Comments on: Thom Yorke’s Taste In Music Gets Made More Mainstream By The Man

By: LiquidHeaven

LiquidHeaven — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 08:24:43 +0000

^True, that also helps me know where to avoid.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 12:52:43 +0000

@moomintroll: I didn't mean that one should condescend to the Grammy audience; that's a rather dangerous level of condensation. Rather, they should take or fake pride in themselves and say "We're the frickin' Grammys, and these are the relevant things we've done in the past." Afterall, shouldn't the influences of a great artist be great, and therefore worthy of winning the award for outstanding achievment in their field? Unless, of course, the Grammys are a ridiculous farce trying to grab some sort of cultural relevance by tempting Mr. York with a trophy he can give to his mom. @Cam/ron: It's still a matter of personality over substance. Was he influenced by some specifics of the record of "Tumbling Dice", or did he just think Mick Jagger looked cool strutting around on the Voodoo Lounge tour? The two could, concievably, be two different animals.

By: moomintroll

moomintroll — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 12:10:11 +0000

@K-Rex: I get your point too, I suppose it's irrelevant to the specifics of who wins a Grammy what the nominees' influences are. However, if your ad campaign is solely about the nominees' influences, why would you cherry-pick what you think the Grammy audience would "get". It seems disingenuous, and really condescending. I just wish they would give the audience some credit.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 07:35:57 +0000

@moomintroll: The secret to country music is to never buy or download an album. It works best in it's natural habitat: country radio.

By: moomintroll

moomintroll — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 07:10:29 +0000

@relaxing: ha! Country music got knocked out of contention in 2008 by early twentieth century calypso for me.
It's funny that a genre as ubiquitous as country can be ignored so easily.

By: DocStrange

DocStrange — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 07:03:24 +0000

@Maura Johnston: It its defense Raising Sand is a good album. I just don't think it's "Album of the Year nominee" material.

By: Maura Johnston

Maura Johnston — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 05:38:07 +0000

@relaxing:

"Am I a bad person if neither I nor anyone I know cares about bluegrass?"

Not at all. Honestly, I doubt Grammy voters listened to any other bluegrass albums at all.

By: relaxing

relaxing — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 05:20:43 +0000

Hm, OK. I'm genuinely curious here because I listen to (and read about) a lot of music each year, so I'm wondering how a potential best album escaped my radar.

Am I a bad person if neither I nor anyone I know cares about bluegrass?

Not too long ago, Pitchfork did an article about how we should all give Country music a fair chance, and I sort of mentally filed that away for after I finish listening to these 1960's garage/psych comps leftover from that fad in the 90s. (Also on pile: Dub Reggae, Tropicalia, Javanese Gamelan.)

I guess I'm really asking if Bluegrass is the next thing, so I can jump on the bandwagon now before the rest of the hipsters get to it. I see Pitchfork has zero coverage of Krauss, which can only be a good sign.

By: Maura Johnston

Maura Johnston — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 04:46:18 +0000

@relaxing: it's the alison krauss/robert plant bluegrass album. did pretty well. held up the led zep reunion, ha ha.

By: relaxing

relaxing — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 04:40:48 +0000

Should I have heard of Raising Sand?

By: moomintroll

moomintroll — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 04:28:34 +0000

@K-Rex: I suppose it makes sense to think that the reason behind the poster's change was to highlight the actual Grammy winners that have influenced Thom.
Fair enough.
However, I wonder how he feels about the change?
At least they kept "Kill Bill Vol. 4" up at the top on his forehead.

By: Maura Johnston

Maura Johnston — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 04:02:48 +0000

@Christopher R. Weingarten: next time we hang out you should see my computer's default fonts. EVERYONE is like 'wtf yo'

By: DocStrange

DocStrange — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 03:39:13 +0000

My comment about the Kraus/Plant record winning was made because it's happened before. Many albums that deserve Grammys are either not nominated or lose. Even in genre categories like Best Alternative Music Album, with deserving albums by Arcade Fire and Arctic Monkeys losing to merely OK albums by the White Stripes (excluding 2004, where Elephant was easily the best of that lot). Radiohead has the Alternative award completely in the bag, however. Album of the Year will go to the dark horse like it did last year (Hancock) and the year before that (the Dixie Chicks).

By: Christopher R. Weingarten

Christopher R. Weingarten — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 02:06:37 +0000

How can you even read the print ad? You’re driving me nuts for two weeks with that tiny jpg

By: Cam/ron

Cam/ron — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 11:41:20 +0000

@K-Rex: My point was that if the ad wanted to tell the public what influenced Thom then it would've been better to clearly print the artists' names rather than feature otherwise generic song titles like "Unravel," "Six Days" and "I Want You." A dozen or more artists could've recorded songs that share those titles, hence confusing people about what exactly influenced Thom.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 11:05:08 +0000

@Cam/ron: I have to disagree with you here. The Grammys are ideally, though not infact, strictly about recorded music. There should be, ideally, no consideration given to the personality creating or promoting the record. I personally feel that the use of lyrics cheapens the gimmick a bit.
Of course, this being the Grammys, I'm rather surprised they didn't jump on that. I don't believe it's a secret that Grammys are rewarded largely as an apology for previous records that they overlooked.
On a slightly related note: were any of these songs nominated or awarded Grammys? Shouldn't that be some sort of a requirment if one is going to use them to promote the Grammys?

By: Cam/ron

Cam/ron — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 10:34:53 +0000

@moomintroll: It would've been better if the artists, not the songs were listed so that folks would have a better idea of who influenced Thom.

By: moomintroll

moomintroll — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 10:21:27 +0000

Isn't this one of the main problems with the Grammys? There's always a sense that they fear the unknown, and would much rather be on the safe side.

This tact assumes that the music-listening public is unaware of Scott Walker et al. and would much rather be comforted by the reassuring omnipresence of "standards" such as the Rolling Stones.

It's exactly this false belief, however, that turns 90% of discerning music fans away. With moves like this they're a long way from being a relevant or noteworthy entity.
Even if some of these songs are a little obscure, wouldn't someone who cares enough to look at Thom Yorke's musical influences (in fancy Grammy poster form) be interested in looking up the songs they don't know?

By: Cam/ron

Cam/ron — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 09:54:23 +0000

Autechre’s “Vose In” wasn’t completely removed – their track remains on the upper left of Thom’s forehead. To be fair, Autechre’s cryptic cyber-English is a puzzling sight to many eyes.

By: Nicolars

Nicolars — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 09:22:44 +0000

@T'Challa: Forget Autechre, what about Scott Walker? To think he got thrown aside in favor of some ubiquitous Stones makes me want to set the Grammy HQ on fire.