The letter U and the numeral 2. Nobody gives a diddley squat! (to quote Casey Kasem)
Posted on 04/05/2013 7:20:30 PM PDT by MNDude
There are a lot of lousy musicians that are a lot more popular than they deserve, but in you opinion, who are the three most over rated musicians (or groups) of all time?
Plus, they're bleedin' Manchester City fans.
“Whoever they were covering must have been pretty obscure because I had never heard the songs until Zeppelin recorded them.”
Well, if you had white skin, sure they were obscure to you. Most of what they stole were songs by well established R&B artists, which is why they were able to pass them off to white kids without raising too many eyebrows. Though, they were equal opportunity thieves, stealing from folk singers, other rock bands, and even in a very prominent case from one of their early opening acts.
I don’t hold that their musicianship was overrated, but their “songwriting”? Certainly.
There used to be a four part series on youtube showing how nearly everything on I-IV was plagiarized, but BMG has taken some of those down, so here is an example of just 10 songs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiiY4ciKFQA
Calling anybody a “guitar god” is overrating them. Some of them were pretty good, but gods they weren’t.
was Styx drummer also gay, then? I thought he and the bass player were twins?
He's not the Boss of me. He's not even from Bosstown.
Barack Obama didn’t deserve his two Grammys.
Mowtown was just as manufactured as the Monkees. Singers typically didn’t write their songs or play the instruments.
The Sex Pistols were a manufactured band as well, a selling point being they couldn’t play their instruments.
The Runaways were a manufactured band as well.
Even Elvis’ post-Sun career was manufactured.
Manufacturing is the key to Industry.
To be fair about this, Neil Young sings like a woman.
I'm more surprised that 50 posts in, I didn't see U2 or REM listed!
True, but the Funk Bros instrumentals are awesome. And as they said in the movie, "the way we played the music, Bugs Bunny coulda sang those songs"
Soul music is still out there being sung live and recorded. Good news is the 80s synthesizers and disco beats are gone.
Many are older performers who never made it "back in the day" but others are new blood or session musicians stepping out on their own. Black and white performers in this game. Just like the old days.
““Night Moves” is as close to time travel as I’ll ever come.”
For you and Millions of others in our age group.
“Hollywood Nights” is also a great song.
Some names off the top of my head:
Charles Bradley (the screaming eagle of soul, a little over the top for my tastes but a good show)
Lee Fields
James Hunter
Sharon Jones
Renaldo Domino
Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears
Not all of these are on Daptone or Desco Records.
There are more out there, consider this a starting place (and a number of these play the nightclub and festival circuits).
Is that where Marilyn Munster got his look from?
"Main Street" ain't half bad in that respect also.............Back in the day :)
The letter U and the numeral 2. Nobody gives a diddley squat! (to quote Casey Kasem)
Donna Dixon used to be hot.
Without a doubt:
Bob Dylan
Springsteen
U2
Does this mean that no one who's come along since 1984 is overrated? Or are there just so many overrated nu-acts that it is impossible to list them all? Or are FReepers just being overly focused on the music they heard growing up and being completely out of touch with all of the overrated drek that has come out ever since that day?
I'd stake just about any band that ever won a Grammy as being far overrated in comparison to other acts that released albums in those years.
And just to stoke the fire, Winchester Cathedral won out for Grammy over the Beatles’ Yesterday. People may not like the Beatles but I haven't found anyone to hold up that bit of vo-di-oh-do music as great songwriting.
You're joking right?
The mob virtually ran the music business in the 1950s and 1960s. Jukebox trade, labels, payola, the whole deal and had the muscle for enforcement.
Payola didn't end with the diminishing control from the mob. Tommy Shaw said that Styx' "Lady" was sold to radio stations with a trail of cocaine and the corporate suits who determined the playlists (and still do) were called penguins because of the way they followed "snow".
People are free to buy whatever they want, true. But the facetime in magazines, tv, radio, and even hyped on the web through blogs is often funded by the Hollywood hype machine (paid bloggers have been exposed, Sony and others used them). You are effectively shut out from exposure.
ASCAP wouldn't publish race/R&B recordings, hillbilly/western recordings, or the hybrid of the two known as "rock and roll". ASCAP tried to effectively force such music from the marketplace. But BMI would. And stations were willing to play it plus there were clear channel (lower case 'c's) that could be heard across the country. Maybe your community wouldn't play it but a station in another state or even Mexico might.
Eventually the stores were flooded with demands for such recordings and ASCAP blamed the change in market demand on "payola" (which had existed for decades and still exists in radio and elsewhere).
Overall tracked sales are down. If you aren't a soundscan store or don't push enough units to chart, you "don't exist" in the music industry's tally. Yet there are more names in the game than ever before. Smaller piece of the pie for everyone. Plus all of the untracked USED CD and LP sales.
If people think that POLITICAL perspective is not balanced in the media, then wait until you get to examining the way they push music on the low information listeners.
LOVE them. Michael Kiwanuka is someone I just discovered recently and I can't stop listening to his album. He has sort of an old school 60's/70's soul or R & B sound, although he does a lot of singer/songwriter type stuff, too.
Always Waiting - a very touching and haunting video.
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