5 Great Musicians I Am Ashamed To Admit, I Don’t Like. (Blogging 101)

So I am now a full day behind my Blogging 101 Challenge, the assignment for yesterday was to write a post about the ‘Daily Prompt’ from WordPress, that being ‘Ring Of Fire, do you like spicy food?’. And the easy answer to that is, yes, but not too spicy as I like to taste the food rather than have it burned from my mouth, I’d say a Jalfrezi is about as spicy a curry as I go. But being a person who has a mind that can get from talking about moving house to talking about farts in 4 logical steps, I took ‘Ring of Fire’ around my brain for 24 hours and farted out this post (Do you see what I did there?).

But not only do I like talking about farts, I also love me some music, trouble is, when you are a bit of a ‘Muso’ you end up realising that other ‘Musos’ tend to hold certain musicians in high esteem, and anyone who thinks they aren’t that great end up getting berated as a ‘poser’. So this, I suppose, is my confessional, and you lovely people are my Priests, and I offer you this post in the hope that you will forgive me for being a ‘poser’ for not liking such musical greats as…
5. Johnny Cash.

(I’ll give you 10 seconds to work out where I got the idea for this post!)

So everybody knows about Johnny Cash, he is a legend, and that is exactly what I say to anybody who speaks about him. But, I really can’t get into his music, and it’s not just a prejudice against country music, I like a bit of Willie now and again.

who doesn’t?

But if I have to hear ‘Ring of Fire’ one more time I might actually burn out my ear drums with a red-hot poker inserted into my anus, honestly people, get over it. But in fairness, he has made it onto the bottom of the list for one song, ‘Hurt’, that may be the only song of his that I find tolerable, and it’s pretty much only because I really like the Nine Inch Nails original and I have a thing for quirky cover songs.
4. Iron Maiden.

I’m going to start this with an admission; I have seen Iron Maiden live (Somewhere Back In Time Tour, Twickenham, 2008) and through the haze of Guinness I do vaguely remember having a reasonably good time. It was all very theatrical, they had Eddie walking around on stage and all that sort of stuff, and I sang along to ‘Run to the Hills’ like the good little metal-head I am.

I even have 4/5 Iron Maiden albums on my iTunes that I have listened to all of 3 times in the last 8 years. They do have some good songs and they have even better drinking songs, easy to learn choruses, and luckily Bruce Dickinson’s voice lends itself well to screaming at the top of your lungs after 8 or 9 Jagerbombs and a skin-full of Lager. But only in the same way that Bon Jovi lends itself to drunken singing, but if you aren’t trying to destroy your liver, it’s just dull, and it does absolutely nothing for me.
3. Jeff Buckley

If you have never heard of Jeff Buckley, then listen to this…

If you haven’t been touched by that song then you have somehow learned how to transfer your consciousness into a super-computer, trading your emotions for immortality.
He really is a great, and it is a shame that he died at such an early age, for a musician to have the presence of that guy, as well as the musical talent to back it up, well, that comes along once I a generation.
I just wish he would cheer the f**k up, lets quickly deconstruct ‘Grace’, it is a beautiful album, but there is no emotional state you can safely listen to it in, without it puking images of a languishing Sylvia Plath-esque suicide into your mind. If you are in a good mood, then all it does is bring you down, and if you are in a bad mood, then half way through ‘Last Goodbye’ and your beginning to think whether it’s possible to choke yourself to death on the flea ridden cat that lives in the ally way behind your house. (Or is that just me?)

2. Beastie Boys.

*I’m going to put a caveat on this entry and say that I do like ‘Sabotage’, but mostly for the video.

I really don’t understand why the Beastie Boys have gained the reputation they have, I know they are ‘kind of’ the people who invented ‘rap-rock’, but is that really something to be proud of?

But there are plenty of other people, who were doing it before them, take a listen to this and tell me it isn’t a primordial version of rap-rock.

Now to me, not only does that sound better than ‘Sabotage’ (and came out 32 years earlier by the way) but the lyrics are far more intelligent and actually mean something, and he doesn’t sound like he has had a goblin hiding up his ass for the better part of a decade.

1. Jimi Hendrix.

This is probably one of the most controversial people on the list, but I want to start with a joke I heard by a comedian who was commenting on Heston Blumenthal’s cooking, he said ‘JUST COOK A F**KING DINNER!’ well, I’m saying to Jimi, ‘JUST PLAY A F**KING SONG!’
I should explain that when I was about 15 and just finding my way through the musical quagmire of genre’s that Jimi Hendrix was a pretty consistent factor in all of them, most of the bands I liked said that he was a big influence on them, and most of the girls I liked said similar. So I walked into my local music shop and bought Jimi Hendrix live at Woodstock, took it home in hot anticipation, put it on and listened to what I can only express in writing as ‘ahlsdjfb;;bjbjnannbnbnnbadfjjuhuu z dgbljgva,ljfvb’.

Listen to that song at 1.01 onwards and tell me that isn’t murder to your ears!

Yes, he is great, his guitar skills WE’RE second to none, it was like he owned every inch of the Axe, but today he is pretty much irrelevant, Mozart, he aint. He probably could have been, but since he was the first to use a guitar in the way that he did, he ended up being the experimenter, and the problem with experiments, is that they go wrong sometimes.

So there you have it, my list of musicians I feel guilty for not liking, I know it shouldn’t matter what music I like, and when amongst friends like you wonderful people I’m sure it doesn’t matter too much. And in truth, although I don’t particularly like these musicians, that doesn’t mean that I don’t respect them, without them I wouldn’t have the music I do enjoy, and for that I am eternally grateful. But on some occasions it is better to just nod your head approvingly and pretend to be in awe, but, just to reverse what has become a slight rampage against music, here is one of my favourite songs at the moment, hope you enjoy, but if you don’t, screw you poser!