Musicians/Headscratchers

• Alucard: Isn't It Sad? Blues was the biggest contributor to Rock, and now we have all these sections of Rock sub-genres with not enough devoted artists among them to make a Blues folder. The worst thing is that Blues is so ingrained into the sound of Rock that any artists we could add to such a folder would fit better in Rock (Cream, Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin). When I was folderizing this, I briefly considered a Blues folder, then realized all I had to add to it was Eric Clapton. Isn't It Sad? So anyone planning to make a B.B. King page?
  • Sen: I could probably knock off a Robert Johnson quick, but... eh... I don't really know much else. Also, how do you create a Just Bugs Me, Laconic or WMG page? I keep wanting to learn how to create one, but end up failing...
  • Alucard: There's probably a mark-up explaining page or a thread in the forums explaining this, but just link Just Bugs Me (no "It") to Subject with a / in the middle. Thus, JustBugsMe/GreenDay becomes Green Day. Anyway, I'd love to see a page on Joe Cocker or Rory Gallagher, personally. I think the problem is that most Blues artists avoid the popular music scene, meaning no page (unless they're highly influential or talented).
  • Atticus: The trouble with Blues subgenres is that they usually describe location rather than style. Memphis blues, Chicago blues, etc. Much harder to quantify than explict subgenres.
• dxman: Why do people hate 80s music so much?
  • Two reasons: Either they weren't around when it was and therefore simply don't understand, or they were, and are too embarrassed to admit they actually liked it at one point.
    • But the 80s gets an incredible amount of hate compared to the other decades in pop music.
  • Alucard: Personally, I love the 80's, but I think it's because the decade is seen as that cheesy half-way point in music, not quite as revolutionary as the 60's or not quite as intense or raw as the 70's. It's become "That time before the 90's changed the face of music". The 60's had Bubblegum Pop, Blues Rock and Motown, the 70's had Soul and Hard Rock, and between those two was Disco. What did the 80's have? New Wave, the rise too many movements to count (including College Rock, the thing that would help to kill this decade), and of course Heavy Metal. So the 80's tends to be seen as that middle ground with too many synths and masturbatory guitar solos. The one that grunge had to slay.
    • Popular music had, at to the point, been seen as something subversive and against the establishment, at first just by its very nature with the likes of Elvis and Little Richard being banned for supposed sexuality, and then directly with the likes of Bob Dylan railing against the Vietnam War and corrupt politicians. When we got to the eighties with rampant capitalism and Thatcher & Reagan, popular music actually seemed to side with them (the biggest selling artists of the decade such as Duran Duran and Huey Lewis and the News seemed to be celebrating consumerism).
      • arcana 07: The key word here is seems. People by and large are too literal-minded and take things too often at face value, which is why Duran Duran get a lot of flack for their lyrics when in fact you're supposed to process the vast majority of them like poems. Simon Le Bon derived a great amount of influence from T.S. Eliot, so he's a big fan of original metaphors and lyrics that have to be deciphered. And their whole ethos wasn't simply that of "consumerism" (fun fact: the 1970s was the true era of "consumerism", while the 1980s was the era of the workaholic) but of thumbing their noses at the British establishment at a time when it was advocating austerity and morose, doomsday mindsets. Even Simon's famous saying about DD wanting to be "the band everyone dances to when the bomb drops" is a "take that" at the idea that we should all have to live our lives in dread and fear because of global circumstances (fear of nuclear holocaust in the '80s, fear of global terrorism in the '90s and beyond).
  • The 80's (or at least the bits people take the piss out of) was largely a Take That that got horrendously out of hand. Anyone remember The Human Leagues early hit Being Boiled Alive? No? That's because because it was the original line up who recorded that. After most of the band members left due to "creative differences" Philip Oakley drafted in two fit birds from the local pub and topped the charts. Some of the previous members, annoyed that their former band had "sold out" and gone pop decided to form Heaven 17, pose as a bunch of Yuppies and make incredibly polished, bland Pop songs about how great it was to be incredibly bland and polished to take the piss. Unfortunately, the joke was lost on actual Yuppies who lapped it up unironically. As a result, labels signed just about anyone they could find who fit the mold and what started as a genuinely disturbing and subversive rejection of Rocks hyperbolic somewhat ironically became a deliberately vacous celebration of all things tacky and souless. Compare Warm Leatherette by The Normal (1978) to Too Shy by Kajagoogoo (1983), who had themselves started as a far more experimental band before becoming frustrated and "going pop".
  • It also depends on which kind music you're talking about- in Punk Rock and Heavy Metal, the 80s are generally well regarded, as they represented periods of significant development in each genre and subculture. Hardcore Punk and Thrash Metal, in particular, were at their peak in this decade, and the output of that period still retains a very loyal fanbase. (Noting that the modern Metal subculture is largely derived from Thrash Metal, at the time the underdog to the more popular Hair Metal, opinions of which are decidedly mixed.)
  • Amon Duul: I suspect two other factors may be at play. First, there seems to be/just was a big upswing in nostalgia for the 1980s and, as a result, a lot of 80s music became much more visible via TV/Movies/the internet/whatever. Surges of popularity like this often come with backlashes from people who don't like said popular thing, ergo, people make a bigger stink about hating 80s music than they otherwise might. Second, speaking from personal experience, for some people the kind of production style common on a lot of popular 80s music sound really plastic and awful. It can kill an possible enjoyment they could get form the song and just grates whenever they have to hear it. Combine this with the aforementioned resurgence of 80s music and complaining about it seems like a natural right.
  • The second reason here seems to be the main one. The 80's were when electronic music really came into it's own, but it was still early and primitive. People feel that it became "soulless" or "created by machines and not people" Also, a lot of people are obsessed with "authenticity" and generally found that commercialism to be soulless and unauthentic. It's also a lot closer to the now. While the 60's and 70's had a ton of crap in them, they were both a really, really long time ago. Youngish people (30's and such) still remember the 80's clearly.
    • Somewhat ironically, in a recent (and fascinating, if you're into that) TV documentary called Synth Britannia, the members of (I believe) OMD defended themselves against those who claimed it was too mechanical at the time by pointing out that they had to play every note by hand as sequencers were not yet commercially available, at least to bands of their income bracket. If you've ever tried to play sixteeth notes on a piano for longer than 30 seconds you'll know exactly what they're talking about. How they weren't all laid up with carpel tunnel is a medical mystery.

• Cabbit Girl Emi: The band Everything but the Girl. Sure, Missing was a pretty good song, but what confounds me is why they call themselves that despite the fact that it clearly has a female singer. I hate it when being Literal-Minded gets in the way.
  • It's from a store in their city that had a sign saying "We sell everything but the girl."
• Why are most musicians being revered for their amazing musical talent, when everyone talks more about how hot they look or their crazy antics?
  • Some people are shallow; some people are music freaks. Different strokes for different folks.
• Why is it that popular, well-known pop artists (think Katy Perry or Lady Gaga) tend to be the ones who gets the worst treatment by "True Music" fans? Just because it's popular doesn't mean it's automatically bad. Somehow, it started off as a "I don't like this song" opinion to bashing at an artist and their fans because it's not "True Art". It's like hating what's cool to hate and their fans, really.