Vinyl Me Please Essentials

Joe Mac said:
Hmmm. I think that’s very charitable.

I don’t like storf and really didn’t enjoy my interactions with him in the old forum but I’m not going to relitigate that here and now. What I will say is that I was all for stax saturation when they were uncovering Darrell Banks or pressing Eddie Floyd, William Bell and Mavis Staples. Now it feels like, and this is my alternatie perspective on it, that they’re pressing albums that are rare because no one wanted them the first time around, they were rightly forgotten and are only being dredged up now to complete his collection.

As for the millennials point, I’m a millennial indie fan and my foundations were in the 90s and I’ve dug back into the 80s and it’s roots. It’s really lazy to me.
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It could be lazy, or it could be compromise. Either way, it doesn't surprise me considering the american indie culture. But I would certainly not complain about more diversity.

And without being able to repeat artists, the Stax heaviness can only last so long. I personally have enjoyed every one so far, even if they were an odd pick.
 
wynn72 said:
It could be lazy, or it could be compromise. Either way, it doesn't surprise me considering the american indie culture. But I would certainly not complain about more diversity.

And without being able to repeat artists, the Stax heaviness can only last so long. I personally have enjoyed every one so far, even if they were an odd pick.
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Classics would be better served if they'd revisit artists.
 
wynn72 said:
I mean, considering they’re all Vinyl buying millennials in the US, they probably are mostly big fans of Indie music in the 00s. I personally am not but I understand that it is a popular genre/time period for the people who buy Vinyl here. Probably the easiest to get a label relationship with too. Even though it’s generally not my jam Im ok with 3-4/year as I like it just about that much.
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I think this nails it - not the genre/time period so much as the very narrow age range band of the people doing the curating, so they have a myopic worldview of how influential ("Essential") some of their favorites are.

"“As a former teenage Strokes obsessive, us doing Room on Fire was a dream come true for me personally; they were the first band I felt like I could call my own, in a way,” said VMP Editorial Director Andrew Winistorfer."

I was 27 when Room on Fire came out, so I had a very different take (The Strokes are retread garbage, offering nothing new or interesting). There's nothing wrong with still enjoying the bands that you loved as a teenager, but if everyone 'in the room' (in the Zoom?) is roughly the same age and has similar listening habits, it's easy to fall into groupthink.
 
serotonein said:
I think this nails it - not the genre/time period so much as the very narrow age range band of the people doing the curating, so they have a myopic worldview of how influential ("Essential") some of their favorites are.

"“As a former teenage Strokes obsessive, us doing Room on Fire was a dream come true for me personally; they were the first band I felt like I could call my own, in a way,” said VMP Editorial Director Andrew Winistorfer."

I was 27 when Room on Fire came out, so I had a very different take (The Strokes are retread garbage, offering nothing new or interesting). There's nothing wrong with still enjoying the bands that you loved as a teenager, but if everyone 'in the room' (in the Zoom?) is roughly the same age and has similar listening habits, it's easy to fall into groupthink.
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Yep, on the other extreme see MoFi and AP whose curation is so staid its in its slippers smoking a pipe by the fire.

I probably sit somewhere in between on The Strokes, I was 18 when it came out and whilst it they weren’t earth shattering Is This It was a good album and a bit of a course correction palate cleanser that opened up a whole new generation of indie/rock bands, the music scenes for a late teenager had been pretty dire in the couple of years beforehand. Room on Fire, however, is a bang average follow up with a couple of good singles on it.
 
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serotonein said:
I think this nails it - not the genre/time period so much as the very narrow age range band of the people doing the curating, so they have a myopic worldview of how influential ("Essential") some of their favorites are.

"“As a former teenage Strokes obsessive, us doing Room on Fire was a dream come true for me personally; they were the first band I felt like I could call my own, in a way,” said VMP Editorial Director Andrew Winistorfer."

I was 27 when Room on Fire came out, so I had a very different take (The Strokes are retread garbage, offering nothing new or interesting). There's nothing wrong with still enjoying the bands that you loved as a teenager, but if everyone 'in the room' (in the Zoom?) is roughly the same age and has similar listening habits, it's easy to fall into groupthink.
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They definitely fall into group think, particularly with Indie Rock. Just look at the volume and hyperbole over Indie music from 2009, which was the tail end of the 00s scene.
 
serotonein said:
I think this nails it - not the genre/time period so much as the very narrow age range band of the people doing the curating, so they have a myopic worldview of how influential ("Essential") some of their favorites are.

"“As a former teenage Strokes obsessive, us doing Room on Fire was a dream come true for me personally; they were the first band I felt like I could call my own, in a way,” said VMP Editorial Director Andrew Winistorfer."

I was 27 when Room on Fire came out, so I had a very different take (The Strokes are retread garbage, offering nothing new or interesting). There's nothing wrong with still enjoying the bands that you loved as a teenager, but if everyone 'in the room' (in the Zoom?) is roughly the same age and has similar listening habits, it's easy to fall into groupthink.
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Exactly my take on both strokes ("oh they like classic rock, but have heard punk, i guess that's cool") and vmp nostalgia bs. I mean I'd so the same if i were curator too right? "Here's the absolutely essential iron maiden" - but my personal biases aside, there's a bunch of stuff they're ignoring just because it's outside the scope of "shit i got laid to when i was in my early 20s"
 
yukbon said:
Exactly my take on both strokes ("oh they like classic rock, but have heard punk, i guess that's cool") and vmp nostalgia bs. I mean I'd so the same if i were curator too right? "Here's the absolutely essential iron maiden" - but my personal biases aside, there's a bunch of stuff they're ignoring just because it's outside the scope of "shit i got laid to when i was in my early 20s"
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Strokes bashing aside, I agree with this, too. VMP would really benefit from guest (or some other) form of rotating curation.
 
yukbon said:
I have no particular beef with the strokes, i just found them inoffensive and uninspired. (Contrasted with Greta van fleet which is offensive and uninspired). I'll listen to the strokes again to see if they strike me any better the second time around.
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I am in agreement with all of this.
 
yukbon said:
I have no particular beef with the strokes, i just found them inoffensive and uninspired. (Contrasted with Greta van fleet which is offensive and uninspired). I'll listen to the strokes again to see if they strike me any better the second time around.
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Look, when The Strokes became a thing I wanted to hate them. They were too fucking cool and the press was too fucking fawning. My contrarian nature HATED all of it but then I heard their music and FUCK, it was all really good.
 
TenderLovingKiller® said:
Look, when The Strokes became a thing I wanted to hate them. They were too fucking cool and the press was too fucking fawning. My contrarian nature HATED all of it but then I heard their music and FUCK, it was all really good.
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As I have commented before, and which I believe was the point of the earlier “groupthink” comments, it mostly comes down to context.

I started listening to music around Costellos debut, Devoed and Policed my way through the 80s. By High School, I was all over the spectrum from REM, to Tribe to Metallica to Uncle Tupelo (I went to High School 45 min from Belleville, IL). I was a 1st semester college Freshman when Nevermind was released and I discovered NIN. After the early 90s onslaught of great music (deridingly referred to as the Grunge era) I got into the the Blues through Hendrix and Aretha. By 1998 I was living in London when OK Computer and Mezzanine were blowing minds and I even got into a little Pete Tong and Paul Okkenfold in the London club scene. By 2000, I had moved to Boston and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Kid A and Relationship of Command were redefining what it meant to have your mind blown.

Around that time, Spin and the music rags were telling us how great the Strokes were and they were the next great thing. But Spin lost all their cred when they picked Bandwagonesque over Nevermind and When I Was Born For The 7th Time over OK Computer & you could tell the rest of the rags were just trying to make Nirvana happen again.

So when I say “The Strokes, most decidedly do not “rock” at all”, it’s because of context. Their first album, in the context of my experience, was a tepid “meh” and they fall closer to a 1 hit wonder than anything “essential”....in my book.

I can appreciate that how someone else came to them may create a different context & get them excited for the release. But I agree, VMPs target market on this one is likely small because, as was pointed out before, that context speaks to an audience in a very narrow window of time.
 
tvham said:
So they were just what you needed?
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HEY!

I don't mind you comin' here
And wastin' all my time
'Cause when you're standin' oh so near
I kinda lose my mind
It's not the perfume that you wear
It's not the ribbons in your hair
And I don't mind you comin' here
And wastin' all my time
I don't mind you hangin' out
And talkin' in your sleep
It doesn't matter where you've been
As long as it was deep, yeah
You always knew to wear it well and
You look so fancy I can tell
I don't mind you hangin' out
And talkin' in your sleep
I GUESS YOU'RE JUST WHAT I NEEDED
 
Viking Dan said:
As I have commented before, and which I believe was the point of the earlier “groupthink” comments, it mostly comes down to context.

I started listening to music around Costellos debut, Devoed and Policed my way through the 80s. By High School, I was all over the spectrum from REM, to Tribe to Metallica to Uncle Tupelo (I went to High School 45 min from Belleville, IL). I was a 1st semester college Freshman when Nevermind was released and I discovered NIN. After the early 90s onslaught of great music (deridingly referred to as the Grunge era) I got into the the Blues through Hendrix and Aretha. By 1998 I was living in London when OK Computer and Mezzanine were blowing minds and I even got into a little Pete Tong and Paul Okkenfold in the London club scene. By 2000, I had moved to Boston and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Kid A and Relationship of Command were redefining what it meant to have your mind blown.

Around that time, Spin and the music rags were telling us how great the Strokes were and they were the next great thing. But Spin lost all their cred when they picked Bandwagonesque over Nevermind and When I Was Born For The 7th Time over OK Computer & you could tell the rest of the rags were just trying to make Nirvana happen again.

So when I say “The Strokes, most decidedly do not “rock” at all”, it’s because of context. Their first album, in the context of my experience, was a tepid “meh” and they fall closer to a 1 hit wonder than anything “essential”....in my book.

I can appreciate that how someone else came to them may create a different context & get them excited for the release. But I agree, VMPs target market on this one is likely small because, as was pointed out before, that context speaks to an audience in a very narrow window of time.
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I didn’t realize thinking The Strokes were good was such a hot take. Good music is universal and all the other bullshit may add or detract but ultimately the music is what is important. Sure they coulda selected Television or The Replacements or The Cars and those would have been great artists to highlight but appreciating The Strokes doesn’t detract from the great rock groups that came before.
 
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Viking Dan said:
As I have commented before, and which I believe was the point of the earlier “groupthink” comments, it mostly comes down to context.

I started listening to music around Costellos debut, Devoed and Policed my way through the 80s. By High School, I was all over the spectrum from REM, to Tribe to Metallica to Uncle Tupelo (I went to High School 45 min from Belleville, IL). I was a 1st semester college Freshman when Nevermind was released and I discovered NIN. After the early 90s onslaught of great music (deridingly referred to as the Grunge era) I got into the the Blues through Hendrix and Aretha. By 1998 I was living in London when OK Computer and Mezzanine were blowing minds and I even got into a little Pete Tong and Paul Okkenfold in the London club scene. By 2000, I had moved to Boston and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Kid A and Relationship of Command were redefining what it meant to have your mind blown.

Around that time, Spin and the music rags were telling us how great the Strokes were and they were the next great thing. But Spin lost all their cred when they picked Bandwagonesque over Nevermind and When I Was Born For The 7th Time over OK Computer & you could tell the rest of the rags were just trying to make Nirvana happen again.

So when I say “The Strokes, most decidedly do not “rock” at all”, it’s because of context. Their first album, in the context of my experience, was a tepid “meh” and they fall closer to a 1 hit wonder than anything “essential”....in my book.

I can appreciate that how someone else came to them may create a different context & get them excited for the release. But I agree, VMPs target market on this one is likely small because, as was pointed out before, that context speaks to an audience in a very narrow window of time.
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For me The Strokes are one of those bands that have to be looked at within the context of everything that was around them at the time though. In the UK we'd just started the Pop Idol generation and the charts were filling up with either that sort of pure shit or the dregs of britpop. It was either that or dadrock masterpieces like Travis, Coldplay, Starsailor etc etc etc. Definitely Maybe had been years earlier and any promise from that era had been blown out of the water by massively excessive (and mainly shit) follow ups and pastiche. The Stokes came along and absolutely blew the roof off that. I can still remember the first time I heard them . Some ladbible shitshow called Soccer AM played New York City Cops as the accompaniment to the goals section one week and I was fully 'whoooooooaaaaaaa'. At the time you couldn't get anything by them over here too so I spent the next month or so scrambling around Limewire and Napster hunting out bits and pieces to burn to cd until I finally tracked down a copy of The Modern Age. They were an absolute breath of fresh air and Is This It had a huge impact on the UK music scene in particular. Ironically the other artist pushed to the forefront was Andrew WK (who was also apparently here to save music)

I mean, looking back you can say what really happened? Sure loads of bands emerged with 'The' in their names and in reality The Strokes are possibly just a lesser version of The Ramones or New York Dolls (or the Cars... or Television... or whoever else) but at the time that Is This It came out I'd say they were important and did revitalise a pretty sorry scene. May have been different in the states but that was definitely the case in the UK. On that basis I would see Is This It fitting the Essentials criteria. In fact VMP could have even put something together that included that and The Modern Age EP. That would have been ace.

It's Room on Fire as a pick that puzzles me. I mean the album was supposed to be something totally different. I read somewhere that Nigel Godrich was supposed to be taking them in a new direction and for one reason or another the band/ Julian didn't want to go there, backed out and quickly reworked a more formulaic album in the place of the intended follow up. I like the album. I always have but calling it essential is a bit of a stretch. It's a more of the same, while not being as good, as their debut. Even the band have said it was rushed an needed more time! Great singles but the rest of the album is nowhere near. It also doesn't have that emotive pull that people like me, who heard the band, loved the band and then binged on the band for a year, get from Is This It. It's a crazy choice. I mean, I like the Strokes so I'm happy to have it but if I was a total new listener I'm not sure this would make me dive into the rest of their albums where Is This It would make me hunt around to see what came next.

But as I said, I'm a fan. My copy isn't the best. I'll be happy to have the VMP version and it'll get played.
 
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