Controversial guitar opinions you have.

guitars4you · September 2023

soma1975 said:

Smoke on the Water is a dogshit song and a dogshit riff and has no place being held up as an alltime classic.

Are you sure

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUVOg78QOrE

Offset · September 2023

soma1975 said:

Smoke on the Water is a dogshit song and a dogshit riff and has no place being held up as an alltime classic.

If it weren't so ubiquitous for beginners playing along one string when they start out nobody would remember it.

Also Pearl Jam are a better band than Nirvana were with a far more diverse and less one-dimensional back catalogue.

The idea of the thread is to get people to post something controversial, not something that everyone will agree with

Grumpyrocker · September 2023

Smoke on the Water is a wonderful bit of storytelling. It's great to get a story on an album about that album being recorded. But it's popular and an easy target.

My controversial opinion is that it's a fabulous song.

Philly_Q · September 2023

soma1975 said:

Also Pearl Jam are a better band than Nirvana were with a far more diverse and less one-dimensional back catalogue.

Pearl Jam have got one good album followed by thirty years of mumbling jam-band Americana tedium.

soma1975 · September 2023

guitars4you said:

soma1975 said:

Smoke on the Water is a dogshit song and a dogshit riff and has no place being held up as an alltime classic.

Are you sure

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUVOg78QOrE

That was what reminded me of how awful it is.

soma1975 · September 2023

Philly_Q said:

soma1975 said:

Also Pearl Jam are a better band than Nirvana were with a far more diverse and less one-dimensional back catalogue.

Pearl Jam have got one good album followed by thirty years of mumbling jam-band Americana tedium.

If you only listened to tracks of theirs from the 1990s the point would still stand.

DoctorX · September 2023

Pearl Jam made a good album?

soma1975 · September 2023

DoctorX said:

Pearl Jam made a good album?

I know this the controversial opinions thread but there's a line...

distressed · September 2023

soma1975 said:

Also Pearl Jam are a better band than Nirvana were with a far more diverse and less one-dimensional back catalogue.

Apples and oranges. It's like saying Nickelback is better than the Stooges.

soma1975 · September 2023

distressed said:

soma1975 said:

Also Pearl Jam are a better band than Nirvana were with a far more diverse and less one-dimensional back catalogue.

Apples and oranges. It's like saying Nickelback is better than the Stooges.

Well I mean, 2 bands from the same city that came onto the scene around the same time and were lumped under the same banner and who everyone had strong opinions about at the time and who had a fair bit of interaction and back and forth between them...

In an interview with Flipside in 1992, Cobain explained why he rejected the opportunity to support Guns’ N’ Roses and why that side of rock music offended him. It wasn’t just Axl Rose’s clan who would feel the wrath of Cobain, though — the frontman unleashing an onslaught of vitriol against the scene.

“Right, we turned down Guns’ N’ Roses. That would be a big waste of time,” Cobain explained. “I can’t comment on Soundgarden because I know them personally, and I really like them a lot, but I have strong feelings towards Pearl Jam and Alice In Chains and bands like that. They’re obviously just corporate puppets that are just trying to jump on the alternative bandwagon – and we are being lumped into that category.

“Those bands have been in the hairspray/cockrock scene for years and all of a sudden they stop washing their hair and start wearing flannel shirts. It doesn’t make any sense to me. There are bands moving from L.A. and all over to Seattle and then claim they’ve lived there all their life so they can get record deals. It really offends me,” Cobain vehemently added.

The Nirvana frontman’s rant didn’t stop there. He went on to lash out further against the whole Lollapalooza crowd, which he beautifully brandished as “false alternative macho metal”. Everything that Cobain did had authenticity at its core, and he had a nose that could sniff out when something seemed manufactured. Cobain added: “Especially Pearl Jam. I can’t really call Pearl Jam’ macho’ but it’s not the kind of stuff that I am into.”

A year later, Cobain was still not converted to Pearl Jam’s music, but he admitted that his comments were out of line and revealed that he’d since formed a friendship with Eddie Vedder. “There never was one. I slagged them off because I didn’t like their band,” he told Rolling Stone. “I hadn’t met Eddie at the time. It was my fault; I should have been slagging off the record company instead of them. They were marketed. not probably against their will. But without them realizing they were being pushed into the grunge bandwagon.”

Philly_Q · September 2023

It's all just opinions, nobody's right or wrong... including Kurt Cobain. In those interviews he's saying he likes Soundgarden whilst slagging off Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains, but it sounds like he's barely heard any of them (and to be fair he was probably busy with his own life and music, I wouldn't expect him to be spending hours listening to his contemporaries).

Personally I love Alice in Chains and Soundgarden (although I wasn't too interested in either band's "reformation" albums). I find Pearl Jam very boring, apart from Ten and a few tracks off the next couple of albums. And I'll be honest, I haven't listened to Nirvana very much for a long time, I'm not going to say they were "better" than the other bands, but back in 1991 it was obvious that there was something about them which separated them from the rest.

noisepolluter · September 2023

The majority of two-guitar bands I hear in pubs would sound better with one guitar

soma1975 · September 2023

Philly_Q said:

It's all just opinions, nobody's right or wrong... including Kurt Cobain. In those interviews he's saying he likes Soundgarden whilst slagging off Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains, but it sounds like he's barely heard any of them (and to be fair he was probably busy with his own life and music, I wouldn't expect him to be spending hours listening to his contemporaries).

Personally I love Alice in Chains and Soundgarden (although I wasn't too interested in either band's "reformation" albums). I find Pearl Jam very boring, apart from Ten and a few tracks off the next couple of albums. And I'll be honest, I haven't listened to Nirvana very much for a long time, I'm not going to say they were "better" than the other bands, but back in 1991 it was obvious that there was something about them which separated them from the rest.

Of course it's all just opinions. Just having a bit of fun. Found it interesting about them becoming friends having originally lumped them in with hair metal. Obviously AIC originally had a bit of that image but then Dirt is one of the greatest alt rock albums of all time. He was just talking out of his arse giving some column inches to reporters. Wasn't the first and won't be the last to do it.

I think what separated Nirvana from the rest at the time is the bands they sounded like were less popular so they seemed more unique.

I won't try to sell PJ to anyone but they are a good honest hard-working band that has managed to stay together and make new music(drummers aside) and be there for each other when several of them could easily have pegged it over the years.

Nerine · September 2023

Seeing as we’re on a band kick:

Nickelback are a FAR better band than everyone gives them credit for.

They are just very clever commercial songwriters. Nothing wrong with that. It works. Get rid of the ballady stuff and some of the singles and their back catalogue is honestly pretty ferocious.

icu81b4 · September 2023

noisepolluter said:

The majority of two-guitar bands I hear in pubs would sound better with one guitar

Replaced by bagpipes!

flying_pie · September 2023

Nerine said:

Nickelback are a FAR better band than everyone gives them credit for.

Rumour has it that Radiohead dabbled with starting a song with "I like your pants around your feet" until they discovered Nickelback had beaten them to it

flying_pie · September 2023

The open G major chord where you use your ring, middle and pinkie fingers is for wankers.

Proper guitarists play it with the D on the B string and ideally muting the A string. Come to think of it, it's probably just simpler to say that major chords are shit

Grumpyrocker · September 2023

I find Cobain's views rather tiresome. What's wrong with a bit of fun in music?

Grunge was so po-faced and serious and took so much fun out or rock and metal. So many none grunge bands were scared into toning down their shows and sucking the joy from the scene.

Give me giant dragons and lasers over suicidal junkies any day.

soma1975 · September 2023

Don't get me wrong Nirvana had some incredible songs but they are pretty much one-note thematically speaking.

By all accounts his private persona was a lot more fun-loving than the media hyped angst-ridden outsider lashing out at the establishment but doing smack with your pregnant partner and every song being about some type of pain or other and eventually killing yourself doesn't do much to dissuade the myth makers.

I hate the term grunge and never use it because all the artists lumped under that banner did as well. But there was plenty of fun, humour, optimism and playfulness in there as well.

The only thing I didn't like was that labels suddenly got scared of bands having guitar solos due to th connection to 80s rock and mandated that they were an anachronism and needed to disappear.

Funnily enough except for Pearl Jam who always had plenty.

Fez · September 2023

HH amps were really good much better than any valve amps

Cranky · September 2023

Philly_Q said:

soma1975 said:

Also Pearl Jam are a better band than Nirvana were with a far more diverse and less one-dimensional back catalogue.

Pearl Jam have got one good album followed by thirty years of mumbling jam-band Americana tedium.

Wait. Which is their one good one?

I haven’t really followed them since Vitalogy, which I liked a lot but then I just lost track. That, 10, and Vs were all good, no?

Philly_Q · September 2023

Cranky said:

Philly_Q said:

soma1975 said:

Also Pearl Jam are a better band than Nirvana were with a far more diverse and less one-dimensional back catalogue.

Pearl Jam have got one good album followed by thirty years of mumbling jam-band Americana tedium.

Wait. Which is their one good one?

I haven’t really followed them since Vitalogy, which I liked a lot but then I just lost track. That, 10, and Vs were all good, no?

Just Ten. I think Vs. and Vitalogy have a few good tracks but Vedder was already going into mogadon mode.

hollywoodrox · September 2023

Stuckfast said:

SpoonMan said:

Did you read my last post? It's nothing to do with anyone's level of technical or theoretical ability.

I wouldn't suggest that all musicians from anywhere where anything, apart from musicians.

Just plain bollocks. WTF has colonialism got to do with anything?!

I don't know if it's colonialist bollocks, but your post did read as though you were making the false and very dubious inference that because Indian music sounds simple to you, it lacks complexity or theoretical nuance. Whereas in reality if Indian music sounds simple to you that's because you lack the framework to understand it properly (as do I and probably most of us here).

Man Indian music is really complicated don’t they use microtonal scales or something it’s bad enough trying to bend a 1/4 tone

I don’t think the original poster was inferring anything you probably got the wrong end of the stick

BillDL · September 2023

hollywoodrox said:

I don’t think the original poster was inferring anything you probably got the wrong end of the stick sitar

FTFY

ICBM · September 2023

The best Pearl Jam album by far is Mirror Ball.

drippycat · September 2023

Calling them a back/front pickup is so much clearer than bridge/neck.

Cranky · September 2023

drippycat said:

Calling them a back/front pickup is so much clearer than bridge/neck.

Is it?

Which one’s the back pickup?

The missus and I have this running point of confusion with backpacks. What I call the back pocket she calls the front, and vice versa.

I like how the neck pickup is right by the neck and the bridge pickup is right by the bridge. Oddly, I can never remember which is the middle pickup.

Philly_Q · September 2023

drippycat said:

Calling them a back/front pickup is so much clearer than bridge/neck.

It really isn't.

DoctorX · September 2023

None of my guitars have got pickups on the back.

distressed · September 2023

I call them upper left and lower right.

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