I must be the only music geek on Earth who doesn't like Nick Drake.

[RandomKoolzip]

Honestly, I've never been one of those whippet-thin, bookish dreamy types who look as though a slightly withering remark could knock him down. That's what Nick Drake's music evokes to me: weakness, thin milk.

I know there's some occasional real beauty in there, and I know he was a skillful guitarist, but I swear on a sweaty stack of pancakes that the reason people revere Drake is because of his early death, and the romance of suicide. If he'd lived to record a fourth or fifth album, he might have become another Mark Knopfler. And history would have been all sortsa fucked up and Belle and Sebastian would have had to rip off Lindisfarne or Vinegar Joe or the Edgar Broughton Band instead, leaving hundreds of thousands of overpriveliged white people in their mid-twenties stranded in their ennui, unable to find the right musical catharsis to go with their cappucinos and comfy sweaters.

I've been listening to a lot of John Martyn lately, and it really hit me while cranking up "Over the Hill" for the fifth time in a row, how if Martyn had died after the album Solid Air, this situation could have been rectified. Instead of Nick Drake's inchoate melodicism and butterfly kiss of a voice, we could have had a collegiate revival of the jazzy melismas and sturdier songcraft that Martyn espoused. Instead of tunes composed of anhedonic gruel so thin they just sit in a corner and make you fell annoyed rather than really haunt you, young, Byronic, poetic types with their widdle sensitive hearts could have been studying the swoops and dives of John MArtyn's similar but stronger muse. Why, we could have saved the world from Iron and Wine! Somebody invent a time machine STAT!

Anyways, I still can't enjoy Nick Drake's music. There's just something about him that makes me want to slap him around like Patton did to that soldier with "nerves:" grow up and take your meds and write some audible songs, you loser!

Rant over. Flamesuit on.

[eeyore]

1. No rant here.

I've never been able to do it, thought I do think he has a few really great tunes.

However, I am an unabashed Elliott Smith freak, at least the stuff before Figure 8. Maybe it's that I saw him a lot here in Portland, starting when he was in Heatmiser. I used to see him around a lot at bars and stuff. He has that same sort of whispy thing, but I always kind of thought that Elliott could really kick some ass if he needed to. Plus, he got arrested in LA for attacking a cop. Sad, because he was deep into his demis, but very rock at the same time.

But Nick Drake? Meh. :shrug: He can shove that pink moon right up his pink ass!

[RandomKoolzip]

5. "He can shove that Pink Moon right up his pink ass!"

:rofl:

Good one!

[Redstone]

2. I know how you feel. I think Wilco us unutterably boring, and Dave

Matthews is unlistenable.

But let me say that in front of the Fans of either one, and you'd think I had told them their mama wore Army boots...

Redstone

[RandomKoolzip]

10. Double for me on the Wilco.

I loved Uncle Tupelo, but Tweedy's songs were always the ones I skipped over. Jay Farrar was the soul, the brains, and the heart of that band. Tweedy always sounds like a depressed rich kid pretending to be Paul Westerberg to me, and all his songs are to slow and muffled. I must say that Tweedy has suckered a few great musicians to be in his band, though: Nels Cline, a fantastic guitarist, is now a Tweedy-fellatrix.

ANd Dave Matthews...I mean, it's not even worth debating. Everybody with ears knows Dave Matthews blows wild moosecock day and night.

[hobbywizard]

15. Oh yeah? Well I saw Farrer at a 7-11 last week....

and his slurpee mixin' skills were ten times more interesting than any post-Tupelo song he ever scratched out!

Hey Jay, we get it: The coal mining life is a bitch and the only way out is to get drunk. Got anything new???

Tweedy=genius
Farrer=one set of pipes removed from being the perfect NoDoz anidote

There's no accounting for taste, as my ma (who don't like Wilco) often says. :toast:

[RandomKoolzip]

18. "Hey Tweedy! Play another song that sounds like the Replacements dying!"

YMMV.

[hobbywizard]

19. Yo, Jay - real moonshine stills don't offer cola or cherry flava!

:patriot:

I only have Drake's first album. I have to be in the mood for him, which I'm not very frequently. He has a good sense of melody, though, and I think he's a good writer. But his emotional territory (or whatever) is too candle-and-incense for me.

[I Have A Dream]

3. I like him, but it's OK if you don't.

His music just touches me in ways that most other music doesn't. I think that it's the open tunings that he uses. (I've only really gotten into Pink Moon though.)

[sendero]

4. I'm so dissapointed.

Here's a thread about my favorite subject (music), but I have no opinion either way about Drake. I can't excorciate you with a scathing rebuttal, or wax eloquent about the soundness of your taste.

Oh well... :)

[asthmaticeog]

6. I'm not so crazy about him either.

There's a Robyn Hitchcock cover of one of his tunes that I like OK, but that's about it. I used to have a GF who was *bonkers* about him, so had to suffer him a lot. Never saw the appeal, and I often enjoy downer stuff like that. Maybe if "Pink Moon" was as good as "Oar"...

[RandomKoolzip]

8. I think that's a big part of it too....

I remember critics in the 80's comparing "Pink Moon" to Skip Spence and "Five LEaves Left" to Sandy Denny (two of my fave raves). When I finally heard the albums, it was like some sullen teenager whispering at you, and we all know that ain't worth 14.99 a pop. Where was the "off"ness promised by the critics (even Byron Coley sang this momo's praises!)

From the hype, I expected "Pink Moon" to be a cross between Lennon's "Plastic Ono Band" and John Fahey's "Blind Joe Death," with an extra soupcon of suicidal insanity, but what I got was a cold bowl of porridge poured ever so sloooowwwwllyy on my crotch.

Like I said, I'm in a big John Martyn phase right now....If Drake had written a song one/tenth as good as "Over the Hill," I'd like to hear it. To my mind, Martyn is what I expected Drake to be, but even better. Too bad Martyn made the mistake of not killing himself.

[Loonman]

7. Ever listen to "Mental Torture"?

It is. Aptly named album.

[RandomKoolzip]

9. By who?

Nick Drake didn't put an album out with that name...is it a bootleg?

[MN ChimpH8R]

11. To each his/her own

Though bashing Nick Drake (as opposed to just not caring for him) is a little bit like kicking a kitten, IMHO.

There's probably something to your point that Drake's status was enhanced by his early passing. Drake has always expressed things I have often felt - especailly that vague wistful disconnectedness from the world - but could never express myself.

I find it interesting that when Joe Boyd signed off on the sale of Island Records his one condition was that Drake's recordings always remain in print. As the guy who discovered Fairport Convention and Pink Floyd, Joe knew great music when he heard it.

And I like John Martyn's 1970s stuff a lot, too.

[RandomKoolzip]

12. I think that's why I don't like Drake:

"That vague wistful disconnectednedd from the world" is something I've suffered through my whole life, being severely depressed, often suicidal....to see something so awful revered and nurtured by Drake-heads (and Cure fans, and Goths, etc) is terribly upsetting to me. I'm always trying to escape from darkness, while these guys are wallowing in it, you know? Depression and "disconnectedness" is something I'd like to overcome, to beat....That's why I mentioned the "romance of suicide" in the OP: depression is not romantic, it sucks.

[Sufi Marmot]

13. If Nick Drake had lived he wouldn't have become another Mark Knopfler...

...but rather John Mayer. Every time I hear John Mayer's cloying, sensitive wuss-rock I think to myself that that's what Nick Drake (who I rather like in small doses) would have ended up sounding like had he survived long enough to see the era of SSRIs.

-SM

[RandomKoolzip]

14. Nice avatar.

R. Thompson's seventies work: A+++ stuff.

Yes, John Mayer is a nice analogue. Same fear of vocal projection, same grounding in "the blues," same appeal to gullible collegiate types.

[Sufi Marmot]

16. Thanks - I'm a pretty hardcore R (&L) T fan...

One of the reasons I like RT so much is that there are several degrees of separation between his personal demons (such as they are/were) and his muse. Even his bleakest songs are usually obscure enough that it's not clear whether RT is channeling his own experiences and emotions or simply narrating a story. His work has none of the self-conscious navel-gazing of Nick Drake or other typical singer-songwriters (the worst modern example I can come up with is Alanis Morissette...)

-SM

[RandomKoolzip]

17. Damn right....

Plus, there's always those amazing, unique solos. Nick Drake's fingerrpicking skills, such as they were, couldn't convey the raw desolation that Thompson's strat could at full blast. There's nothing in the Drake canon that can compete with "Streets of Paradise" for bleakness and angst, anyways.

I'm of the opinion that Thompson's eighties and beyond work just wasn't of the same caliber, except for the albums he did with French, Frith, and Kaiser...collaborating seems to bring out the best in him.

JMO, YMMV, as they say.

[dcfirefighter]

20. I like Drake

but I'm not a music geek, and have nothing to offer but thanks for the other musicians discussed, I will check them out.

Perhaps one reason people like depressing and desolate music is the control they have over the music vs. the emotions. Something like controlling your fear and doing something dangerous.