That Vic Lundberg song is amazing.
"And if you decide to burn your draft card, then burn your birth certificate at the same time. From that moment on, I have no son!"
Haha, holy shit! Almost as psychedelic as Incense and Peppermints, totally makes me want to get high, especially when the Battle Hymn of the Republic starts playing in the background.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBU6GkseD1w
I got stuck at the whale section my first time too. A couple years later I started over again and it didn't bother me as much. I agree that it is a little gratuitous though.
My favorite recipe song is "La cumbia de mole" by Lila Downs, whose entire bridge is a recipe for Mexican chocolate-based mole sauce (the original version of the song is in Spanish, as it should be). I want to try to make mole according to Lila's recipe one of these days.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8xL_VgwIH4
Listening to Big Star now, I have no idea why they didn't have any hits. Only reason I can think of is that they had bad distribution which didn't get their record into stores, so it couldn't be bought. But especially on the first album, they sound like pure 70s rock and roll that would fit right in between, say, Dream Weaver and More Than A Feeling.
I know pop culture makes it seem like everyone was practically a hippie in 1967, but that's like saying the youth of today are going to hate the police in fifty years because Kendrick Lamar is popular. There are only so many people who really take pop culture to heart, and as popular as the Beatles were, they didn't reach everybody. Even many of those that they did reach...how many many really thought that all you needed was love? You think the current president of the US saw this song as anything more than a preamble to making money, hitting on a girl or some other cynical purpose? What a wonderful world it would be if the best protest songs actually spurred deep, long-lasting political and social change...but that takes a bit more heavy lifting than any song can possibly do on its own.
Didn't know that Lights was about LA until you said this. Bummer. I know Journey sucks but too many good moments soundtracked by their cheesy guitars and synths to turn back now.
If we are not counting the Full House theme song or Jesse and the Rippers' Forever, here is my own San Fran anthem:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXSS9tNL0N4
True enough. I wonder who would win if we did a poll about which band sucks worse. I also like the Eagles and would defend them against their haters, but if forced to choose I would say the Doors are better than the Eagles, just on the originality of their sound I think it is open and shut case.
The Doors are the most divisive classic rock band, some people who love almost everything from the sixties and seventies just flat out loathe the Doors. I mean, I get that Jim Morrison has some pretentiously bad lyrics sometimes, but it still seems weird to me that this band still attracts so much hate from people who otherwise like to rock.
Is it some kind of celebration similar to April Fools' Day wherever you are? Are you checking to see if we Stereogum commenters actually read these? Because I do, and this one is fake in such a weird and particular way that I am not sure what to make of it.
Thanks right back at you for all these supplementary posts to the number ones, they are greatly appreciated by us chart nerds and lovers of very old music!
For whatever reason, I can't seem to post this below Tom's comment about never raving about Whitney above, so I am going to try posting the evidence here:
"And their new single “Golden Days,” a supremely laid-back rocker with some breezy horns, is a real camping-in-the-backyard jammer."
https://www.stereogum.com/1867089/whitney-golden-days-video/mp3s/
"The Chicago indie rockers won plenty of fans last year for their mellow, blissful, ramshackle style. And a warm rambling classic-rock love song is pretty much exactly their wheelhouse."
https://www.stereogum.com/1926054/whitney-tonight-ill-be-staying-here-with-you-bob-dylan-cover/music/
"Even though they’re nominally a duo, Whitney brought a whole lot of friends to Colbert, playing as a seven-piece and working up a jammy twinkle on their single “Golden Days.”"
https://www.stereogum.com/1918559/watch-whitney-make-their-tv-debut-on-colbert/video/
Looking these over, maybe "rave" was too strong a word, but doesn't sound like you dislike Whitney or similarly mellow easy listening jams.
For whatever reason my original comment isn't showing up here, though it is on my commenter page. Anyway it went like this:
"And their new single “Golden Days,” a supremely laid-back rocker with some breezy horns, is a real camping-in-the-backyard jammer."
https://www.stereogum.com/1867089/whitney-golden-days-video/mp3s/
"The Chicago indie rockers won plenty of fans last year for their mellow, blissful, ramshackle style. And a warm rambling classic-rock love song is pretty much exactly their wheelhouse."
https://www.stereogum.com/1926054/whitney-tonight-ill-be-staying-here-with-you-bob-dylan-cover/music/
"Even though they’re nominally a duo, Whitney brought a whole lot of friends to Colbert, playing as a seven-piece and working up a jammy twinkle on their single “Golden Days.”"
https://www.stereogum.com/1918559/watch-whitney-make-their-tv-debut-on-colbert/video/
Looking these over, maybe "rave" was too strong a word, but doesn't sound like you dislike Whitney or similarly mellow easy listening jams. Unless these were written at gunpoint?
"And their new single “Golden Days,” a supremely laid-back rocker with some breezy horns, is a real camping-in-the-backyard jammer."
https://www.stereogum.com/1867089/whitney-golden-days-video/mp3s/
"The Chicago indie rockers won plenty of fans last year for their mellow, blissful, ramshackle style. And a warm rambling classic-rock love song is pretty much exactly their wheelhouse."
https://www.stereogum.com/1926054/whitney-tonight-ill-be-staying-here-with-you-bob-dylan-cover/music/
"Even though they’re nominally a duo, Whitney brought a whole lot of friends to Colbert, playing as a seven-piece and working up a jammy twinkle on their single “Golden Days.”"
https://www.stereogum.com/1918559/watch-whitney-make-their-tv-debut-on-colbert/video/
Looking these over, maybe "rave" was too strong a word, but doesn't sound like you dislike Whitney or similarly mellow easy listening jams. Unless these were written at gunpoint?
Don't worry about Bread and the Carpenters getting insulted, Whitney and a bunch of other recent indie bands sound exactly like them and Stereogum raves about them, even Breihan (so do I)!
"The time for an old-fashioned rock record to make its way onto pop charts has come and gone."
This is very true, and various people have tried to hash out why on this website, but I have still never heard a convincing answer. What have you all got? I'll go first: guitar rock, even metal, is seen as dad's music by kids these days and kids always wanna rebel. Rappers figured out a way to make new rap that doesn't sound like older rap, and people in their 30s and older often hate it and say it doesn't compare. Rock hasn't come up with a fresh sound that can annoy the elders, except by adding pop beats.
Gotta say, I don't get the extreme dislike of this song here either. Lots of fond memories hearing this in the backseat while parents listened to Lite FM. My mom had the greatest hits album, and besides Never My Love and Windy and Along Comes Mary there is this wild tune: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jah4eqzYjvQ
What would be the equivalent of this happening now, in terms of the gap between an artist first getting popular and having a number one hit forty years later? Maybe a new song from that Parliament Medicare Fraud Dogg album going to number one?
Like a million other people, The Beatles are probably my favorite band, but the last thing anybody needs is more Beatles hagiography. It sometimes feels like the Beatles discography rests on its laurels as a cultural phenomenon, so I salute Tom's efforts here to bring the Beatles back to Earth a bit. This could be a fun series of debates! Though it should be noted, the collection of Beatles songs that made it to number one is a lot less interesting and varied than the discography as a whole, which has all sorts of nooks and crannies that will never come up when discussing their biggest hits alone.
It has been amusing to watch Stereogum gradually attempt to rehabilitate the critical reputation of every band indie rockers vilified in the 90s and 2000s. DMB, Linkin Park, RHCP...makes that recent Muse takedown all the stranger. Anyways, looking forward to "actually, nu-metal was seminal" week on Stereogum coming soon.
So jarring these days when Stereogum actually draws a critical line and dares to say something popular is actually NOT GOOD AT ALL YOU RUBES WITH NO TASTE. I'll take Muse over nearly everything on the pop charts at the moment, and I don't even like Muse that much! Can't wait for the next version of this article where you rag on Disturbed fans or whatever because they still like guitar bands that can get a song played on the radio. What a bunch of losers, amirite?
I guess that is what I meant, kids still love rap and it tops the charts and dominates pop culture after all these years, but rock has definitely fallen off from the days when Metallica, Nirvana, GNR, REM and the like were going to number one and dominating MTV. Rap is still a default music for youth in a way that rock isn't as much anymore. I thought when I was kid that popular heavy music would be insane by now, something like Atari Teenage Riot crossed with Cannibal Corpse, and it would annoy even people that called themselves metalheads once upon a time, and that rap would be like a Bomb Squad production but 1000 times noisier and offputting, but if anything 2018 popular music is smooth, almost lighter than air. I get a lot of PM Dawn flashbacks.
It is possible that even though I am on a moving train I still think the world is standing still. But it still feels like people dress and style themselves the same, listen to the same kinds of music, watch the same sorts of movies, etc. I'll give you the TV shows being different.
This is a very good answer! Can you recommend a good book that covers these sorts of technological breakthroughs in pop and rock music? I would read a much longer version of this extremely knowledgeable comment in a heartbeat!
I have a version of this thought every few weeks, about how amazing the progress of music was between say, 1960 and 1985 compared to say, 1993 and now. Or how a string of utterly classic albums were released on top of each other at many points during that era, like Marvin Gaye's What's Going On, the Rolling Stones' Sticky Fingers, Paul McCartney's Ram, and Aretha Franklin's Live at Fillmore West all being released within a month of each other. Or that That 70s Show would be set in 1996 if it took place now and was That 90s Show. The 90s do feel like a long time ago, but aside from the internet and smart phones and all the related paraphernalia the culture itself feels largely the same. Much like "Why don't kids listen to rock music anymore?" I have also wondered "Why does it feel like pop culture is largely standing still?"
I wore out my vinyl copy of the Chipmunks tv show soundtrack back in the 80s and will always associate this song with the Chipettes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SA2ka8mUKbQ
Was looking over the first few number ones from the Hot Rap Songs chart back in 1989 and thinking maybe Tom needs to write about them too: https://www.billboard.com/archive/charts/1989/rap-song
Yes, all of those artists received awards that were not televised. None were asked to perform. Kendrick swept all the rap awards too, but that's not really the point of this essay, right?
It feels like the typical Stereogum writer or reader should know better than to expect anything from the Grammy awards. Back when I was a young sneering indie and punk fan, this was a given. Didn’t Jethro Tull beat out Metallica for the first metal Grammy? Why bother? This is a telecast and voting process aimed at a much older, whiter and more male demographic. It seems odd to waste space and energy on it. The indie rock that defined Stereogum’s original existence had already learned and internalized the lesson that most of the organized corporate music industry was not on its side and never would be. Just because pop and R&B have more critical cache than they used to does not change the fact that the Grammy awards are a boring, unadventurous and conservative enterprise. Stereogum’s dry, ho-hum review of the 2008 Grammy ceremony strikes a much more reasonable tone than this sort of faux-wounded-innocence coverage of 2018: https://www.stereogum.com/8048/2008_grammys_winners_list/news/
Weird to see how little the sound of indie rock has changed in the past ten years. The basic structure of the indie rock hype complex is still mostly the same too, even as streaming and Bandcamp have come to dominate the way indie rock is distributed. The biggest difference between 2018 and ten years ago is that the typical indie rock listener probably listens to a wider range of music beyond indie rock. But honestly, you could put this album out today and it would probably follow the exact same trajectory, from indie buzz band of the moment to one of the leading bands of the movement. Is that a tribute to the band’s timeless sound, or a knock on indie rock as a whole being frozen in place?
I feel like there are fewer of these anniversary articles than there used to be? Is there a general sense that less music from the late 90s and aughts has stood the test of time compared to the early nineties and aughts? Mainstream rock certainly wasn’t at its peak in either era, that’s for sure.
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