Most underrated people in pop

[Various Artist]

@recoilofficial, if you were to.

Thanks AB!

[Jah Womble]

Mick Ronson and Roddy Frame are both very good shouts. In very different ways.

[Satchmo Distel]

Herbie Flowers, Clem Cattini, Lloyd Cole.

[MsD]

Mick Ronson is venerated in my circles, who doesn't rate him?

[delicatemoth]

I would like to apologise, to nmrfox in particular, for my pointless and boorish post about Joy Division. Not everything that falls out of my brain needs sharing and I shall try to be Less Online. I'm sure that wasn't what Curtis' friends and colleagues thought either, it was a thoughtless thing to say.

[MsD]

What would this forum be without some strong opinions which we haven't always thought through, or which other people aren't going to like? I think everyone's posted stuff they've afterwards thought better of (or which they stand by, but other people have been upset by, justifiably or not). Except me, of course. I'm always right and always entirely reasonable.

No-one's going to be really upset if you're a bit iconoclastic about Ian Curtis, it just gives us a chance to think whether he really was special, or has been inflated due to the tragedy.

I had a good think about him, anyway, and decided Transmission is a really good song. So thanks, these things need to be questioned.

[treibeis]

What would this forum be without some strong opinions which we haven't always thought through, or which other people aren't going to like? I think everyone's posted stuff they've afterwards thought better of (or which they stand by, but other people have been upset by, justifiably or not). Except me, of course. I'm always right and always entirely reasonable.

What a load of bollocks.<smiley face>

MsD is, of course, absolutely right. At least 80% of my posts have me thinking "Why on earth did I just write that?"

My opinions about The Beatles, for example, have elicited all sorts of threats and insults - I'm half-expecting to come to work one day to find "treibeis is a cloth-eared fuckwit" sprayed in three-foot-high letters on the front of the hut - but there's no way I'm going to change them.

[Satchmo Distel]

DM, I agree with MsD: no apologies needed.

[Jah Womble]

Nobody would expect any poster to change an opinion. Just maybe an idea to have that tin hat ready, however.

And for the record, there’s only one person who’s always right on here. (Winky thing.)

[treibeis]

And for the record, there’s only one person who’s always right on here. (Winky thing.)

You once got the name of "Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh (A Letter From Camp)" wrong.

[Jah Womble]

Might have misspelt it, perhaps. From what I recall, I was hopelessly wrong about scrumpy ‘n’ western - but I’ll never be ashamed of that.

In any case, it was - obviously - ‘opinion’ to which I was referring. (Humorously.)

[Duncan Gardner]

New Order. The 2nd best band from Macclesfield

[Jah Womble]

Don’t tell me - The Macc Lads?

[Duncan Gardner]

The one and only

[Jah Womble]

(*Sigh*) Right again...

[Patrick Thistle]

.
No-one's going to be really upset if you're a bit iconoclastic about Ian Curtis, it just gives us a chance to think whether he really was special, or has been inflated due to the tragedy.
.

It's hard to separate the songs from the tragedy, though. It's like listening to Nirvana and Kurt's suicide not affecting how you hear the songs.

(I mean, maybe someone could be objective if they just heard the song and had no clue of the history. But once you know the history then that affects how you hear the songs)

[MsD]

Maybe, if you came to the music after they'd died.

[delicatemoth]

I apologised because it was a crass thing to say. MsD has teased a decent point out of it which is part of what I had in mind, but I didn't put it well at all. Maybe it's worth having a discussion regarding the primacy of text and the singer in groups where those things are arguably the least essential parts, but that wasn't the way to kick it off.

Anyway, yes Morris is a great drummer and considerably underrated!

[Satchmo Distel]

I think the discussion would be useful. I could ask how you think Joy Division would sound with a different singer who was not into the themes that obsessed Curtis. Visually Curtis is clearly central; magnetic. So it depends if someone has never seen the live performances on video, which are amazing, and just going by the two albums, although I'd still say his voice there is unique in rock history, so vivid, richly textured and authentic. Some may find it cold and alienating but I feel it really connects to me; I'm in the same room as him, as I am with Billie Holiday or Nick Drake.

[Jah Womble]

Yes, exactly. You feel like he's speaking directly to you.

There was a humility in Joy Division that I've not really heard elsewhere.

[Foot of Astaire's]

John Bramwell / I am Kloot

[Stumpy Pepys]

Lots of prolific producers, but Arif Mardin (famously of the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack) worked on over 1,000 albums for Atlantic.

[G-Man]

Everybody who knows producers rates Mardin very highly.

Among producers, a word surely needs be said for Bob Johnstone, whose credits include Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited, Blonde on Blonde, John Wesley Harding, Nashville Skyline, a.o., Simon & Garfunkel's Sounds of Silence and Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme; Leonard Cohen's Songs from a Room and Songs of Love and Hate; The Byrds’ Dr. Byrds & Mr. Hyde; Lindisfarne’s Fog On The Tyne, Johnny Cash’s At Folsom Prison and At San Quentin, and more.

And among arrangers, Jimmie Haskell's record is incredible -- almost Wrecking Crew-like (and, of course, he often worked with them). His arrangement of "Bridge Over Troubled Water" is incredible, and the stiry of itsrecording isworth reading. Just look at this list. It's mind-boggling how much we know so well Haskell worked on..