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Nirvana - Over rated?


ZeromiserY

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For me, Kurt Cobain doing his version of Black Francis' scream will never be as good as Black Francis doing it.

"We were basically trying to rip off the Pixies." Hell yeah, Pixies every time for me. Or the Huskers.

Nae a fan at the time. All my mates were, but I never quite got it, I suppose.

Nowadays I can pick and choose some Nirvana stuff I like but there's no doubt they influenced a generation. And they were good live. And had one of the best rock drummers ever.

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Ahhh....here's where I offer a different view of things. (said like a pretentious fool...)

If one ignores everything around them - the hype, the stardom, the deification of Cobain - in my opinion all you have left is a pretty good indie-rock band. I think the biggest part of Nirvana's legacy IS all the other stuff around them, not thier recorded output.

The reason we remember NIrvana (in my humble opinion) is because the industry picked up on them, they were the right band for the right time, and they made a lot of other things possible. The amount of bands that 'made it' because of NIrvana is staggering, but more importantly the number of bands that were completely re-evaluated after their impact is mind-blowing. After the success of Nirvana, bands like Husker Du, the Meat Puppets, even Sonic Youth, were seen as having been vindicated, and all of the 'underground' success they achieved was laid out for all to see.

I'm not saying I don't like Nirvana (I'm quite fond of them at times), but I feel their actual back catalogue is not as 'legendary' as it's often made out to be ('over-rated', as the title of this thread suggests...). Songs like 'Teen Sprit' and 'Heart Shaped Box' or whatever have been stripped of their power to me, and because I've heard so much other stuff, I have a tendency to look at Nirvana as a band who ripped off (in a good way) loads of bands that I really like and made some pretty decent songs. For me, Kurt Cobain doing his version of Black Francis' scream will never be as good as Black Francis doing it.

So yeah, I think they're over-rated, but they're still pretty good.

I agree with you 100%.

In my opinion they were one of the poorer quality bands in the Seattle collective. They were a lot more derivative than the genre crossing bands in the "grunge" scene, like Soundgarden and Alice In Chains, both of whom are vastly under-rated and oft overlooked. That's not to say i don't like them though. They had a knack for writing some well-crafted and catchy pop songs though the Pixies were doing it a lot better quite a few years earlier.

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Guest Steven Dedalus
all these "big" bands are overrated, because most of their "popularity" has been artificially created in the first place by good marketing. People have developed a false sense of the true value of music and musicians because of this process which has been going on for decades.

So, Steven 'Scab Picker' Rainey rises to the bait, yet again...

I'm not quite sure what you mean here. I take what you mean about hype and marketing, and that is something that has been going on since the day music was first sold.

(in an interesting Nirvana related aside, I was recently reading a thing about Leadbelly (as covered on "Unplugged in New York") and when he was let out of prison, by some white folks who thought he was an interesting curiosity, he wanted to behave in the manner of a southern gentleman, but they wanted him to dress in prison uniforms, because that made him more 'dangerous'...)

But I don't really know what you mean by the second part. Are you saying that no-one really knows what good music is anymore because we're constantly being told what is good by the 'biz', or do you mean that anything that is 'big' is 'bad'?

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all these "big" bands are overrated, because most of their "popularity" has been artificially created in the first place by good marketing. People have developed a false sense of the true value of music and musicians because of this process which has been going on for decades.

I must admit that I have a false sense of the true value of music now I think about it. Thanks for pointing that out. :up:

It really comes down to what you like listening to and what gives you that special feeling. I'm pretty confident that I love Nirvana and that's a decision I made myself. The good marketing may have brought Nevermind to my grubby little hands via a friend of my brother but the music on the tape was what made me love it immediately. I didn't have MTV, didn't listen to the radio and didn't read music magazines so it was solely based on the music, which to this day, having listened to thousands of bands "big" and small, I love more than most.

If you don't love Nirvana, I reckon you'll think they're overrated.

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But I don't really know what you mean by the second part. Are you saying that no-one really knows what good music is anymore because we're constantly being told what is good by the 'biz', or do you mean that anything that is 'big' is 'bad'?

Nah, I meant that generally people have developed an exaggerated sense of the what music is actually worth, because the industry has become so huge and the marketing so powerful. This is the only reason people still pay for music when they could get it for nothing.

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Wha'choo talkin' 'bout, Willis?

I love owning CDs. I also appreciate that a lot of hard work goes into music and the people that write it for us need to pay their bills too.

Better quality on CD's too, even if you download 320kB/s mp3's

o fuck man you just made a friend for life. ever need a loan or a place to stay, you got it!:up:

I appreciate that, thanks:popcorn:

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holy hell. i posted this at lunch at work, its now 8 pm and theres 32 replies!

i'd say nirvana helped get me into heaviness, they were kind of a slingshot into it though. i went straight past them and landed on slipknot.

i agree that cobain wrote some of the best lyrics i've ever heard. its more like poetry than words to music at times. though i didnt like the way it was delivered.

to me there are much better bands in the same or a simlilar style, masters of reality being a good example. deep in the hole was IMO better than anything nirvana ever did.

so in general i'd have to say over-rated.

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Wha'choo talkin' 'bout, Willis?

I love owning CDs. I also appreciate that a lot of hard work goes into music and the people that write it for us need to pay their bills too.

The thing is, by buying music through major distributors off major labels, you're actually sustaining an industry which has always given the artists a raw deal and will continue to as long as it can. Things were beginning to change until apple came along and conned a new generation of idiots into buying music online.

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The thing is, by buying music through major distributors off major labels, you're actually sustaining an industry which has always given the artists a raw deal and will continue to as long as it can. Things were beginning to change until apple came along and conned a new generation of idiots into buying music online.

I appreciate that but at the same time the artist still gets money. Your way means they get nothing. Lesser of two evils in my opinion.

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I appreciate that but at the same time the artist still gets money. Your way means they get nothing. Lesser of two evils in my opinion.

The artists get a pittance. Piracy is performing an important in function in that it's threatening the way the traditional music business works.

Why on earth in this day and age would anyone buy music online from a major distributor such as itunes, when the infrastructure is there for the artists to sell directly to the customer and make 100% profit?

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The artists get a pittance. Piracy is performing an important in function in that it's threatening the way the traditional music business works.

Why on earth in this day and age would anyone buy music online from a major distributor such as itunes, when the infrastructure is there for the artists to sell directly to the customer and make 100% profit?

I didn't say artists shouldn't sell the music themselves now did I? You were condoning total piracy where no-one gets any money from it whatsoever, now you seem to have back-tracked and said that it's ok for bands to get money for their work. Either that or your first proclamation was very poorly worded.

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You were condoning total piracy where no-one gets any money from it whatsoever, now you seem to have back-tracked and said that it's ok for bands to get money for their work. Either that or your first proclamation was very poorly worded.

I am fully condoning total piracy of all music released on major labels and distributed by people like itunes.

I didn't say musicians shouldn't get paid - but now that every musician has the means to very cheaply release their own music and cut out all the middlemen, I would question the motives and the intelligence of any artist that signs to a big label.

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The artists get a pittance. Piracy is performing an important in function in that it's threatening the way the traditional music business works.

Why on earth in this day and age would anyone buy music online from a major distributor such as itunes, when the infrastructure is there for the artists to sell directly to the customer and make 100% profit?

Er sound quality for one. I am not nor will i ever "pay" money for bit rate and files. If you have all of your music on i-tunes or stored on a computer ,then you are a shmuck.

The big bad boys have the infrastructure and distribution and their grubby little hands hold the pen for the magazine writers and their reviews. They are a necessary evil. How many "indie" and "underground" bands say no when a major comes knocking?

100 million web pages , more shit on my space than you can wave a stick at. Give the artist a fair deal and you buy the product so the band make money and the producer has a studio and you can listen to a quality sound (if you are smart) on a decent hi-fi.

The infrastructure is not there. The big boys just buy it up and then they (bands and labels) lose all their supposed kudos and people like you moan cos it ain't rock & roll enough for ya.

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I am fully condoning total piracy of all music released on major labels and distributed by people like itunes.

I didn't say musicians shouldn't get paid - but now that every musician has the means to very cheaply release their own music and cut out all the middlemen, I would question the motives and the intelligence of any artist that signs to a big label.

As opposed to who?

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I don't really understand most of what you posted?

Anyway, the only shmucks are the people who buy music from big labels and the artists who willingly sign up to be pimped.

Which part do you need clarifying?

If an artist does not want to get paid for his work and is against being pimped. How are they to survive? Playing clubs and pubs. Again how many acts are "pure"

How do you get your music to the people?

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