So I’ve been jamming the latest from Them Crooked Vultures, and it’s got me a little bummed. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a super record. But why isn’t there more awesome hard rock mining the same wicked vein? I’m not talking about grunge or hardcore. Nor am I talking about metal. I’m talking:
- AC / DC
- Thin Lizzy
- Guns ‘n’ Roses
- Queens of the Stone Age
As I said last week, the Priestess debut was the last great record that fit the bill. Their new one came out November 4th, and while I think it’s pretty bad ass, it’s not a hard rock record. It’s a metal album, released on an independent label that seems to focus on releasing metal records.
What’s the difference? That’s kind of a good question, isn’t it? Often, influential bands like Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath are—correctly, I think—placed in both categories, which makes them unhelpful benchmarks when you’re trying to answer that question. Priestess, on the other hand, isn’t going to be canonized in either genre. But they’re useful for exploring the differences because they’ve made a pretty abrupt switch between the two forms.
Here’s probably their most famous track (thanks to Guitar Hero III) taken from their debut:
And here’s the single from the new one:
The differences in the two tracks are replicated over the course of each record. And I think they’re representative of the differences between hard rock and metal:
|
Hard Rock |
Metal |
| Blues-based chords, progressions, and scales, especially the pentatonic scale | Usually more diverse, incorporating elements of classical music, and focusing on “modal scale progressions, tritone and chromatic progressions, and the use of pedal points.” |
| Swing | Hardly any swing, lots more staccato 16th notes. |
| Sexy, often with lyrics about girls | Almost never sexy; might discuss girls, but certainly does not discuss “relationships”. Frequently dark and fantastical. |
| Structure usually centers around one or two signature riffs with a central chorus that’s repeated several times. Usually a bad-ass guitar solo leads into or out of a relatively simple bridge. | Rather than developing around a single-focused riff, the pleasures are more complex and structural. While it may have a verse-chorus structure, it will usually have a number of other parts and lots more solos. A song’s bad-assness is related to how well its intricate parts seem to fit together. |
So basically, although I dig column B, there’s already enough of it around to keep me happy. I mean, there’s enough for the genre’s standard bearing magazine to compile an entire Top 40 albums list…of 2009. I don’t think I heard about 10 hard-rock records that even came out in 2009. And that’s why I’m bummed. Because I prefer column A.
_______
My dog walk listening this week pointed me to a couple of tracks of Sleater-Kinney’s late era record, The Woods. I’m a pretty big SK fan, and so the completist in me downloaded The Woods back in 2005, even though I wasn’t a big fan of One Beat. Now that I’m finally giving it a close listen, this might be one of those classics lots of fans avoided, but shouldn’t have.
Coincidentally, this week found former SK-er Carrie Brownstein bemoaning the same trend I’ve been seeing, a general turning away from heavy music:
In terms of rock music, the first half of the ’00s was marked by mostly gutless post-punk new-wave rip-offs (like The Bravery and The Killers), who borrowed the sound of the late ’70s and early ’80s but none of the fire, angularity, discord, ingenuity or politics. Some of the tunes bordered on danceable — and a few were catchy, for sure — but most listeners found nothing revelatory or lasting in those songs. Personally, I was insulted by the idea that these bands thought an audience wouldn’t know any better, that some eyeliner and a flange pedal could make up for passion.
My own band was still playing music during this time. I remember going to Coachella and playing songs from our album The Woods. The tunes on that record were abrasive and scary, full of imbalance and uncertainty. But instead playing rock that day, I felt like we were throwing them. Rock music should be unapologetic, but looking out at the audience, I wanted to hand out earplugs and say, "I’m so sorry."
Then I saw Sufjan Stevens. I had yet to hear his album, Illinois, but I knew change was in the air. I saw Stevens at the Aladdin Theatre in Portland. The show was sold out; the crowd hung on his very word, laughed, held hands, felt okay about the world. His songs were literary, beautiful and melodic. He filled the stage with costumes, kitsch, cuteness and warmth. There was a lot of wit and heart to Stevens’ music, but no bite. Yet toothlessness was where we seemed to be headed in indie rock; a soft, safe gumminess.
What followed — at least in the world of indie music (and I use the term "indie" loosely and for lack of a better term) — was the rise in popularity of mostly bearded men making very sensitive music: Fleet Foxes, Andrew Bird, Bon Iver, Devendra Banhart, Beirut, Girls, Grizzly Bear, The Dodos, Iron & Wine, and so forth and so on.
Women in indie rock were for the most part right there with them. Though beardless, from Feist to Regina Spektor, the trend was to assuage.
While I’m not sure I’d call it hard rock, I agree with Brownstein that The Woods has some of the heaviness I’ve been missing. And I’m glad to have stumbled upon it this week.
I find myself largely in agreement with Brownstein (as I often do). Personally, I can’t stand almost any of the stuff she mentioned in the soft, bearded, indie category. And it should come as no surprise that I love metal.
Beyond that, if you have to use a chart to tell the difference between metal and hard rock then you’ve already lost the war. The world Decibel describes in its top 40 of ’09 list is a rich and many-layered one, and that’s just for extreme metal. Hard rock is something a little more slippery, and honestly, a little more one-dimensional. And that’s just by using your own chart to say so.
I’m not using a chart to tell the difference. I’m using it to explain what’s not there—what’s missing. I certainly agree the world of metal is varied and complex. What started as basically a sub-genre of hard rock has become its own intricate land of “extreme music”. As you indicate, the expanse is more vast than what I describe as hard rock.
“Hard rock is something a little more slippery, and honestly, a little more one-dimensional.”
Exactly. Given that hard rock is usually simpler and dumber than metal, I wonder if it’s not a bit more difficult to pull off. Both in its content, and in the marketplace.
Hard rock has, due to its traditional, blues-based elements, been more associated with commercial success than metal (maybe should have put that in the chart). Really, until Nirvana killed that particular gravy train, it was pretty difficult to be a hard rock band and not be seen as a band with aspirations (i.e., what Billy Corgan used to call “careerism”).
The extreme commercial success of hard rock the 80s is probably one of the reasons there’s so little hard rock being made now. It became such a caricature, that it only survives on Led Zepp tees, oldies tours, and hipster dancefloors. Bands that approach hard rock in a modern context have a couple of choices. Parody or obscurity. Or they just become a metal band instead. Which is the path Priestess took after they toured with Mastodon and got dropped from their major. The market is now bigger for metal than it was for the meat and potatoes awesomeness they served up on their first record.
But content is part of it too. Why can’t a band make a classic stab at hard rock without being compared with The Darkness? That’s what Decibel did in their review of Priestess’s debut before grudgingly admitting it was pretty good.
I loved the Darkness for celebrating everything that was awesome about arena rock, and for having the chops to pull it off. So many great hooks and guitar solos on that record. Was it novelty/parody? Yep. But I’m not sure they had another choice if they actually wanted their music to be heard. I loved the interview with Justin Hawkins where he said Americans don’t get that you can make fun of something and love it at the same time. That irony and earnestness can be at the same ballpark. (Beck’s career either proves or disproves this theory…discuss).
So here’s the deal: Priestess was a serious attempt at the narrow window I call hard rock, but it flopped even after being picked up by a major label and featured on Guitar Hero. Queens of the Stone Age are bad ass, but no one else is even trying to do what they do. That leaves two choices for bands wondering if there’s any way to answer all those kids who are aching for new Rock Band tracks:
Eagles of Death Metal… or just Metal
I loved the interview with Justin Hawkins where he said Americans don’t get that you can make fun of something and love it at the same time.
So he’s stupid? Got it.
Well, to be fair, I don’t think I was very clear either. He was discussing the tendency of critics to put things in either the NOVELTY bucket or the CRITICALLY RESPECTABLE bucket.
While I think the success of the Darkness in the US, along with the careers of Beck and They Might Be Giants are all notable (perhaps debatable) exceptions, I’ve found this to be true amongst both my friends and the general population.
There’s a difference between being respected and being taken seriously. I respect TMBG, but I don’t take them seriously most of the time. This is sometimes true of Beck, depending on the album. I can certainly respect (which is not to say like) The Darkness’ cheesy hard rock and guitarmonies, but I laugh at their hair metal posturing. Unlike TMBG or Beck, though, they aren’t really creating anything new, but are rather just plagiarizing. Which is not to say that there hasn’t been a lot of copying throughout the history of rock. Despite their copying, though, nobody is going to confuse Led Zeppelin with Willie Dixon, because they aren’t really stylistically similar. The Darkness try to imitate the whole package, only adding (possibly) the self-awareness of how silly they look. So if we are to judge them on the merits of their art–the thing that they are actually creating–we have to judge them on their ironic distance. Four stars.
Don’t get me wrong, I love hard rock too. Hell, my last band was about as hard rock as I could get without lapsing into the cliches so inherent in the genre. Personally, i would have preferred it to turn much more metal, but c’est la vie. As for pulling hard rock off in the marketplace, I think you hit it on the head when you mention that it pretty much wore out its welcome after the bloat of the 90s. It’ll be back, give it time.
OK personally I think the Darkness is unlistenable middling early 80′s sounding AOR crap that talks down to its listeners. So if people really bought into that as any kind of standard for Hard Rock then the genre is truly dead and worthless.
Anyhow, I’m glad though that you highlighted The Woods. I rememeber buying that LP and feeling like I was the only person who loved it. I think it’s one of the best hard rock albums to have come out this decade and Brownstein and company had more balls than many of the more celebrated Hard Rock acts of the same period. And yeah everyone raves about Eagles of Death metal but those guys are too cutesy for my taste and one of the things I loved about Sleater Kinney’s The Woods was that it wasn’t cheeky – it had menace. A lot of bands would do better if they just followed suit and just stopped smirking and just lay some great chimpy riffs…
OK that and also have someone like Janet Wiess beat the fuck out her kit. That’s something a lot of the hard rock acts forget. The drums should never be an afterthought! Chimpy drummers = good hard rock. Look at bands like Zeppelin and Sabbath. Those guys drummed like they just learned how to walk upright that morning and the drums are right up there with everything else. I don’t hear any distinctive drumming from any neo-hard rock bands ever and that is where a lot of the teeth comes from in the kind of music Brownstein talks about.
anyhow, good blog.
I’ll point out here that with respect to The Eagles of Death Metal and The Darkness, we’ve covered this territory. I didn’t like them then and don’t like them now.
And I agree with you about drummers. Hard hitting is key, but it also helps if you have some subtlety the way Bonham or Ward or–don’t forget–Keith Moon did.
Yeah, I also remember wondering why more people weren’t digging on The Woods. I think it’s great, apart from some sloppy soloing and “Modern Girl” being ruined by the ridiculously distorted production.
Marshall, I think you should give One Beat another chance; it’s got some great songs.
Moon may have had some subtlety, but holy crap, it sure wasn’t much!
I just wanted to add one thing to this whole thread and that is if you want to hear something really heavy check out Harvey Milk.
http://lala.com/z5Mo
We played with those guys earlier this year and even though I was under the weather in more ways than one it was one of the heaviest chimpiest bands I’d ever witnessed.
What the hell does “chimpiest” mean?
Oh Clinton Heider and I (You’ll notice the LP4 fascination with our fellow apes in many a song) have this thing we call Chimp Rock which I described as “primal knuckle-scraping music that circumvents the rational and logical side of your brain and jumps straight to that caveman gray matter.”
Curiously enough that was part of an interview I did with Awesome Color who then explained to me that it had been coined long before by a band called Kudgel long ago. My theory for us comign up with the same term is that Chimp Rock is an a-priori concept and that we all have that chimp in us even a band like BMOL is not immune to the chimp. Like when BMOL kicked that AC/DC opening on that new song you guys let out your chimp.
You shouldn’t make fun of ape people, Ramon.
Ramon, didn’t you submit some sort of chimp related song to one of the old podcasts? As in – wasn’t the word “chimp” in the song title or band name or something?
I’d second Harvey Milk, by the way. Very heavy, and also very wonderful band. Georgia is the home of some great heavy stuff.
John, I think you’re referring to Part Chimp. One of their albums is called Chart Pimp. Genius.
It does seem true that there isn’t much music that could be said truly to belong to a genre called “hard rock.” But if I think about albums that I’ve heard from the last few years that have what hard rock has as documented in your chart, I don’t feel like I have trouble coming up with examples, and they tend to be some of my favorite records. Such as:
The Woods
Trail of Dead, So Divided
Big Business, Here Come the Waterworks and Mind the Drift
Harvey Milk, Life. . .
Awesome Color, Electric Aborigines (is it possible to have a more classic-rock-y album title?)
Chopper, Born to Ride. . . or Die
The Heartless Bastards, Mountain
Baroness, Blue
The Vines, Melodia
Dinosaur Jr, Beyond and Farm
Most of this stuff is not referred to as hard rock- in fact, most of it definitely belongs to other genres. Sleater-Kinney, Trail of Dead, Dinosaur and Awesome Color are either punk or indie rock depending on who you talk to. The Heartless Bastards and the Vines are pop, I guess. Big Business, Harvey Milk, Baroness and Chopper (all from Georgie except Big Business BTW) are usually called metal. But the “hard rock” label seems to fit many of these records better than their actual genre label, even if the bands don’t fit all the criteria (sexiness, especially, is debatable for a band like Baroness).
But. Are they “hard rock” in the same way that Guns ‘N’ Roses, AC/DC or the Darkness are? Dubious. Take the song “Step Up” by Awesome Color. Blues-based riffs? Check. Solos? Check. Simple structure? Check. Lyrics about girls? Check (“if you want her, gotta have her, or someone else will be her lover”). So what’s different? I think it’s the mood. I can imagine Darkness or Guns ‘N’ Roses being played at a party. Or being sung at a karaoke bar. But not Awesome Color; they’re just too edgy for that. Ditto “The Woods.” Baroness, Chopper and Dinosaur are too aggressive. Trail of Dead and the Heartless Bastards are too sincere. Big Business, on the other hand, are ironic, but not in the right way- they’re like a Looney Tunes version of hard rock.
These are the same things that keep these records from being huge hits that people play on Guitar Hero. This stuff is just not right for the pumping-fist partytime hell-yeah atmosphere of the arena/ car radio in the school parking lot/ video game. So maybe what you’re noting here is not that “hard rock” has ceased to exist. In the ’80s, hard rock was *the* mainstream pop music. Maybe the things that defined GNR and Def Leppard and such arose not from their hard-rock-ness, but from their mainstream-pop-ness. This would mean that one reason you don’t hear ’80s-style hard rock is that the “arena-ready” torch has now been passed to stuff like Taylor Swift and Kanye West. In addition, this explains why ’80s-style hard rock seems careerist, because it was explicitly and intentionally conceived for a mainstream audience. It also explains a lot of the differences between ’80s hard rock and ’70s hard rock- hard rock wasn’t the primary source of top-40 music in 1971 (not to mention that top-40 music got a LOT more formulaic in the ’80s) so the “hard rock” of that time is stuff like Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple, which, aside from the presence of loud, distorted guitars, really does not sound all that much like Back in Black(1980) or Pyromania(1983).
Finally, this theory allows for the continued existence of “hard rock” as exemplified by ’80s bands, in the form of loud guitar bands that are still mainstream: QOTSA, the White Stripes, Foo Fighters, Weezer, Wolfmother, the Darkness. These bands, to me, obviously fit the GNR/ACDC mold, in part because they’re all hugely popular (or clearly have the ambition to be). There aren’t as many of them as there were 20 years ago, but that’s probably a reflection of the changing tastes of consumers of mainstream music. It’s also worth noting that their output is not uniformly worthwhile. Quite frankly, I’m glad hard rock has faded. But then, I’m younger than you.
I have some issues with a couple of your points, youngster.
It’s true that hard rock was a component of the mainstream in the 80s, but it certainly wasn’t the only component. There was also synthpop of the New Romantics, mall culture bubblegum pop, and the first mainstream hip hop. I remember the synthpop being the biggest of these. For example, Duran Duran were huge in a way that Def Leppard never was. And it’s worth pointing out that Van Halen didn’t really hit mainstream until they stuck a cheesy synth line in one of their songs.
While it’s true that Led Zeppelin were nowhere near as formulaic as some of the 80s hard rock bands, they were every bit as careerist. Peter Grant is widely credited with changing the way the music industry dealt with artists and Zeppelin hired him to do just that.
Just a few comments.
1) I love both Baroness records, but I put them squarely in the Metal category. Indeed, Priestess’s shift towards metal was decidedly in the direction of Baroness, and they couldn’t have picked a better role model.
2) Wait, the Vines are good? I’ll have to check them out. Based on early hype alone, I’d decided to ignore them as major label Strokes rip-offs. Or was that another band?
3) Love Trail of Dead, especially Source Tags and Codes and Worlds Apart but I HATED “So Divided”. You’ll have to tell me the secret to getting into that record.
4) Dinosaur Jr. have actually been featured on Guitar Hero, and I think they’re pretty squarely a hard rock band. They might actually bristle if you said otherwise. Bummed I didn’t think of them when I was writing this post.
5) Awesome Color were pretty hard rockin’, but they bored the hell out of me when I saw them play at The Mink. Interminable songs with very little substance or melody. I’d rather watch a jam band.
Good call on the White Stripes, though. They’re pretty much exactly what I’m talking about, but I failed to mention them. Probably because I’ve never been that big a fan (and the songs I do like by them tend to not be their rockers). So maybe I don’t want what I say I want. Wolfmother, too, are trying hard to fill the void. But they’re an awful, awful rock band.
1. Baroness definitely fits best in the metal category, but there is also some stuff that they do that is not very metal, particularly the drumming, as well as the way some of the quieter songs are put together. The bellowing vocals on the loud stuff push it toward metal, but if they didn’t have that, I think there’d be a much better case for them being “hard rock.” Other bands exist that might be even better examples for this hard rock/metal line-walking, like Red Fang and the Sword. Not that I’m endorsing the Sword’s music.
The other thing is that there is a lot of aesthetic variation within some of these stoner-metal records. For example, Torche: “Across the Shields” sounds like hard rock in the same way as QOTSA, but “Healer” is just too fast.
2. I probably shouldn’t have mentioned the Vines, because I actually haven’t listened to that record much or recently. But I remember liking it.
3. I dunno man. Do you like Oasis? Or Meat Loaf? Then again, I don’t. So Divided just seems like such a perfect example to me of how over-the-top and self-important Trail of Dead are. It just crosses so many lines of taste. I mean, doing a GBV song as an ultra-multitracked, hugely pompous march? That takes balls. I think So Divided does for me what the Darkness does for some other people, because I definitely laughed in disbelief more than once the first time I heard it.
I can’t even imagine what it would be like to watch them do those songs live, because they suck so bad at actually playing. The record is produced far past the point of self-parody, but at the same time it really sounds good. I just can’t believe they pulled it off.
4. Putting the hard rock label on Dinosaur calls into question the whole idea that alt-rock had any kind of negative impact on hard rock. But then, I’m inclined to welcome that: what were Soundgarden, Alice in Chains and Candlebox but hard-rock bands?
5. I hated Awesome Color when I saw them the first time too, and I wasn’t into what I heard from the first record, but Aborigines has some great stuff on it.
6. I had initially listed the Raconteurs, because I’ve seen them, but the White Strips seemed like an even better example.
7. I heard Wolfmother cover “Wuthering Heights” by Kate Bush as I was walking by their show at Stubb’s a while back. It was weird.
8. How about the Drive-By Truckers? I think they’re a little overrated, but the hard rock label seems to fit them. What about Wilco’s louder material? What about the Yeah Yeah Yeahs? I don’t know that you could call their music punk anymore. Also, it’s completely incredible that we haven’t talked about Boris in this thread yet. I assume you’ve heard Pink?
3. I finally decided I do like Oasis. Well, I like their early hit singles at least. Also, I do like Meatloaf’s Bat out of Hell. And I also agree that the first time heard So Divided I thought the whole thing was precisely as absurd as you suggest. But I had taken some serious pleasure in the previous two records. I guess I wasn’t ready for them to turn it up to eleven. I’ve tried several times to get over my initial distaste for the record. Just haven’t been able to do it.
4. Yeah, I guess I would say Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, and Stone Temple Pilots are all hard rock bands. But my favorite, and probably least well known, example from the grunge-era are Screaming Trees. I loved Sweet Oblivian. I jammed it a ton during my freshman year at college along with Where You Been? Candlebox were basically a hair metal band, and certainly fit the 80s hard rock mold more than the 90s mold. I wouldn’t include them here.
But, your point holds true. Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, and Stone Temple Pilots were hugely successful bands in the 90s. They’re proof that hard rock bands didn’t really die so much as alt themselves into continued success (albeit on a smaller scale). It’s probably a symptom of my current yearning that I kinda miss, and, uh, respect STP in hindsight.
8. I like Drive By Truckers, but there has to be Rock if we have Hard Rock, and I’d place them in the former category. Same with Wilco.
The Yeah Yeah Yeah’s first EP and LP are huge favorites of mine. And those recordings are certainly hard rock. But they’ve pretty much transformed themselves into an indie pop band. Which isn’t a bad thing for them. This year’s record was a grower for me.
I have just added Pink to my Emusic saved-for-later list. I had meant to check that out earlier. But forgot.
Quite honestly, I like Smile and Rainbow more than Pink, but you’d be hard up to find a better example of 21st-century hard rock.
I’m sorry, Duran Duran were bigger than Def Leppard? May Ai direkt ur atenshun to teh Wikipediaz:
Duran Duran: 2 Gold records, 5 Platinum records, 3 Multiplatinum records (Rio, Seven and the Ragged Tiger and Arena, all double platinum)
Def Leppard: 3 Gold records, 3 Platinum records, 2 Multiplatinum records, and 2 Diamond records, including Hysteria, which sold more than 12 million copies, or as many as all of Duran Duran’s certified records combined.
As far as Van Halen goes, their very first album went Diamond.
Be that as it may, you are certainly correct that hard rock was not the only thing that was extremely popular in the ’80s, and the definite article is cheerfully withdrawn. The important thing is that it was a much larger component of mainstream pop than it is today, which I still think is true.
As for Led Zeppelin, I completely agree that they were no less careerist than anyone else. I didn’t mean to suggest that hard rock bands weren’t careerist prior to the ’80s, only that hard rock, in the ’80s, became a much better career path, and therefore probably attracted more people looking to make it. This was intended as a response to Marshall’s reference to “careerism,” as an explanation of that factor as a contingent, rather than necessary, part of what we see as “hard rock” today.
But as Trey told me and I am fond of remembering, Zep was the first band to own an airplane. So yeah.
I’m not sure sales figures are the best measure of cultural impact. That is, unless you want to say that Alanis Morissette has had a bigger impact, because Jagged Little Pill sold 61% more copies than Def Leppard’s biggest seller, Hysteria. And let’s face it, Pyromania, which sold fewer copies than Hysteria, is the most important Def Leppard album.
For a time in the 80s Duran Duran were everywhere. The songs were all over the radio. Every new video was on MTV. And most importantly, their posters were on the walls of that cute girl who lived down the street from me. She didn’t give a rat’s ass about Def Leppard.
And not to put a damper on your memory or anything, but Zep didn’t actually own the airplane.
Justin, I am totally enamored with the fact that you consider any Leppard album to be the “important” one. And Marshall, you used the term “differences” in plotting out your chart. I only referred to it. You actually said, “The differences between hard rock and metal.” Pretty clear, no? I thought I was losing it there for a minute.
My comment to you was aimed at the glib idea that I’d “have to have a chart” to tell the difference. I have a chart for the sake of my discussion. I’m pretty sure there are more differences, and more similarities, than I could conveniently chart for everyone.
I used my chart to make a point about hard rock. The chart was not meant to summarize metal, which is too broad and varied to summarize. A chart works pretty well to discuss the narrow vein of hard rock I was getting at.
Even if I don’t like it, I can’t deny Pyromania‘s cultural importance. Although, I have secretly turned up the title track while driving on at least one occasion. Also, did you know that “Mutt” Lange did the fake German count in?
My memories of the time period are based strictly on skating rink playlists, and by that measure, Def Leppard were a much bigger band. I’m sure Duran Duran were bigger in the clubs. So, I’d say the question of who was bigger may depend quite a bit on the demographic prism one chooses to use.
I think Trey probably said they were the first band to “have their own airplane,” which I misinterpreted to mean they owned one . . . now I know better.
I’m perfectly comfortable with sales figures as a measure of “hugeness,” which is what you claimed (PREPOSTEROUSLY!
)Duran Duran had in excess of Def Leppard. So that makes Alanis Morissette “huger” than Leppard. . . so what? I never said anything about “cultural impact” (which, if such a thing actually exists, Morrisette has had in spades, judging from the Avril Lavigne=> Hannah Montana=> Taylor Swift line of pop). I just said hard rock was mainstream popular music in the ’80s.
Here in Houston, at the time that Duran Duran was at their peak of popularity, I would say they eclisped Def Leppard. Eventually, however, I think Hysteria blew it wide open.
Marshall, my point was more along the lines that – at least for me – reading your chart came off somewhat dry and academic, which stands (again, for me), as a humorous counterpoint to the actual joys of listening to the music you are writing about. Sorry if it bothered you somehow. It was meant more in humor than as an affront. Charts have a tendency to come of as professorish, and not particularly Guns & Roses.
No, I can definitely see the humor in it. I think half the fun of this post was discussing something in a way that was so at odds with the subject.
If I’m defensive, I should apologize. I’m just saying I understand both the limitations and irony of my approach here. But I don’t think it’s a useless exercise. If nothing else, I got a pretty decent playlist for next week just from reading Danny’s responses.
Oh definitely not useless. If we’re discussing it it was well done if you ask me. Are you familiar with Torche, by the way? If not, check them out. They have a lot in common with the sound of the latest Baroness record. By the way, Baroness will be here sometime this month (I forget the day).