The Next Big Thing................. (soundtrack, depeche mode, electronic, funk, jazz)

Urban Hat€monger ? · 05-15-2008, 02:49 PM

We've had threads about pop gems , one hit wonders , forgotten classics. One thing I don't ever remember having is a thread about bands that were hyped to death (usually by papers like the NME & Melody Maker) as the next big thing who went on to total indifference to the record buying public.

Here's some of the stuff they were touting in the early 90s before Oasis , Blur , Suede and Pulp saved the day.

Orlando - Just For A Second

Just what the world wanted , a new romantic revival

This crappy excuse for a movement was dubbed 'Romo' and was hyped to death by the Melody Maker by journalist Simon Price for at least a month or four. Orlando were supposed to be the figurehead band for this movement.
The world just shrugged it's shoulders and waited for them to go away.

Urban Hat€monger ? · 05-15-2008, 03:17 PM

S*M*A*S*H - Real Surreal

From the hotbed of Rock N Roll debauchery Welwyn Garden City. Came S*M*A*S*H. A Band who took the Manic Street Preachers debut album Waaaaaaaaaay too seriously. They even had their own manifesto , based on the writings of Germaine Greer which led to the standout (cough) track on their debut EP entitled Lady Love Your C*nt. Sadly I couldn't find it so you'll have to listen to their 2nd most well known song instead.
Like most music weeklys writing about the band wasn't enough and so they had to invent a scene for it. This one was dubbed NWONW (New Wave Of New Wave) which also produced......

These Animal Men - Speeed King

These Animal Men were a bit more polished & wore more make up than S*M*A*S*H so they soon overtook them as poster boys for the NWONW. A couple of their singles even reached the lower depths of the singles chart amazingly. They also had an uncanny knack of looking like slack jawed gormless twats in every single photo session.

boo boo · 05-16-2008, 06:41 AM

Funny that you bring up Melody Maker, same guys who wrote this.

Quote:

Radiohead - Kid A - Parlophone

1.5 Stars / 5

IMPORTANT? This, oh brother monks of the New Music, is the second Big Bang. It's the alien mothership hovering over the UN tower of rock, preparing to blast everything we know and cherish into thermo-nuclear smithereens.

Important? The very whirr of the CD tray hisses revolution, the title is a portent of genetic science surpassed by sound, the sleeve art positively stinks of the body odour of genius. So earthbuggering is the event of Radiohead deigning to record some music that review samples are distributed on uncopiable, non-uploadable "listening sticks" to prevent this most mercurial of music from falling into the wrong hands, then being whacked on to www.copyrightinfringementagogo.com and exposed to the public at large as the tubby, ostentatious, self-congratulatory, look-ma-I-can-suck-my-own-**** whiny old rubbish it is.

Rubbish? I almost listened to the Dum Dums. It is the sound of Thom Yorke ramming his head firmly up his own arse, hearing the rumblings of his intestinal wind and deciding to share it with the world.

Let's do the math: "OK Computer", until today the most overrated album ever recorded, contained a total of four actual tunes, two of which ("Karma Police" and "No Surprises") were almost identical. "Kid A" manages to squeeze on about two and three-eighths, and those struggle for breath under the avalanche of electronic mice, pointless vocoder twattery and baboon rape. Gulping down their own hype and under self-imposed pressure to make a record even more "ground-breaking" than their third, Radiohead have committed the ultimate folly. They've created a monument of effect over content, a smothering cataclysm of sound and fury signifying precisely f*** all.

The album starts as it means to mither on. "Everything in Its Right Place" is essentially everything unnecessary in whatever place they could shove it. From behind a swathe of keyboards apparently sampled from forgotten Eighties kiddie show "Let's Pretend" emerges a glacial Thom deadpanning, "Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon" in monotone and, heaven knows, we've all been there. But wait! It's not Thom at all! It's an android monk impostor now! No, now there's a billion Thoms all dive-bombing in from the stratosphere doing Stephen Hawking impressions and squabbling over where they last saw the plot! Word down Oxford Mensa is that "Kid A" is the result of studio sessions in Gloucestershire where about 60 songs were started that no one had a bloody clue how to finish. Frankly it shows.

But d'oh! What are they doing singing something resembling a verse like a bunch of syphilitic corporate whores?!? They are Radiohead band, and Radiohead band knee convention in the nadgers, remember? So come the title track they've locked Thom inside a 10-inch thick Metal Mickey costume and buried it 6ft under Chernobyl, from where we can just about make out his mumbles of "We've got heads on sticks, you've got ventriloquists". Cheers! Jonny Greenwood comes on like a Chinese DJ Shadow, laying down cold and charmless flickerbeats while Robo-Thom, casting himself as a Wonky-Eyed Piper of Grimlin, chokes, "Rats and children follow me out of town", thereby introducing the underlying theme of the album: oh woe upon woe, why must poor Thom be tormented with mass international success, a pile of hard cash the size of Ann Widdecombe, and this damned fanbase that plagues him so? Put another record on, mate.

Quite literally, before they do "The National Anthem". Presumably the National Anthem for some bizarre jazz-loving nation ruled by demented circus folk, it is both "Kid A"'s nadir and its first really important track. For once we're past the lumpen space-funk workout and they let the horn section from Bedlam out of their jaw restraints, it turns into Primal Scream's "Accelerator" as played by 50 crack-crazed clowns on their honky noses and thus utterly redefines the notion of "unlistenability", propels us to a whole new sphere of self-indulgence, invents - if you will - post-bollocks.

After so many monkeys have been strangled in the name of art, "How To Disappear Completely And Never Be Found" - with its taut David-Gray-snogs-Slowdive tones and its actual, no-bull**** guitars - comes as a relic, albeit one fraught with frustration. As Thom takes a reflective stroll around Dublin before an oh-so-alienating mega-gig, you're desperate for him to unshackle his explosive misery ala "Lucky" and blast off to some higher level of anguish. But this is no gateau, only pudding, and so on it plods (a bit spooky, a bit whiny, the odd clown) to an ignoble demise.

Cue the music! "Optimistic" heralds the album's first tune, a stirring mechanical chain-gang chant reminiscent of the theme from "The Lost Boys", as sung by a hundred pissed-up coal-miners. But cherish that shred of melody, friends, because from here we race hell-for-leather down Tuneless Wank Boulevard. There's "In limbo" with its aimless arpeggios and Trekkie techie wibbles. There's "Idioteque", in which Thom finds a great new box that spews beats like Depeche Mode in 1984 and uses it to bury three-eighths of a song under some vaguely interesting coin-pressing noises. And there's "Morning Bell", in which nothing f***ing happens at all! Nothing! Really f***ing expensively!

With a shuffle and a shrug, "Kid A" catches up with itself at the pearly gates of "Motion Picture Soundtrack", trips over a massive f***-off harp and suddenly realises what a boring arse it's been all along. "MPS" is magnificent, an epiphany of grinding organ and angelic choirs. It ****s from 150,000ft on the rest of the album and was written, tellingly, in the early Nineties. "Banana Co." by millionaires, anybody?

You're left dazed, bemused, and musing over the motives of "Kid A". Are Radiohead trying to push the experimental rock envelope, unaware that they're simply ploughing furrows dug by DJ Shadow and Brian Eno before them? Are they having a laugh at the pseuds' expense before they go "not really!" and release the proper album of rollicking great pop songs next spring? Or have they simply made a record not to be listened to but to be placed on a plinth at the head of every dinner party butter?

Ground-breaking? As Thom sang in 1993 on "Pop is Dead", by far Radiohead's most inspired single to date, "The emperor [really] has no clothes on/And all his skin is peeling off." And important? As the great poet, philosopher and anti-globalisation non-robot Jim Royle might have said: "Important, my arse."

MARK BEAUMONT

Hardly my idea of a credible source.

Urban Hat€monger ? · 05-16-2008, 07:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by boo boo

Funny that you bring up Melody Maker, same guys who wrote this.

Hardly my idea of a credible source.

To be fair to Melody Maker this was written after it's relaunch in 1998 when it went from being a half decent credible paper to an awful downmarket glossy that pandered to rock/metal fans.
Not surprising that it closed down shortly after that.

Piss Me Off · 05-16-2008, 01:58 PM

Hehe, that gave me a chuckle.
It's a well known fact that Mark Beaumont is wrong about just about everything.

05-15-2008, 02:49 PM	#1 (permalink)
Urban Hat€monger ? The Sexual Intellectual Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Somewhere cooler than you Posts: 18,605	The Next Big Thing................. We've had threads about pop gems , one hit wonders , forgotten classics. One thing I don't ever remember having is a thread about bands that were hyped to death (usually by papers like the NME & Melody Maker) as the next big thing who went on to total indifference to the record buying public. Here's some of the stuff they were touting in the early 90s before Oasis , Blur , Suede and Pulp saved the day. Orlando - Just For A Second Just what the world wanted , a new romantic revival This crappy excuse for a movement was dubbed 'Romo' and was hyped to death by the Melody Maker by journalist Simon Price for at least a month or four. Orlando were supposed to be the figurehead band for this movement. The world just shrugged it's shoulders and waited for them to go away. __________________ Urb's RYM Stuff Most people sell their soul to the devil, but the devil sells his soul to Nick Cave.

05-15-2008, 03:17 PM	#2 (permalink)
Urban Hat€monger ? The Sexual Intellectual Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Somewhere cooler than you Posts: 18,605	SMASH - Real Surreal From the hotbed of Rock N Roll debauchery Welwyn Garden City. Came SMASH. A Band who took the Manic Street Preachers debut album Waaaaaaaaaay too seriously. They even had their own manifesto , based on the writings of Germaine Greer which led to the standout (cough) track on their debut EP entitled Lady Love Your Cnt. Sadly I couldn't find it so you'll have to listen to their 2nd most well known song instead. Like most music weeklys writing about the band wasn't enough and so they had to invent a scene for it. This one was dubbed NWONW (New Wave Of New Wave) which also produced...... These Animal Men - Speeed King These Animal Men were a bit more polished & wore more make up than SMASH so they soon overtook them as poster boys for the NWONW. A couple of their singles even reached the lower depths of the singles chart amazingly. They also had an uncanny knack of looking like slack jawed gormless twats in every single photo session. __________________ Urb's RYM Stuff Most people sell their soul to the devil, but the devil sells his soul to Nick Cave.*

05-16-2008, 01:58 PM	#5 (permalink)
Piss Me Off Moodswings n' Roundabouts Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: At the corner of Dude and Catastrophe Posts: 4,512	Hehe, that gave me a chuckle. It's a well known fact that Mark Beaumont is wrong about just about everything. __________________ Last FM Rate Yr Music Muxtape