They single-handedly changed what every rock radio station in the country was playing, ditto MTV. (back when the M stood for music)

They were not the godfathers of grunge or the harbingers of a new punk wave – those titles get tossed around a little too easily. But they were the timely epitome of a break from what was all wrong about rock & roll at the time & bent/broke so many conventions about what rock music should sound like. Overrated?? You’d have to have not lived on the planet before or during!

Motorhead did more influencing of punk bands in the states in the 80s than The Clash did. Everyone forgets Motorhead…

Like Lost in the Supermarket. Then again, I like pop the best period.

I’d say those influenced by "punk" in this country at least, actually get a lot more from either The Sex Pistols or stateside bands like The Ramones or the subsequent early hardcore leaning stuff, Black Flag, Minor Threat etc.

Dah, it’s way too hard to separate these effects. I would just rather say they’re all influential.

What’s surprising about The Clash is that despite the fact that everyone calls them a punk band, they actually do a lot of pop music and also a lot of watered down, light reggae as well.

Well, yeah, fans were pissed off that they “sold out” with Combat Rock. But I don’t think most fans would characterize The Clash and London Calling as watered down pop.

remember o.j.?

i’m just thinking that their music is praiseworthy, they were supposedly one of the better live bands of their era and they HAVE been influential, but were they, to borrow their own motto, “the only band that mattered”? hardly. were they REALLY iconoclastic? meh.

It is, IMO, their third best album. “Safe European Home” and “Tommy Gun” are two of my favorite Clash songs. Pure energy. The knock is the production is “too slick,” which is bullshit.

Cut the Crap says “The Clash” on it. It is a Clash album. Whether or not that’s simply because Joe’s ego was out of control and Bernie Rhodes not helping matters. Also it was dumped on at the time but fuckin’ “This is England” is a great song.

Springsteen is utterly terrible.

Jesus fucking Christ.

is music is terrible and shoddily put together, his vocals are supremely bad, and his lyrics are decent at best.

Holy fucking shit.

Maybe if I never studied, played, or in any way learned anything about music I could like him for the "fun" factor of his music, but thats just not the case.

Mother of fucking hell.

freddie mercury was beyond talented. apart from having incredible vocals and ruthless energy, he was charismatic like nobody’s business. his performance in Live Aid in 1985 is legendary. and he himself wrote a lot of queen’s greatest hits.

sure they’re a pop (pap?) band, but sometimes, pop is what i want. you certainly can’t accuse them of playing the same thing every time. crazy little thing called love is a fun tribute to do-wop, we are the champions has been sung by every high school team of every sport at one point or another, and under pressure is one of the coolest uses of bowie’s voice that you’ll find. and despite its reputation derived from wayne’s world as a camp piece, bohemian rhapsody is a gorgeous, theatrical piece of music, well ahead of its time.

and “pretentious”, titov? where do you get “pretentious”?

and I say that as a metal fan. The one band that went down that didn’t deserve to? Skid Row. Seriously. Go back and listen to “Slave to the Grind” and tell me that isn’t a fucking BRUTAL album for the first half. Get through the first 6 songs, through “Get the Fuck Out” and tell me they weren’t metal by then.

that music critics gave punk musical cred (when most couldn’t play their fucking instruments) yet Iron Maiden and Judas Priest were “loser” metal bands. Do yourself a favor – Check out “The Number of the Beast” or “Powerslave” from Iron Maiden and tell me they weren’t as musically relevant as punk bands misplaying the same 4 chords for 1:45 for each song.

I have not agree with a statement this much in a long time. Also, the French (and their lackeys in the hipster crowd) take house music wayyyy too seriously. But Daft Punk is still fun, dammit.

I’m only an occasional dancer myself. I think I take things too seriously to really get into dance music. But you nailed the appeal of disco, dance music, pop hip-hop, all of it. Music is supposed to be fun, after all.

…is the shit.

Yep, it was Your Tax Dollars at Work. The U.S. Information Agency sent cultural exchange exhibits over here, on themes such as Photography USA, Higher Education in America and (my favorite title) Hand Tools USA. This was part of a US-Soviet cultural exchange agreement that started in 1959 (the Nixon-Khrushchev “Kitchen Debate” took place at the first such exhibit) and ran through 1990 (USIA went out of business in ’93, I think it was, what with the Cold War over and all). The Soviets, btw, sent exhibits to the US with themes like Soviet Sport, Women of the USSR, etc.

The theme of the ehxibit I worked on as a guide-interpreter was, groan, Agriculture USA. Needless to say, I didn’t know much more about ag than which end of the cow worked— but then I really didn’t have to. Each exhibit guide had to work two stands, and my two were Irrigation and, gulp, Rural Culture. So I read up on irrigation (z-z-z-z-z), memorized a spiel, and that was that. But the Culture stand was, basically, about pop music: it was set up to look sort of like a DJ booth at a country music radio station, and the exhibit visitors would approach you, the “DJ”, and ask about whatever while you put 8-track tapes [!] into a player.

Most of the Russians couldn’t have given a warm turd about country music as such; they were much more interested in finding out (or confirming rumors about) what the most popular music in the US was. It got really, really tedious telling them the truth — that the Village People were selling more records than anybody; I mean, what is there to say about the Village People or their music, especially to visitors who coudn’t distinguish the East Village from East Africa given the information-free society they’d grown up in — so in the course of the 7 months, my exhibit roommate (who also had a regular shift on the DJ stand) and I started just making stuff up.

We decided we really had a Larger Duty than the one dictated by mere truthfulness: we felt that Real Americans should promote something truthier and more interesting than the Village People, who were a major cultural embarassment, so we began telling people that …Devo was all the rage, a monster cult-in-the-making, etc. Yes, but it was lying For a Good Cause.

Are we not men? We are Devo!

As to how many of your tax dollars went into it: exhibits were actually pretty cheap to mount, since a lot of companies simply donated stuff to give their brand some visibility in a potentially huge future market (and for some this strategy no doubt panned out after 1991). The Ag USA exhibit had John Deere tractors, a Ford pick-up truck, seed form some Cargill-related companies, stuff like that. So the whole operation cost like a lousy $3 million or something, with the guides paid at the bottom of the Foreign Service scale as temps (grade 9 or the like, I forget— but it was OK, since there really wasn’t any place to spend your $ anyway, so it mostly piled up in my bank acct at home, and then went for grad school).

 It was actually a great job — even though I still remember way too much about the Dupont Drip Irrigation System — and the 20 other guides I worked with are still among my best friends. A lot of guides went on to full-time work for USIA/State Dept. and then diplomatic careers (including the current US ambassador here, who was a guide on Photography USA, a really cool exhibit). In 2007 a bunch of us got together for a reunion here, at the US embassy. As one guide put it, We all look just like our old selves. Only worse.

Boy, now you’re sorry you asked, huh? Anyway, Devo still rules.

This spring Busta Rhymes and the Backstreet Boys came through town, playing at modest-sized venues. Not exactly cutting edge stuff, eh? So what, Liza Frickin’ Minnelli can sell tickets here!

Golabalization has taken its toll. Hillary was actually right about one thing: it does take a village. Hopefully without the People, though.