December 6, 200618 yr Author Whew, well, we're down to the Top 10 now, hope everyone is still with me and you're all enjoying the journey... The finishing post is almost in sight.... A slight difference now though... Because the following are the 'big boys' as it were (and I feel they kinda deserve a wee bit more..), I'm going to include a supplementary clip, whether a bit of a live show or a TV appearance/piece on the band or a supplementary promo vid, or just some random oddity.... Hope you will like it regardless.... RIGHT..... NUMBER 10 - MY BLOODY VALENTINE - SOON The ultimate "Shoegazer" band, probably one of the first, this Irish quartet enjoyed an almost mythical status in the annals of Indie Rock because some people out there honestly seem to believe that MBV never actually existed, or if they do believe it, then it is automatically assumed that they're some sort of Marilyn Manson/Murderdolls-type band because of the B-Movie horror style band name..... :lol: :lol: I'm sure Wednesday 13 would've loved to have had this name for his band... Instead of PVC-clad Shock-Rockers caked in make-up and scowling on their press shots, what you have is a bunch of quiet, unassuming Irish people who dont look as if they'd say "YAAAAAAHH DIE MUTHAFUKKA!!!" to a goose.... Dont let appearances fool you, MBV created some of the most astounding, visceral aural soundscapes ever committed to album... The sort of musical chaos they were capable of creating would leave the likes of Wednesday or Manson just speechless in envy... Live performances by this band were sparse and irregular (a bit like their recording "schedules" really..), but I was lucky to catch them twice and both times I was completely and utterly blown away.... Only two albums, but WHAT albums they were - "Isn't Anything" in 1988 and over three years later the legendary "Loveless", and then....nothing, they signed to Island records (after almost bankrupting Creation records..), built a studio with the advance and that's it as it stands, Kevin Shields has played guitar with Primal Scream and remixed a few things, but all is quiet on the MBV front. Some of us still wait for that 'difficult' third album. They influenced a generation of Indie guitar bands and some of their influence can still be heard in bands such as Snow Patrol and Royskopp... SUPPLEMENTAL VID - a piece from pretty cool Beeb 2 music show "Rapido". Given the current musical climate today, it is unthinkable that a band like My Bloody Valentine would ever receive such high-profile coverage.... Sad really and just really symptomatic of just how much things have totally dumbed down... fSXilppTgOo Rapido TV interview A9I_lN7m8Fo Soon Promo
December 6, 200618 yr I'm fairly new to Nirvana, I bought Nevermind a couple of weeks ago as a friend strongly recommended it to me and I saw it cheap, and I'm really enjoying it at the moment. I can see why it's so highly rated. I think In Utero is on my 'to get' list now too.
December 7, 200618 yr Author NUMBER 9 - NICK CAVE AND THE BAD SEEDS - RED RIGHT HAND The coolest thing to ever come out of Australia, ever... Nick Cave is quite the renaissance man, musician, troubador, actor, novellist, screenwriter.... So many quivers to his bow that you might expect him to have spread himself a bit thin, but no, he approaches everything with a consummate artistic skill... The word 'genius' is often over-used, but I feel that it could be justifiably applied to Mr Cave, his unique talent is obvious, the man is a genuine one-off that lesser talents desperately attempt to emulate, but very, very few actually succeed in matching... Perhaps his most obvious kindred spirit is P J Harvey in many ways, when they performed together sparks flew, it was like the conjoining of those two Hindu Gods... Stephen Patrick Morrissey is perhaps another you could seriously compare to Cave.. Nick started out in a proto-Goth band called The Birthday Party, their song "Release The Bats" was a bit of a Goth favourite, "Nick The Stripper" was another famous track of theirs.. But it was when he formed The Bad Seeds that things really took off. To say that Cave ploughs a dark furrow is an understatement, but his forays into this territory have never been cliched or riddled with pathetic teen angst, his lyrics are remarkable, full of dense imagery, allegory, with a literacy rarely matched by anyone before or since, simply, Nick Cave writes astounding lyrics, I would put his literary/poetic talent on a par with Shakespeare, Joyce, Coleridge, Milton and the great poets such as Shelley, Byron, Wordsworth, Blake... And those are not just my opinions, but opinions of serious Academics who have looked at the form and structure of his lyrics.. Even when writing love songs, they are never simple, or trite, or saccharine they are as good as any poem by the Romantics you care to mention and there is a yearning in songs such as "Into My Arms" and "The Ship Song" that will just leave you speechless and almost in tears.. Of course, Cave is probably best known for his duet with fellow Aussie Kylie Minogue, but "Where The Wild Roses Grow" is certainly no gimmicky record, or some stab at kitsch or irony... Cave had an agenda, it was all part of his concept album "Murder Ballads" (which also features his staggering duet with P J Harvey, which I feel is superior to "Wild Roses..."). Kylie certainly did well out of it, emerging with some credibilty, and it was probably doing that duet with Cave which more than anything kind of gave her the confidence to finally do her own thing and shed her manufactured tag.. SUPPLEMENTAL CLIP - NICK AND P J TOGETHER LIVE... [flash=450,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch/v/DrodaLzfi5s.swf Red Right Hand [flash=450,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch/v/-JcNh9Cqav0.swf Nick and PJ
December 7, 200618 yr Author NUMBER 8 - THE STONE ROSES - WATERFALL What, yet more gobby Mancunians???? Yep, yer fookin' right it is la' (and there's more to come....). This was a legendary band. No one under the age of 30 can even begin to really appreciate just how legendary they really were and the sheer seismic eruption that they and fellow Mancs Happy Mondays caused in the UK music scene in '89/'90.... The Stone Roses exploded onto the scene with "She Bangs The Drum", and I vividly remember the time when the Indie Top 10 actually featured THREE of their songs in the same week... Ian Brown, John Squire, Reni and Mani became absolute icons for a generation of music fans. Taking their cues from classic rock bands like The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin and mixing in the sensibilties of The Smiths and The Beatles, the Stone Roses crafted a pretty unique and very identifiable sound.. John Squire was an amazing guitarist, one of the best of his generation, as for Ian Brown, well, he certainly couldn't sing particularly well, but he had attitude and charisma in abundance to more than make up for a lack of singing talent, and he was a good songwriter as well... Their self-titled debut album rightly remains a classic to this day, every single track a work of genius, especially album closer "I Am The Resurrection", so arrogant and confident, just defining everything that the band were about, absolutely cracking tune which just takes you into another dimension... Wonderful. Two splendid EPs followed - "One Love" and the Indie Dance classic "Fools Gold", almost as funky as George Clinton... The signature sound of The Roses, however, relied as much on the quite intricate percussion techniques of Reni, no one really appreciated just how important he was to the band until that is, he got kicked out just after the release of the rather ill-fated second album "Second Coming" (which they really took FAR too long over doing...), and it was inevitable that things were going to go t*ts up... A band like The Stone Roses is one of these bands which are defined by the people in it, and without one of the component elements the whole thing will just fall apart.. They got a replacement drummer, but he just wasn't Reni, and fans knew it too. "Second Coming" itself was a rather bloated, excessive, hit and miss affair, not really coming close to matching the classic debut album... A few good songs, but Squire's obsessions with merely apeing the Classic Rock bands of the 70s as opposed to just using certain elements from these bands, made listening to the album a tiresome and tedious experience.. The Stone Roses were one of the casualties of Indie bands moving over to major labels... Although, it has to be said, their Indie label Silvertone, in its own way, is just as money grabbing and corporate... They've had the nerve to continually re-release Stone Roses material for well over a decade now, and somehow have managed to milk no less than THREE compilation albums out of the Roses.... After the Roses, Ian Brown forged ahead with a pretty cool solo career which has received much critical acclaim, John Squire formed the rather tedious Seahorses, Mani joined Primal Scream and Reni...? Who knows.... SUPPLEMENTAL CLIP - The ill-fated live performance of "Made In Stone". It is open to conjecture whether the amps blew or someone pulled the plug.... But Ian Brown was NOT a happy bunny....And who can blame him...? N3Di06iZmbc Waterfall zgGTQgvCPOU
December 7, 200618 yr Author NUMBER 7 - PRIMAL SCREAM - KILL ALL HIPPIES After Bobby Gillespie was booted out of Jesus and Mary Chain on the grounds of being such a c**p drummer that a machine would be a vast improvement... :lol: He formed Primal Scream. At first glance of this band there was no way that anyone could've predicted the greatness that was to come - two rather forgettable Indie Pop albums came our way in the late 80s - "Sonic Flower Groove" and a self-titled second album which was the genesis for their Rolling Stones obsessions.. But then in late 1990 something quite miraculous happened, Gillespie got into rave culture, got together with Andy Wetherall and crafted one of the all-time great Indie/Dance anthems, it was called "Loaded" and it fukkin' stomped all over stereos, clubs and radio shows country-wide... The resulting album "Screamadelica" in 1991 was hailed as a classic, and it still sounds utterly amazing. 1991 was a great year - "Screamadelica", "Loveless" and "Nevermind", Indie/Alt had truly hit the big-time now... Gillespie, unlike Cobain or MBV, was never one for being introverted and soon wild tales of rock excess and drug abuse became quite common, several quite high profile arrests followed.. A few years later, they ditched the Rave sound in favour of a sort of Stones-esque style of retro-rock... I really had no time for "Give Out But Dont Give Up", it was a disappointment after "Screamadelica" to see a band take such a leap backwards into rather old-fashioned musical territory, but songs like "Rocks" and "Funky Jam" did well.. "Vanishing Point" came after that and a step back into more experimental electronica territory, but still keeping an element of retro-rock in there as well, it was far more agreeable hybrid, and songs like "Kowalski", "If They Move Kill Em" and "Burning Wheel" just ripped... In '98 they did a triumphant show in Glasgow (whch I attended..) with none other than Jesus and Mary Chain as their 'support'.. To say it was a surprise would be an understatement, Gillespie had not spoken with the Reids in years... The fantastic "Exterminator" album came out near the end of the millennium and carried on the sonic experimentation of "Vanishing Point" to whole other levels; on balance it is perhaps my favourite album of theirs, some truly marvellous tracks and I think it captured the whole anxiety aspect of the 'Millennium's End" really well.. The seriously weird "Evil Heat" came a few years later, an awkward and pretty much ignored album (which I reckon is a bit unfair..)... Unfortunately, the Primal Scream of '06 have decided to yet again take a huge leap back to the days of Retro Stones-style Rock... I really have no time for that, they're far too good and original a band to waste their talents on such old-fashioned, unoriginal material... SUPPLEMENTAL CLIP - Rapido TV feature in 1991 - the glory days of "Screamadelica"... rye2QU8r4nw Kill All Hippies promo vid 55z4oEYEF5k
December 7, 200618 yr Author NUMBER 6 - ECHO AND THE BUNNYMEN - THE KILLING MOON Believe it or not The Bunnymen's Ian McCulloch, Teardrop Explodes' Julian Cope and Mighty Wah's Pete Wylie were once in a band together.....BLIMEY... And it was this band, The Crucial Three, that would eventually shape the early Post-Punk/Indie scene of the late 70s and into the 80s... The Bunnymen actually formed in 1978 at the height of the Punk movment, Julian Cope/Teardrop Explodes quickly followed suit... The Bunnymen would become a firm favourite of John Peel's and they would feature in many "Peel Sessions" over subsequent years... To say that the McCulloch/Cope/Wylie axis was hugely influential would be an understatement, just listen to bands like Interpol, Editors, Coldplay, etc and it is apparent for all to hear. Fellow Liverpudlians such as The Las and The Boo Radleys cited them as a major influence as well.. The Bunnymen enjoyed pretty big success and they were easily one of the coolest bands in Britain in the 1980s, some would argue perhaps a little too cool for their own good, albums such as "Crocodiles", "Ocean Rain" (one of the greatest albums of the 80s), "Heaven Up Here" maintain their greatness to this day. It is said that world domination was pretty much theirs for the taking, but neither McCulloch nor guitarist Will Sargeant were really that bothered, leaving the trappings of fame for the likes of Bono and Jim Kerr who wanted to be the 'big stadium band' far more than The Bunnymen did... The Bunnymen ultimately made the right choice in eschewing commercialism, because simply they have the credibility and cool factor that Simple Minds and U2 just lack.. The Bunnymen split up for a time after their 1987 album "The Game", McCulloch and Sargeant went their separate ways and embarked on solo careers... Later they got back together for the intense, more gothic rocky Electrafixion side-project just to see what a McCulloch/Sargeant collaboration would sound like in a new decade, they discovered many of their old fans (and a fair few new ones) wanted The Bunnymen back... How could they resist....? 1996's "Evergreen" was the first Bunnymen album proper in a decade, and it was better than any album by a comeback band had any right to be, the follow up "What Do You Want to do With Your Life" was great as well... Their most recent effort "Siberia" is no mean album either.... A class act, whichever way you cut it.... SUPPLEMENTAL CLIP - Part of a 2001 documentary on the Bunnymen centring around a special gig they played at Paul McCartney's academy in Liverpool... If you want to see the rest, I'll send you the links... YMxlhANOP6U Killing Moon promo MtQ33QegrFU Meet The Bunnymen - Documentary, part one
December 9, 200618 yr ^ this songs brilliant!! ive never heard it before, its the first time of actually heard any of their stuff
December 9, 200618 yr ^ this songs brilliant!! ive never heard it before, its the first time of actually heard any of their stuff I had a few of their songs once.
December 9, 200618 yr Author ^ this songs brilliant!! ive never heard it before, its the first time of actually heard any of their stuff A compilation album of theirs came out recently, highly recommended. It's missing a few things (like "Villier's Terrace"), but for the beginner it covers pretty much all the bases, their original 80s incarnation and stuff from their more recent few albums as well... Plenty of their vids on You Tube as well... Some great live performances.... That's for you too Royston....
December 9, 200618 yr A compilation album of theirs came out recently, highly recommended. It's missing a few things (like "Villier's Terrace"), but for the beginner it covers pretty much all the bases, their original 80s incarnation and stuff from their more recent few albums as well... Plenty of their vids on You Tube as well... Some great live performances.... That's for you too Royston.... I don't really like them, not enough to buy an album of theirs. But if he looks on youtube i'll probably hear it anyway.
December 9, 200618 yr Author I don't really like them, not enough to buy an album of theirs. But if he looks on youtube i'll probably hear it anyway. Hope you're enjoying the rundown anyway... If there's anything more you want to know about any of these bands give me a shout.... :) Top 5 will come soon....
December 9, 200618 yr I noticed you have Smashing Pumpkins in your list. I quite like them, I have some of their songs.
December 9, 200618 yr I love all of the top 10 so far. Waterfall isn't one of my favourite Roses songs but it's still fantastic!
December 9, 200618 yr Author I love all of the top 10 so far. Waterfall isn't one of my favourite Roses songs but it's still fantastic! You've only been listening to the Top 10 mate??? There are some gems lower down, go on, off you pop..... :P :lol:
December 10, 200618 yr A compilation album of theirs came out recently, highly recommended. It's missing a few things (like "Villier's Terrace"), but for the beginner it covers pretty much all the bases, their original 80s incarnation and stuff from their more recent few albums as well... Plenty of their vids on You Tube as well... Some great live performances.... That's for you too Royston.... im not made of money, but ill download some anyway
December 10, 200618 yr A compilation album of theirs came out recently, highly recommended. It's missing a few things (like "Villier's Terrace"), but for the beginner it covers pretty much all the bases, their original 80s incarnation and stuff from their more recent few albums as well... i've just bought that about a week ago. £8.99 with DVD. think it was funny how the tracks not on Warner Music (Korova/London Records 90) are listed as bonus tracks. :lol:
December 10, 200618 yr im not made of money, but ill download some anyway and you can pick up Donnie Darko for about £2 these days too :lol:
December 10, 200618 yr You've only been listening to the Top 10 mate??? There are some gems lower down, go on, off you pop..... :P :lol: :lol: I shall listen to the ones that I don't know and shall comment more in full when it's done :P
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