Gang of 4 were shit. Discuss.

[padraig (u.s.)]

proto-cool rock music - The Monks and 13th Floor Elevators definitely. The Seeds, for pointing from garage rock to The Velvet Underground.

garage rock isn't really cool, rather cool rock people retroactively made it cool, but if you want to include an exemplar I'd go with The Sonics

 

[luka]

Did you listen to Matthews 80s Rock mix?

Eighties Rock Panorama

[Click image to engorge ] This clocks in at five and half hours long . Pow . Big data. Bring the noise. Step up to the plate. 80+1 tr...

www.woebot.com

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

the Cleveland proto-punk scene of the early 70s, but especially Electric Eels

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

MC5 are not cool rock music except for "Black to Comm"

which is every bit as important to cool rock music as "Heroin" and "I Wanna Be Your Dog"

Spacemen 3 are basically if you made "Black to Comm" into an entire career

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

Did you listen to Matthews 80s Rock mix?

I have not

looks like a typically impeccably curated selection

some choices I wouldn't have made myself but that's the nature of such things

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

Big Black has to be. no one else - not even Justin Broadrick - has ever gotten guitars to sound like that.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

I would 100% include electric Miles but only the Pete Cosey-Reggie Lucas dual guitar era (that is, not John McLaughlin)

it's cool rock music in the exact same sense that Can is, even down to sharing the Stockhausen influence

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

The Clean probably, but none of the other Flying Nun/NZ stuff which is too twee to be cool rock music

The Dead C I guess if you count them as rock music but they're really noise merchants and also too avant-intellectual

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

things on which I'm unclear

The Godz - the origin of all shambling lo-fi noise rock but probably too mid-late 60s adrift for cool rock music. the shape Faust to come.

Captain Beefheart - too prog. cool rock music exists within certain parameters of weirdness.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

AC/DC are, counterintuitively, cool rock music

they are regular rock music - Stones, Zeppelin - but with such laser-focused fixity of purpose to only rocking out the act of rocking itself becomes cool

they pursued rocking out with the same monomaniacal obsession with which Klaus Dinger pursued the motorik

to wit

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

Lemmy-era Hawkwind

 

[version]

Royal Trux.

 

[linebaugh]

MC5 are not cool rock music except for "Black to Comm"

which is every bit as important to cool rock music as "Heroin" and "I Wanna Be Your Dog"

Spacemen 3 are basically if you made "Black to Comm" into an entire career

I I agree MC5 is probably to often by the books blues rock to throw them in there but I think this performance is an alltime moment for CRM

 

[linebaugh]

finally a music thread I can really get behind. it's been awhile.

I mostly concur with Cool Rock Music as laid out so far but @version is correct that Gang of Four are not cool rock music.

I'm going to need some expanding here. I think you could toss Entertainment! on the pantheon of essential releases, and Damaged Goods and Naturals Not In It as essential songs.

And Bauhaus's In The Flat Field was what I had in mind, admittedly not too familiar with the rest of them. Ornate, ponderous, and affected dont feel appropriate for that album, and its certainly rocks with abandon. Click through the tracklist again

 

[Leo]

those are essential releases. but not Cool Rock Music.

 

[linebaugh]

those are essential releases. but not Cool Rock Music.

Why not? Its raw and high energy, but affected and restrained in a way proper of most things cool. It grooves as hard as it rocks, as much (if not most) CRM does, and likewise has a sense of humor. I think for many what disqualifies gang of four is what rightfully disqualifies Talking Heads, too coy and aware, but I think for Go4 those elements dont have as much sway in how the band hits your ears.

 

[version]

My stance on Gang of Four's a gut thing. They just don't strike me as cool in any way. They're awkward and earnest and beige. The live vids are like watching a school chess club pretending to be a rock band.

 

[luka]

Suspended reason has left us cos we slagged off Malick, Gang of Four are going to do for Limburger.

 

[Leo]

I love GoF, "entertainment" is a great album, see earlier my post how they were one of the best live bands I've ever seem.

I just view them as too serious and uptight for Cool Rock Music.

 

[john eden]

Did you listen to Matthews 80s Rock mix?

Eighties Rock Panorama

[Click image to engorge ] This clocks in at five and half hours long . Pow . Big data. Bring the noise. Step up to the plate. 80+1 tr...

www.woebot.com

I liked this, it was very idiosyncratic.