1. Aretha Franklin
2. Bjork
3. PJ Harvey
4. Radiohead - Too serious. Sorry. It's only rock and roll. (But I really did kinda like In Rainbows...)
5. OutKast - I genuinely like these guys, but we've finally reached the point where I've run out of artists I can live without.
More or less the same votes as last week, with some minor adjustments...
1. Bob Marley and the Wailers
2. Simon and Garfunkel
3. The Who- the songs poll has convinced me that I can tolerate them a little more than Simon and Garfunkel
4. The Byrds- Their continued presence hear disturbs my spirit.
5. Aretha Franklin
Anthony, the new project is progressing nicely. But no hints. Tell you what, I'll reveal what it is when we're down to the last ten artists on the island...which, as things stand now, would be May 26. It'll start once Survivor is over.
I should give it a cool code name until then that doesn't reveal anything...well, since jonmarck referenced boats travelling through time, let's call it the Philadelphia Experiment (yes, I know a lot about bad films of the 1980s).
Loophole - Radiohead are too serious? That's like saying Hank Williams is too country, or "Good Vibrations" is too "piecey". (Maybe I'm just sad that my favorite band - rock's trailblazers for the past decade - have entered this game.)
1) Van Morrison
2) Tom Waits
3) The Stooges
4) Nick Drake
New:
5) Leonard Cohen -- Listening to "Famous Blue Raincoat" again, afteri ts inclusion in the song poll, I was struck mostly by how unfocused it sounded to me. I appreciate, but feel removed from, Cohen's dispassionate takes on his passionate tales. Hence, he gets a vote now.
1) Ray Charles - He's OK.
2) Leonard Cohen - At the risk of be lambasted by his fans, he sounds a little like a Dylan knock-off to me.
3) Nick Drake - He's back on the list, because now we're starting to get down to great artists, and he's not one of them.
4) Hank Williams - I'm not the biggest country fan in the world, so while I appreciate ol' Hank, his time has come.
5) Curtis Mayfield - He might be "super," and he's certainly "fly," but I don't think he's "Superfly."
On deck (in alphabetical order) are the likes of Blur, Lou Reed, and the Stooges and Hank Williams
Ok, rethinking my list of five - just in case it needs reiterating. Firstly I delete everyone that I'll regret voting against, which leaves these eleven names:
The Byrds, The Clash, Elvis Costello, Nick Drake, Bob Dylan, Bob Marley and the Wailers, Van Morrison, Nirvana, Pixies, R.E.M., Bruce Springsteen,
Secondly, I arrange them in order of who is worst (in my opinion), as follows:
Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Bruce Springsteen, Pixies, The Byrds, Elvis Costello, Nick Drake, Bob Marley and the Wailers, The Clash, Nirvana, R.E.M.
And thirdly, listing the top five and giving reasons.
1 (5 points) Bob Dylan - What a nightmare this man is, I concede he's a great lyricist and poet, but this is a music forum, not a poet forum. Meanwhile everyone heaps praise upon him and his works. Have I mentioned his irritating voice?
2 (4 points) Van Morrison - Just nasty, pompous, ugly music by an awful man. Never liked him, and I tend to like people.
3 (3 points) Bruce Springsteen - Apparently he recorded one of his albums in his bathroom, that's the only thing about him that I like (the fact, not the album)
4 (2 points) Pixies - I never understood why they were so beloved of students while I was going through my student-taunting phase. Other beloved bands I do indeed appreciate, such as Sonic Youth - but not this lot.
5 (1 point) The Byrds - drab music by a drab band, supposedly amazing but not my cup of tea. Dull and ordinary. Hardly the stuff of the top artistes of all time.
A lot of people are voting against Hank Williams precisely because he is too country, which isn't something they want in their music. By the same reasoning, I've got to list Radiohead. At least I waited this long. And I do like In Rainbows.
Paul – I understand. I don’t have to like it, but I understand. (I foresee a discovery of "The Bends" on the horizon for you...)
Re: Van the man… while I don’t completely agree with Harpo, I can see where he’s coming from. The musical showboating on the last half of Astral Weeks really is sometimes more of a turnoff than it is admirable, and as expected, I lean towards the poppier, more concise Van (you guessed it: Moondance).
Shoot, I used my real name a few posts back! It's not one you here much anymore, but there were six Paul's in my hall in the college dorm, so I use the dumb nickname.
There are only a handful of people in the United States with my last name (there are less than 100 Schleuses in North America, according to genealogical research some members of my family have done), so I use that since I'm very unlikely to be duplicated (it would be a different story in Germany, I suppose).
If anyone cares, my first name is Martin, but I'm gonna stick with my more unusual surname. "schleuse" is the guy I am on this forum.
Maybe I just like it that it's hard to pronounce...
schleuse
Your name is funny because that's how the French called the Germans during the wars
"les schleus"
Makes me think of black and white movies from the '60s
OK, nicolas…I’ll take your word for it. (I’m not sure I want a translation!).
Anthony, within my own family I’ve heard four different ways to pronounce it...and that's not counting my days as a teacher, when several hundred high school students mangled my name in quite entertaining ways. Probably the simplest is
/shloos/ (rhymes with “moose”)
although my other brother (the one who’s not Paul) favors what I take is the correct German pronunciation:
/SHLOY-zuh/
but that always sounds to me like some kind of wart.
I haven’t been “Marty” since I was 12, as I don’t care to be associated with either Michael J. Fox or Ernest Borgnine.
1)Outkast:Self-indulgent albums,almost unlistenable(for me) from end to end...
2)Leonard Cohen:Well I guess he can get a bit bland for my liking
3)Public Enemy:Fell well short of my expectations,can't get into their so-called 'Tour de Force' albums
4)The Stooges:Don't mind them,just starting to get into voting out artists I actually like,still I hardly listen to them very much
5)Lou Reed:I like Transformer but not too much else...
Right then, it's high time I dropped that stupid part at the beginning of my name here (somebody convinced me to include it in my email address years ago, and it stuck somehow). But it's no big change really.
1 Pink Floyd
2 Van Morrison
3 The Clash
4 Bruce Springsteen
5 Bjork:sweeter than a drop of blood from The Sugarcubes she may be, but Bjork is a classic case of an artist I admire rather than actually enjoy. A poor argument for eviction, but it's getting to that stage of the competition.
Also, Bjork sux, no way can u compare too Peejay Harvee she roolz!!ok
I'm going to be a little contrary--I like it when people use a different persona online than in their civilian life.
This probably has something to do with my preference for artifice over sincerity (in art). After all, it worked for Robert Zimmerman, David Jones, James Osterberg, Paul Hewson, David Evans, Gordon Sumner, Carlton Ridenhour, Reggie Dwight, Joseph Simmons, Del MacManus, John Ritchie, Roberta Joan Anderson, Jeff Hyman, Michael Lee Aday, Steveland Judkins, and Richard Starkey.
An internet username and an artist pseudo are different things IMO.
Here I never saw any reason to hide my name and identity.
But some artists change their names to have a stronger impact on their audience (Dylan, Bowie), or to signify something (Prince, Howlin' Wolf, The Edge, Stevie Wonder), or to anglicize their names (Dean Martin, George Michael, Cat Stevens)
When I wrote my book, I finally kept my own name (Nicolas Lejeune)
As a singer I went by the (rather stupid) name of Nick Raven (why ? long story)
But here I wanna be just myself.
I understand, though, those who chose distanciation;
It's a question of personality and aesthetic choices.
Verfremdungseffekt or Nemesis ? Distanciation or identification ? Any one can chose, but that tells a lot of our tastes I guess
4. Van Morrison - I don´t wan´t to see Public Enemy go! So in as a desperate measure I´ll sacrifice Van Morrison. He is due quite soon anyway
5. The Byrds - The Byrds is yet another band that I have very little relation to. They do not fire me up. And i do not think they have the place in history to advance further.
I really like the survivor game format. Soon I will have to start killing favorites to save the acts i really cares about. That´s when things start to become interesting.