Is my taste in music shit?

[Sits]

A propose of nothing in particular, Teenage Fanclub happily acknowledged their debt to Big Star, and while I’ve not heard/read so I assume The Byrds too. Personally I think they took those influences and made them better.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Better than the Byrds! Really!... Oh come on! COME ON!

[Lang Spoon]

Teenage Fanclub were definitely better than Big Star but. I've never been as disappointed (well, I have) as when I heard Chilton's stuff long after I'd got Bandwagonesque. He never wrote a song as glorious as Alcoholiday. Though Everything Flows is prob their best song.

[Sits]

Seconded on Big Star. I think I’d already been well and truly overwhelmed by Bandwagonesque, Grand Prix and SFNB before I listened to Big Star.

Sorry about The Byrds Amor.

[Jah Womble]

Another vote for Everything Flows, which itself is a lot heavier than Big Star in the main. Mellow Doubt gets my vote as TFC's finest moment, however. One of my favourite singles of all time, that.

Later Japan and solo Sylvia’n maybe? I appreciate their visual image was highly derivative and their earlier music quite so too.

Japan surely owed a fair bit to Roxy Music, no? (Not least Sylvian's vocal stylings.) And also Bill Nelson/Be-Bop Deluxe. But were way better than either, IMO.

(Obviously, early Japan gives more than a nod to the New York Dolls.)

[Sits]

Fair enough but I think by Tin Drum Japan were beyond those influences, and Sylvian’s voice just happened to sound a bit like Bryan Ferry’s.

Edit: and of course his solo stuff e.g. Jean the Birdman doesn’t sound like anyone else.