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Bands / artists where once you've heard one album you've heard them all.


Towelie

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Most people really, everyone has a certain style don't they, broadly speaking? The differences are in the detail. In fact it's the ones where there is a pronounced different from album to album that are the anomoly.

Well, you get a lot of artists and bands who are fairly diverse and can swap between multiple genres to varying degrees of success (The Beatles, Prince, MJ are all great examples of this)... and then you get certain acts who just do one thing but at least try and push their sound forward or incorporate different influences into their sound (I suppose ChiDem was an example of this). And then you get other acts who just seem content to do the same thing over and over again (Slash's solo work comes to mind).

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I think any band should progress with each album but the whole "I don't want to repeat" attitude can backfire in a big way. In some ways, the album format made some bands complacent, but it also led to better quality work. It was good when a band has some pressure on it to deliver a single or have one more song to add to the album at the last minute, because a lot of classic songs were made that way. Spontaneously.

A band like U2 had progressed with each album in the 70s, and Unforgettable Fire was the transition album that led to Joshua Tree, but from the 2000s on, they seemed to be pretty formulaic. In 1991, they could afford to take a big risk with Achtung Baby but when they did Pop, it backfired on them, even though (to me) it's a great album.

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With ACDC I hear three different sounds.

The first two albums (High Voltage and Dirty Deeds) are filled with slow, sleazy blues. The next two (Let There Be Rock and Powerage) are faster, angrier and full of energy. Then everything since Highway To Hell has been big production, big vocals, big choruses.

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I think thats an unfair indictment of AC/DC cuz they're doing it on purpose, they are meant to be that 'most reliable night out' type bands, where you know where you're getting. It's all very deliberate, same with The Ramones, God love em.

I don't think they get a pass just because they do it on purpose. Like if a student turns in a shit paper and I give them a bad grade, they can't come back at me with, "No, Mr. magisme, you don't understand. I made it shit on purpose." :lol:

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I think thats an unfair indictment of AC/DC cuz they're doing it on purpose, they are meant to be that 'most reliable night out' type bands, where you know where you're getting. It's all very deliberate, same with The Ramones, God love em.

I don't think they get a pass just because they do it on purpose. Like if a student turns in a shit paper and I give them a bad grade, they can't come back at me with, "No, Mr. magisme, you don't understand. I made it shit on purpose." :lol:

True, i just couldn't be bothered to type out a whole...thing in defence. What i was getting at was, in the specific case of The Ramones, the entire thing, the short songs, the uniform, the standing a certain way, matching names, matching haircuts, it was an act of design, those songs aren't short and fast and simple due to lack of talent or intelligence, Ramones songs are highly intelligent, great sense of humour and almost satirical in a way. All of this way an act of design to achieve something specific, as opposed to just a band being shit and only being able to do one thing.

Like i heard once that if The Ramones didn't have the whole image and played their songs a little nuanced underneath the frenzied downpicking was these really pretty really catchy Beatle songs. But that wasn't the point.

Edited by Len B'stard
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Staind. Foo Fighters for the most part. Most of your 80's hair bands.

Certain bands like ACDC, Ramones, I'll add Lynyrd Skynyrd, their fans didn't really want anything else. I don't mean that to be negative either. Those bands just embody the type of music they play so good, they really nail what it's all about. It was honest. Fans knew there wasn't any fake shit going on, they were the real deal. Plus, they were just really fucking good at what they did.

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It is all bollocks. Basically the 'moral stance' of rock music has been stolen by a bunch of artsy fartsy types. Chuck Berry used the same chord progression, always began with a similar intro lick, and used similar lyrics (about teenage Americana), yet every single Berry number is an individual masterpiece. The very limitations of Berry's craft were his great release. It gave him a great amount of freedom to compose masterpieces. He did not get bogged down in sitting on his bed trying to come up with obscure chord progressions. Conversely, Axl fans go on about CD. They cite, 'progressiveness' and 'modernity' (vs Slash style, retrogression) yet all it is at the end of the day is a bunch of late 1990s 'Kornesque' rock songs with a few beeps and farts thrown over the top. It does not make you Beethoven, getting someone to record a few farts on a casio.

This is why I respect DC. They have an elemental primal ability to fall back on a certain craftsmanship. They know what they are good at and continue with it.

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