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    Originally posted by Bordeaux Education View Post
    Yes, you're right. As I alluded, Poison/Warrant/Extreme were influenced by Van Halen in a very one-eyed wrong-end-of-the-telescope manner with very little of the wit, charm, intelligence, musicianship nor songwriting ability. Even Kiss and especially Aerosmith are leagues above them.

    Some of those bands - Motley Crue, Bon Jovi, Guns & Roses - moved away from those three's shadows (not least by mixing other influences such as AC/DC, Motorhead, punk etc into it). Two other bands that those bands seemed to cite (or were cited on their behalf) were the New York Dolls and Cheap Trick. The former was always a lazy comparison and the latter I have very little knowledge of so can't comment.
    Any New York Dolls-comparison would’ve been largely down to that band’s original look - which one could argue was little more than ‘glam-Stones’ anyway.

    With Cheap Trick, it’d have been a small amount of their stagecraft and an even-smaller amount of their songwriting. The Trick had a way with a big pop melody when they wanted it.

    A lot of even-less-likely musicians rate the latter, as well - not least Billy Corgan and Steve Albini, both of whom have frequently cited them as influence.

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      Originally posted by Jah Womble View Post
      Despite DLR's love of spandex, I never really see Van Halen as part of, or even responsible for, that poodle-metal boom in the late eighties. They were much better musicians, for a start.

      I'd've thought KISS or Aerosmith were the more obvious instigators, but I could be wrong.
      KISS has a lot to answer for.

      Aerosmith always struck me as the most MOR or MOR rock bands. When the term “alternative rock” became a thing, Aerosmith were what it was an alternative to. They are the Coldplay of 80s rock.

      It always bothered me that they were featured in Wayne’s World 2. Because I think that the real Wayne and Garth would have had more interesting taste. But everyone has heard of Aerosmith and nobody who likes rock really dislikes them, so they fit, I guess.
      Last edited by Hot Pepsi; 30-09-2020, 23:56.

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        It'd be more likely that Wayne and Garth would like their (slightly) more interesting 70s stuff, when Steven Tyler could do more than just scream and holler into the mic.

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          Originally posted by Hot Pepsi View Post

          KISS has a lot to answer for.

          Aerosmith always struck me as the most MOR or MOR rock bands. When the term "alternative rock" became a thing, Aerosmith were what it was an alternative to. They are the Coldplay of 80s rock.

          It always bothered me that they were featured in Wayne’s World 2. Because I think that the real Wayne and Garth would have had more interesting taste. But everyone has heard of Aerosmith and nobody who likes rock really dislikes them, so they fit, I guess.
          I'm no apologist for Aerosmith, but I'm not sure I'd really place them among all those MOR stadium bands to which alt-rock was supposed to be an antidote. I'd say that acts like REO Speedwagon, Journey, Foreigner, Styx, Asia, etc, were seen more as the common 'enemy' there (if indeed there was one).

          And if we're looking for a 'Coldplay of eighties rock', I'd probably pitch somebody like Dire Straits. Mixed with Air Supply.

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            Dire Straits and Coldplay seems a good comparison. Neither were quite as reviled in their early days as might be expected if one only knew them from their mega-successful periods.

            Aerosmith were completely washed up before the Run DMC single, weren't they? Later they may have benefitted from Guns 'N' Roses' car crash trajectory seeming like the Aerosmith story on x16 fast forward and punters deciding that they might as well go with the cleaned up and vaguely good humoured original.

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              Originally posted by Jah Womble View Post

              I'm no apologist for Aerosmith, but I'm not sure I'd really place them among all those MOR stadium bands to which alt-rock was supposed to be an antidote. I'd say that acts like REO Speedwagon, Journey, Foreigner, Styx, Asia, etc, were seen more as the common 'enemy' there (if indeed there was one).

              And if we're looking for a 'Coldplay of eighties rock', I'd probably pitch somebody like Dire Straits. Mixed with Air Supply.
              I was thinking Aerosmith was like Coldplay in that their music seemed to be everywhere on TV and films and even my mom has probably heard of them. But I had my timeline wrong.

              Dire Straights might be a better comparison for the 80s, although I don't actually remember Dire Straights being a big deal beyond that one album and video.

              Aerosmith didn't actually do much in the early 80s. According to Wiki, Joe Perry left the band in 79 and there were some drug, divorce and rehab challenges. They didn't get back together for five years and their next hit album was in 1987. I recall that, even though they were making new records, in the late 80s they were kinda presented as a heritage act, something for people who had been teenagers in the 70s.*

              "REO Speedwagon, Journey, Foreigner, Styx, Asia, etc, were seen more as the common 'enemy'"

              That was true in the early 80s, but in the 90s, the only rock bands I can recall being on MTV who weren't considered "alternative" were Aerosmith and Guns and Roses, and GNR were already starting to fade by the early 90s. And it wasn't really their sound that made them "mainstream" so much as their massiveness and connection to Hollywood. Their songs seemed to be everywhere and they had those videos that made Alicia Silverstone famous (one of the only examples where somebody became known just for being in music videos). In the later 90s that they had a ride at Disney and a cheesy ballad in Armageddon.

              But I wouldn't say that Aerosmith are bad. Listening to them now, they sound like a decent Led Zeppelin cover band that also writes songs.

              KISS is bad. Just a pile of rock cliches in makeup. And Gene Simmons is not a good person.


              *That's why the Wayne's World 2 thing seemed a bit off. The tone of that film felt like it was aimed at (possibly stoned) teenagers, and the characters are supposed to be in their 20s (even though the actors were much older.) but all the references were for older people. The whole last bit is an homage to The Graduate (1967) and the running gag was about the "weird Indian" that supposedly guided Jim Morrison (1943-1971). That was actually reference to Oliver Stone's The Doors film that had just been released, rather than the Doors actual career, but how many people under 30 - besides me and a few others - saw that film or liked it? Perhaps that's why WW2 wasn't nearly as popular as the first one.

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                I guess it rather depends on what we're calling 'alternative rock'. I was thinking of the non-Billboard-friendly bands of the mid-late eighties, although I suspect you're referring more to the time when Nirvana got big and the door was thereby kicked open for Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Smashing Pumpkins, Hole, etc.

                (Brothers in Arms was by some distance their biggest record, but Dire Straits were already a big deal in the US before that - they scored five other gold/platinum/multi-platinum albums there.)

                (Edit: 17,000th post. Crikey.)
                Last edited by Jah Womble; 01-10-2020, 15:47.

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                  I'd say that acts like REO Speedwagon, Journey, Foreigner, Styx, Asia, etc, were seen more as the common 'enemy' there (if indeed there was one).
                  There's a poor quality joke waiting to be made there about blaming everything on Journey, Foreigner.

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                    There's also a similar poor quality Trump-style joke to be had about blaming certain things on Asia.

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                      Ariana Grande, Lana del Rey and Dua Lipa.

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                        Originally posted by Jah Womble View Post
                        I guess it rather depends on what we're calling 'alternative rock'. I was thinking of the non-Billboard-friendly bands of the mid-late eighties, although I suspect you're referring more to the time when Nirvana got big and the door was thereby kicked open for Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Smashing Pumpkins, Hole, etc.

                        (Brothers in Arms was by some distance their biggest record, but Dire Straits were already a big deal in the US before that - they scored five other gold/platinum/multi-platinum albums there.)

                        (Edit: 17,000th post. Crikey.)
                        Yes, I don't recall the term "alternative" being widely used before 1991. Within a year or so, there was no other kind of rock on commercial radio, and yet it was still calling itself alternative.

                        In the 80s, REM, The Cure, The Pixies, etc, were often called "new music" or "college music," unless they were more hardcore like Black Flag, etc,, in which case they were just called "punk."


                        I have no memory of Dire Straits before or after Brothers in Arms. But then I was born in 1972 and have no memories of listening to popular music prior to 1982. But I do recall having some idea which bands were "new" and which ones had been famous before I started paying attention.

                        We sometimes imagine that MTV, New Wave and post-punk really wiped the 70s from the map. Certainly at the time, as kids, we were hostile to anything we perceived as "old" in a way that kids today do not seem to be. But I think there was a lot more continuity through that period then we imagined. There were probably some bands who struggled because they couldn't make a good video and disco was widely disparaged, but something like a third of MTVs original stock of videos were from Rod Stewart and Bruce Springsteen didn't really miss a step.

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                          REO Speedwagon, Journey, Foreigner, Styx, Asia.


                          I used to get REO Speedwagon and Foreigner mixed up and Asia and Styx mixed up. They don't sound alike, but there just so much boring shit on the radio in the 80s, I didn't care.

                          Somehow, I got Journey and Boston mixed up.

                          And I got Kansas and America mixed up. That one makes a little more sense, perhaps.

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                            I get Kansas, Boston, Chicago, Foreigner and (to a lesser extent) America mixed up. For fairly obvious reasons. And then I get Supertramp confused with the others for reasons of Breakfast in America.

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                              I wouldn't recognise anything by Kansas if I heard their entire catalogue all the way to Munchkinland and back. They just never really featured in the UK.

                              Chicago I associate entirely with that drippy "If you leave me now" song that I absolutely hated as a boy (soppy music for girls), which in the UK massively outsold anything else they ever did.

                              Boston almost entirely with "More than a Feeling", which I reckon is one of the greatest rock ballads ever made.

                              Foreigner kind of middling.

                              REO Speedwagon's "Take it on the run" isn't bad.

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                                Kansas did “Dust in the Wind” and “Carry On Wayward Son.” I get the latter stuck in my head whenever Kansas is mentioned in any context.

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                                  Surprised Toto haven’t featured at all in the last couple of pages.

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                                    Hoping to find some old forgotten words or ancient melodies?

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                                      Originally posted by Sits View Post
                                      Surprised Toto haven’t featured at all in the last couple of pages.
                                      Toto are so incredibly cheesy that I think it's difficult to bear significant hatred towards them, unlike most of the rest of the MOR AOR brigade.

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                                        I'd originally included Toto (and Boston) on my long-list, but edited them since I felt that they'd issued at least one album that wasn't too bad.

                                        Kansas I'd probably not know at all if I hadn't spent so much of the seventies in the USA: Carry On Wayward Son, I'll concede I still have a bit of a soft spot for. (Atlanta Rhythm Section - there was another faceless group of session-types that used to get masses of airplay across the pond, but sweet FA here in the UK.)

                                        Originally posted by Hot Pepsi View Post

                                        Yes, I don't recall the term "alternative" being widely used before 1991. Within a year or so, there was no other kind of rock on commercial radio, and yet it was still calling itself alternative.

                                        In the 80s, REM, The Cure, The Pixies, etc, were often called "new music" or "college music," unless they were more hardcore like Black Flag, etc,, in which case they were just called "punk."


                                        I have no memory of Dire Straits before or after Brothers in Arms. But then I was born in 1972 and have no memories of listening to popular music prior to 1982. But I do recall having some idea which bands were "new" and which ones had been famous before I started paying attention.

                                        We sometimes imagine that MTV, New Wave and post-punk really wiped the 70s from the map. Certainly at the time, as kids, we were hostile to anything we perceived as "old" in a way that kids today do not seem to be. But I think there was a lot more continuity through that period then we imagined. There were probably some bands who struggled because they couldn't make a good video and disco was widely disparaged, but something like a third of MTVs original stock of videos were from Rod Stewart and Bruce Springsteen didn't really miss a step.
                                        'Alternative' was probably used far more in Europe, yes: people talked of new wave, post-punk and later on (the fairly nebulous) 'indie' over here more often, however.

                                        I can remember staying in the US a number of times during the early eighties and (as I've mentioned previously) all the record stores had that 'new music' section - usually written in jagged handwriting to represent something 'edgy' - but this seemed to me largely to comprise those bands that hadn't quite made the cut in the UK: AFOS (who eventually managed one Top Ten hit at home), The Fixx, Wang Chung, Naked Eyes, etc. (By contrast, one NY store had a huge stand of albums by The Jam - proudly proclaiming them as 'Britain's Number One Rock Band!', which at the time [1982], they probably were. Nobody went near it.)

                                        Dire Straits had impacted with their previous albums - and Sultans of Swing had given them a Top Five Billboard hit in 1979 - but I can understand your not being aware of much before a certain age. It took me until I was ten or so as well (a little before you) before I started recognising a decent swathe of pop/rock acts. It was easier in the early seventies, though, because the scene was full of such big, colourful characters (Bolan, Bowie, Cooper, etc).

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                                          Bill Medley and Bill Withers

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                                            The other day, an incredibly familiar INXS song came on the radio, and fuck me if I could get my brain working. I was like "It's Crowded House....wait....no, it's fucking U2....wait...it's..." and I swear it's a song all of us have heard about a thousand times, but it's just white noise now.

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                                              What song was it?

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                                                Never tear the weather with no name.

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                                                  No, it was Don't Dream The MistiFly.

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                                                    Harsh on Crowded House.

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