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Will we ever experience another David Bowie or Peter Gabriel?

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Will we ever experience another David Bowie or Peter Gabriel?

Old 11-19-12, 06:01 PM
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Re: Will we ever experience another David Bowie or Peter Gabriel?

Someone mentioned Sonic Youth, who perhaps are the closest in that they were defiantly experimental but still managed to gain some measure of mainstream acceptance. And they had a career that lasted from the early 80's through to the beginning of this decade.
Old 11-19-12, 06:55 PM
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Re: Will we ever experience another David Bowie or Peter Gabriel?

To answer that question I ask: Has any 20 year old in the last few years produced a track as good as Uncle Arthur or Love You Till Tuesday?

Although the mention of Beck...I can see that. He's a good candidate. I had a dream about his songbook last night...even in my dreams I had to listen to a cover and not him performing from it. Fuck.

Last edited by bluetoast; 11-19-12 at 07:02 PM.
Old 11-19-12, 07:27 PM
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Re: Will we ever experience another David Bowie or Peter Gabriel?

How about Mike Patton?
He's definitely prolific, contributing to music in multiple genres.
He doesn't have nearly the popularity that Bowie and Gabriel had, but he's definitely got a wider range of creative projects than nearly any other artist since.
Old 11-19-12, 08:02 PM
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Re: Will we ever experience another David Bowie or Peter Gabriel?

I did a poor job in the OP but part of what I'm looking for is a combination of a few things:

1. Classic albums
2. Critically praised
3. Commercially successful
4. Recognizable to the general public

Some really good choices listed in this thread. Many hit three of the four.

Some that are close are Radiohead, Beck, Bjork, Reznor, maybe Arcade Fire with the Grammy win. Hiro made a good point - it's too early to assess many of these artists.

The closest for me might be Albarn. He falters in #4 but only because he hides behind his bands.
Old 11-19-12, 08:08 PM
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Re: Will we ever experience another David Bowie or Peter Gabriel?

I certainly hope not! (at least not latter period Bowie or ANY Gabriel)
Old 11-19-12, 08:09 PM
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Re: Will we ever experience another David Bowie or Peter Gabriel?

Originally Posted by auto
I did a poor job in the OP but part of what I'm looking for is a combination of a few things:

1. Classic albums
2. Critically praised
3. Commercially successful
4. Recognizable to the general public
Foo Fighters
Old 11-19-12, 08:12 PM
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Re: Will we ever experience another David Bowie or Peter Gabriel?

Originally Posted by nodeerforamonth
I certainly hope not! (at least not latter period Bowie or ANY Gabriel)
Originally Posted by nodeerforamonth
Foo Fighters
You are immediately disqualified from talking about music sir.

The Foo Fighters have exactly zero classic albums, and I'm a fan!
Old 11-19-12, 08:37 PM
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Re: Will we ever experience another David Bowie or Peter Gabriel?

Originally Posted by auto
You are immediately disqualified from talking about music sir.

The Foo Fighters have exactly zero classic albums, and I'm a fan!
Kind of early to tell, but their last one, "Wasting Light", will probably be considered a classic (at least in my book) in years to come.
Old 11-19-12, 09:13 PM
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Re: Will we ever experience another David Bowie or Peter Gabriel?

Originally Posted by auto
I did a poor job in the OP but part of what I'm looking for is a combination of a few things:

1. Classic albums
2. Critically praised
3. Commercially successful
4. Recognizable to the general public

...
I think you did a better job in the OP than this description...lots of bands (Foo Fighters are a perfect example of the above, but don't match Bowie/Gabriel) match the above...
Old 11-19-12, 09:23 PM
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Re: Will we ever experience another David Bowie or Peter Gabriel?

Damn it!
Old 11-19-12, 10:32 PM
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Re: Will we ever experience another David Bowie or Peter Gabriel?

Bjork
Old 11-19-12, 10:38 PM
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Re: Will we ever experience another David Bowie or Peter Gabriel?

Originally Posted by Mabuse
Also, what about someone like Trent Reznor? His trajectory is similar to these guys. Maybe never had the major hits but his sound and music permeates the culture and is very well known.
Reznor was the first name that popped into my head as well. Certainly his work with NIN was ground-breaking. But now that he's done some great soundtrack work (including winning an Oscar!), as well as other various side projects, it really puts him into that elite territory.
Old 11-20-12, 06:18 AM
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Re: Will we ever experience another David Bowie or Peter Gabriel?

Itdoesn't take time for classic albums to be regarded as classic. Most classic LPs were considered classics soon after their release. It was so much different in the early seventies. There was a definite gap between rock and pop. The masses never heard of Bowie until Fame. Nobody heard of Genesis until Duke. Yet they could sell out arenas like Madison Square Garden with zero airplay and you could stand outside a high school all day and not find someone who heard of them. Jethro Tull could have a hit album with no airplay. Rock, and the albums, were like a subculture of mainstream music. If you were lucky you became exposed through somebody you met or an older sibling.
I'll use comics as an analogy. Before the movies, everybody knew Superman and Batman, yet X-Men, one of the most popular and sucessful comics were completely unknown to anyone outside comic readers. Now everybody knows them.
Bowie, Genesis and many others were like X-Men. Selling out arenas, sucessful albums, yet you would freeze to death standing on a busy street corner in the winter asking passerbys if they'd heard of them waiting for a yes.
Old 11-20-12, 09:31 AM
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Re: Will we ever experience another David Bowie or Peter Gabriel?

Oh, so like Metallica in the 80s?
Old 11-20-12, 11:40 AM
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Re: Will we ever experience another David Bowie or Peter Gabriel?

Originally Posted by auto
I did a poor job in the OP but part of what I'm looking for is a combination of a few things:

1. Classic albums
2. Critically praised
3. Commercially successful
4. Recognizable to the general public
I agree with this but you left out number 5.

5. The intangible "it" factor

It's impossible to define. I think it has something to do with pushing rock/pop into a new sounding direction or bringing in outside non-rock sounds and making them rock. And it also has something to do with persona, style, attitude, cult of personality.

Regarding #3: Being a Bowie or a Gabriel also has to do with breaking through to the mainstream without "selling out"; something that's nearly impossible to do. Modern Love and Sledgehammer and Let's Dance are the songs that even your mom would love, they're the songs that sent them into the top 40, and miraculously they aren't sell out songs or songs that sound different from their earlier output.
Old 11-20-12, 12:12 PM
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Re: Will we ever experience another David Bowie or Peter Gabriel?

Originally Posted by Mabuse
I agree with this but you left out number 5.

5. The intangible "it" factor

It's impossible to define. I think it has something to do with pushing rock/pop into a new sounding direction or bringing in outside non-rock sounds and making them rock. And it also has something to do with persona, style, attitude, cult of personality.

Regarding #3: Being a Bowie or a Gabriel also has to do with breaking through to the mainstream without "selling out"; something that's nearly impossible to do. Modern Love and Sledgehammer and Let's Dance are the songs that even your mom would love, they're the songs that sent them into the top 40, and miraculously they aren't sell out songs or songs that sound different from their earlier output.
Really? Sledgehammer is nothing remotely like what Peter Gabriel did prior to it. A big dance tune with horns? Where is that in his first 4 albums? And Bowie did dance music prior to Let's Dance (Young Americans, Golden Years) but never anything as overtly commercial. I'm not saying any of it was bad, but these were definitely both attempts at commercial success.
Old 11-20-12, 02:12 PM
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Re: Will we ever experience another David Bowie or Peter Gabriel?

This just in from the Old Fart corner:

I've heard of Peter Gabriel and I've heard of Genesis but had no idea they were related. I've been listening to popular music for much longer than they've been around, yet I can't tell you if I've ever heard anything by either Gabriel or Genesis. I just looked them both up on Wikipedia and I never heard of any of the songs or albums listed on either page. For 45 years, they've gone completely under (or over?) my radar.

A few years ago my daughter lent me a David Bowie Greatest Hits album and urged me to listen to it. I still haven't. I remember Bowie's "Major Tom to Ground Control" song from the early 1970s (I still don't know what the title is) but I only learned from watching a documentary about Bowie in the late 1990s that it was Bowie who sang it.

I remember Harlan Ellison's quote from about 40 years ago:

"I'd rather listen to 200 years of Ennio Morricone than five minutes of David Bowie."
Old 11-20-12, 02:52 PM
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Re: Will we ever experience another David Bowie or Peter Gabriel?

Old Fart? More like Old Fart's dad!
Old 11-20-12, 03:26 PM
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Re: Will we ever experience another David Bowie or Peter Gabriel?

Gabriel struggled for a long time. He has not had the success this thread implies. I was a huge fan of those first 3 albums. Not so much afterwards.

David Bowie's Low is a masterpiece, but there are many new masterpieces every decade.

If you are specifically talking about live shows, it is doubtful it will happen again. Skyrocketing costs and low attendance, make it improbable.

Creatively, it happens all the time. There are plenty of artists that are pushing the boundaries and doing so with amazing talent. Music isn't any better or worse, you are just not listening.

Theatrically, I hope some of it never comes back. Although, I saw Gabriel on the melted face tour and he was amazing.

Oh, Todd Rundgren should be added to Bowie and Gabriel.
Old 11-20-12, 04:18 PM
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Re: Will we ever experience another David Bowie or Peter Gabriel?

Originally Posted by Groucho
Old Fart? More like Old Fart's dad!
More like "Person Living in a Cave".

I guarentee you've heard In Your Eyes by Peter Gabriel. It's played on the radio constantly since the song was new.
Old 11-20-12, 04:22 PM
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Re: Will we ever experience another David Bowie or Peter Gabriel?

Originally Posted by cungar
Really? Sledgehammer is nothing remotely like what Peter Gabriel did prior to it. A big dance tune with horns? Where is that in his first 4 albums?
Shock the Monkey, Solsbury Hill, On the Air, I Go Swimming. They don't have horns but they're big rollicking anthemic rock numbers. PG would do moody ambient pieces, complex art rock pieces, and rocking good pop songs.

Also, Sledgehammer fits within the context of what Gabriel had been consistently doing over the last four albums, incorporating world music sounds from all over the place. He'd done blues numbers (Waiting For the Big One), afro-rhythm (The Rhythm of the Heat), ambient (Intruder), this time he used Motown and Stax records as a jumping off point.

Last edited by Mabuse; 11-20-12 at 04:39 PM.
Old 11-20-12, 05:08 PM
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Re: Will we ever experience another David Bowie or Peter Gabriel?

Originally Posted by Ash Ketchum
I remember Harlan Ellison's quote from about 40 years ago:

"I'd rather listen to 200 years of Ennio Morricone than five minutes of David Bowie."
And you're the guy who goes nuts for Expendables 2? Talk about cognitive dissonance.

And Harlan Ellison doesn't have to listen to David Bowie, but he's missing out on some of the greatest rock music ever recorded. Ennio Morricone is an absolute genius, but working in an entirely different genre of music than Bowie. I'd listen to either anytime.
Old 11-20-12, 05:41 PM
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Re: Will we ever experience another David Bowie or Peter Gabriel?

Originally Posted by Mabuse
Shock the Monkey, Solsbury Hill, On the Air, I Go Swimming. They don't have horns but they're big rollicking anthemic rock numbers. PG would do moody ambient pieces, complex art rock pieces, and rocking good pop songs.

Also, Sledgehammer fits within the context of what Gabriel had been consistently doing over the last four albums, incorporating world music sounds from all over the place. He'd done blues numbers (Waiting For the Big One), afro-rhythm (The Rhythm of the Heat), ambient (Intruder), this time he used Motown and Stax records as a jumping off point.
I think the commercial success of Sledghammer speaks for itself. None of the songs you mentioned are Top 40 material. Sledgehammer was obviously produced with hit single in mind.
Old 11-20-12, 05:49 PM
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Re: Will we ever experience another David Bowie or Peter Gabriel?

You can draw a line from "Shock The Monkey" to "Sledgehammer." Also, it would have felt more like selling out if the whole album sounded like "Sledgehammer," but So has the more pop-style numbers like "Sledgehammer" and "Big Time," ballads like "Don't Give Up", art rock with "Excellent Birds (This Is The Picture)", and even semi-ambient stuff like "We Do What We're Told."

Now, "Steam," that's an obvious attempt at cashing in on the popularity of "Sledgehammer," and doesn't hold up nearly as well.
Old 11-20-12, 05:49 PM
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Re: Will we ever experience another David Bowie or Peter Gabriel?

Originally Posted by cungar
I think the commercial success of Sledghammer speaks for itself. None of the songs you mentioned are Top 40 material. Sledgehammer was obviously produced with hit single in mind.
True, but Gabriel's previous top 40 piece of material, Games Without Frontiers, doesn't sound remotely comercial.

Originally Posted by Supermallet
Now, "Steam," that's an obvious attempt at cashing in on the popularity of "Sledgehammer," and doesn't hold up nearly as well.
Very true.

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