I staged my intervention in comments, but I thought I would share, to open up a larger discussion here. Matt, while linking to Erin Polgreen’s book review of a history of women in music in the 90s, criticizes Erin for picking “Wargasm” as a representative L7 song. And suggests instead that their best song is “Pretend We’re Dead”. This simply cannot stand. “Pretend We’re Dead” is an okay song, but it represents the dark underbelly of the 90s alternative rock revolution, which is the inevitable watering down process. I don’t know why they wrote and performed this song, but I believe the common and probably correct assumption was that it was a straight-up attempt to sell out, to grab a piece of the Pearl Jam market for themselves. “Pretend We’re Dead” is the worst song you could pick of L7’s, if you’re talking about them in a historical context, because it tells you nothing about what they sound like. Other suggestions were “Shove” and “Shitlist”, with me gunning for “Fast and Frightening”.
But what I found kind of surprising was that Erin also picked “Dance Song ‘97” for the representative Sleater Kinney song. On a list that includes “Rebel Girl” by Bikini Kill, I thought you’d probably go for a more iconic song than that. “Words and Guitars” would be my starter song, with “Dig Me Out” as a second pick.
The book in question is Girl Power: The Nineties Revolution in Music, and I’m halfway through it right now. It’s a breezy, quick read, but I’m not done because I’m sadly juggling a bunch of books right now. What’s interesting is author Marisa Meltzer actually tackles the question of selling out and dumbing down, and how ideas that started in riot grrl were dumbed down until the Spice Girls were yelling “Girl power!” Meltzer takes a more generous approach to this than I do, arguing that perhaps a little Alanis Morrisette would lead you down the road towards harder stuff. I appreciate that argument, but my sense is that it’s just too hopeful. What Morrisette and those like her did by cleaning up riot grrl and making it palatable for the mainstream was to make the female rage in it meaningless. Rage about sexism and sexual violence is scary, but there’s really nothing that interesting or rebellious about a woman being pissed because she was rejected, and unable to get over it. The big sell out of the genuine punk rockness of the early 90s has meant that, outside of feminist and music geek circles, the explosion of women in music in the 90s is mostly remembered in a distorted way, such as thinking that “Pretend We’re Dead” is the iconic L7 song.
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Meltzer takes a more generous approach to this than I do, arguing that perhaps a little Alanis Morrisette would lead you down the road towards harder stuff.
Agg...when my high school friends and I heard “Hands in my Pocket” in the summer after our first year of college, we were all stunned that something sounding so scattered, dumb sounding, and ridiculous was actually being played on the radio.
What’s interesting is author Marisa Meltzer actually tackles the question of selling out and dumbing down, and how ideas that started in riot grrl were dumbed down until the Spice Girls were yelling “Girl power!”
Something which can be boiled down into a simple soundbite has the greatest chance of catchiness...especially if it builds upon previous mainstream cultural trends.
Gah....I remembered how “Wannabe” was so popular in the late ‘90s that adolescent girls were screaming the song out of apartment windows and on NYC streets during my summer home from college. What’s worse, I actually know some 40-50 year old male co-workers who love that song....and sing it at work to my annoyance.
Morrisette was also vague about the definition of irony, which pisses many people off. “Shove” is a great song, though, just because you can be the most hard bitten misogynistic cockmonger on the planet, and still think it’s a catchy tune. That’s comforting, somehow.
I was always a fan of “Everglade” off of that album. Hungry for Stink and Smell the Magic were both excellent albums in their own right. But let’s face it “Pretend We’re Dead” was the one that got on the airwaves, and the thing that brought us into the fold. And while even the band felt that Bricks was a cleaned-up poppy album, it still did a great job of shaking up a lot of teenage girls:
Turn the tables with our unity
They’re not a moral nor majority
Wake up and smell the coffee
or just say not to individuality
I mean, the whole song is about getting into political action. The chorus is about how people won’t hear you if you don’t speak up.
Yeah, it’s scrubbed up they made it nice and pretty for the airwaves, but it did exactly what it was supposed to do.
“Pretend We’re Dead” is...good, but yeah, Matt Y had to have been doing some heavy duty drugs to think that it was even in the same league as “Wargasm” which is probably one of the top 10 anti-war songs ever made. “Wargasm” was the song that got me into L7, “Pretend We’re Dead” was a fun song to sing along to in Rock Band, completely different leagues.
“Step Aside” off of “One Beat” is my very favorite Sleater-Kinney song, followed a close second by “Youth Decay” off “All Hands On the Bad One” and “One More Hour” off “Dig Me Out.” Something about “Step Aside” gives me goosebumps every time I hear it, possibly the horns.
My favorite L7 song is probably “Shirley.” That song is so damn cathartic. “Pretend We’re Dead” is just sorta “meh.”
I keep thinking 2010, teabaggers, and this damn recession might actually be tolerable if Sleater-Kinney and Le Tigre would just reunite and release new albums. I need the suck put in proper musical context.
Wow. “Pretend We’re Dead” is how someone capsulizes the sound of L7? Sheesh. I always thought their catchiest tune was “Shove” - which unlike “Pretend...” is a kickass song. Your other suggestions work too, Amanda.
I must admit, though, that I never thought of L7 as punk. For some reason they seemed more on the metal side to me, but I often disagree on others definitions of punk. I can’t define it, but I know it when I hear it and all.
“Rebel Girl” is a great song, but not my favorite of Bikini Kill’s. I like the rawness of “Suck My Left One” but their scariest song is probably “White Boys.” That one still gives me chills all these years later. Now Bikini Kill was unquestionably punk.
Anything that lists Lunachicks is good to me. Nobody ever mentions them anymore. I can’t figure that one out.
I’ll hold out hope that Meltzer mentions the Aquanettas in there somewhere.
Morrisette was also vague about the definition of irony, which pisses many people off.
I actually thought this was funny as hell. Mostly, she’s singing about situational irony. But because it doesn’t fit the strict dictionary definition of irony (which you know tons of people ran to look it up) people flipped. Other recording artists screw with grammar, drop letters off words to make it fit a stanza, mispronounce words so they’ll rhyme and some just flat out make up words and who cares? But a mainstream watered down female singer uses irony in broad terms and it was ZOMG! THE SKY IS FALLING!, from people who felt smart because they had memorized the definition of irony from their Merriam-Webster.
It wasn’t even good as situational irony. “A free ride when you’ve already paid”? People shrug and give the ticket to someone else, they don’t get emotional and write songs over it. “A free ride back to the hellhole you came from; you left there three days ago and swore you’d never go back” is much more ironic. “Rain on your wedding day”? Most vows have “for better or for worse” or its equivalent. Rain on a wedding day can be symbolic of being able to cope as a couple, and is therefore appropriate, if unwanted. Rain during the Sun Tanning convention would be ironic.
As “Isn’t it ironic that Alannis doesn’t understand irony?” is based on somewhat uncommon irony type (I think I’d categorize it as dramatic irony, because the speaker and his audience are sharing an awareness of the ‘character’, the singer’s, lack of awareness), I don’t think the criticism is coming from people who just looked up irony in the dictionary.
Shak, even situational irony doesn’t describe what she’s talking about. What she’s talking about is what we call “bad luck”. The reason people got mad is completely legitimate---the song, like all of her catalogue, was the musical equivalent of the show “Friends”. It took the best parts of Gen X culture, watered them down to meaninglessness, and resold them to gullible people as hip.
Irony is the calling card of shrewd indie loving hipsters everywhere, and it was really gaining steam in the 90s. Most irony is skewed towards humor, such as the practice of wearing silly T-shirts that you wouldn’t wear if you weren’t joking. Morrisette writing that song was like taking a dump on the floor while burglarizing the Gen X house.
Samantha, I’d say it’s unintentional irony, which I suppose is like dramatic irony lived out in real life. Appreciating unintentional irony is one of the hallmarks of the hipster-y Gen X culture. Bill Hicks and David Cross are the masters of it. David Cross even has a routine about growing up in the cultural capital of unintentional irony, Georgia---his joke about seeing fat yet undernourished rednecks wearing T-shirts that say “God don’t make no mistakes”. Oh, irony.
I always kind of thought L7 fell more in the metal than punk camp as well, which made them quintessential 90’s hard rock--taking the best from both flavors and making your own stew.
And my favorite Sleater-Kinney is probably “One More Hour”. Gives me shivers to this day.
Why can you be so insightful about most things, and so myopic about musical preferences? Ugh.
Look, you can sneer at Alanis Morisette and her grasp of English grammar (syntax? vocabulary? whatever) all you like - but if, like me, you came up through your teen listening mostly to Billy Holiday, then women like her and like e.g. Sinead O’Connor were a big deal. Context matters, you know.
And liking them hasn’t made me a watered down or dumbed down feminist anymore than not having heard of any of the other bands you mention has. And/both, remember?
I just remembered that “Shove” was one of the songs they played in the movie “Tank Girl.” Change of plans, the band is now dead to me.
I always gathered that Morrisette was sort of a musical fifth column. Kind of the Yoko Ono of human evolution. Gen X could have gone on to be interesting, or complacent, depending on how protective they were willing to be about language and definitions. Those things are, after all, the center of any decent rebellion. I think Morrisette redefining irony is sort of reminiscent of Orwellian thoughtcrime. When they make you accept irony for whatever version they think it is, they control you. Not to be alarmist, but I think that’s what allows such outcomes as burning the village in order to save it, and electing a homicidal moron twice because we value security. It’s a little too ironic, dontcha think?
Personally I don’t think that L7 or Bikini Kill have aged very well but then I am not a big fan of most of that kind of “grungey” alternative rock from America in the early 90s. Nowadays thinking back to that era in American music, I’d much rather listen to Unrest or Pavement then Nirvana or Hole.
As for other music with a Feminist bent from that time period, I do think Liz Phair’s “Exile in Guyville” is one of the most brilliant indie records of that decade and across the pond Elastica’s first record was fantastic.
Still the whole neo-feminist-punk thing of the 90s did not, in my opinion, produce as much innovative, diverse and exciting music as the first punk feminists: X-Ray Specs, The Slits, The Raincoats, Au Pairs, Siouxsie, and of course Patti Smith.
AdamN @ #22, I kind of feel the opposite way re: 90’s rock. I find L7, Bikini Kill, and yes, Nirvana much more musically striking than Pavement. I mean yes, Slanted & Enchanted, but then what? Nada. Zip. Boring and dehydrated rock & roll.
Or course Elastica and Liz Phair are also way better than Pavement. Even Alanis Morrisette kicks Stephen Malkmus’ Jick all over the place.
I am a long-time reader and fan of your words and perspective on a lot of issues and topics. Even when I don’t necessarily agree, I’m always interested in your take on a given issue. I say this to couch my next statement, so that it does not come across as being the ONLY thing I think, with regard to your opinions:
Holy living mother of fuck, you can be the most un-self-aware insufferable music snob I’ve ever, ever read.
Dr. Locrian,
Yeah, Pavement is for me all about Slanted and Enchanted, The Watery Domestic Ep, and Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. But I vastly prefer Unrest’s two Eps to those records, I think they are totally underrated. Or Mercury Rev’s Boces which sounds like a road map for a lot of best indie rock that was to come from the Flaming Lips to Animal Collective.
Overall I am generally not a fan of most American stuff from the early 90s. I really love what was going on in the UK at the time however, both the Shoegaze movement (My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, Ride) and Britpop (Suede, Pulp, Blur, Elastica, Super Furry Animals, Radiohead (remember they started out lumped into Britpop), Saint Ettiene). The American stuff I love from the 90s comes at the end of the decade: Neutral Milk Hotel, Flaming Lips, Built to Spill, and Modest Mouse.
In comparison the grunge stuff sounds musically un-adventurous to me and strangely conservative. While Suede was playing with gender in a sexy and striking way, Blur, Saint Ettiene, and Pulp using disco and synth pop with indie, and My Bloody Valentine fusing noise/distortion to Beach Boy harmonies in an incredibly exciting ways, Americans were playing this muddy macho kind of boring meh in my opinion.
I love all the bands you mention, but I also love the American rock from the same period. I’ve said this same thing before a lot, but I’ll say it again: pound for pound, the real NW “grunge” from the 80’s (Green River, Melvins, Mudhoney, The U-Men, Screaming Life-era Soundgarden, and Bleach-era Nirvana) was less about making completely new sounds (which is a musical red herring as far as I’m concerned) and more about erasing the stupid Balkanization of 80’s hard rock between the artsy and poppy camps. An article in the Rocket at the time most accurately expressed the spirit of Seattle by saying when you at a show, you didn’t know if that dirty guy or girl drinking an Oly at the back of the club was some indie punk scenester or just some dude who drove in from Bothell, and the made the whole thing just plain FUN. All inclusive. Everybody was in a fucking band, and everyone went to shows.
It all ended in ‘91 or so, but for a while it was a real musical utopia. This includes the awesome things happening down in Olympia at the time as well.
Hmm...maybe it was all inclusive. I don’t know, I wasn’t there.
I do know when I heard Nirvana for the first time in 7th grade they just seemed like a metal band with somewhat better hair who had listened to the Ramones and as a result made somewhat better music then most metal bands. As a young gay kid in NJ suburbia, it just sounded like the same old oppressive sound of macho American youth.
However, that same year when I saw Suede’s video of “Metal Mickey” it was a revelation. To see these fey, somewhat seedy, melodramatic, campy, bizarrely stylish, subversive and altogether alien boys ROCK out to a fantastically catchy song that seemed equal parts Bowie, the Smiths, and Adam and Ants blew my little kid mind. I didn’t know what it was but I knew it was wonderful and weird and I absolutely belonged. To me what they were doing was far more punk then anything going on in America. I will still take Suede, at least in their original incarnation, over any grunge bands any day.
I always thought Courtney Love must owe serious royalties for stealing Kat Bjelland’s sound and image.
Glad to see some love for early Mercury Rev (although I don’t know if you can say the Lips were followers. Jonathan Donahue was in the Lips prior to MR. They both branched out into widescreen psychedelia at about the same time, too). If you like them, I highly recommend Rollerskate Skinny, who sounded like what I always thought the Flaming Lips would have matured into if Ronald had stayed in the band. (You can download one of their singles over at my place.) Also, Hopewell, who made up part of the touring band version of Mercury Rev for many years. Oh, and Radial Spangle, who ended up as The Charm Pops and employed a couple of the Flaming Lips early drummers. Most of them have hovered around the nexus of sometime Mercury Rev member and producer Dave Fridmann.
Suede seemed a little to calculating for me. If you’re looking for wickedly arch, fey, rockin’ androgyny, I always preferred Placebo.
And Sleater-Kinney’s best song? It’s kind of like picking the Pixies’ best, but Words + Guitar are probably at the top. How about I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone?
Sure Suede are calculating. I really just think it was kind of the smart, British, post-modern thing they were all doing, esp. Pulp, that really didn’t have a parallel in America until this last decade. Their first two albums, really the only original Suede, covers some pretty emotional terrain despite this tendency. I never liked Placebo though.
Holy living mother of fuck, you can be the most un-self-aware insufferable music snob I’ve ever, ever read.
How is it un-self-aware to say that Alanis Morisette was terrible, her music sucked, and she co-opted real feminism to sell the same sort of thoughtless, unthreatening crap usually peddled to girls?
Also Sinead O’Connor is a much much better singer and songwriter than Alanis.
Reading people rate ‘90s indie bands here is sort of strange – IMO L7 was the least good of all the riot grrl bands, and you can hear the mushiness of Pretend You’re Dead in Shove, though Shove is a better song; Unrest had a few good pop songs but weren’t at Pavement’s level; the shoegazer bands made some good music but Mercury Rev never quite got there*; I generally enjoy Britpop but “Creep” has always been a terrible bandwagon-jumping crap of a song… what am I even getting at? I guess it’s kind of weird to see people ruling out entire movements in ‘90s rock – it’s like saying the only good hip-hop at the time was Native Tongues. The cool thing about the early ‘90s was all this stuff bubbling up at once.
*okay I haven’t listened to Mercury Rev in 10 years so I am going to go do that today and see what I think.
Well, that’s the fun of arguing music--people are always surprising you. And I agree with you about finding it odd that some are willing to dismiss entire genres of music. I pretty much like just about every band mentioned on this thread. I just can’t stand Pavement after Slanted & Enchanted, for very arbitrary and personal reasons.
LOL@ jdobbin. She really is. My bf is the same way though. i was listening to Pink Floyd one day, and he told me that he didn’t like that Pink Floyd. He was a fan of the Pink Floyd before they became popular when apparently they were making some other kind of music that no one liked and were going nowhere. Then they started making shit that people liked, and so of course, my bf didn’t like them anymore.
It always cracks me up. I’ll listen to some Alanis, especially if I’m smoking pot. I’ll also listen to wargasm, definitely a good time. I love listening to Eddie Veder do Masters of war, which is another thing guaranteed to give my bf aneurysms. I am not a music snob. I love all kinds of music, mainstream to way out of it. Music is like pizza...even when it’s bad, it’s better than not having pizza.
I have a new theory on why music geeks scare and anger people more than other people with strong opinions and a great love of their love: Because music geeks were often nerdy in high school, but then grew out of it. Boundary transgressors get no love.
Angl, it’s really hilarious to accuse me of not liking something because others do. That’s grade A projection, and certainly inclines me to think that people lash out at people expressing strong opinions on music because of their own issues, not because the person is objectively a snob. I listen to insane amounts of popular music. I loooooove good pop music. Love it. For my 32nd birthday, I threw a disco-themed party and literally pumped out 6 hours of popular disco music, something that a for real snob would likely find unbearable. The accusations hooked on me appear to be based on the fact that I actually give a shit about bands that weren’t top 40. But I give a shit about a lot of bands that were. I just don’t think something’s automatically enticing because it sold a bunch of copies. Mediocrity as the mainstream in American culture is hardly a snobbish opinion. A survey of the most popular sitcoms out there would suggest it’s objective reality.
For all the evil I’m accused of perpetuating on nerd-dom by having strong opinions about music, I have to say that in my experience, whether you fell on the L7/grunge side of the equation or on the Pavement/indie rock side was honestly a matter of taste. All the above are great, but if you’re hyper-active like me, you’re probably going to consistently pick shit that just rocks harder. But as I’ve aged and mellowed, I like Pavement better.
I’ll add that the funniest part of the sniping is that my argument is made from a rather straight feminist perspective. I’m not usually keen on “selling out” as a narrative, but in this case, it makes sense that the sexist mainstream would not be able to swallow female punk bands that are raw, and that record executives would insist on toning down the sound or the message to make it more palatable. It’s not really controversial, I’d think, to suggest that women are silenced and restrained in the mainstream of American society.
I think it’s more because music geeks often tend to give off an aura of moral self-righteousness that implies they’re better or smarter people for liking better music. The truth is that it’s actually one of the few areas where people who do love that kind of stuff can have passionate arguments without thinking less of each other afterwards.
For what it’s worth, I liked and still do like a lot of the bands mentioned on the thread but don’t really see the point in reducing their output to one supposedly representative song. Surely the thing about great bands is that they can create a range of songs that go together musically and thematically to make up an overall artistic statement (hence the importance of the album).
No one’s mentioned PJ Harvey in the context of 90’s femme punk yet? Or even Bis. Sure they only briefly produced anything that could be musically classed as punk, but they were lo-fi, political and forthrightly feminist. L7 were awesome but they occupied that point in between punk and metal, similar to Motorhead.
Not Alanis Morrissette though. As Amanda and others have pointed out, she sold all those records precisely because she reduced the things she sang about to meaningless cliches (although You Oughtta Know is pretty great), much like U2, Coldplay, Foo Fighters, etc. all have in recent years.
Comment #45: Stubborn Kind of Fellow on 01/31 at 10:42 PM
she reduced the things she sang about to meaningless cliches (although You Oughtta Know is pretty great), much like U2, Coldplay, Foo Fighters, etc. all have in recent years.
It really isn’t fair to toss Foo Fighters in with those other bands. Overall they aren’t anything ground breaking, but they consistently produce really solid pop songs. And then there’s “Everlong” which is one of the greatest pop songs of the last 20 years. I’ve probably heard it hundreds of times but it still sets my heart racing.
I think it’s more because music geeks often tend to give off an aura of moral self-righteousness that implies they’re better or smarter people for liking better music. The truth is that it’s actually one of the few areas where people who do love that kind of stuff can have passionate arguments without thinking less of each other afterwards.
The only aura of insufferable self-righteousness I’ve observed in the music area tend to be classical music and to some extent, jazz fans who feel intellectually superior and more “sophisticated” for listening to those genres. Incidentally, most tend to be quite insufferable to conservatory educated friends who do play classical and jazz because more often than not....they’re ignorant pseudointellectual wannabes who listen to classical/jazz to maintain a phony sophisticated facade....not because they actually enjoy listening to the music.
While many members of the punk rock fandom can match the elitism and cliquishness IME.....at least one cannot deny that the vast majority are in it because they actually love the genre and the ideals it is seen to represent.
There we are in violent agreement. I suspect that the line “popping wheelies on her motorbike/straight girls wish they were dykes” really hit a lot of people’s freak-out buttons.
Man, I wish I still had a Vinaigrettes album around somewhere.
I do know when I heard Nirvana for the first time in 7th grade…
Ah, that explains your position. You didn’t experience the increasing homogenization and synthesized sound of ‘80s pop (although the ‘00s have done a good job imitating that). If you’d lived through the evolution of pop in the ‘80s - and by “pop” I mean what could be heard on the radio. Remember, no internet, no MP3’s to buy, just commercial radio. Unless you were lucky enough to have good college or community radio - you’d realize just how groundbreaking, and awesomely relieving it was to hear Nirvana start to get into rotation. Of course Nirvana (and the rest of the sound that developed from about ‘89 on) would never have made it without Jane’s Addiction. “Been Caught Stealing” was the first, by a long period, relatively speaking, of a new sound to be heard on the radio.
I was lucky enough to be in NYC from ‘85 onward so I got to listen to The New Afternoon Show on WNYU and hear stuff that wasn’t the commercial pop that was all to be heard on commercial FM radio. That was the first place I heard “Been Caught Stealing” and then commercial radio picked it up within a month. And then Nirvana was the thing that crushed the back of bland commercial pop only radio. It’s what allowed L7, Belly, The Breeders, Bikini Kill, Sleater Kinney, Pavement, Butthole Surfers, Throwing Muses and the rest to be played on commercial stations (even if only in the middle of the night). That’s what was groundbreaking about Nirvana (who I didn’t appreciate musically all that much until their “Unplugged,” that really revealed to me the complexity of what they were doing).
@36 “Unrest had a few good pop songs but weren’t at Pavement’s level”
Oh I disagree, very much so. “Imperial” is smarter and more sublime then any Pavement song in my opinion. I do agree that Mercury Rev never touched the greatness of UK shoegaze but then I don’t think any US indie band in the early 90s made anything as massive and brilliant as “Loveless”, “Soulvaki” or “Nowhere”. As for “Creep” Radiohead weren’t really a good brit pop band till their second album and after that they changed the entire British music scene in the 90s entirely with “OK Computer”. But Blur, Suede and Pulp are probably the best reps of quality Brit pop.
I don’t think arguing about this stuff is silly but actually fun and smart like developing taste in any art form. Its the same when I critique art/painting, which is what I make. Art (and I actually think of good pop music as art ) deserves that. You do it because you actually care about art and what art can do. Its not pretentious to care about art, its just that our culture is so fucking lazy and scared of taste/intellectualism/sophistication. Not developing taste is what allows people to listen earnestly to Alanis Morissette and that is a very sad thing.
@49
Well I did have a cool older brother who listened to Echo and the Bunnymen, the Replacements, the Sex Pistols, the Ramones, R.E.M., and Prince and I was already watching 120 Minutes on MTV when Nirvana came along and they still seemed totally retrogressive and repressive to me. I get that the mainstream was totally dominated by insufferable crap at that time but Nirvana still felt too much like an extension of Metallica and not enough of an extension of the Pixies or Husker Du. So at that point I was much happier listening to the Smiths and all those cool bands my brother got me into until Brit pop came along. Listening to Nirvana now I find very little to find exciting about them other then the fact they did introduce a lot of people in my generation to alternative music. But the music, meh.
As for Amanda being an insufferable music snob: I love it! Insufferable music snobs unite!!
I think it’s more because music geeks often tend to give off an aura of moral self-righteousness that implies they’re better or smarter people for liking better music.
Ah, but so do all snobs, and music geeks who don’t are accused of doing it. So I’m afraid it’s something else, something special. And the cool factor appears to be it. Music geeks are assumed---often wrongly!---to dress better, get laid more, just generally be cooler. So even when they’re geeking out on music and there’s not even a whiff of these other things, narratives about social privilege and how people who have it should be ashamed creep in. And it’s easy to pin that on music geeks, who are still geeks, and therefore are accessible targets for ire. It actually resembles, in a much more harmless way, how rich women are the target of populist ire while rich men tend to get accolades, because misogynist tropes make them easier targets.
Not that I’m equating the two in terms of social damage or anything. Misogyny=serious social problem. Geek attacks? Not quite the same. But since they have similar structures, I have to wonder if geeks who jump uppity music geeks for their subcultural peculiarities aren’t reinforcing general anti-geek sentiment in order to score points against people that have unfair cool privileges. I think so. Lashing out against music geeks usually relies on leaning on general American anti-intellectual tropes, and music geeks are far from the worst victims of those. Far from it.
I have to agree with jessica. The Foo Fighters are pretty awesome. I don’t think someone “sold out” just because they made money. They had to send something fundamental down the river. I look at Dave Grohl and just see someone who gets to do what he likes and make a shit ton of money at it.
To make it clear, I’m not pitying myself. I got over that a long time ago---every time you talk about music, no matter how innocuously, you’ll get this kind of blowback if any level of obscurity is involved. I got used to it, and now feel kind of ashamed that my feelings were hurt, because I’m secure in who I am.
And exactly, mythago! What’s so great about L7 is you don’t get even the slightest whiff off them of trying too hard. They really are that badass. Whereas the “angry” women who were mainstreamed always had a noticeable iffiness about them, to calm down public reactions.
Listening to Nirvana now I find very little to find exciting about them other then the fact they did introduce a lot of people in my generation to alternative music. But the music, meh.
Gack! This is my one sticking point in your positions, which I otherwise mostly agree with. But if didn’t like both the Stooges AND Sabbath or whatever other band you’d put on your Do Not Want list, I can understand your objections, YMMV and all that.
But really, you just would not be saying this about Nirvana if you’d seen Cobain giving it his all in your Student Union just as much as he did in the Moore Theater in downtown Seattle. OK, maybe a good portion of the shows I saw he was pulling a Bobby Stinson, stumbling around drunk kind of thing on stage. But even then he was having a ball with the music. Nirvana was a Johnny Come Lately band in Seattle, a lot of locals kind of resented them, but even right from the beginning, you could just sense Something Special about the band. Everyone knew it. I will hold up Bleach and about half of Nevermind and In Utero as stone cold, transcendental rock music that measures up to anything else put out by the Brit bands. And also, grunge hit it big first in the UK, before people in the States knew much about it (I read reviews of Tad and Green River in Melody Maker in the 80’s)
@51
Most of the bands that your cool older brother listened to were no part of late ‘80s pop. Why not add in DKs and The Residents and Lydia Lunch. Those 3 are just as relevant to late ‘80s pop as the first four you named. I’ll give you REM & Prince, though. 120 minutes was great for a while, but really had nothing to do with 80s commercial pop. 120 minutes was a (very limited) slice of alternative and not something that most of the country had access to or interest in.
No Nirvana was not an extension of the Pixies or Husker Du. I don’t really find them on the same branch as Metallica, but I’m open to being convinced. Of the groups lumped into the Seattle Grunge movement, I’d think that Soundgarden was way, way closer to Metallica than Nirvana ever was - but that’s only because their sound was more metal than Nirvana’s sound.
I don’t think that it’s imperative that you find anything exciting about the music of Nirvana. Tastes differ and different sounds do it for different folks. Whether you like them or not, though, you should be able to see that they had a totally different sound for pop and that their songs were more complex than most people realize and that the band had a really good singer (the vocal lines are really a lot more difficult than you’d think) and one of the best rock drummers there’s been (sure, that’s just my opinion. But you can’t deny that Grohl is an incredible talent on the drums).
(I can’t believe that I’m defending Nirvana. I’m usually the one to point out the stuff they took from pop of the mid to late 60s. Yeah, I’m talking about a lot of their bass lines.)
Mostly I’m with Dr. Locrian with regards to your positions and I just find the inconsistency and gaping hole that is your placing of Nirvana to be really strange.
Out of curiosity, what are your thoughts on Smashing Pumpkins? I ask because I always thought of them as Nirvana light.
I haven’t read comments yet, but I find funny was the person in the linked post who claimed Pretend was their 2nd most hated song, after a 4 nonBlonds song. I’m pretty sure that song they claim to hate worse than any other was “What’s going On”, not “what’s Up”.
“I’m pretty sure that song they claim to hate worse than any other was “What’s going On”, not “what’s Up”.”
Not according to Google. It’s actually called “What’s Up” for some reason. Maybe I don’t remember the horribleness, but I don’t remember hating that song. I don’t blame you for doubting a Yglesias commenter. That place is the proverbial wretched hub of scum and villainy.
Amanda has to qualify as a little bit self-aware, given that I first read the term “Insufferable Music Snob” come out of her keyboard.
I think most of the friction comes from people being possessive and other people being dicks. I was never a proper IMS, but I was a teenage metalhead who (publically) scorned everything mellower than the black album. I was probably a dick about that as a teen. (But there was a kid in my school who owned multiple Shaquille O’Neal albums. Where he rapped. Not played basketball. Rapped. Every moron who ever said ‘Rap is crap. It’s just talking, anyone could do it’ should be forced to listen to Shaq prove them motherfucking wrong at great length. In such an environment, who among us wouldn’t put Sepultura on repeat) I remember this kid in college who looked like he wanted to fight me because I responded to his plans to drive from Michigan to Pennsylvania for a Billy Joel concert that I didn’t think I’d walk across the street to see Billy Joel.
I pretty much missed all the music that Amanda is talking about here, since as I mellowed into listening to everything, I started with the more popular stuff. Have to check a lot of it out.
Jake, I’m not sure ‘extension’ is the right word but Nirvana certainly picked up the soft-loud dynamic from the alt-rock scene that the Pixies and Hüsker Dü were representative of. Combine that with a fast, noisy rock progression that speedmetal bands like (early) Metallica, Megadeath and Slayer had popularized in the mid 80s (but stripped of its epic metal themes) and a heaping helping of no-wave aesthetic ala Pussy Galore or The Swans to top it off with and you’ve pretty much got grunge. Soundgarden hared towards the speedmetal side, Nirvana towards the alt-rock and, say, The Melvins towards the noise/math-rock side.
i’m going to join a few others and stick up for “Everglade” as the definitive L7 songs. I had a lot of friends who adopted it as a personal anthem for the female concert-going experience in the 1990s.
Nirvana definitely had a lot of 70’s rock and metal in their make up - Sabbath, Stooges, Blue Cheer, etc. but you can hear the Pixies influence really come in between Bleach and Nevermind in the sense that they took a lot of the quiet-loud-quiet-loud structure of the songs on board. Foo Fighters, I wouldn’t say are crap so much as functional. I’ll admit I’ve only heard the singles but musically they seem to fall into either straightahead acoustic rock song or straightahead loud rock song and the lyrics can be boiled down to either ‘Troubled, undefined relationship with another person couched entirely in metaphors’ or ‘Sometimes I/you feel bad but maybe things will work out in the future...couched entirely in metaphors’. That’s why I compare them with U2 and Coldplay. They also intentionally avoid detail or precision in their lyrics and variation in their music, presumably because they want to avoid anything commercial radio listeners might find remotely offensive or challenging.
As for the snobbery thing, music is similar to sport in that people who are passionate about it tend to, consciously or not, ascribe a morality to different bands or teams based on the qualities they feel they represent. It’s why the Giants/Patriots 2008 superbowl and the Rage/X Factor chart battle in the UK last xmas mattered so much to people even though the actual results in either case had little effect on anything whatsoever. Anyway, I think that’s what turns people off in these music conversations, the implication that bands they like are worth less than the ones we do or, to give an example in this case, have been actively harmful to feminism. That doesn’t mean those assertions are wrong, just that it’s understandable why people get their noses bent out of joint.
Comment #60: Stubborn Kind of Fellow on 02/01 at 02:58 PM
“But if didn’t like both the Stooges AND Sabbath...”
Haha but I love the Stooges and Iggy. Sabbath are not really my thing but I appreciate them. I’d rather listen to Led Zeppelin or T.Rex then Sabbath. I love a lot of hard rock from the 70s and am a big glam/art rock fan from that decade.
@ Jake Squid @55
My point about the exposure to cool bands by my brother wasn’t me saying that I thought of those bands as mainstream pop in the 80s but just that I thought the underground had much more to offer when it broke into the mainstream then it did with Nirvana. And that is totally just my opinion.
I think Sacrasto and Stubborn Kind of Fellow basically covered the whole Pixies/Husker Du and metal thing in relation to Nirvana.
Most every other music geek I know and respect loves Nirvana. I appreciate that they are most definitely good but I just think they are vastly overrated. Once in a blue moon I will find another big music person who agrees with me but its rare. That’s totally fine.
I really, really hate the Smashing Pumpkins. Yeah, the whole grunge thing just never did it for me. Sorry. In my mind why listen to that boring, tuneless stuff when there was so much other far more interesting music made in the 90s? In addition to the bands I mentioned before, what about the amazing last Talk Talk record? Or Disco Inferno? But again, that’s just my opinion and I am willing to concede that Nirvana are a good band even if I don’t enjoy them.
The more I think about it I forgot to mention two of my other favorite American bands from the 90s:
American Music Club and Low. Both bands doing something very different then grunge or the rest of indie at the time for that matter.
And I do realize that for many people Talk Talk and Disco Inferno are more boring and tuneless then Nirvana. That’s just because its more challenging but its also more rewarding.
Angl, it’s really hilarious to accuse me of not liking something because others do. That’s grade A projection, and certainly inclines me to think that people lash out at people expressing strong opinions on music because of their own issues, not because the person is objectively a snob. I listen to insane amounts of popular music. I loooooove good pop music. Love it. For my 32nd birthday, I threw a disco-themed party and literally pumped out 6 hours of popular disco music, something that a for real snob would likely find unbearable. The accusations hooked on me appear to be based on the fact that I actually give a shit about bands that weren’t top 40. But I give a shit about a lot of bands that were. I just don’t think something’s automatically enticing because it sold a bunch of copies. Mediocrity as the mainstream in American culture is hardly a snobbish opinion. A survey of the most popular sitcoms out there would suggest it’s objective reality.
You realize this is the “But I have a black friend!” argument in different clothes?
I don’t know. I think Alanis Morissette wrote songs that were meaningful to her-- take that for what it may be; I don’t think she evilly conspired to craft an acceptable amount of bland sentiment spiced up with only juuust enough depth to pose as something she was not… That assumes a kind of conspiracy-theorist world-view where superp competent agents cunningly play 4 dimensional chess 12 moves into the future. I have yet to meet such people. (Well, maybe that creepy Lady Gaga.)
I think that a more likely explanation is that she’s Canadian, and that’s as rebellious as they get.
It just strikes me that music-geeks/snobs/whatever always go twelve miles out of their way to tell you their bona fides, with extensive lists of obscure bands AND lists of disposable new pop that they find hidden virtue in (to prove they are not just all about obscure bands) about something that is always, at the end of the metaphorical day, subjective.
I don’t know. I think Alanis Morissette wrote songs that were meaningful to her-- take that for what it may be; I don’t think she evilly conspired to craft an acceptable amount of bland sentiment spiced up with only juuust enough depth to pose as something she was not… That assumes a kind of conspiracy-theorist world-view where superp competent agents cunningly play 4 dimensional chess 12 moves into the future. I have yet to meet such people. (Well, maybe that creepy Lady Gaga.)
Morissette was a child actress who prior to Jagged Little Pill had released two dance/pop albums. I wouldn’t be so fast to doubt a calculated money-making intention behind her music. She wrote Jagged Little Pill with a professional songwriter. The same songwriter who was at least in part responsible for Wilson-Phillips self titled ballad filled crap-fest and a bunch of other insipid pop crap. Calling Morissette’s feminist-lite album and image calculated seems pretty apropos. Looking at the wiki for Glen Ballard, the songwriter she worked with, I’m also seeing Paula Abdul’s Forever Your Girl on his hit list. I think Jagged Little Pill may only be slightly more authentic.
Plus “You Oughta Know” was about Dave Coulier, Joey on “Full House.” Do you really want to think about someone going down on Joey in a theater? Really?
Wait...who thought the Smashing Pumpkins were a grunge band?
Someone upthread mentioned the incredible variety of music coming up in the 90’s, and I have to agree that was the best part. I don’t think I ever knew anybody (many who would qualify as IMSs) who hewed to one specific genre (and, honestly, no one at the time called anything grunge, except for wannabe bands like Bush or STP). Even the punk-rockest girl I knew loved Peter Gabriel as much as Hole. I went to college in 91, and we’d all “grown up” on a mixture of college bands, goth, new wave, etc. You found new music by finding new friends and seeing what they had in their collection. Nearly everybody I knew had some mixture of The Cocteau Twins, R.E.M., The Cure, Camper Van Beethoven, Pixies, The Cars, Metallica, The Pogues, Pink Floyd, Dead Kennedys, and the Violent Femmes in their CD racks when we arrived, well before Nirvana broke through.
“It just strikes me that music-geeks/snobs/whatever always go twelve miles out of their way to tell you their bona fides, with extensive lists of obscure bands AND lists of disposable new pop that they find hidden virtue in (to prove they are not just all about obscure bands) about something that is always, at the end of the metaphorical day, subjective. “
I really hate this kind of thing. Some people are really into music and that includes finding out about bands who may be amazing but are also unknown. Sure there are people who are snobs for snobbery sake but most music dorks are really just people who like music a lot. Talking about these obscure bands isn’t a way of showing off but instead a way of communicating, showing an appreciation, or learning about other music. Why the hell would I want to show off to you? Why would I care? It seems to me that there is some projection of ones owns insecurities here.
Taste is certainly subjective, as an artist I realize that, but that doesn’t make art criticism irrelevant and that seems to be the logic of this kind of thinking. A lot of people would see that as a pretty blatant anti-intellectual, culturally backward position in regards to other art forms, but it still gets a pass when referring to contemporary music for some reason. Criticizing art is partly how we learn to appreciate it and understand its potential, its also how we eventually come to organize it and think about it historically. Most talented artist/writers/musicians/filmmakers who I have known are also hugely critical with very developed ideas about art and art quality. If all this makes me a snob, then that’s a label I’ll wear proudly.
Talking about these obscure bands isn’t a way of showing off but instead a way of communicating, showing an appreciation, or learning about other music. Why the hell would I want to show off to you? Why would I care? It seems to me that there is some projection of ones owns insecurities here.
I honestly don’t know why this type of personality quirk seems to want me/others to care or would care themselves. But it seems to be the case.
Also, talk about “projection of insecurities” is really stretching, in this context. MY MASSIVE AWARENESS OF THE INDIE PUNK AND SUB-POP SCENE MAKES YOU INSECURE, DOESN’T IT?
In short, no.
The thing that I (and others) are responding to is when, at some point in these discussions, one’s opinion on artiist or band X is passed off as fact, then that fact is used to buttress an intellectual argument leading to some conclusion, then that conclusion is used as a given in another thought. At the end, the music-afficianado stands back to admire his or her own awesomeness with an unspoken, but present, feeling of “I just blew your mind and if you don’t agree, it is because you’re so uncomfortable and insecure at how handily your mind was just blown.”
The problem is that all these points usually begin with a faulty (or at least subjective) given that is presented as incontrovertible fact.
Look, I’m not condemning, exactly. I’m a giant comic book fan, and I’ve seen the same dynamic play out in discussions on that topic. I don’t know WHY there’s a need to crow about one’s own awareness, rap-bragadoccio style, as a preamble to any point or observation, but it seems to be the case in a lot of “nerd-dom,” regardless of the topic.
I also think the tendency to cry “Projection!” is like hearing “Splitter!” in LIFE OF BRIAN. Stop already. It is the ultimate “No, YOU are!” move and can be thrown back and forth with lots of heat but little light.
I think it comes down to hearing someone “crow”, when the person talking thinks they’re just, you know, “talking.” About something they care about a lot.
Speaking only for myself, what pisses me off about indie/punk snobbery is the anti-intellectualism. There’s a pervasive attitude that knowing music theory or even how to play an instrument proficiently somehow means you can’t understand the raw feeling and heart and blahblahblah of their favorite know-nothing band.
I think it comes down to hearing someone “crow”, when the person talking thinks they’re just, you know, “talking.” About something they care about a lot.
I guess this should be the last I put in on the subject, because overall, I really truly like Amanda a lot and I have tons of other friends who have this tendency about whatever their topic may be (this kind of literature, TV, video games, music, whatever. I’ve even got a wine friend who is awesome when talking about anything other than wine, at which point you want to shoot him or yourself or both). But I think the distinction is more about caring a lot about caring a lot about it. If that makes sense.
Speaking only for myself, what pisses me off about indie/punk snobbery is the anti-intellectualism. There’s a pervasive attitude that knowing music theory or even how to play an instrument proficiently somehow means you can’t understand the raw feeling and heart and blahblahblah of their favorite know-nothing band.
First of all, I think that’s a myth that punk bands couldn’t play their instruments. Sid Vicious aside, the Sex Pistols were pretty good musicians who just added a lot of self-aware rage to what were mostly straight up pop songs. The Dead Kennedys played so fast and hard, I don’t know how they even kept up with themselves. Even most of the bands mentioned on this list were exceptional, if wild, musicians. The Flaming Lips built an entire, intricate, 3-D album out of four separate CDs being played at once. Early Mercury Rev sounded like Neil Young hopped up on goofballs, plowing Brian Eno’s jet into Disney’s Fantasia. Nirvana more than proved themselves on Unplugged. Sleater-Kinney made more righteous noise with two guitars and a drum than just about anybody, ever. They weren’t “know nothings”.
If anything, it’s the classical/jazz people who always invade these threads to complain about the noise we call “music”. I never hear punks or indie kids bashing Mozart. For what it’s worth, people like Eric Clapton, Steve Vai, and Yngwie Malmsteen are all excellent (proficient) guitarists who make lousy music. So, yeah, I don’t think they “get” raw feeling and heart the way others do. I don’t think knowing how to play is necessarily an impediment (I think David Gilmore is one of the most heartfelt guitarists, ever), but focusing on technique usually precludes emotion.
And there’s a lot to be said for the profundity of “stupid” music. As Lester Bangs said, Frank Zappa was a musical genius, and although he could appreciate and quote a song like Louie Louie, he never could have written it himself.
“I honestly don’t know why this type of personality quirk seems to want me/others to care or would care themselves. But it seems to be the case. “
The point I was making was that I don’t care if you don’t care. I am having a conversation with others who have criticisms about music, during which I express opinions. I am not nesc. having a conversation with you (and thats were I see projection, because of this assumption that I am talking to you and not just Amanda or Dr. Locrian or whoever) The points of view aren’t really about you or being “put on display” because of you. If you are not interested in the discussion or find it annoying why not find another one?
Again I really think that criticism and discussion about quality are an important part of our understanding and appreciating art. I’m not interested in showing off at all, it has nothing to do with that in my case.
I think it’s more because music geeks often tend to give off an aura of moral self-righteousness that implies they’re better or smarter people for liking better music.
Ah, but so do all snobs, and music geeks who don’t are accused of doing it. So I’m afraid it’s something else, something special.
I think the simplest explanation is that people take the music they like very personally (oldest, most compact and portable art form and all), so when someone with good taste that someone respects says “your music sucks” to them, they tend to get a little bent out of shape, you know?
And the cool factor appears to be it. Music geeks are assumed---often wrongly!---to dress better, get laid more, just generally be cooler.
...
[N]arratives about social privilege and how people who have it should be ashamed creep in.
...
It actually resembles, in a much more harmless way, how rich women are the target of populist ire while rich men tend to get accolades, because misogynist tropes make them easier targets.
“If anything, it’s the classical/jazz people who always invade these threads to complain about the noise we call “music”. I never hear punks or indie kids bashing Mozart.”
I totally agree. Most music dorks I know totally enjoy classical music and/or jazz. I myself love Mozart’s operas for instance and often listen to Baroque era classical music like Bach.
Its not nesc. music theory or instrumental skills that many contemporary music snobs object to but rather a really outdated idea of certain specific kind of skill as the primary content of the music and/or the use of the skill in a kind of masturbatory way. If you are going to enter into music theory, John Cale and his absorption of John Cage is gonna trump Eric Clapton every time and people like Cale or Brian Eno are anything but anti-intellectual. Its just a different set of values that good contemporary music is working with (texture, density, etc) as opposed to say guitar noodles.
I think its best to show a parallel in painting: Its kind of like someone who loves Ingres because of his exquisite grasp of detailed rendering having trouble accepting the quality (intellectual, skill level) of an early modern master like Matisse and instead preferring the illustrations of M.C. Escher because he draws thinks tightly that are recognizable but also spectacular in really banal kind of “Oh Wow look the stairs go backwards here and then upwards here!” way. All the while Matisse was a master, a striking original colorist and who used color as value in a way no artist before him had. He had an amazing handling /sense of paint and was able to do fantastic things with it, made daring and incredibly seemingly simple but sophisticated compositions that still feel incredibly contemporary and relevant to new painting...As opposed to Escher who made illustrations that don’t really say or do much beyond the an initial “isn’t that neat!” factor.
Great art often changes the rules and values by which we formerly critiqued it by finding/inventing other systems of value. Its silly to judge a Picasso by the same values you would judge a Da Vinci, they may share common ground in some areas but they are more often then not doing very different things to different agendas. Its just as silly to critique the Velvet Underground or Nirvana by the exact same musical ideas that you would Bach or even Gershwin. They are doing different things in different times to achieve different results and each approach has its own value.
Agg...when my high school friends and I heard “Hands in my Pocket” in the summer after our first year of college, we were all stunned that something sounding so scattered, dumb sounding, and ridiculous was actually being played on the radio.
Something which can be boiled down into a simple soundbite has the greatest chance of catchiness...especially if it builds upon previous mainstream cultural trends.
Gah....I remembered how “Wannabe” was so popular in the late ‘90s that adolescent girls were screaming the song out of apartment windows and on NYC streets during my summer home from college. What’s worse, I actually know some 40-50 year old male co-workers who love that song....and sing it at work to my annoyance.