Alex Chilton RIP

"Power poop", as a certain embittered musician friend with an axe to grind calls it...(not speaking of the Posies in particular, just the concept generally, but I never did like the term either)...Listen, I'm sure all the hearts are in the all the right places, and my bro' (who also tried to sell me on Game Theory and the Loud Family) happened to know and jammed with Ken Stringfellow when he lived in Seattle, but I've endured the Posies live and was left chilly, even though like any of these bands they're not without talent. After AC died I began going through some of my latter-day PP disks and putting a lot of them into the 'get rid of' pile...Bill Lloyd, Baby Lemonade, dB's, Wondermints, Sloan, Paul Collins' Beat, Grip Weeds, Greenberry Woods, Jason Falkner, etc...some of the stuff is really good, at least on paper, but I'd probably never listen to it again...Posies, Fountains of Wayne, Smithereens etc. I never fell for in the first place although I've seen the majority of these bands live...Just had my fill of third-hand white-boy ingeniousness I suppose...Life is short and I prefer real genius and soul (and/or real fun) over clever but conservative craftsmanship. Or more to the point here, AC was simply a much better and more inspired singer and songwriter than all of the above -- that is to say, an actual, inevitable, uncontrollable *artist*

Zaikesman,

Go slow with that discard pile. It could be a phase. I've walked away from that genre for years at a time - for much the same reason that you cite - but, eventually, I do come back. These songs offer a different kind of reward.

Smithereens, Bill LLoyd (in particular!), and The dbs may feel too polished and cold to you today, but they are wonderful records on their own terms. (Probably what you found appealling about them in the first place.) And one day, you may again be willing to take them on those terms. If you do decide to lose 'em, find them a good home. There is a(n admittedly different) kind of treasure there.

Marty

i'm (obviously) with martykl on this one--at the end of the day, it's all about the songs; the fact that zman's discarded bands took their inspiration from the prophet shouldn't ipso facto damn them to oblivion. virtually everyone is influenced by someone else--lots of unquestionably great acts (e.g. radiohead, nirvana, badfinger, the jam, etc.) borrowed heavily, sometimes slavishly, from their predecessors, yet still left behind classic work. i honestly consider that the dbs, posies, tommy keene and and a very few others working the same genre to be worth mentioning in the same revered company. of course, one's musical taste is inherently subjective; vive le difference.

Can't speak to all those bands, but there was certainly no reason to see GT live: Performances did not come close to having the effect of the recordings.

I grew up seeing Tommy Keene back in the day here in DC when he was on Limp, and knew him a bit though he was older than me. (We briefly crossed paths at UMD, where I "majored" in radio station by default. We also both played Gretsch 6120 thin double-cuts. Too bad for me I can't sing or write a song like him.)

LJ, there's no question about EVERYONE being influenced and taking inspiration from someone else. There is no other way, no one's reinventing the wheel even if you're James Brown or John Lennon. (Or Kurt Cobain, whose talent I admire but whose songs I only want to hear occasionally on the radio.) Or, very self-evidently to my mind, Alex Chilton, who really didn't come up with anything so terribly original as to be retrospectively credited with inventing a genre -- never quite understood that one. More like he was just really, really damn good, and got across that humanity with guts intact.

But what I think separates AC (and KC too) from most of the parade is that, 25 years hence, I don't think anyone's gonna be covering and taking their inspiration from most of the acts we've named. Real genius is a rare thing, that's why we crave hearing it.