David Lee Roth or Ozzy Osbourne ?

David Lee Roth or Ozzy Osbourne ? Feb 25, 2018 4:06:26 GMT

Quote

Post by Eva Yojimbo on Feb 25, 2018 4:06:26 GMT

Feb 25, 2018 3:28:57 GMT Terrapin Station said:

Feb 25, 2018 2:45:25 GMT Eva Yojimbo said:

Yes. Are you seriously suggesting post-Dio Sabbath are better than Pixies?

Edit: Reading your above replies, I see you're not much of a fan. Frankly, the Pixies are a band I shouldn't like given my typical tastes. I'm not a fan in general of most punk or punk-like music, but Pixies had a really unique combination of furiously abrasive and ridiculously catchy. I think Bowie nailed it when he called them a "psychotic Beatles." Plus, they had a pretty immense influence on 90s alternative rock and indie music; without them, Nirvana and Radiohead are very different bands. It's hard to imagine the 90s without the quiet/minimal verse to loud/maximal chorus structure that all those bands got from the Pixies (not that they were the first to do it, but they were certainly the most influential from that period).

In my view, whether something is influential has nothing at all to do with whether it's any good. And the subsequent stuff can easily surpass the influencer.

I like enough punk and indie. I just don't think the Pixies were very good songwriters/arrangers. They're usually boring to my ear, stuff is underdeveloped, often formulaic where the formula does nothing for me and it's sometimes annoying to me instead. It's hard for me to believe that they're not primarily respected simply because Kurt Cobain talked about liking them.

I feel the same way about the Replacements by the way.

I agree stuff can surpass the influencer, but I do think influence is one legitimate way of measuring goodness/greatness, since influence is one of the biggest factors that shape how art evolves. Also, Cobain was hardly their only admirer: Radiohead and Bowie both lavished praise on them; Bowie was the one that made The Beatles comparison.

I can understand Pixies being boring from a certain perspective. They share the same raw, simplistic approach to songwriting as punk that I've typically found boring because it was just a few dull ideas repeated ad nauseam; but I love their sensibility when it comes to melody and hooks, their off-kilter sense of humor, their occasional inclusion of surf music and other older genres (something like Here Comes Your Man sounds like it could've been released in the 50s), and their ability to find a lot of tonal variations and textures within a rather limited technical palette. They were pretty un-formulaic given the time period: who else was doing what they were doing when they were doing it? As for being underdeveloped... well, yeah, but isn't a lack of development a staple of punk music? The idea is just to paste a few simple ideas together and hope it makes an impact. It's polar opposite approach of prog where developing ideas is the name of the game.