Quote:
Originally Posted by Janszoon
This. I don't think of them as overrated because I don't think of them as being all that highly rated. I feel like they're more important for their place in history that for the actual music they produced.
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Really? I can believe that a lot of their current popularity is hindsight based, but I still hear their music praised about as much as most any other band they're mentioned with, like the VU. They're not necessarily as innovative as some of their art rock/proto-punk/whatever peers, but as far as having a unique, original sound that grabs your attention by balls they're on par with any of them. I mean, I certainly love the way that "1970" slowly deconstructs into the almost pure jam/freak out/whatever of "Funhouse", which then completely dissolves into stream-of-conscious noise with "LA Blues", but the VU definitely realized that unstructured, spontaneous thing the Stooges were going for better with "Sister Ray". I think Flipper actually did the same thing with "Sex Bomb" too, and realized it more fully as well. But I prefer the base sound of the Stooges more than either of those bands, even if they couldn't quite capture their intentions as well on record. Whatever deficiencies they may have had were more than made up for by a visceral instinct for rock'n'roll that is unmatched by the vast majority of bands.