mainstream 'rewriting' of rock history

B

Buick6

too punk to drunk
It always happens. But the most hilarious (insulting?) was listening on our Yobbo-'common' bloke/yuppy 'commercial' rock Foo Fighters sponsored footy sation MMM

They have this 'history of rock' segment some knowledable self-appointed 'rock expert' with a commerical voice puts on, and they were talking to COLDPLAY, in all these sorta 'intellectual enough for the mainstream liad back interview' type thing, that sorta 'de-rockstars' these massive commerical bands so the average fucker can relate and buy their next five 'important' ablums..But anyway the lead guy from COLDPLAY was talking about music that influences and inspires them, and he was pretty honest and rolled off 'ENO, BOWIE, NEW ORDER, DEPECHE MODE' and said they make 'synthesiser music' but not 'clinical' like in the 80s blablabla..SO he kept mumbling, and the producers decides to play an 'influence' so they chuck in Bowie 'Young americans'..This I found hilarious, coz their contextualisatio was so fucken perposefully calculated to be off the mark for anyone with a musical brain...I mean is it too dangerous to play a snippet of ENO, maybe they could do some good for the world..Nope business as fucken usual.
 
swears

swears

preppy-kei
'ENO, BOWIE, NEW ORDER, DEPECHE MODE'

What a crock of shit, they sound like Crowded House or something.
 
G

gek-opel

entered apprentice
In fact if they were to be honest they would say "U2, Buckley, Bends era Radiohead, Echo and The Bunny Men" (the latter for a pure steal on one of their tunes)... "Young Americans" is taking the piss utterly, given that there are precisely zero white-plastic soul/coke-funk elements in Coldplay's sound. The stupid cunt doesn't even know what "influence" means.
 
D

dubversion

Guest
It was always particularly sphincter-clenchingly embarrasing when Bono was cosying up to the great and good of US music, claiming people like BB King and the like were always a big influence. Even if you were being generous to U2*, you'd have to claim it was artists like Wire, not fucking King, who were their influences.

(* being generous to U2, in my case, involves not actually sticking handfuls of flesh-eating insects in their arses before setting fire to them).
 
swears

swears

preppy-kei
People just rattle off a list of "influnces" that make them sound cool, that's just the standard attitude now. It's like on Myspace when people list dozens of acts that have nothing to do with their sound at all, just in case there's a hip group they've missed out. And of course, you've got to be seen as having "eclectic" taste.
Coldplay's biggest influence is probably Shed Seven or something.
 
D

dHarry

Well-known member
When Coldplay did that Computer Love Kraftwerk steal Martin said something absurd and inane like "Kraftwerk are so cool and obscure that no-one's actually heard the original"... beyond belief really; at least Bono & co were actually influenced by the Clash & Joy Division back in the day, even if they sounded like Duran Duran in their earliest incarnation. Has it really come to this, defending U2's "integrity" in comparison to Coldplay?! Of course they were laughably "influenced" by My Bloody Valentine, Screamadelica and Ministry or such-like post-BB King in their avant-po-mo Zoo TV phase (or, desperate re-branding strategy to boost sales after dismal Rattle And Hum Americana roots fiasco)...
 
Guybrush

Guybrush

Dittohead
swears said:
People just rattle off a list of "influnces" that make them sound cool, that's just the standard attitude now. It's like on Myspace when people list dozens of acts that have nothing to do with their sound at all, just in case there's a hip group they've missed out. And of course, you've got to be seen as having "eclectic" taste.
Coldplay's biggest influence is probably Shed Seven or something.
Click to expand...
I've noticed this too, but is it any worse than, say, ten or twenty years ago? (I have no idea.) Here's Keith Allen's daughter's list, in case you haven't seen it:

Blondie , The Specials , Zinc , SL2 , Futurecut Productions, Baby D , Dizzee Rascal, Newham Generals, sCISSOR sISTESRS , Chas n Dave , Jamie T , Ragga Twins , Beenie Man , Pay as you go Cartel ,Lee Dorsey , Happy Mondays , Black Grape, T REX (possibly the best band ever , ever ! ) ,Kris Kross, Ben Parmar , Kate Bush( when she was my age) , Wreckless Eric , Small Faces, K.D.Oran Bananarama, Sultans of Ping FC , Rip rig and panic , Nenneh Cherry ,Primal Scream, JIGGA MAN (jayz . s dot carter) , S dot Chew , MARK FUCKING RONSON , YOYO Massif , Beats international , The Slits , Minnie Riperton , That one St Etienne song "only love can break your heart ", A Guy called Gerald , Ian Dury (rip) and the Blockheads (still going strong ), 808 state , Squeeze , Mobb Deep , Barington levy , Arcade Fire , the streets , mike and the mechanics , PRINCE , aaliyah , Rolf Harris brownstone , Bjork , Pharoahe Monch, Shaggy , Bob Geldof is a cunt , eminem .
Click to expand...

Is it poseuring or broad-mindedness at work? Does it even matter which?
 
swears

swears

preppy-kei
Lily Allen

A more honest list would be:

Ace of Bass , Billie

BTW: What is it with people that put spaces before commas like , this?
 
swears

swears

preppy-kei
naaaah...

The Streets is a bit crap now, but the first album was ace, lo-fi, witty, nice use of string samples, really cheap and nasty prouction that worked spot on. There was a sense of real yearning, lying in the gutter but looking to the stars.
Lily Allen is just some boring spoiled brat with a few cod-reggae tunes.
 
D

DJ PIMP

Well-known member
Always thought the Streets was a bit like pisstake hiphop or proto-grime for whitey, in the tradition of I dunno... the Beasties.

?

Tho more for the hype/fans than the music itself...
 
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Guybrush

Guybrush

Dittohead
Sick Boy said:
A more honest list would be:

The Streets, but not with a bloke
Click to expand...
Replacing the whole list with this sentence would actually be cocky-cool AND honest -- much better.

An interesting aspect to lists as this is that they're so obviously aimed at people "in the know," yet one would think that that's the very group that would be suspicious of this kind of name-sponging. Allen's name-dropping ought to evoke doubt in even the most benevolent mind: citing 'SL2' as an influence is a bit like someone mentioning 'Stardust' when asked for his or her favourite groups. SL2 could be an influence of hers, of course, and therein lies the beauty of name-dropping: provided that the person know at least a little something about the names they're dropping it's hard to call them out on it.
 
G

gek-opel

entered apprentice
But surely Coldplay claiming Bowie's coke-funk period or Lilly Allen claiming Grime as influences is just nonsensical, a misunderstanding of the term "influence"? Unless they mean as an influence outside of the musical aspects, a spirit rather than an aesthetic ancestor?
 
swears

swears

preppy-kei
gek:

Yeah, people just seem to think influence means "Something I like listening to and want everybody else to know this, to show what fantastic taste I have."
 
Guybrush

Guybrush

Dittohead
gek-opel said:
But surely Coldplay claiming Bowie's coke-funk period or Lilly Allen claiming Grime as influences is just nonsensical, a misunderstanding of the term "influence"?
Click to expand...
It could be so, but I suspect that there are several motives at work simultaneously, one being what I call name-sponging: To name-drop artists in the hope of getting associated, however far-fetchedly, with some of their qualities ("coolness" for example); "associated" is a vague word, but I couldn't think of anything more precise, you could view the process as reversed guilty-by-association, perhaps. The reason I sense this practise so strongly in Lily Allen's list is because almost every "influence" on there feels cherry-picked to fill a certain role.
 
B

Buick6

too punk to drunk
TO be honest, when I first heard Coldplay - YELLOW - I actually really liked it, in fact I liked it more than all the fucking Brit-Plop stuff like Oasis and Blur and whatever that was big at the time. I n many ways they seemed to have 'rockified' the whole 'shoegazer' thing. That song sounds more like the song Ride wished they wrote, and incredibly it was massive..

But yeah as ColdPlay got bigger, they just went for the U2 echo the fucken guitar off the back of the stadium wall fucken bullshit.
 
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