.It just isn't to my taste.

I'm not going to read four pages of backlog, but I saw this thread title and thought 'U2' before even reading Post 1.

I won't bother nominating the others, but I would like to point out that Hoov saying 'Blur and Oasis' about halfway down Page 1 makes him sound like a grumpy old man who hasn't actually listened to any music released in the 1990s.

B

Well, I read a little further into the thread..... until this stopped me in my tracks:

"Plus I can't quite get over Zappa's relentless scatology."

Not your style at all eh, Ed?

The thing about U2 is, nobody (surely?) thinks they're great musicians. Sure, the noise that came out was something to behold, but even The Edge was more famous for his get-up than his playing.

As for over-rated, it's gotta be Clapton. He's pish.

You need to listen to early Cream and the blues stuff he did even before that.

B

Kate Bush. The odd commercial success aside, a career built upon caterwauling and grunts.

Can I throw in The Muse? Musically fine, but the singer leaves me cold - why or whhhhyyyyyyy doooooooo alllllll the woooorrrrrds haaavve tooooooooooo beeeeeeeee steeeeeeeeetched out?

I've heard a fair bit of his early stuff MB. It's ok.

'God' almighty though, he's not that great.

I think Clapton's best blues is on Pilgrim. The whole album is an outpouring of grief and guilt over the loss of his son. It's very disturbing and exhilarating at the same time.

"I have no respect for anyone who despises a brand or genre of music.I like it all from Gregorian chants,Opera,Classical,Jazz,R&B."
[StillIncognitas]

And I have great respect for you for saying that.

It's hard to have more than a superficial knowledge of the music that's been written, though. Lord knows I've tried to sample as much as possible. I've still barely scratched the surface. I've generally not enjoyed rap music when I've heard it, and yet Queen Latifah is supposed to be a major rap artist, and I love her to pieces, regardless of what type of songs she's performing.

Talent is probably the crucial element. Talented people can make just about any genre sound good. The downside is that talent has a shelf life. There are brilliant vocalists who blow everybody else away in their 20s and 30s, but only the most devoted fans want to hear them sing when they're 75.The same can happen to violinists. pianist, etc., but the slide is not likely to be as extreme. Plus, they more insightful among them realize what is happening and make changes in their performing repertoir so that the stuff they can no longer do justice to is not there.

Jaysus, MB, but I hate Cream.

I know why, too. It was all that 'Look at us! We're a really talented supergroup!' w*nk. 'Everybody stand there and nod sagely while we show you how self-indulgent we can be.' You only have to look a Ginger Baker's unnecessary drooling and gurning. 'This must be really difficult drumming. It's making me pull these faces like I've got a skinful of mandrax.'

Boundaries! Boundaries!

I'll give Clapton his due - he was a slight exception. He was as dull as ever.

The other week I paid someone to teach my son how to play 'Sunshine of Your Love.'

Pink Floyd. Every now and then their music almost breaks into a tune.

Myself, I don't see tunes as essential to good music (and having seen some of your choices in the past, I'm surprised you do).

But I agree - I'm a Pink Floyd dissenter myself. People go on about the ground breaking production on 'Dark Side of the Moon'. Sorry...it leaves me cold. Where's the soul?

And all that Sid Barret mimsy about bicycles.

"I don't see tunes as essential to good music" [Edward the Bonobo]

Brilliant artists can get away with not being tuneful. Mediocre ones need all the help they can get. Brahms happened to be one of the brilliant ones, but ironically he is remembered most for arranging popular student drinking songs ["Academic Festival Overture"] and Hungarian dances. Beethoven and Haydn made a lot of money arranging Irish and Scottish folk songs. Aaron Copland is most famous for "Appalachian Spring," which would be nothing without Ann Lee's famous Shaker tune "Simple Gifts."

Therefore, I ask you: why would a composer or performer not want to have everything going for him/her? Tunes can be flashy or subtle, or even half-hidden. If tunes are not very good, maybe that's a sign that the musician isn't very good either, and that's a problem. The lack of a good voice[I'm thinking of Bob Dylan] is not a stumbling block if the songs are very good. People with better voices can make the songs famous, as peter Paul and Mary did with "Blowin' in the Wind" or "The Times They are a-changin'." Then again, Anthony Newley had a great voice, and he wrote his own material ["Stop the World, I want to get off," "The Roar of the Greasepaint"] and some of the songs were hits at the time, but his shows have been pretty much forgotten.

Sting, where is thy death?

Broadly speaking (and only broadly!), melody is at the heart of the European musical tradition whereas the in the African-American tradition other elements are more to the fore.

It's not quite that simple, of course. Thelonius Monk said that the first rule of jazz is:

'Hum the melody in your head!'

>>Therefore, I ask you: why would a composer or performer not want to have everything going for him/her?

You don't need melody at all, some composers just use rhythm and timbre, or atmospheric noises alone. Or 4'33" of silence.

Take the difference between Lennon and McCartney. McCartney was about melodic invention (and those who know more about these things than I do tell me he was good at it.) Lennon pretty much kept to a monotone. No bad thing.

>> People go on about the ground breaking production on 'Dark Side of the Moon'. Sorry...it leaves me cold.

It's things like their tendency to break new ground which qualifies them for their high ratings. Your dislike of them is subjectivity (although ultimately that's the important thing).


>>Where's the soul?

There's plenty of soul, it's just that it's an astonishingly cold, bleak, bitter soul. That's why it's hilarious to hear The Scissor Sisters' singing "is there anybody in there" , Bee Gee style.

"You don't need melody at all, some composers just use rhythm and timbre, or atmospheric noises alone. Or 4'33" of silence."[quotes]

That's probably true, as far as it goes. Some genres emphasize rhythm more than other factors. In ragtime [which I'm listening to at the moment], melody and rhythm are somewhat at odds with each other. The Twentieth Century seems to have been a long march away from melodic dominance and toward rhythmic dominance. In the beginning and middle, I could find things I could enjoy. I felt marooned on a beach toward the end, though. The people who claimed to write serious [i.e. pre-Classical] music seemed to want to torture everybody except a small elite of musicologists with tunes you couldn't follow, and dissonance glaring enough to make your ears hurt. Jazz hurtled toward this state as well. Pop music was a mixed bag.

If I had to choose one popular genre, I would go with country music. There's often some wry humor, the singers don't try to force their tone, the lyrics are enjoyable at best, and predictable at worst.