Great band / crappy frontman (or woman)

"Rush" might be pretty good if it wasn't for that screaching banshee voiced singer. To be honest, I can't listen to him long enough to appreciate the band itself.

Did you ever seen the Seinfield episode where Kramer had seizures when he heard Mary Hart's voice? That's me with Rush.

Axel Rose! UGH!

Every line ends in iieeiii

Dieeeiii

Skyeeeiiii.

Makes me so damned cross!

Anthony Kedis is the bane of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. His melodies are repetitive; his lyrics are bland and trite. He's turned the Peppers into sentimental popstars. Worse, he still tries to bust rhymes occasionally.

I've said this before, but the Chili Peppers used to be cool, back when they had Hilel Slovak, and they were shooting heroin, and they sounded more like the Minutemen or Gang of Four. Now they're lameass popstars, and Kedis would be undeserving of such talented musical accompaniment if they weren't his best friends.

But they've long been off the radar for me. So I don't really care.

All the skate punk kids I grew up with seemed personally offended when Blood Sugar blah blah came out.



Good pick, LE...


Can't say I've ever actually gotten past Rush's singing either, boomer. I wonder what they actually sound like under there (though I suspect it sounds like geek metal)...

strange topic, i'd never know if the band was good if i didn't like the front man, i'd never listen

I looked at this thread earlier and Rush came to mind instantly...but, I was hesitant to mention them. I have {IRL} had several guys totally flip out on me for saying so....Rush, eh...annoying....I probably could have spoken about their gf/wifes previous sexual encounters, in detail, and sparked less fury.

One of my wife's friends married a total Rush nut, he spent 4 hours one night trying to convince me that they were the greatest band ever...he was worse than a Jo Jo Boba...{that would be my word for Jehovah's Witnesses, ignore that}...he showed videos, played cd's, he even drew a few diagrams...not kidding. He would stop every so often and ask...are you convinced yet, cause I can keep this up all night.

To which I replied each time....it just sounds like a lot of noise man, sorry, I just don't get it....after being shot down hour after hour {honestly I was listening to SRV in my head the whole time} he was utterly broken hearted and came to the conclusion that it wasn't the bands fault, it was all me, I was simply unable to appreciate their genius. That line of reasoning really pisses me off, but just to get him to shut up about Rush, I agreed, and that seemed to make him feel better.

After we left I told my wife that if she ever took me around those people again, I would fake a seizure.


The lead singer of REO kind of gets on my nerves in a similar way...but not as bad.

Jo jo boba... gotta remember that...

Patiodog said:


I'm sorry - but I just cannot let this go by without comment. I have respect for every member of REM so I can't say the others would be nowhere without Stipe, but let's put it this way - they'd be different- and I don't believe half as successful.

Michael Stipe has a beautiful voice. It's pure.
And maybe you'd have to be a female or a bi or gay male to think so, but in his own weird way, he's sexy as hell. (I think it's the ambiguity- it makes him seem vulnerable and mysterious and that's different and attractive -to men as well as to women- at least among those I've had discussions of REM with). The only time he bugged me was when he wore that black eye-liner for a while.
He's also a great writer. REM have sold millions of records primarily on his voice and lyrics. So you can't contend that he hurts the band in any way. He can write cynical and he can write incredibly sentimentally and romantically. He swings both ways in every sense of the term.
I think he's one of the most versatile musicians and minds of our age.

But I will give you that you and I seem to have different musical taste, (eg, Neil Young), Patiodog, and that's just the way it is sometimes, but the other reason I couldn't let this post go by is that I'm dying to know what Warren Zevon and REM did together. I love Warren Zevon and thought I had everything he'd done. Apparently not. Can you tell me the name of the record and where I might find it?

Zevon and Berry et al. called themselves "Hindu Love Gods," also the name of the album. It's available at amazon, not available on I-Tunes. Just foot-stomping country-ish version of old blues tunes. I had it on tape for a long time, it melted on a dashboard and anyway I don't think I've got a tape player any more.

I actually do like REM's older stuff. I just thought Stipe and the band got really overbearingly pretentious and boring after Green ("the song without a climax"), with all the mopey songs and mandolins and "everybody hurts" and whatnot. Lost their sense of fun entirely. But, hey, it's a matter of taste, innit? Certainly a lot of people (if not most of them) would thumb through my music collection and think, "What a bunch of ****."

Now I know what I want for Christmas. Thanks!

Felt the need to resurrect this one (own thread -- sad, eh?) because am listening to Jane's Addiction for the first time in many years, and realizing that they were a great band, but that Perry Farrell couldn't sing to save his dick.

Yeah, but he wrote the songs. I think he may have been more instrumental to the band than any others listed.

But I'm biased. I ******* love Jane's. Or at least two of their albums.

Yeah. But he wrote the songs for Porno, too, and they sucked balls.

Don't get me wrong, Jane's changed the way I hear music, but you never hear about, like, what a great rhythm section they were, and objectively speaking, that guy's voice was really marginal, even with the processing. (Imagine that band behind Jeff Buckley...)





(Was listening to Ritual, by the way, not Nothing's Shocking.)

Porno sucked some sweaty balls indeed.

Somewhat tangential to this thread's prompt, if I ever make a billion dollars I am going to buy the rights to Notorious B.I.G.'s catalog. And then I am going to remaster it, excluding P.******* Diddie from any tracks. It kills me that one of the greatest mainstream emcees of all time let the dickhead who signaled the death of rap's Golden Age spoil his classics with "Aw yeah, uh, it's all good" in the background every five ******* seconds. I hate Puffy so much that I have NO Biggie in my library. And that's a shame.