Highly overated bands....

[beef]

Fleet Foxes, Bon Ivor, Seasick Steve, Franz Ferdinand, Kaiser Chiefs, any and all of that emo nonsense, uh, run out of modern overrated t#ss from the top of my head.

The Verve, Smiths, Clash and Blur, four of the most hideous nauseating migraine inducing frontmen in the history of forever, held aloft by the genius of their respective guitarists (McCabe, Marr, Jones and Coxon).

And Hendrix, overrated and Dull? WFPAYO? Rob Wyatt commented that he saw 'em play every day for a year and was blown away every single day. Rather defer to his opinion over, well, anyone else. Even you.

[capt_birdseye]

For me it's all about the tunes beefy. You can twiddle away on guitars all day long if you want but to me it is dull dull dull. Hendrix isn't overrated as a guitarist but his recorded output is patchy, some killer tracks and a lot of filler.

Joe Strummer was the biz.

Bang on re. Kaiser Chiefs though.

[donvanvliet]

after primal scream'e cone together both ends burning is probably my favourite song of all time

giggirl - have have heard viva! Roxy music its the live album, has BEB, out of the blue, do the strand and more its perfect utterly perfect live listening!

[donvanvliet]

crosstown traffic by Hendrix - now there's a beefy tune

[mockney piers]

I was watching that documentary on prog last night and it set me thinking about the ephemeral nature of 'overrated'.

It's a strange sliding scale based upon a relationship between a personal subjective opinion of music and a sort of wider perceived quality fed by the press, media, music festivals, perceptions of cool and a host of other factors.

Prog in the mid 70s was undoubtedly overrated. It was enjoying huge worldwide success and had gone into stratospheric levels of ego and pomposity. The press still raved about it, Americans came in their millions to watch the likes of Emerson Lake and Palmer, and yet people here were being turned off by the pretentious noodling that had lost sight of the original experimentation and boundary pushing that defined early prog.

As Rick Wakeman said at the end, prog is now the under-the-counter porn of the music world, but there is of course some fantastic music within it's canon and it undoubtedly is now underrated.

Likewise when fans feel some possession over a band they will always be underrated, and for the fans gratefully so. Take Modest Mouse with their legion of loyal fans, and then Moon & Antarctica came out with all those 10/10s from the press and they got signed up and produced the marvellous Good News For People Who Love Bad News with it's number one hit Float On and those fans soon disowned them and accusations of overrated abounded.

As *Bob* suggests it's easy to snipe at success. I've been coming at this strictly from this hard to pin down ratedness, for the record I love My Bloody Valentine and the Pixies and loved the Doors when I was younger, and totally overkilled Pink Floyd in my late teens, enjoyed Oasis, etc etc, but the fact remains that some bands are deemed untouchable and I understand when it provokes a strong response such as with Keef and the Pixies.

Failing to see what Beef's list has in common other than ti's new music. How can Fleet Foxes be overrated, hardly anyone's heard of it and they're simply enjoying the fruits of success from the momentum the alt-country/alt-folk scene has been building up over the last decade.

Seasick Steve, perhaps not quite my thing, but it seems harsh to begrudge this chap a bit of success late-on in a really hard life!! He's just doing what he did to eat for many years, and some record mogul offered him some cash, good luck to him I say!!

[*Bob*]

Is there really any point in declaring, eg, The Beatles are overrated? I mean - really?

Under(rated) is far more interesting than over.

Underrated?

I just bought 'Leggy Mambo' by Cud on Amazon, an album so underrated you couldn't even buy it on CD for a decade because no-one could be arsed to press some more up.

[Jeremy]

donvanvliet Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> crosstown traffic by Hendrix - now there's a beefy tune

That's a cover, innit.

[????]

Can we have a new category...undoubtedly influential but dull beyond belief...I give you "Kraftwerk"

[mockney piers]

Blimey, you really are a negative nancy aren't you.

I'm sticking with *Bob*'s underrated stuff.

I might nominate Flowered Up, practically ignored during the skippy period (we hated the term Madchester down south you see) and reflecting the press's love affair with Manchester as alluded to earlier by someone.

Great songs, good music, a bit of nuttiness in to the mix, never emerged from their northern cousins' shadow and only one album :(

[Jeremy]

For underrated, I vote for Madness. Often dismissed as chirpy throwaway pop... but some seriously good songs, great arrangements and even some very relevant lyrics in there. They carved out a distinctive and accessible sound which separated them from their 2-Tone peers, but paid homage to their roots. And still pretty influential 30 years after their debut release, I would say.

[Keef]

*Bob* Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Or - to put it another way, between Shayne Ward

Who??

I think he won x-factor or pop stars a few years ago.

Under rated, Crash Test Dummies. Everyone just knows Mmm mmm mmm mmm, but they had some brilliant, and very funny songs.

[donvanvliet]

yeah but it's a good cover jeremy! like All along the watchtower

i really like madness

[Jeremy]

Sorry, I was totally wrong... Crosstown Traffic wasn't a cover.

Don't know what I was thinking.

And yes, it's a belter!

[????]

Mockney - it was me on Manchester and I agree. The reason that the press went mad with Madchester and worshipped the Stone Roses et al is that the average music press journo is largely a middle class, white, rock fan and they couldn't get an angle on dj led Aciiiieeeed house until a few bands that until then had been pretty average, dirgy, indie combos (Primal Scream/Stone Roses/Happy Mondays) started taking on influences from the house scene...."oh now we have bands we can go to town on this".....the northern and southern soul/funk scenes which were massive in the 70s were largelly ignored by the music press mainly becuase they were primarily working class and 'record'/dj based youth cultures...

[HonaloochieB]

I'm not so sure about Madness being underated J, I think they had the best of both worlds, loads of hits and the respect and 'cred' bestowed by the serious strokey-beard critics.

[EDOldie]

*Bob* Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Is there really any point in declaring, eg, The

> Beatles are overrated? I mean - really?

>

> Under(rated) is far more interesting than over.

Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, for instance.

[bon3yard]

Motown...is that a band?

[david_carnell]

On the "good but over-rated" category I'm beginning to think my teenage infatuation with Bob Dylan was a definite.

He's undoubtably good. He's written some genre-defining music and constantly evolved over nearly 50 years. I own over 50% of his output and enjoy most of it.

BUT - dear god some of his fans and a lot of the old-man music press seem to think he's the messiah himself. And as someone who has listened to his born-again Christian guff of "Slow Train Coming" and "Saved" I can say he is merely a very naughty boy.

[Jeremy]

Erm... Motown is a record label, bon3yard. Is that a nomination for under-rated or over-rated?

The Holland/Dozier/Holland team wrote some awesome songs IMO.

[beef]

Kings of Leon.

Yeah Capt B, a fool twiddling on guitar all day is a little tedious, but in all of the cases I mentioned it was guitarist coming up with the killer tunes/riff and the singer boring us all with his tone deaf poo-etry.

Paul Weller. The Jam.

Joe strummer was the biz, as in Foxtons is a biz. Mick Jones was the heart, soul and passion.

[Jah Lush]

Pah!

Hendrix was a god.

Strummer was a fake. A posh boy slumming it.

[bon3yard]

Motown a Label??? Well, well, well...and yes. Overated.

[donvanvliet]

did anyone see that documentary with martin freeman on motown? it was awfully sweet

[giggirl]

The Specials and all things SKA - dull dull dull

[Jeremy]

giggirl Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> The Specials and all things SKA - dull dull dull

No no no.

bon3yard Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Motown a Label??? Well, well, well...and yes. Overated.

No no no no...

beef Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> The Jam

No no no no no no no no no no no no NO!!!