In hindsight immortal, in retrospect they kinda suck
Published by R. Mildred May 29th, 2006 in boogie-woogie?Jedmunds says “woo!” to Oasis, again, says “boo!” to Queen also.
Now this is of course not an unqualified boo!, it is in fact a highly nuanced boo!, a boo! that rarely is seen issuing forth from the eponymous hipster’s hipstering holes.
It is the boo! of someone who has heard the imitators and copycats and artists who riffed off of the original before the original, and then judged the originals in relation to the follow ups, and find the originals guilty of not being all that good really.
No, the beatles/Queen are not actually that good, in hindsight, sure, they improved the music scene, they gave things to the world that no one else did, they were pioneers, but that doesn’t make them good in the present context of there having been stuff since the beatles/queen, Queen in fact came after the beatles and are, IMHO, better.
Oasis are also better than the beatles, no really, they are a direct improvement upon the beatles in fact, part of the long line of musical history that eventually lead to hipsters and IMSes creating a need for oasis in the vast and innovative musical desert. And, actually, no you don’t really like the beatles so there’s no “in my opinion”, “beauty is in the eye of the bee holder” business there. Girl put it best really, you don’t miss listening to the beatles, you miss your youth, or the ideal of the sixties, or the idea of being on the side of a cause you know now will eventually succeed.
It’s not queen you miss listening too, it’s the certainty that eventually Clinton will be elected, that the reagan years will end and that none of the current badness will have happened yet.
You want comfort, and who doesn’t? There’s no harm in it either, unless you forget that we still need to make certain that these reagan years are made to end, The belief in the certainty of the future is only useful for everyone but the prophet remember, who will surely suffer should they be fool enough to believe their own ramblings about “life lines” and tall handsome stangers.
But comfort doesn’t exclude suckiness either, the simple fact is that the beatles date, horrendously so, never mind that my personal tastes would have erred towards music that you can actually dance to, unlike the beatles and their “music you can twitch spasmodically to in lieu of actually being able to dance”.
Queen is as bad really, there’s all of about three or four songs of theirs that doesn’t stink up the place with the incredible 80’s-ness that oozes out of them like Bush’s nostrils after a snort of “executive snow”.
And if they can only lay claim to one or two good songs, how does that make them better than say the yeah yeah yeahs who’s latest album sucks in comparison to their first one.
Which of course may be my brain playing tricks on me of course, deja vu is a awesome track, as is phenomenon, but I remember the first album being so amazing and awesome, but things were so different back then, so maybe I am just pining for the present that was, when things were different, burdens were so less burdensome, and all that glittered was the golden music that got the streets buzzing, not like all this modern crap we get these days…
10 Responses to “In hindsight immortal, in retrospect they kinda suck”
- 1 Pingback on Jun 7th, 2006 at 1:33 am
- 2 Pingback on Jun 10th, 2006 at 9:29 pm
This is really brilliant and perceptive too.
You can’t see me, but I assure you I’m shaking my tiny fist in your general direction to indicate my emphatic disagreement.
I can agree that I don’t miss Queen or the Beatles, but only because I still listen to them regularly.
If Oasis were so good, how come they only played their crappy songs on the radio? I mean, somehow they must’ve used laser sights to single out Wonderwall and Champaigne Supernova, which, judging by all the Oasis hype, must be roughly like if Yellow Submarine had been the only single the Beatles had ever released.
Seriously, the best thing you can say about Wonderwall and Champaigne Supernova is “At least they aren’t as bad as Pearl Jam”.
I feel the same way about the Ramones. All of their singles were basically the same song. And, yeah, it’s a good song, but it’s just the one. Why would I want to buy one of their CDs, when, by all evidence, I’ve already heard everything they had to offer.
And, yeah, I’m not convinced by the common hipster defense of them, which basically amounts to “They were cool because they could barely play their instruments!”
Wonderwall is still better as a song than either “I want to break free” (which always makes me want to check the cd to see why. It. Keeps. Skip - ping. ugh) and “lucy in the sky with diamonds”, which are the ones by the Beatles and Queen that have a nasty habit of getting radio time.
Just ask yourself this: Have Oasis written songs for either Dune or Highlander? Oasis wins, QED.
Which is not to say that Oasis is good, but they are better, objectively speaking.
Now 7 Seconds of Love are a good band from britain, and that’s not just because they’re super obscrue and you can dowload their songs for free.
It’s because they do all their own videos, which include kittens, unlike all those other sell-outs like The Zutons and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
(If I was Big Hipster I would have the slogan “Integrity Is Kittens” plastered all over the place, better than Nuspeek, It’d be Kittenzspeek!)
Odd that you’d relate Queen to “80’s-ness” when for me (I was actually around then), most of their stuff takes me back to the mid-70s.
I don’t think either Queen or the Beatles were the be-all and end-all that their more radbid respective fans would make out, but I also think that Oasis are the very definition of “mediocre.” As far as I can see, the real point is not that the Beatles were really so damn good, but that at least they were innovators for their time, whereas Oasis have never pushed a musical, let alone cultural, boundary in their lives. If anything, they themselves have been a nostalgia act.
You can see that in the reactions that their contemporaries have had towards them, compared to how other musicians–and I mean back in the 60s–viewed the Beatles. There is no point of comparison. Some of Oasis’s peers may like or even respect them, but they have nothing like the regard that the Beatles had from their fellow musicians while they were together. And as far as I can tell, most of the regard Oasis’s peers have for them is more for the laddish behaviour than for actual music. Maybe there are some new young bands who’d cite them as a musical influence, but off the top of my head I cannot in ten years remember reading any contemporary of Oasis mention having been blown away by their music. Which, like it or not, happened regularly with the Beatles.
Actually, I can’t believe I’m taking this much time and effort to defend a band that for the past 20 years I’ve been saying is nowhere near as good as their reputation. I do believe that the Beatles ARE annoyingly overrated, and that there have been bands after them who have been much, much better. But Oasis? C’mon. They’ve never even tried as hard as Blur, and that’s not saying all that much.
Seriously, the best thing you can say about Wonderwall and Champaigne Supernova is “At least they aren’t as bad as Pearl Jam”.
Ever try to say, “Amen,” while laughing hysterically? It can’t be good for you.
Um…I like Queen, and I’m 17 years old. I have absolutely no clue what you’re talking about when you say “it’s the certainty that eventually Clinton will be elected, that the reagan years will end and that none of the current badness will have happened yet” in relation to liking Queen’s music. I wasn’t alive for any of Reagan’s presidency and during Clinton’s election I was still in preschool. Where’s my nostalgia?
I’m sure that you were just trying to stir things up and bait a few old timers for laughs. You appear to have sufficient familiarity with popular music and musicians to have a clue in your head about the difference between musical talent and musical genius.
But just in case you truly are as dense as you are acting, may I ask you to clarify a few things?
Since you say they do not play their instruments well, please list Paul’s shortcomings as a bass player and explain why so many bass players since have described him as the most innovative bassist ever.
Along the same lines, what were George’s shortcomings as guitarist, and please explain how he came to be listed with the great performers of his time.
While we’re at it, what were Ringo’s shortcomings as a drummer?
Please identify the tracks that demonstrate these deficiencies that you have pointed out in the above answers.
Do you have any idea which group has had more covers of their work than any other, by a huge margin?
Add in producer George Martin, and you have a confluence of skills that melded with a synergy like none other in music history; a phenomenon not likely to be repeated.