Whatsitoosit

his voice was an acquired taste for me... it took me a while to get over the fact he sounded like my Grandmother in the morning. Now I can listen to them and enjoy it... but they're not one of my favorites. I heard some of his post GnR work.. sounds like his voice is getting worse as the years go on, maybe from all the years of using a false range as his gimmick?

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"It takes 43 muscles to frown and 17 to smile,
but it doesn't take any to just sit there with a dumb look on your face."

Urban Hat€monger ?

It was so tempting to put concept albums in full stop , but if I did that I would be slating some of my favourite albums. I think it's fair to say I prefer themed albums rather than concept albums. For example Primal Scream's Screamadelica technically could be considered a concept album but I prefer to think of it as a themed album , the theme being of course the high you get from E and the inevitable comedown afterwards.

Everybody praises The Who's Tommy album. I Fucking hate it. The whole concept is idiotic , the pinball part of it was added in at the last minute and goes on to become virtually half the focus of the album. Which just goes to show how paper thin the whole thing was already. They did a much better job on The Who Sell Out , A simple concept (A pirate radio station , with faux adverts in between songs ) done well that doesn't intrude at all in the songs. They managed to make an album with a central concept where you could also take each song individually and it loses nothing. Something that both Primal Scream did on Screamadelica , Husker Du did it on Zen Arcade which just happen to be two of my favourite albums of all time. Compare that to Iron Maiden's Seventh Son album which I found so dull I didn't listen to them again for about 5 years , and i've never really regained the love I once had for them since , which brings me on to my next point.

Concept albums brings this horrible image of horrible wannabe rock operas writing songs about epic quests. What I hate about them most is that there's no release from it. Once your saddled with this idiotic theme you have to endure it for the whole album , which is why I hated Seventh Son & Tommy so much.
None of the songs stand up on their own. The album will almost certainly begin with ridiculous opening song title such 'Prelude To The Magical Quest Of Blarnathog' followed by 'The Magical Quest Of Blarnathog Begins' and you just know at some point there will be a song about water. I think there's an unwritten rule saying all concept albums must have a song about the sea or an ocean. Usually after about 4 or 5 songs I just want it to get to the final song (Usually titled on concept albums as 'Finale' ... amazing originality huh!)

And you know that once your favourite band has made a dull concept album the next time you see them live they'll play THE WHOLE FUCKING THING IN ORDER. I mean have you heard some of The Who's 70s bootlegs? , the whole of the Tommy album , a bunch of early rock n roll / blues standards and an extended version of My Generation that lasts about 15 minutes. By the time you get through that your lucky if you even hear one song from any other album they've done , and thats during a 90/120 minute long show. It wouldn't be so bad if it was just the tour they did for Tommy but they did this up until about 1974.

Concept albums .. Fuck em

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right-track

Why some musicians think they're storytellers is beyond me.
With the odd exception, concept albums are a bad idea, badly thought out with little or no connection linking the tracks so that they actually make sense.
"Enduring the theme" is extremely distracting and can actually ruin a good song.
Good call.

Zombeels

I can't stand Axl either. I'd rather hear nails on a chalkboard.

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What It Is

Whatsitoosit

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"It takes 43 muscles to frown and 17 to smile,
but it doesn't take any to just sit there with a dumb look on your face."

Urban Hat€monger ?

To a lot of people to look at both papers there wasn't a lot of difference , both were published by the same publisher , both were weekly papers favouring the Indie scene and both championed new British bands. But that's where the similarities end because above all else there was one MAJOR difference between the two papers.

The NME wanted so badly to be so cool and would go on and on and on about how cool they were. they'd feature all the 'right' bands , give their journalists cool sounding names and have cool lists and cool awards.

Melody Maker WERE cool , didn't ram it down your throat and didn't give a fuck what you thought.

You know how book authors have a rule 'show ,don't tell'
That was the difference , The NME TOLD you they were cool , Melody Maker SHOWED you why they were.

They covered all the 'right' bands but they'd also cover other things. Even during the whole Blur vs Oasis britpop war when the NME would champion everything British or Pop the Melody Maker were rightfully criticising the dross from that movement like Ocean Colour Scene & Kula Shaker while still championing new American bands and covering emerging movements like Math Rock & Post Rock in great detail as well as championing British bands who didn't fit in with the whole Britpop era such as Gallon Drunk & Tindersticks & of course The Fall. They'd also educate you about the past doing many articles on Folk , Country , Jazz , Krautrock and many others that introduced me to many many artists. They also regually wrote about Hip Hop something the NME did and discarded pretty quickly because their readership rejected it because they wanted more Smith's articles.

One of the best things about Melody Maker was David Stubbs Mr Agreeable column. Where he commented on the top news stories of the week , which was basically just an excuse to just slag off the indie royalty of the day in a barrage of expletives , with Bono , Damon Albarn , Oasis & the Stone Roses being targeted most weeks. It also had a bunch of parodies (The white middle class geek who spoke gangsta & listened to rap being a favourite) and fake interviews. There was also a regular feature called Rebellious Jukebox named after the Fall song of the same name where a musician would choose 12 albums that were the most important in their lives. I remember Dave Grohl's choices being particularly influential to me.

Sadly it had to end and it was the Britpop wars that killed it. NME got so much coverage for their Blur vs Oasis stance their sales went through the roof , yet again populist triumphed over substance and Melody Makers sales declined. They also lost most of their writing talent to glossy magazines & newspapers and worst of all an ex NME journo became editor. When the Spice Girls & Take that appeared on the cover in 1997 I knew it was time to depart. Shortly afterwards the paper was relaunched as a glossy magazine covering mostly rock & metal bands. Within months it was announced the NME & Melody Maker had merged , well what they meant was the Melody Maker's classified section was being moved , everything else had gone.

I bought the NME last year in an airport because Bobby Gillespie was on the cover. That interview was the only part of it I read.

Melody Maker R.I.P.

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jackhammer

I can quite happily say that I have never once read N.M.E. It's such a shame when great magazines lose the plot. Kerrang has a similar story. That was the bible and championed so much underground stuff. These days they are just sticking the latest chart band at the time on the cover and ignoring the fact that many metal fans are older than eighteen. The cable channel is the same. It's bloody awful.

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Piss Me Off

I know i'm much younger and i enjoyed reading the NME a few years ago, when you'd probably say it was **** then, but looking back at old issues i have and what it is now i can the quality lessen. Hell, it got me into some great stuff but now it's, as Mozzer put it brilliantly (but lets not get into that), "a relentless stream of "cheers mate, got pissed last night, ha ha" interviews".

Another problem i have is why they have to side with British music as if it's some competition. And then of course there was the early 00's where it was Travis/Coldplay-ville and they sided a bit more towards the international garage acts (which to be fair were very average on the whole), i can't help but think lately that if they had taken a chance and backed bands like Mclusky more then my taste would be epically different.

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Urban Hat€monger ?

I've never really based my opinion of the NME on anything other than how good melody maker was in it's prime.

I remember being on holiday and looking for something to read and the shop only stocked NME , that was the first time I ever read it. I was expecting something identical to MM , after reading it I realised it wasn't even in the same league. It just felt like a poor copy written badly.

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Urban Hat€monger ?

The really annoying thing about Damon Albarn is he makes great records.

At least Bono makes it easy for you to hate him. He's a cock of the highest order and makes crap records ...done & dusted.

Damon Albarn is also a cock of the highest order yet I love the stuff he does. In a career almost spanning 20 years he's only made one album I flat out hate , that being the morose dirge that is Think Tank. Granted The Great Escape is pretty bad too but even that's listenable after a load of booze & an extended carry on film marathon.

Everything else about him makes me want to punch him in the face. the smugness , the arrogance , he just has an aura of a man who you'll dislike the moment he opens his mouth.
And yet he makes brilliant records.

So basically , he's not on this list for being a twat and because I hate him , it's because the hatred is aimed at myself for liking the music of someone like him.

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