NAPSTER Memories

OK, I was just looking at the aforementioned KISS thread and found this gem:

After slagging off Zeppelin last night I went and watched their London O2 concert. I was pretty impressed and it was much better than any footage I had ever seen of them......at least of them in their peak years. But I still don’t think too much of them regardless. I have always thought of the band as kind of a “training wheels” rock band. You like them when you are young but they don’t offer much past a certain age.

I think some people just look at the costumes and the show that Kiss puts on and think that they are just a novelty act or something. But think about the sheer number of books, movies, documentaries, retrospectives, etc., that have been done on Kiss over the years. There are not too many bands besides maybe The Beatles who have had as much ink spilt over, and every little bit of their history has been covered in the most minute of detail. I don’t think a “novelty act” would garner such attention over so long of time.​

Now, I'm not the biggest Led Zeppelin fan.... but suggesting Led Zeppelin is a "training wheels" rock band to prepare people for grown-up genius like KISS is fucking hilarious to me.

 

Bubbler's right, that forum is not for amateurs.

I have been a pretty serious music guy for decades, listening to it, reading about it (been a Rolling Stone subscriber since I was 12 which I am sure they would gleefully destroy me for) and writing about it (briefly).

I am a huge Hendrix fan and took a gander into a Jimi thread that was overrun with people arguing which releases of the three studio albums he recorded in is lifetime were the best far as mastering, track selection, God knows what else. Which of the myriad Hendrix live releases had the best version of X song. Way too much, even for me, and that was only a seven-page thread, not one with thousands of replies.

 

Normally, I'd assume the dude defending "Christine Sixteen" was on a wind-up. Fucking with me. If that were here, I wouldn't take it seriously for a second.

Not on that forum. I think 95% of them are dead-ass serious which makes it all the more hilarious.

 

I'm also fascinated by the psychology of super fans. Namely, how they pick-and-choose what doesn't pass muster, which is virtually nothing, but it's almost like their mind knows that if they defend everything a band does, they have no credibility. So they cherry-pick one song or two, slag it, and say, "See! I can be critical of (fill in the blank band)."

 

Back in the day, Conan O'Brien used to have a "Walker Texas Ranger" lever on his show which kicked in a random ridiculous clip from that show.

That game can be played with the Hoffman Music Forum. Go to the first page and post the most ridiculous thread title.

Right now? "The Great Importance Of Stone Temple Pilots".

You can't make this shit up!

 

My man crush on Bubbler continues to grow. He's a 15-year veteran who can still throw 95 and throw high and tight without plunking the guy in the head.

Also still waiting for that Penn Station fight.

 

I love Squeeze, but a thread dissecting their catalogue, song-by-song with almost 8,000 posts? I'm not going up that junction.

A brief, shitty recording of The Who doing "I Can See For Miles" in 1968 is gushed over like The Basement Tapes.

 

The KISS vs. Zeppelin argument is hilarious (and I am a fan of both). Yeah, there have been books and docs etc. on KISS - all stage managed by Gene and Paul.

 

Ha, Chuck Klosterman has written a lot about them over the years - And Ratt.

 

The only better about KISS than Zeppelin is that it was soooooo much cooler drawing "KISS" in class than the Zeppelin.

 

This guy running that forum?

 

Unabashed KISS fan here (actually of the original lineup, which kind of takes it up to the aforementioned Elder). I like Christine Sixteen the song; the lyrics are, of course, beyond cringeworthy.

Was surprised (or it shocked me in KISS vernacular) to run across the band playing the song on Letterman in 2012.

That takes an incredible amount of tone deafness or balls to trot that song out in this century: you can decide which.

And this thread was also my first experience with the Hoffman forum. Wow. I looked up a couple more obscure bands, and there's plenty of posts and threads where they get mentioned. Searched my fave band, REM, and ran across a song by song breakdown thread of 733 pages and 18,000 posts, in a thread that's less than 2 years old.