Brah wrote: Just goes to show, music is very subjective. For me much of the best music came out of the early 70s. While Prog featured large in that, along with what was Hard Rock, I never got the Mike Oldfield religion.
Subjective and tribal!
In my musically formative years a large part of your identity revolved around what kind of music was 'your music'. In the same way that you'd have 'mods vs rockers', you had punks vs rockers/hippies. So I came to find myself a teenager through much of the 70s, and teenagers want excitement, and quite possibly channels for their feelings (like challenging authority, and so on). What they do not want is some old looking boring blokes doing 'boring dirgey music' that just goes on an on, and on....
So back at that time it really was as black and white as that. It wasn't until I lived in Japan (by then in my 20s) that I discovered progressive rock, not least because Virgin Tokyo stocked a line of repressings of prog CDs. As I didn't have foreign language TV (bar for CNN) I listened to a huge amount of music. What an epiphany it was discovering bands like Focus, Greenslade, Jefferson Airplane, The Tubes and 101 others...
Brah wrote:To that, while I appreciated what Punk brought and stood for, I never found myself listening to The Sex Pistols or The Clash or some of the more raw stuff by choice, even when in the Village, just didn't get the angst or couldn't relate.
The Pistols were aimed at poor, young, angry people. They were a triumph of marketing meets the perfect market opportunity. Consider them like a white West London iteration of Niggers with Attitude. It has been said that they could not play their instruments, and that was meant in the literal sense rather than 'could not play well.
The Clash started out quite raw, but rapidly ended up commercial and mainstream. Some of their stuff was somewhat intelligent, but since they 'sold-out to the $'... who cared...
brah wrote:I liked The Ramones, and more cerebral stuff like The Dead Kennedys, and a lot more that don't come to mind, but that was just because I liked the music; in general I don't like angry music which is probably why to this day don't get Rap or its derivatives.
I like the Ramones now... great stuff. Never got to hear it much back in the day... there was one music radio channel (Radio 1), and they wouldn't get played there.
Dead Kennedy's. Great stuff too. I remember when 'Holidays in Cambodia' charted... wow!
Brah wrote: Having said that, I quite liked the, what I call California Punk, which is no way to be compared with 70s-80s punk; Blink-182, Sum 41, early Green Day - all had some pretty good ones. They are not in the same league as Agent Orange or The Butthole Surfers or The Meat Puppets and the like.
I like early Green Day too. But I'm not familiar with any of the others.
brah wrote: Odd that you listed Sparks among those more pedestrian bands. While I only heard of them much later, I found them to be pretty creative and non-mainstream, with some of their stuff pretty good, but it was what we'd call College Radio Music, because it never got airplay otherwise.
Sparks were probably a poor choice. They were pretty weird (I'm thinking specifically of 'This town ain't big enough for the both of us'') different sounding and weird looking with the keyboardist being reminiscent of Hitler. I liked them, and bought their first two chart 45's.
Brah wrote: For someone who was more familiar than most of non-mainstream bands, I never heard of Mud or Alvin Stardust; in the States Gary Glitter was a one-hit-wonder on AM radio.
Mud and the likes of Sweet, and the Bay City Rollers (etc) were pitched at the chart/ teen market. Alvin Stardust, a sort of rockabilly'esque affair (Youtube for his hit 'My coo ca choo'). Gary Glitter was majorly eccentric/OTT, even for that day.
brah wrote: Genesis had its good and great stuff, I was less fond of the early albums, and post-And Then There Were Three was awful dreck I never listened to; a couple of the post-Gabriel middle albums like Wind and Wuthering I consider Classics and even Desert Island material.
Genesis pretty much completely passed me by (too young), and Phil Collins later solo career put me off further discovery. Peter Gabriel he certainly was a talent...
Nice (Yanks won't get it)