At least she had heard a song by them. I'm sure there are many that haven't.

 

Everyone knows 'Blitzkreig Bop', it's just how much Ramones merch is fashion these days, everyone is a fake.

Yeah but the point is she probably read that off the side of the bag. It's The Ramones catchphrase taken from the Blitzkrieg Bop lyrics. It's on a lot of the merchandise that's sold and I bet she's never ever heard Blitzkrieg Bop in her life.

exactly... perhaps we're overestimating the importance of a band that it's, bizarrely, 'cool' to like? As we all know, teenagers on the whole are, and I suppose always have been, like sheep - you get the gangs following XFactor, the indie ones following the likes of Kasabian and Muse.... and the goth/alt/emo types who, in their own little world, think they're completely removed from society and that they are making a statement by liking dark, moody, supposedly 'alternative' music that their parents despise (exactly the same as the 80s when Bauhaus, Sex Gang Children, Siouxsie, Sisters of Mercy, Birthday Party etc were around and... surprise surprise... the teens of then wore black, thought they were apart from the norm, had long dyed hair and put the goolies up adults). These are the group who follow bands like, yes, Nine Inch Nails, Marilyn Manson, the 'Offbeat' label German stuff...and bands like and including Nirvana.

 

In a way, when I myself was one of those goth kids.... I suppose this infatuation with Nirvana can be explained.... because back then, we all loved The Doors... another band who, in all honesty, bar a few great singles, weren't really all that much.... and who had a glamorous lead singer who... yep.... topped himself after a doomed love affair with opiates, and who wrote drearily depressing ditties about death and drugs and the horrors of his own making.

 

Now with hindsight, of course, we see that The Doors wrote dreadful lyrics, made shoddy albums, were nowhere near as important as we made them out to be.... and are now consigned to the very back areas of our CD collections and consciousness.....

 

personally i fully agree with your point regarding the simularities between nirvana and the doors, i never 'got' the doors either which as a 60's-phile i should have. imho i agree that both are well overrated and hold some un-earned cult like status.

 

 

 

This is the bit that Weller said that I find the most rediculous. As if the nationality of the artist bars them from having something to say about the condition of human experience. Music from all around the world can have an effect on a listener wherever they are based. This statement is at best parochial and little minded.

It was also the worst thing about Brit Pop in that it completely ignored what was coming out of anywhere else in the world. It was the basis of the first arch Britpop album - Modern Life is Rubbish and it also a stance that Damon Albarn turned his back on when Blur released the Blur album based as it was on US indie rock.

 

So UK kids shouldn't be listening to Ladyhawke, Rammstein, Rihanna, Animal Collective, Bon Iver, Jay-Z, HIM et al just because they don't come from Britain? Patent bollocks.

 

Oh yeah and Curtis Mayfield (one of Weller's heroes) was raised in the UK was he? Bloody old fart. And I like The Jam!

 

no no no m8, that isnt the point.

of course we should be listening to any music that grabs us, that we can relate too, but british created music that tackles british life events are more likely to talk to us in our world. a group from sheffield or manchester for eg lives in our world. that is more pertainent to us then a west coast grunge outfit.

 

thats why our pop music has been world leading and creative, we took rock n roll, r & b, ska, punk, and turned it into music that was meaningful to us... from the 60's beat boom to the uk version of punk ... note the american punk never took off here, until we made it our own.

 

id suggest that if there are so many still finding nirvana etc so apt, then its the recent british groups who have failed to address the problems/lifes of these youths.

Yeah but the point is she probably read that off the side of the bag. It's The Ramones catchphrase taken from the Blitzkrieg Bop lyrics. It's on a lot of the merchandise that's sold and I bet she's never ever heard Blitzkrieg Bop in her life.

 

i'm pretty sure it didnt, but I get your point, I hate people who refer to Blitzkreig Bop as 'Hey Ho Lets Go', its just like you obviously know nothing about the ramones <_< I hate how fashion has ruined that band.

Weller told NME: "You'd had all that shoegazing b*llocks and then the whole Nirvana thing, which I thought was f**king rubbish - it was just America catching up with punk rock 20 years too f**king late for me, you know.

 

"So to hear some English guitar music again was really refreshing."

from DigitalSpy

 

Hang on, he's slagging shoegazing and then bigging up English guitar music. Well WTF was shoegazing which gave us the finest indie guitar band of the last 25 years - My Bloody Valentine. My God the man is a f***ing buffoon!

I knew Stanley Road was the absolute nadir of mid 90s indie but bloody hell.

 

 

 

 

from DigitalSpy

 

Hang on, he's slagging shoegazing and then bigging up English guitar music. Well WTF was shoegazing which gave us the finest indie guitar band of the last 25 years - My Bloody Valentine. My God the man is a f***ing buffoon!

I knew Stanley Road was the absolute nadir of mid 90s indie but bloody hell.

 

I think the biggest idiots in this whole thread are those of you who took a Paul Weller quote (deliberately?) taken out of context from DigitalSpy.

 

I mean are you not aware his 10th solo album “Wake Up The Nation” out on April 12th on Island Records features guest musicians Bev Bevan, Bruce Foxton, Dave Grohl & Kevin Shields.

 

Therefore, don't you think that the Modfather may well have had his tongue in his cheek (which he has had a three decades long reputation for) when doing this interview! :rofl:

I think the biggest idiots in this whole thread are those of you who took a Paul Weller quote (deliberately?) taken out of context from DigitalSpy.

 

I mean are you not aware his 10th solo album “Wake Up The Nation” out on April 12th on Island Records features guest musicians Bev Bevan, Bruce Foxton, Dave Grohl & Kevin Shields.

 

Therefore, don't you think that the Modfather may well have had his tongue in his cheek (which he has had a three decades long reputation for) when doing this interview! :rofl:

 

member of Nirvana on his new album, says it all really lol.

member of Nirvana on his new album, says it all really lol.

 

and Kevin Shields is the main man from leading early 1990s shoegazing act My Bloody Valentine.

I think the biggest idiots in this whole thread are those of you who took a Paul Weller quote (deliberately?) taken out of context from DigitalSpy.

 

I mean are you not aware his 10th solo album “Wake Up The Nation” out on April 12th on Island Records features guest musicians Bev Bevan, Bruce Foxton, Dave Grohl & Kevin Shields.

 

Therefore, don't you think that the Modfather may well have had his tongue in his cheek (which he has had a three decades long reputation for) when doing this interview! :rofl:

 

 

and Kevin Shields is the main man from leading early 1990s shoegazing act My Bloody Valentine.

 

Ooops! :blush: Well I am suitably chastened.

 

Still think Stanley Road is pants though.

those of you who took a Paul Weller quote (deliberately?) taken out of context from DigitalSpy.

 

... he he, anythings fair game for an excuse to start a debate!

I was taking issue with the "shoegazing bollocks" part of it anyway. That old git, best known for not smiling during Band Aid, has no right to slag off such fantastic acts as Slowdive, Chapterhouse and Ride!

Jark, as you've never ever visited this forum in your life.... and you probably think the Pixies are what we call fans of Miss Lott...this is one argument that you can surely find it within yourself to stay away from.... eh?

 

Now who's being borderline insulting....? :rolleyes:

 

 

 

I was taking issue with the "shoegazing bollocks" part of it anyway. That old git, best known for not smiling during Band Aid, has no right to slag off such fantastic acts as Slowdive, Chapterhouse and Ride!

Quite...

 

He's a w'anker, simple as... And these are British bands as well FFS..... Be he doesn't like Radiohead either.... :rolleyes:

 

Just because he is "lyrically inept" doesnt mean he cant speak to us, you can have some amazing lyrics but they could speak to no one, I dont personally thinks lyrics are a valid arguement here, and you are being highly selective with your picks.

 

I agree, I mean, I could easily selectively quote Public Enemy lyrics and take them out of context, which would likely make Chuck D appear a bit foolish and inarticulate....

 

And, well, Russ is a Depeche Mode fan FFS, and they've written some utter HOWLERS over the years which are just hilarious.... :lol:

 

Oh, but it's obviously okay for British acts to write dodgy lyrics....

 

I could also pick holes in some of Massive Attack's lyrics too if I really wanted to ("Karmacoma"'s lyrics are hardly 'profound')...

It depends on what you mean by achieve. What do you mean? Sounds like you think the Pixies didn't fulfil their potential and that they split prematurely.

 

What I mean is, they split on the verge of becoming absolutely HUGE, probably Nirvana-huge even... You only have to see how the reunion gigs they did sold out extremely quickly to see just what they may have become back in the day.... And the talk of the new Pixies material roundabout '06/'07, which then came to nothing... A lot of missed potential...

 

 

 

oh dear...where do I start?

 

I won't even enter into answering the utter stupidity of Scott's postings (he seems to only decide to post inane, unreadable, borderline insulting ramblings these days.... a real shame, once such a readable poster here) - Scott, like the poster I've quoted above, is a Nine Inch Nails fan - says it all really. And Scott - nope, never saw Nirvana live - I was doing far more interesting things in 1991, thankyou very much. 1991 was the tail end of acid house and the birth of the recording arm of the Wild Bunch, Massive Attack for one thing.... yes, far more interesting things going on than rock bands in 1991 :rolleyes:

 

OK..... selfdestruct....err. no contact with teenagers...umm...I work with teenagers - day after day after day. Thankfully these same teenagers are not as apparently sheep-like as you make yourself appear. The teenagers I work with all have varying musical tastes - the alternative ones..... I don't think Nirvana or any of the other charty rock bands would feature particularly high on their playlists to be perfectly honest. You really have missed the point if you would even name Nirvana as alternative, anyway - they were mainstream - very - and alternative to what? Minus the hype they sound pretty damn generic to me.

 

Nirvana are about as valid and important to British music as Liberace is - only the most musically shallow would ever cite them as even a minor influence - and Scott, just for the record - The Smiths never ever cited Velvet Underground as an influence - for someone to say Nirvana have more influence over teenagers now than The Beatles or The Smiths is just hilariously misguided - and completely completely completely wide of the mark.

 

In America, maybe, where music has always been slow to catch on and pretty stagnant, yes, Nirvana are important..... but the UK was producing bands with more intelligence and depth than Nirvana throughout the 70s, 80s AND 90s. But only someone as young as selfdestruct would fail to miss this..... to not have actually been around when Nirvana hit the big time... when, in reality, the 'big' album of the time was REM's 'Out of Time' and certainly not 'Nevermind' - to try to make out they had some cultural influence in Britain is simply not true. They didn't - at all. OK, rock fans, maybe... but 'rock' was already a dead sub-genre at that point.... OK, so they killed off the big hair brigade.... but, in reality, that was all over by the late 80s anyway. They appealed to rock fans - had a couple of minor hit singles, one big album...and err... that was that. Hardly the makings of a legend, is it?

 

To make out Nirvana have some important lasting legacy is laughable - their music, from the shallow, badly written 6th-former-angsty lyrics (pretty toe curling stuff if you care to read them... kinda funny, actually.... but, of course, achingly, ahem, 'relevant' is you're a poorly read adolescent), to the generic production to the humdrum image... to state they are of ANY relevance in the UK beyond a few catchy singles.... is just wrong and pretty laughable.

 

If you want shoegazing bands with great lyrics and something to say and who reach out to touch an audience...come on, leave the Joe Public mainstream and be a little more creative, no? Nirvana were a below par, mediocre chart rock band with a suicidal and rather dull lead singer who wrote frankly TERRIBLE lyrics. Then he topped himself and...oh Jesus... well.... yes, oh Jesus literally - here we have the, ahem, 'Second Coming' - oh how iconic. Nothing more nothing less.

 

And for anyone, any age, to say they were anything more than a very average American rock band elevated to cult status simply because they have a dead singer displays a pretty shallow understanding of the true culture, relevance and art of music.

 

Oh dear, so sorry for disagreeing with the Great God Russ..... :rolleyes: So sorry for being a NIN and Nirvana fan... Will you ever forgive me Russypoos.... :rolleyes: Did I even say that either of them were my absolute "favourites of all time" or whatever....? NO, I didn't, I rate them highly, and I just think you, like Wellar are incredibly narrow minded for slagging them off, and downplaying their influence amongst a certain generation or to somehow imply that any American (or, well, NON British) bands cant make a comment on the human condition or connect with British youth (which is utter UTTER bollocks as the triumph of Rage Against the Machine over Simon Cowell PROVED at Christmas).... And the 20-odd thousand who packed out NIN's last show at the 02 would just laugh in your face if you were to say that NIN weren't an important band, and I know LOTS of very intelligent people (people with *gasp* university degrees in ENGLISH, PSYCHOLOGY and LITERATURE even) who get a lot out of the lyrics and music of bands like NIN, Nirvana, Alice In Chains, etc, so for you to imply some sort of intellectual superiority over these people just because they don't happen to think that these bands are "worthless" or "toe-curling" is frankly laughable....

 

If you cant tell that there was indeed a pretty obvious difference between what Nirvana, Mudhoney, Soundgarden, Alice In Chains, Tad and the other Seattle Bands were doing, and what Pixies, Dinosaur Jr, Buffallo Tom, Sebadoh and what the Boston bands were doing (and this is even before you take into account the likes of Sonic Youth, Smashing Pumpkins, Mercury Rev, Flaming Lips and Pavement who were part of neither Seattle Grunge nor the Boston College Scene, but something altogether completely different, and well, just a BIT more daring than pedestrian sh!t like Stereophonics, Wellar, The Verve, OCS and Oasis, and let's not forget Blur's Graham Coxon and his clear love affair with the US Underground/Alt/Lo Fi scene, especially Pavement and Sebadoh), then I suggest you actually get an education into early 90s American Indie Rock/Grunge/Lo Fi/Art Rock.. It's a bit like comparing Trip Hop to Drum N Bass really.... :rolleyes:

 

Yeah, it's so easy to slag off what you patently DONT understand isn't it.....? And, you clearly just dont get that these bands were hardly generic.... And I repeat - Nirvana almost certainly influenced Ash's Tim Wheeler ("1977" is almost a love-letter to Nirvana) as well as Placebo (particularly the first two albums which are pretty, well, "grungy" in their musical style...), and other bands came on the Brit scene which had a Nirvana-esque sound to them...

 

And, well, I think it's pretty obvious Velvet Underground's influence on modern music, even the NME credited their album "Velvet Underground and Nico" as being the defining and influential record of all-time (well, okay, from the 60s onwards to be fair..) about 15 or so years ago, you know, when the NME was actually WORTH A READ... :rolleyes:

 

so?.... our strength has always been that we took american influences and made them our own, from the early 60's through to punk, non of which had much/any resonance with 'us' until 'we' anglacised it and made it our own. swo in that respect weller is right, 'our' bands should be singing about 'our' problems/lifestyle and not try to be america

 

So, British people listening to VU's "Heroin" or Alice In Chain's "Junkhead" wouldn't see the resonance or be able to relate to those lyrics...? Because of course Britain doesn't have a drugs problem does it....? :rolleyes: Nor of course AIC's "Dirt", because, well, no one in UK suffers from depression do they....?

 

Drug addiction and mental illness are NOT "American" or "British" concerns, mate, they're kind of UNIVERSAL....

 

 

If Nirvana were so brilliant then why did they fail to break out big with their indie SubPop debut Bleach and their career best track (IMHO) About A Girl?

 

Because "Bleach" was recorded on a less than a shoestring budget, sounds a bit too 'rough and ready' and got fukk-all advertising or support....

 

I dunno Rich, why did it take Metallica bloody yonks before they got anywhere and hit it big-time with "Enter Sandman"...??? Because the conditions weren't quite right, unless you're gonna tell me you dont think "Master of Puppets" or "Ride The Lightening" are damn good records....

 

Coincidentally, Metallica also had a first album which was recorded for fukk-all and got little or no support...

 

The phrase "indie SubPop debut" should explain exactly why "About a Girl" did not hit. That and the fact it was not released as a single. In fact, I don't think the track was even popular until MTV Unplugged when Geffen stuck it out as a single then.

So, British people listening to VU's "Heroin" or Alice In Chain's "Junkhead" wouldn't see the resonance or be able to relate to those lyrics...? Because of course Britain doesn't have a drugs problem does it....? :rolleyes: Nor of course AIC's "Dirt", because, well, no one in UK suffers from depression do they....?

 

Drug addiction and mental illness are NOT "American" or "British" concerns, mate, they're kind of UNIVERSAL....

 

not sure what youre getting at....

 

yes of course brits have drug/mental probs, so? not all of us do! are you suggesting that only druggies 'get' nirvana?

 

nah...just another excuse to knock british/english ... weller might be a twat, but theres nowt wrong with the general gist of what he supposed to have said. british acts should have more resonance with british public then american.. not exclusive, just more. in fact, im struggling to think of any american track by anyone who has had much resonance with me on a personal level...