Overrated

NOTE: This post is co-written by Good Jaybee and Evil Jaybee. Most of the work was done by Good Jaybee (because Evil Jaybee is, well, evil) but we’ll call it out when EJ has something to say.

I recently threw a stink bomb into a discussion taking place on an Americana music site.

Members were asked which artists they thought were the most overrated. I just came to listen since I couldn’t think of anyone.

Some of the comments were of the kids these days variety. I'd had enough of that when I was an actual kid, but didn’t rise to the bait this time.

And of course there were the conformist-as-hell-but-don’t-know-it nonconformists who trashed the Beatles. For the most part, though, ire was directed at well, Americana artists, as was apt.

But then a few commenters put some pop/dance/rap artists on their lists. Now I’m a dilettante at best regarding those genres. I hate some, I like some. So I wasn’t exactly defending them when I jumped into it.

My point was if you don’t like a genre, how can you say an artist of that genre is overrated? It’s like someone who hates hearing fat ladies sing saying that opera is overrated. Maybe his opinion just doesn’t matter. Doesn’t he know this? Why is he even talking? The fat lady fans just don’t care.

I got a good mix of responses - none of them threatening actual physical harm. And the dialog eventually got to the I like what I like and you like what you like phase, which leads me to wonder what the point of the exercise was.

I always wondered how someone could dismiss an entire musical genre, anyway. Don’t you have to be familiar with something to form an opinion about it? I’d try to picture the person dutifully listening to a whole stack of albums in order to develop an informed opinion just for this occasion. And at the end of all that effort (and money spent), they would pronounce the genre “Sucky”. Really? Isn’t life too short for all that? Unless you’re a critic and you’re paid to do that.

I’ve since learned that most people don’t go to such lengths. They hear what they hear and then they give their opinion about it. And I guess if you hear a few songs and don’t like any of them, chances are you’re not going to like the next one, either.

Isn’t that enough to just leave it all be? Do you really need to make pronouncements about it? As if those who are enjoying it are wrong? (Evil Jaybee here. I will make exceptions for artists like Journey or Rush, who, if you like them, you're definitely wrong.)

So I got to thinking about what overrated really means. When we use the term, we’re essentially saying that we like something less than other people. Not much of a statement.

The logic of it goes something like this:
You like ______ a lot.
I don’t like _______ as much as you.
Therefore, you have rated ______ too highly.
Thus, you are incorrect.
Stop liking _______.

When put into a more global context, it’s more like this:
The whole world really like ________.
I think _________ is okay,
So the whole world has overrated them.
Thus, the whole world is incorrect.
World, stop liking ______.

This all sounds ridiculous to me, but it’s a bit more entertaining than "To each his own".

It comes back to the question of inherent quality. I once heard Mortimer J. Adler talking to Bill Moyers and rating Shakespeare over the poetry of James Dickey. Bill Moyers preferred the latter. Adler said that Moyers saw a quality in Dickey, as Adler saw in Shakespeare, but added that there was an inherent quality in Shakespeare that made him greater than James Dickey.

Funny how the guy who prefers Shakespeare also finds a greater inherent quality in him. What a coincidence. File that under No Shit, Mortimer.

On the other side of the coin, there are very few people who, when asked to choose between the Beatles and Herman’s Hermits, would pick the latter.  But are they wrong if they do?
(EJ: Hell Yes!) 

But once you get inside their heads you realize they're not. They like HH goddammit! And who am I to say that they’re f*cking stupid morons with no taste?  (Oops, that was EJ again.)

A guy at work who once told me - with a straight face - that he preferred Wings to the Beatles. While I shook my head in disgust, another person there agreed with him. Now you expect to encounter such idiocy on the job but these were people I respected! They were older than me and thus preferred the more poppish/commercial Wings to the slightly rockier Beatles.

And the sales figures at the time may have backed them up on this. I’m actually afraid of finding out. (EJ: I'm not. I just checked a couple of sites and it looks like the Beatles are doing better.) 

Thank God. But was it a matter of time?  Were the quality/marathon Beatles inevitably going to beat out the hit-of-the-moment/sprinter Wings? I’d like to think so, but Cats has still grossed more than Gypsy on Broadway.

(EJ) Let’s stop right here. I will (and sometimes do) shout to the rooftops that the Wings people are WRONG about this. That there is an inherent quality (yeah, I said it) in Beatles music that is lacking in Wings. And those Wings fans make Hermans Hermits fans seem like Rhodes scholars.   

Good Jaybee here. A seemingly obvious difference in quality - Beatles vs. Herman’s Hermits -  may only be so because the Beatles are more famous than HH. In other words, perhaps it’s just the majority saying what they like and drowning out the HH fans.

I don’t have any Hermans Hermits albums. so for all I know they’re masterpieces. (EJ: Ah, but life’s too short to find out, right GJ?)

Uh, yeah. But for the hell of it, I checked the allmusic.com essay, and well, don’t you know that the author thinks their second album is just great?

Which brings me to Willie Nelson.

Or rather, that Americana site.

I somehow got pulled into an argument about Willie, or was it just an offshoot of the original Overrated Debate? Anyway, I was trying to play nice and pushed the to each his own line.

One guy was cool with that, since he was being attacked for liking some of Willie’s later albums. The other guy hated anything by Willie after 1985 or so.

We got to the you like what you like... phase (or, as the anti-Willie guy said, the you’re blind phase). (EJ: Didn’t he mean deaf?)

So to break the tension I decided to ask them both for their suggestions on good Willie Nelson albums. And guess who gave me suggestions? Not the Anti Late Willie guy, of course. You’d think that with all the effort he put into trashing stuff, he'd happily direct me to the "good". But no. He must have gotten bored.

So what’s the point of a negative opinion?  I mean, it’s fine to have one. I have plenty.

Like this one. These guys are overrated:
Led Zeppelin
U2
The Police

Discuss!

And while you’re doing that, here’s one of the greatest songs of the sixties by the just-about-correctly-rated Hermans Hermits.
(EJ: Just try to think of a song by Wings you’d say was one of the greatest of the seventies. Good luck with that!)

Confessions of St. Jaybee: My Cover Story

Dear Mike:

I have a confession.  I’ve committed the sin of lameness. (Eleventh Commandment, I believe). I’m telling you because I need dispensation.

What did I do, you ask? Well, I went to see a cover band.  

I told you it was lame.

But I have an excuse! The band was covering Television. Get that? A. Television. Cover. Band. I didn’t think such things existed either.

I’m aware of the many such bands that play at BB Kings all time. They imitate Billy Joel, the Rolling Stones, Elton John, U2, Led Zeppelin, etc. You name a classic rock band, and there’ll be a tribute band for them. We even took my son and nephew to a “Beatles Brunch” there, but I had an excuse: it was for the kids. Yeah, sure.

How did this come to pass, you might ask? No? I’ll tell you anyway.

I found out about it through my trusty skint email, which announced a “Classic Album Night” at the Brooklyn Bowl. I could have ignored it easily enough, but when it said that the first of the three albums to be featured would be Television’s Marquee Moon, I did a double take. The second would be the Police’s Synchronicity, which would get Mrs. Jaybee to come along. The third was something by Pat Benatar, which I couldn’t even bear to stay for, even if it meant getting to mock people - my favorite pastime.

So we headed for the Brooklyn Bowl, where you can eat, drink, bowl and listen to music all in one place, and simultaneously if you really try. But they don’t recommend it. The main dish is fried chicken, and I expect they’ve had their share of flying bowling balls due to greasy fingers.

I would never try such a thing myself, having trouble with even a single activity involving motor skills and heavy objects. Besides, the last time I was in a bowling alley, I was having a bite to eat with friends while waiting for a lane to open up. Good times. Beers, burgers and lively conversation. So lively in fact that, at one point, I got distracted and tried to drink from the ketchup bottle while pouring beer on my burger.

So Mrs. Jaybee advised sticking to the eating drinking and listening, and leaving the bowling to the experts..

There were some pathetic geezers there, too, who didn’t know any better than to stand alone on the dance floor in their sandals and socks. But mostly it was young-ish people. Though  band was old enough to talk about “flipping the record over” half way through the set.

And Little Johnny and the Jewels did all right.  They were a bit sloppy, and didn’t try to look or sing like Tom Verlaine, thank god.  And they played bitchin’ guitars.  What more could I ask?

Then came New York’s Finest (get it?) to cover the Police. Now, Mrs. Jaybee is a big Police fan, which was the only way she was going to go.  And me? Well, I have a blog post drafted - but never posted - entitled “F*ck the Police”.  Which may be an overreaction. I don’t hate them. I just never loved them.

And why not? They put out five good to excellent records. Their musicianship is impeccable. They have their own, instantly recognizable sound.  Sting is an excellent songwriter, a good singer, a humanitarian, and damned good-looking, too. Ask Mrs. Jaybee. (Ahh, I think we’re getting to the root of the problem now....)

Television, on the other hand, only managed two studio albums, and one live one before breaking up. Some fans don’t even care for the second album. The leader sings/looks weird, and was considered to be almost as big an asshole as Lou Reed.  

And yet I like Television more. Maybe I just like my bands ugly. That way, I don’t get jealous.

But New York’s Finest came roaring out of the gate! (Maybe “roaring” is the wrong word. The singer is clearly Sting’s illegitimate son, who inherited dad’s high voice.)

And while the band played (perfectly, by the way) song after excellent song (except Andy Summer’s hilarious “Mother”, maybe because it was so un Police-like? Hey what kind of commitment is that?  Is it a Classic Album Night or what?) I had to admit to really respecting Synchronicity. It was as good as I remembered.

But as good as that is, I still don’t love it. Like Led Zeppelin IV, it’s a record whose popularity is completely understandable, but one that I’ll never fully embrace.   

And why am I giving this so much thought, anyway? Doesn’t that just make the whole enterprise that much more pathetic?  After all, don’t I pride myself on being the one who was always trying to broaden his horizons?  And here I am spending my time and money on a simulated experience.

Me - the one who once scoffed at a bouncer who tried to get a $14 cover out of me because the band inside “sounded just like the Doors”, and who went to the bar half a block away, the one with no cover and perfectly good blues band playing?

Maybe it was the fourteen bucks...

So Mike, get back to me and tell me that it was just a lark, that you don’t get to see a Television cover band every day, and that we never got to see the real thing to begin with.

And most of all, as I approach my 55th birthday, that I’m not the pathetic geezer I’m beginning to suspect I am.

Your friend (and new AARP member),

Jaybee