Controversial Entertainment Opinions/Discussion Thread

[Shareefruck]

I guess this would be my controversial opinion, but I'd have The Stones and Zeppelin way way down the list, in the third or fourth tier, personally. I'd easily consider The Velvet Underground, Beefheart, Hendrix, Zappa, Can, Pink Floyd, Jefferson Airplane, The Kinks, The Clash, The Who, Joy Division, Soft Machine, Faust, The Stooges, and Neu long before I'd consider either of them, and hell, I even prefer bands like Talking Heads, Wire, The Fall, Public Image, Pere Ubu, Gang of Four, The Residents, and Gong, although these ones are a bit closer.

I'm placing more emphasis on peak output than longevity, though. I still think The Stones and Zeppelin are great bands with very impressive (rarely transcendent) discographies, but I find their greatness very overstated.

Expecting to get some flack for that.

 

[Roo Returns]

I guess this would be my controversial opinion, but I'd have The Stones and Zeppelin way way down the list, in the third or fourth tier, personally. I'd easily consider The Velvet Underground, Beefheart, Hendrix, Zappa, Can, Pink Floyd, Jefferson Airplane, The Kinks, The Clash, The Who, Joy Division, Soft Machine, Faust, The Stooges, and Neu long before I'd consider either of them, and hell, I even prefer bands like Talking Heads, Wire, The Fall, Public Image, Pere Ubu, Gang of Four, The Residents, and Gong, although these ones are a bit closer.

I'm placing more emphasis on peak output than longevity, though. I still think The Stones and Zeppelin are great bands with very impressive (rarely transcendent) discographies, but I find their greatness very overstated.

Expecting to get some flack for that.

It's all good and a personal preference. We're not here to fight just debate...except when it comes to Corsi

Yeah, for me personally the Stones are a great band but RHCP, Metallica, Parliament, Talking Heads, Led Zep, Who, Hendrix, Cream, Bob Marley, Bad Brains, The Clash, Killing Joke, Fugazi, Beatles, Sabbath, etc. are all higher on my personal list. Reason being again is because musically those bands all just were more diverse and Keith Richards is a great guitar player, but he never really changed his tone very much while all these other groups had multiple sounds/rhythms/atmospheres.

 

[kihei]

I guess this would be my controversial opinion, but I'd have The Stones and Zeppelin way way down the list, in the third or fourth tier, personally. I'd easily consider The Velvet Underground, Beefheart, Hendrix, Zappa, Can, Pink Floyd, Jefferson Airplane, The Kinks, The Clash, The Who, Joy Division, Soft Machine, Faust, The Stooges, and Neu long before I'd consider either of them, and hell, I even prefer bands like Talking Heads, Wire, The Fall, Public Image, Pere Ubu, Gang of Four, The Residents, and Gong, although these ones are a bit closer.

I'm placing more emphasis on peak output than longevity, though. I still think The Stones and Zeppelin are great bands with very impressive (rarely transcendent) discographies, but I find their greatness very overstated.

Expecting to get some flack for that.

I know this is one of our sore points of long standing, but it depends for me whether we are talking dispassionate evaluation of the greatest rock bands ever or are we talking personal favourites? If it is the latter, then I would put Radiohead, The Clash, U2, Talk Talk, Bryan Ferry/Roxy Music, The Kinks and probably a couple others ahead of the Rolling Stones as well.

 

[Roo Returns]

Well, I'm firmly in the Beatles camp. But.....

After the Beatles, the Stones have by far the best song list of any pop/rock band in history. I would put them light years ahead of Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, The Allman Brothers, and Skynyrd. The Who is a great band, the best that I ever saw in concert, but much of their reputation justifiably rests on live performance in which they had no peer in my book, not so much on recorded output. The Stones came up basically as a blues band and it looks like they are going out basically as a blues band. But inbetween they produced great rock music; I would include all of the following albums, and parts of many more:

12 X 5
Our of Our Heads
Aftermath
Beggars Banquet
Let It Bleed
Sticky Fingers
Exile on Mains St
It's Only Rock 'n Roll (thanks largely to Mick Taylor)
Some Girls

They had three or four great live albums as well. As for the second greatest rock band in history, it is a toss-up between Led Zep and the Rolling Stones for me. I think a helluva case could be made for either band.

Great post and you make a lot of valid points. As I said I mean no disrespect to the Stones just feel like they don't have as many sounds/tones/rhythms as the other bands. Deep Purple for instance had two lead or melodic instruments and their bassists either Glover or Hughes could solo. Allmans even though they were a Southern Rock/Blues band, if you listen to their first 3-4 records, they could have 3 or 4 lead instruments at any time (Dreams, Elizabeth Reed, Les Bres) and having two drummers really added a lot of color and rhythms, plus both guitar players were very unique Duane Allman had the warmer classic slide tone, and Betts had the heavier Les Paul thing. The Who were a lot like the Beatles they started out one way, and ended entirely different. I love Who's Next, By Numbers, Who Are You, and even It's Hard gets a bad rep (Eminence Front was a great 80s RnB song, Athena is cool, and Dangerous is another Entwistle classic).

 

[left hand path]

I know this is one of our sore points of long standing, but it depends for me whether we are talking dispassionate evaluation of the greatest rock bands ever or are we talking personal favourites?

people really need to let go of the notion that "objective greatness" actually exists

 

[kihei]

people really need to let go of the notion that "objective greatness" actually exists

So call it "arguable greatness" if the term "objective" freaks you out. It's like arguing who is the greatest football team ever. You don't have to be a fan of a specific team to think, based on their accomplishments, that Team X or Team Y is the greatest team ever, better than your favourite team. You do it by applying specific criteria, often criteria that can be agreed upon by the evaluators. What is wrong with that?

 

[Shareefruck]

It's all good and a personal preference. We're not here to fight just debate...except when it comes to Corsi

Yeah, for me personally the Stones are a great band but RHCP, Metallica, Parliament, Talking Heads, Led Zep, Who, Hendrix, Cream, Bob Marley, Bad Brains, The Clash, Killing Joke, Fugazi, Beatles, Sabbath, etc. are all higher on my personal list. Reason being again is because musically those bands all just were more diverse and Keith Richards is a great guitar player, but he never really changed his tone very much while all these other groups had multiple sounds/rhythms/atmospheres.

You guys can all take your fancy advanced stats and biased eye tests and stuff it-- I'll trust my ears, thank you very much. *adjusts dials on an old-timey radio*

 

[Shareefruck]

So call it "arguable greatness" if the term "objective" freaks you out. It's like arguing who is the greatest football team ever. You don't have to be a fan of a specific team to think, based on their accomplishments, that Team X or Team Y is the greatest team ever, better than your favourite team. You do it by applying specific criteria, often criteria that can be agreed upon by the evaluators. What is wrong with that?

This is going to go nowhere again, but for me, the biggest difference is that in sports, there is a clear unanimously agreeable purpose that everyone is undeniably the MOST concerned about (far more than our preferences), whereas I would argue that in music/films, they exist mainly to be communicated, appreciated, indulged, and experienced-- succeeding in making that connection IS the accomplishment.

If we didn't care at all about the outcomes of hockey games and winning, and watched exclusively for pure minute-to-minute satisfaction, to be inspired by the way that players play rather than their ability to positively influence the outcome (which obviously we don't do), it wouldn't really make much sense to me to enforce the same standard that we currently do for measuring the best teams/players.

I don't hold it against anyone for valuing the dispassionate qualities of movies, but I do struggle to make sense of why anyone would value them enough that they would have the greatest bearing on how "good" (a more all-encompassing phrase) they think something is. For me, it holds very little significance without that translation, especially when put up against the passionate/subjective appreciation side of it, which is what makes the thing meaningful/interesting/valuable to me in the first place and separates it from carpentry or plumbing.

 

[Ben Grimm]

I think my favorite post was when a kid argued that a 2 decade era in music was bad, because there were 4 gimmick/novelty songs that came out that he didn't like.

 

[Ben Grimm]

So call it "arguable greatness" if the term "objective" freaks you out. It's like arguing who is the greatest football team ever. You don't have to be a fan of a specific team to think, based on their accomplishments, that Team X or Team Y is the greatest team ever, better than your favourite team. You do it by applying specific criteria, often criteria that can be agreed upon by the evaluators. What is wrong with that?

Agreed. Great post, kihei! The very fact most people agree that certain things are good is what causes some posters to feel compelled to swim upstream and declare that they are bad. I personally may prefer The Blues, James Brown, the Stones, Stevie Wonder, Chuck Berry, Led Zeppelin, and Ray Charles, but that does not deny the quality of the Beatles, Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, and The Who.

 

[Eisen]

One I always had but never could put my finger on.
Han Solo is a freaking cliché sideshow character. Indy is Ford's role. (Probably cause he's the lead. The characters are similar.)

 

[BenchBrawl]

Wow my thread generated much discussion.Good, I'll make a part 2 once we approach 1000 posts.

 

[member 151739]

Dolly Parton's original version of I Will Always Love You is better than Whitney's. Belting out the lyrics to show off your powerful voice doesn't make the song more emotional, and it actually has the opposite effect on me.

 

[Shareefruck]

Dolly Parton's original version of I Will Always Love You is better than Whitney's. Belting out the lyrics to show off your powerful voice doesn't make the song more emotional, and it actually has the opposite effect on me.

I'm not familiar with the other version, but I totally agree about this.

 

[member 151739]

I'm not familiar with the other version, but I totally agree about this.

 

[Mantis]

Wow my thread generated much discussion.Good, I'll make a part 2 once we approach 1000 posts.

Ok you do that

 

[Oscar Acosta]

James Franco

Greatest talent of our time. His performance of James Dean was so spot on it was uncanny. He's gone from there to being a legit movie and TV star. Charisma all over the place, he can do comedy (Pineapple Express, deliver the best lines in a movie of comedians "This is my Milky Way". to serious movies and being in tone of the greatest mini series ever done in 11.22.63.

Then spends his free time going to University like UCLA learning to write. Nope not screenplays but actual full fleshed novels that are poignant, relevant of their time and artistically written. To the point I said if I didn't know the difference, James Franco's "Palo Alto" short stories could have been written by John Steinbeck or not.

But also knows great books when they come across his path and produces movies of it whether it is a hit or not. Cormac McCarthy's Child of God. Stephen King's 11/22/63 which is the greatest miniseries ever done bar none.

Then paints pictures on a professional level of talent. Sells them under a pseudonym so people don't just buy his art off his name.

If the guy ended up being the next Kurt Cobain I wouldn't be surprised. All the talent in the world.

 

[BonMorrison]

I agree that James Franco is tremendously talented and intelligent.

Still a gigantic, pretentious d-bag though.

 

[Shareefruck]

Is he ACTUALLY pretentious, though? I'm always under the impression that he just does that stuff randomly to take a **** out of it.

 

[member 151739]

Yeah, James Franco is a great dude. He seems genuine to me unlike, say, Shia LaBeouf. Shia seems like bizarro James Franco.

 

[Ben Grimm]

Is he ACTUALLY pretentious, though? I'm always under the impression that he just does that stuff randomly to take a **** out of it.

My Controversial Entertainment Opinion is that you are the President of the Marvin Gaye fan club.

 

[BonMorrison]

Is he ACTUALLY pretentious, though? I'm always under the impression that he just does that stuff randomly to take a **** out of it.

Yes. He self-deprecates it all the time, his entire character in This is the End was making fun of his own pretentiousness.

 

[hototogisu]

Franco gets called pretentious in the same way that some people accuse anybody who goes to a museum or watches a subtitled movie of being "pretentious".

It's like calling someone a hipster, it has real meaning but is mostly used a catch-all epithet for someone who likes stuff that's slightly beyond the mainstream scope of pop culture.

 

[member 51464]

James Franco

Greatest talent of our time. His performance of James Dean was so spot on it was uncanny. He's gone from there to being a legit movie and TV star. Charisma all over the place, he can do comedy (Pineapple Express, deliver the best lines in a movie of comedians "This is my Milky Way". to serious movies and being in tone of the greatest mini series ever done in 11.22.63.

Then spends his free time going to University like UCLA learning to write. Nope not screenplays but actual full fleshed novels that are poignant, relevant of their time and artistically written. To the point I said if I didn't know the difference, James Franco's "Palo Alto" short stories could have been written by John Steinbeck or not.

But also knows great books when they come across his path and produces movies of it whether it is a hit or not. Cormac McCarthy's Child of God. Stephen King's 11/22/63 which is the greatest miniseries ever done bar none.

Then paints pictures on a professional level of talent. Sells them under a pseudonym so people don't just buy his art off his name.

If the guy ended up being the next Kurt Cobain I wouldn't be surprised. All the talent in the world.

What?

 

[Shareefruck]

Yes. He self-deprecates it all the time, his entire character in This is the End was making fun of his own pretentiousness.

That's exactly why I don't think it's real pretension, though-- It seems like does it just for ****s and giggles/just to see if he can rather than because he takes it seriously and thinking of it as some hoity toity thing. Seems almost more like he's just curious about it/has fun with it and intentionally annoying people who take it too seriously rather than actually being pretentious, to me.