Great song openings

The beginning of Wonderwall is one of the best openings of any song ever. But the rest of the song sucks so bad that it ruins it all.

Greatest Song of All Time

QUOTE (Myshkin @ Feb 28 2009, 01.23)

An answer.

Ding Dong Song by Gunther and the Sunshine Girls.

And don't forget to check out the rest of Gunther's work while you're there.

Not bad, but I've gotta go with Brude on this. Weird Al has him by a mile. This seemed like they took a top notch premise than forgot to add lyrics. With Weird Al you can be listening to it for the 10th time and find something new to set you busting a gut laughing again. He gets damned creative with his shit. This guy? At least for this song, not so much.

Battle of the Seattle Grunge Bands

I'm not sure if it qualifies as grunge, I only applied the broadest of musical classifications than and now, so I tended to lump all of them into the VERY generic catch-all category of alternative....but from that era, I'd say STP.

QUOTE (Jacen @ Mar 4 2009, 20.39)

You are gonna catch hell for that pick EHK, as STP wasn't from Seattle and alot of people wrote them off as merely Pearl Jam clones. tongue.gif But I respect that, I liked STP and I thought they were their own group, with their own sound. The only problem is, every time I tried to see them in concert, Scott Weiland had to go on a drug bender again, and they'd have to abandon the tour.

Heh, the bolded part did annoy me several times. Still, I found their music far superior to Pearl Jams. Call them clones if you like, but at least they had more than 2 worthwhile albums. Didn't really keep track of the geography beyond knowing that Smashing Pumpkins were local boys.

QUOTE (childe roland @ Mar 4 2009, 21.26)

the first and second stp albums were solid but ifumble for the third? where as ten, vs, and vitalogy were all great albums. yes i'm a pearl jam fan

Vitalogy was overall crap and at most had a few good tracks. And everything after it seemed to get worse. It was the last Pearl Jam Album I bought and I felt like suing them for fraud. In either case, I wanted my money back.

STP's first two were excellent, their third a bit of a stumble but still some decent tracks, including Lady Picture Show, Big Bang Baby, and Trippin on a Hole in a Paper heart. Not world beaters, but not bad. 4th album gave us Down, No Way out, and Sour Girl. And I don't think the 5th album gave us much of anything.

They definitely trailed off and Weiland's constant arrests and rehabs helped to ensure they never really got back, but they never produced anything that I listened to that outright pissed me off, which Pearl Jam certainly has. So even their later mediocre shit doesn't detract much from their great first two albums.

But since we're opening it up, Pumpkins, Melancholy and before, is pure awesome. So long as we forget almost everything they did afterwards and the fact that Billy Corgan is a self-important douche.

QUOTE (Raidne @ Mar 4 2009, 23.37)

That's so funny - I know exactly what you mean. It's just one of those hideous videos that makes you associate anything that went along with it with rank unpleasantness.

I had a similar experience with that video. It probably is the reason that I don't like Cornell or Soundgarden.

QUOTE (Dackad @ Mar 5 2009, 00.54)

When I first really listened to Soundgarden, I really didn't care for them or Cornell's voice, but my opinion has improved drastically since then. Cornell just has an amazing voice and, musically, Soundgarden is pretty damn impressive. I'm not that big of a fan of their pre-Badmotofinger stuff though.

Ya know, a hell of alot of bands from this era seem to have a '2 great albums and done' tendency. I noticed that from my rememberings, wikiing, and youtubing in response to this thread.

STP: Core, Purple than decline.
Pearl Jam: 10 and Vs's with nothing else coming close and (IMO) mostly shit afterwards.
Soundgarden: Obscurity (Badmotorfinger was not a breakout album nor a really good one, but YMMV) than Superunknown, Down on the Upside, and breakup.
Pumpkins: Siamese Dream, Melancholy, than crap. (Pisces was in there with a decent song or two, but not a great album)
Nirvana: Nevermind, Unplugged in NY (amazing fricken album)...maybe In Utero if you're being generous, than shotgun.
Alice in Chains: Guess you can give em 3.

Maybe time to reassess my usual Pearl Jam criticism, it seems that 2 worthwhile albums is pretty much the standard for this era.

QUOTE (The Man @ Mar 5 2009, 01.45)

By the way, I object to the classification of Adore as "crap," though it's certainly quite different from anything else the Pumpkins did.

And I think crap is being generous. The album had 2 released singles, neither of them that good and only one remotely notable. The rest was unlistenable trash. One day out of the clear blue fucking sky Billy Corgan decided to declare RocknRoll dead/boring/antiquated and that electronica was the future. Thank god noone was buying that horseshit.

Plus, Billy Corgan owes me $50 fucking dollars. I don't give a shit if he gave all $50 to the Make a Wish foundation, I want it back. Went to a show during the Adore tour. I understand alot of bands like to promote their new shit when they go on tour. I expected to hear some of that. What I did not expect was to hear EVERY SINGLE FUCKING TRACK on Adore and almost nothing else from any of their other albums. Rocket? No. Disarm? No. Bullet with Butterfly Wings? Not hardly. Cherub Rock? Not a chance. Tonight? 1979? Are you kidding me? Today? The Make a Wish kids came out and sang a single verse...that was it. That was the extent of the classic Pumpkins hits played.

Corgan had to play uptight artist and shove shit nobody liked down our throats. It'd be one thing if he announced his arrogance and pretension on the ticket so we'd know to avoid it, but no. I had to apologize profusely to some friends who were convinced to buy a ticket based on my rave reviews of their Mellancholy show. They want refunds too. I've hated Corgan ever since. You're a godamned rock band with a number of hit singles and a buying fanbase that wants to fucking hear them. You are not Bob Dylan. You are not John Lennon. Even the Stones have to play Satisfaction no matter how much they might despise it. Even Metallica knows to make all of their shows mostly Black and before because that's the audience who is buying the tickets.

You have a fucking audience Corgan. They pay good money and they have certain expectations. That doesn't mean you're in a straight jacket. Doesn't mean you have no creative freedom. But it does mean that your shows can't be 100% full of self indulgent crap that noone wants to listen to.

Did I mention that Adore sucks?

I was in Chicago during Lolla last year. Weather was fine, warm but comfortably breezy without too much humidity. (Though Augusts can be shitty for that in Chicago) Didn't go to the show, was up for some other reason, but the streets had an almost festival atmosphere for most of the night. Just an exodus of people from the shows, to the bars, walking the streets and mingling. It was a good time and I didn't even actually go. Got hit on by some Milfs too!