slymer

Listen to the new Bridge & Tunnel or the new Gaslight Anthem. Plenty of great music right now. You just won't find it on your radio.

Corleone316

I checked out Bridge & Tunnel. Didn't like it.

However, I found Gaslight Anthem to be pretty fuckin' good. Maybe it's the Springsteen influence that they are known for. Plan on buying their newest album soon.

B5Erik

I haven't heard ANY Hard Rock bands that measure up to AC/DC, Thin Lizzy, UFO, KISS, Dokken, Ratt, Deep Purple, etc, in the last 15 years.

(That doesn't mean that they aren't out there, but if they are it says a lot about the music industry that they haven't broken through like the previously mentioned bands did.)

Tarantino

I'm guessing you've never seen John Mayer play...

= J

slymer

I'm not really a fan of any of the bands you listed besides Thin Lizzy, who I think are great. I'd consider the Foo Fighters and excellent hard rock band, and while I'm not as a big of a fan of them as I used to be, Pearl Jam is still going strong.

B5Erik

If you like Thin Lizzy you'd probably like UFO. They were very similar bands musically (still are - and UFO is still around). The first UFO albums I'd check out would be Walk On Water, Lights Out, and Obsession.

Foo Fighters might make the cut. Maybe. I've never heard an entire album from them, but I've been meaning to check their albums out for a long time. I HATE Eddie Vedder, though, so Pearl Jam annoys the hell out of me (I'm not a big fan of their musical style, either).

For me the whole Grunge/Heavy Alternative thing just ruined Hard Rock, and the genre still hasn't recovered.

nothingfails

you remind me of a friend I had in high school who hated all things alternative and swore to his 80's bands even tho it was 1995. All good things come to ends, if it wasn't grunge, something else would've come along, because that's how the industry goes. Nirvana and Pearl Jam frankly made great music, that's why the pendulum swung toward them while groups like Def Leppard and Bon Jovi were starting to sound really tired and boring around 1992 (and now both groups are courting the pro-Bush country market to sell records again... sad. Eddie Vedder would never stoop so low). Guns N Roses were still making great music in 91-92, therefore they were immune from the backlash (the inner turmoil did them in IMO), same goes for Metallica and Megadeth and Anthrax and other groups who saw some of their biggest success in the era of alt-rock. It was mainly the pop-metal bands that faded from view. I think enough time has passed and grunge has faded from the mainstream long enough now (and what's left has morphed into crap like Nickelback and Daughtry that represent everything Nirvana was rebelling against) that you can listen to the genre with open ears and realize how good it was. Hell, Alice In Chains weren't that far from metal... even my metalhead grunge-hating friend loved them and Tool.

B5Erik

The problem that I have with Grunge and Alternative is that it's so damned dischordant and unhappy. It's got a very negative vibe, whereas most of the 70's and 80's Hard Rock and Metal had a postive vibe - even if that vibe was based on rebellion and an assertion of independence.

The grunge and alternative stuff from the 90's just bemoaned the bad things in life and had a real defeatist attitude. I could never relate to that mindset, and the music and vocal style just totally rubbed me the wrong way.

But you're wrong when it comes to the Pop Metal bands - listen to Warrant's Ultraphobic, Winger's Pull, or Dokken's Dysfunctional for albums that fit perfectly in the 90's while still maintaining their footings in the 80's.

wm lopez

Well said.
Every rock band during rock from 1950 to 1990 had love songs.
But the new bands that came out of the 90's avoided great love songs.

PopcornTreeCt

I don't think music is getting worse it's just that the good stuff is just incredibly hard to find. It just makes the process a pain in the ass. I go to MetaCritic to check the greatest albums of the past few years and yeah...nearly all of them are bands I never heard of. I did actively seek out all these crazy new bands but only ended up liking maybe like half of them.

You know the music everyone go goes gaga for like: Sufjan Stevens, The Decemberists, The Arcade Fire, Spoon, Iron & Wine, My Morning Jacket, Bright Eyes, etc.

Please fucking kill me now if this is the best new music we've got.

nothingfails

well, I think it depends what your social status in school was. I was more of an outcast so when grunge came along, I could identify with people like Cobain and Vedder more than party-happy groupie-banging bands which were more representative of the jocks and popular students. For a depressed 13 year old who is always on the outside no matter how much he wants to fit in (and I was very suicidal when I was 12-13 and even saw shrinks for my depression at that age, that's how much I hated going to school), people like Eddie and Kurt made more sense to me than someone like Bret Michaels who were singing songs I just couldn't identify with at that point in my life. Grunge was like the "revenge of the bullied" after the pop metal party bands were the bands of the bullies, IMO. But then of course, around the time I was 14-15, "geek rock" took off with bands like Weezer, which made sense to me at that age also, because I had gotten past the suicide thoughts and depression and just accepted the fact I was never going to fit in with certain crowds and embraced being different, and Weezer were singing to that audience.

Now that shit is all so far in my past I don't care and can listen to whatever, but back in 1992, I felt more represented by PJ and Nirvana than the "cooler" party rock bands were.

atlantamoi

If you lump New Wave music into the alternative tag, then I disagree with you about unhappy music. While you find that pop metal stuff fun and happy, I find it depressing as hell.

Giantrobo

B5Erik

I don't. New Wave was fun, in a geeky kind of way.

Really? Songs about having a good time and standing up for yourself are depressing? If you really think so then you need help.

atlantamoi

Okay, I stand corrected. I did get some great tips on how to tussle up my hair, wear fishnet stockings all the while sounding substandard to the original kings of it all, New York Dolls.

The Infidel

John Mayer is a great guitar player, no question about it. But he will never be a "guitar god", because he's been influenced by others before him. That's what the "gods" are all about. They were the innovators, the ones who did it first. Sure, the "gods" themselves have said they were influenced by others before them, as well, but our guitar gods are the ones who brought a certain sound to people worldwide. They're the names that were on everyone's lips, everywhere. Wait and see who the great guitar players are 10 or twenty years from now, and they'll still be saying they were influenced by Hendrix, Clapton, Van Halen, etc, etc.

So yeah, John Mayer is good, but he's essentially a young Stevie Ray Vaughan. There's your god.

Giles

I think there's alot of songs out there that have truly terrible lyrics - it's not the music per say, I think songwriters can't come up decent lyrics - some are truly terrible, half assed, and unmemorable.

Rocketdog2000

OK, this you're quite correct about.

Some of this yes, but some, no. Def Leppard and Bon Jovi were still having hits and were quite popular in '92 and '93. It wasn't bands like them that were on the way out so much as it was all the groups that followed them, with big hair, wild fashions and makeup. Band's like Warrant, Trixter, Poison...any band that was influenced by the bands that started the whole 'popularity of metal' ball rolling in the mid-80's. The sorta fake and poser groups, if you will. Bands like Metallica , Megadeth and Anthrax survived because they were perceived as real - as did most of the bands who were. That's why Grunge took off - because it was perceived as being VERY real (i.e. more relative) - as opposed to the very fake scene that 80's popular metal turned into. Even someone like me - who was a fan of the genre, and lived through it, being in and working with bands of the time - realized it had just gone overboard, and couldn't last as it was much longer.

Well, Alice In Chains came out at the very end of the 80's metal scene, and and were initially marketed as part of it. What saved their bacon was the fact they were from Seattle, and once Grunge hit, that made them cool. Tool were never grunge, anyway. They were always truly alternative. So I can see why your friend liked both of theses bands. Listen to Mother Love Bone, whose debut came out the same time as AIC's. It's not too far removed from the 80's metal sound, either, and certainly only hits at what would later come with the death of Andrew Wood, and the band morphing into Pearl Jam. I'm sure he would have been a fan of them, as well.

Rocketdog2000

You're right about a lot of that. But that's what the new generation, as nothingfails points out, was more into, or needed, at the time. Things go in cycles. You had the upbeat, "Let's party" vibe of the 80's being replaced by what I like to refer to as the "surviving the hangover" phase of the early 90's, with Grunge.

The pendulum, however, eventually swings back in the other direction, too, even if not quite in the same manner. Do you know who the biggest band was when grunge was n it's way out? Hootie & The fucking Blowfish. Totally, happy, upbeat, positive sounding tunes - and that set off the next wave for awhile. Then the pendulum swings back, and it's the nu metal discord of groups like Korn, Staind, Limp Bizkit and the like. It's all cycles.

Rocketdog2000

What's truly ironic about that, is that when 80's popular metal first hit around '83/'84, IT was the music for the social outcasts, and not the jocks and popular students. They were more into the likes of Journey, Billy Squire, Foreigner and Styx. It was the same sort of rebellious music to kids of my age as Grunge would later be to the next generation. Again, cycles.

nothingfails

I am aware of that, but Adrenalize and Keep The Faith both sucked and marked popularity downturns. Both albums were long-awaited, and when they came out, were pisspoor in comparison to the two or three albums that preceded them. Even tho Def Lep were still popular in 1992, you can't deny how tired and tacky "Let's Get Rocked" sounded next to Evenflow and Come As You Are on the radio. I think the negative reactions to Adrenalize ended up doing them in in the long haul because when Slang came out in 96, they weren't even able to debut in the top 10 because a lot of fans were put off after Adrenalize. Bon Jovi were the same way with Keep The Faith, even tho they were able to reclaim many of the fans that dropped off years later, whereas Def Leppard haven't.

nothingfails

I think the worst thing grunge music did was that it made the "cool kids" ditch rock and gravitate towards rap, and it's been that way ever since sadly.

dadaluholla

Not really. We were definitely listening to a lot of rap, but we were also listening to a lot of Nirvana, and STP. I think Pearl Jam's "Vs" was getting played as much as Wu-Tang's "Enter the 36 Chambers". Hell, most parties I was going to in 94/95 were an equal blend of Notorious B.I.G. & White Zombie.

I have no idea what the social outcasts were listening to a the time. They were usually trying to emulate us, so I'd say it was probably the same stuff.

Rocketdog2000

OK, but in Leppard's case it's hard for anyone to follow up a mutli-million selling album with another one that does as well, or better. Almost no one else has done it. So, of course if you sell 7 to 10 million on your last album, and your next only does 2 or 3 million, it's perceived as a failure - even if you still sold 1 to 2 million more albums than 80% of the other bands who released albums the same year. Oh, and on a side note, yes, "Let's Get Rocked" is the shittiest song Leppard ever did (yet still had a hit with), so no argument there.

However, let's also factor this. These are the stats for both Def Leppard and Bon Jovi from the years '91 through '93...

Def Leppard
- Adrenalize 1992 #1 Billboard Top 200 Albums chart
Singles that charted on the Billboard Top 100 singles chart
- "Let's Get Rocked" #15
- "Make Love Like A Man" #36
- "Have You Ever Needed Someone So Bad" #12
- "Stand Up (Kick Love Into Motion)" #34
- "Tonight" #62

- Retroactive 1993 #9 Billboard Top 200 Albums chart
(and this is a b-sides and outtakes comp, no less)
Singles that charted on the Billboard Top 100 singles chart
- "Two Steps Behind" #12
- "Miss You In A Heartbeat" #39

Bon Jovi
- Keep The Faith 1992 #5 Billboard Top 200 Albums chart
Singles that charted on the Billboard Top 100 singles chart
- "Keep The Faith" #29
- "Bed Of Roses" #10
- "In These Arms" #27

Doesn't look like they were doing as bad as you think, as far as the greater public was concerned. What really did both bands in, IMHO, was the over reliance on ballads, instead of "rock" songs.

Now in comparison, even considering how huge Nirvana and Pearl Jam were, let's take a look at their stats for the same years..

Nirvana
- Nevermind 1991 #1 Billboard Top 200 Albums chart
Singles that charted on the Billboard Top 100 singles chart
- "Smells Like Teen Spirit" #6
- "Lithium" #64
(Yes that's right, those are the only songs off Nevermind that charted on the Top 100)

- In Utero 1993 #1 Billboard Top 200 Albums chart
Singles that charted on the Billboard Top 100 singles chart
- None

Pearl Jam
- Ten 1991 #2 Billboard Top 200 Albums chart (although it didn't hit there until 1992)
Singles that charted on the Billboard Top 100 singles chart
- "Jeremy" #7

- VS 1993 #1 Billboard Top 200 Albums chart
Singles that charted on the Billboard Top 100 singles chart
- "Daughter" #97

Curious that even though both bands had many well known songs, how few "Hits" there actually were. Granted, that wasn't what either and was about, but it's still interesting.

Rocketdog2000

Now that I agree with. But at least it seems to be swinging back the other way these days. Even Rap's not as cool as it used to be at it's height.