As Finto said to me on the 76 bus going through Clondalkin village in November 1999, it’s like this Cheasty, people are either into British music or American music.
This is both a narrow minded and generally true statement.
My view of American music and America in general has been coloured by people who like shit American guitar music.
There is a perhaps apocryphal. ie. fake, quote by Noel Gallagher about the Canadian band Sum 41 which went:
“Do you ever look at the sky and think, I’m glad I’m alive? After I heard Sum 41, I thought, I’m actually alive to hear the shittiest band of all time. Which is quite something when you think about it. Of all the bands that have gone before and all the bands that’ll be in the future, I was around when the worst was around.”
There was then some confusion and the quote was for a time believed to refer to the US band System Of A Down, who would be a strong contender for worst band of all time. This quote inspired me to listen to a couple of System Of A Down songs on the YouTubes, just to let full gravity of how shite they are sink in. And by God they were even more shite than I remembered.
My formative years properly listening to guitar music were probably 1995 to, I don’t know, 2001/02 ish. In this time there were a seemingly endless succession of appalling white American guitar bands with singers who sounded like cats making that guttural growling/hissing sound they make when they feel threatened, who received fairly heavy airplay on the likes of MTV and indeed on Irish radio. This culminated in the horrific “nu-metal” scene, which is why I could never fully condemn the events of September 11th, 2001. Ultimately you’d have to say America deserved it for inflicting nu-metal on the world.
I like Tom Petty and I suppose I like Bruce Springsteen. I think I like Mazzy Star and I definitely like Mark Lanegan. I liked the singles Lump and Peaches by The Presidents Of The Presidents Of The United States of America, which is a terrible name for band. I liked that Buddy Holly song by Weezer and I have belatedly come to the view that Teenage Dirtbag by Wheatus is a classic pop song. I like the Pretenders and Patti Smith.
I don’t mind Green Day or the Red Hot Chili Peppers or the Foo Fighters or the Smashing Pumpkins or Rage Against The Machine but am not a fan as such.
I love Neil Young but he’s Canadian but I do like Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and Buffalo Springfield and all that - which contained Americans -by association.
I have albums by the MC5 and the Stooges and I think I have an album by the New York Dolls, which would separate me from anybody who has a New York Dolls t-shirt, none of whom own any New York Dolls records.
I love Jimi Hendrix and Prince but they’re not white. I very much like American pop music in a general sense and I’d have a grá for the the blues and soul and the hippety hoppety too and even an odd bit of the country and the roots and whatever you call it.
My main target here is anybody who was a fan of a particular cohort of utterly lumpen white male American guitar bands who were prominent in the 1995 to 2001 ish era.
These bands include but are not limited to:
System Of A Down
Creed
Alien Ant Farm
Limp Bizkit
Slipknot
Korn
Linkin Park
Papa Roach
Tool
American metal music and indeed any music which identifies as “metal” is the tool of the devil, a lumpen, white, male, right wing devil.
