« Obama and the Progressive Economy | Main | Terrorism Versus Law Enforcement » It's Better Than The Rest17 Jun 2008 05:01 pm Dries Buytaert, creator of Drupal, proclaims "Glycerine" by Bush to be his "all-time favorite song." This is perhaps crazier than John McCain running on peace as a campaign theme. I'm a huge apologist for nineties alt-rock, but Bush is just not a very good band. Besides which the best Bush song is clearly "Machine Head" "Everything Zen" is also better than "Glycerin," IMHO. Comments (88)
Always been a Hoodoo Gurus man myself. 
Machine Head is definitely their best song to date. Yeah, that's right, I'm waiting for the Bush reunion. But Glycerin is not a bad song. Actually, Bush probably should have stopped making music after '16 Stone.' 'Razorblade Suitcase' was a disaster.
People who like Bush are dumber than smokers. Bush is to the ears what cigarettes are to the lungs.
Wasn't a fan when it originally came out, but revisited Sixteen Stone last year and..it's a great album. Same deal with the big Oasis album from around the same time with Wonderwall etc, holds up pretty well.
Bush isn't a very good band, but they released "Sixteen Stone" in a time that was an absolute musical wasteland. Pearl Jam, Nirvana, grunge as a whole was terrible. Taking that into account, Bush isn't that bad. I'm sure that I'll get yelled at for saying that, but seeing as how I'm not old, I can't claim to have a soft spot for the early to mid '90s at all.
Sorry, blah, you can admit that '16 Stone' was a good album without having your hipster pass revoked. Go check the manual.
Is this going to be like that "What's the best Gin Blossoms song?" thread from a while back? Because my pick was "Until I Fall Away", but I was traveling or something and I didn't get to the thread until it was dead.
Wasn't a fan when it originally came out, but revisited Sixteen Stone last year and..it's a great album. Same deal with the big Oasis album from around the same time with Wonderwall etc, holds up pretty well.
I'd give Bush a break. They certainly weren't the worst post-grunge band ever created, and they recorded some decent songs. But it's true that Glycerine is not one of them.
*shudder*
Jacob,
My favorite Bush song is "Swallowed." It's got stop-start AND loud-quiet. I could listen to it all day, whereas I would never voluntarily put on a Nirvana album. http://www.nolamotors.com/music/bush - swallowed.mp3
The fact that it's not punctual doesn't make your opinion any more correct, Neil. The answer is "Hey Jealousy". And for my money (and sure, it wouldn't be very much for this song) "Everything Zen" is far and away Bush's best single.
Bush was, overall, not very good. But the first 30 seconds of "Machine Head" are really great. It ranks with the openings to "Gimme Shelter", GNR's "You Could Be Mine", "Crazy Train", and "Smells Like Teen Spirit". They were really one riff wonders.
Bush was, overall, not very good. But the first 30 seconds of "Machine Head" are really great. It ranks with the openings to "Gimme Shelter", GNR's "You Could Be Mine", "Crazy Train", and "Smells Like Teen Spirit". They were really one riff wonders.
I had no idea there were so many Bush apologists reading your blog.
It's got nothing to do with hipster cred or anything like that. I just really hate Bush.
Bush not a good band! Ridiculous! I'd rate "Mouth" as my favorite cut. You could argue that they don't show a ton of innovation from song to song but to these ears at least they sound great. I suppose this means I get to continue looking from the outside at all the cool hipsters gathering within. So be it.
Curt,
You know what, I just pulled up Bush on my MP3, and 'Little Things' is a pretty good song as well.
Bush? Rossdale's childish word (e.g. "my Willie is food") salad put to guitar jacked from Nirvana and Pixies B-sides ought not to be called "songs" in my opinion. It implies a level of artistic merit and agency Bush can't lay a claim to. It would be more appropriate to call their tracks "jingles." I think that places the band in its proper commercial context.
I think 90s alt-rock in general will come to be looked at with the disdain usually reserved for 80s hair metal very soon. Everytime one of those commericals for the GINORMOUS Buzz-Cuts compilations comes on Comedy Central in the middle of the midnight Stewart/Colbert re-run, Jesus kills a kitten and I reach for another shot of Jack with a beer chaser.
Bush? Rossdale's childish word salad (e.g. "my Willie is food") put to guitar jacked from Nirvana and Pixies B-sides ought not to be called "songs" in my opinion. It implies a level of artistic merit and agency Bush can't lay a claim to. It would be more appropriate to call their tracks "jingles." I think that places the band in its proper commercial context.
Well, I'm no authority on mid-nineties alt rock. And I wasn't sure which tune "Glycerine" was at first. But, now that I hear it... it turns out to be one of those songs that I've remembered all along and that I kind of liked, relative to the typical stuff on the radio at the time. Color me lame. It's all relative, though. Music fans are like ducklings... if, at a critical time of life, they find themselves standing in front of an ultralight aircraft, they'll never stop thinking of it as mom. How else can I explain the terrifying existence of that Styx cassette in the attic?
Screw all of you music elitists. I hope your silly little beards fall off. I liked Bush then and I like them now. Its a toss up between Machinehead and Everything Zen, but Glycerine's a damn good song too. Bush is a quintessential 90's band, as much as Oasis or Sublime, and whosoever disagrees with me sucks ____ by choice.
WOOO HOOO! whosoever disagrees with me sucks ____ by choice. Best line on the best TV show EVAH!
labor, I would say that Pearl Jam is the quintessential 90's band, for better and for worse.
Easy, I'm no musical elitist either, but let's not start grouping Bush in with Oasis and especiallly Sublime. 40 Oz. to freedom is one of the top five albums of the '90's. Believe that.
Can we please talk about the Offspring?
Agreement with subsequent commenters that Deadwood is the best TV show ever and that 40 oz to Freedom is one of the top 5 of the 90's. In fact, its probably my favorite of the decade. Also, my list of Bush, Oasis and Sublime was not intended to be exhaustive.
Offspring, now there's a band we can all agree to hate. They are terrible.
mad6798j: No way! The Smashing Pumpkins were, all told, both bigger and much better than Pearl Jam. Once Pearl Jam abandoned grunge for straight up 90s alternative, they were playing on the Pumpkins' turf, and they got owned. People who say Nirvana sucks are just so beyond crazy I can't address them, so we'll brush right by that. Stu is right about Oasis: awesome, even if they're just a second-rate rip off of the Stone Roses (a pretty great band to be a second-rate rip off of). Sublime, though, has long struck me as a quintessential high school skater poseur band à la 311. They'd have absolutely no cachet if Bradley Nowell was still alive. Oh, and "Glycerine" is the Crash of music: despised by the terminally cool, loved by schlock-rock saps, easily tolerated by the powers that be against whom art should be rebelling, superficially deep but deeply superficial, and not in an Andy Warhol sort of way.
Machinehead > Everything Zen > Glycerine Don't get me started on Nirvana.....suffice it to say that Cobain benefited from the James Dean Syndrome™ and was frozen in time before he could screw up his legacy (not commenting on whether he or Dean would have or not).
"Machine Head" sucks. What about "Come Down"?
I had no real musical consciousness until I was 8 and the Rolling Stones released Steel Wheels, which was the beginning of a pretty much life-long affinity for the Stones and all Stones derivations. To that degree, I am with Anonymous Nitpicker. I just thank the Lord that my parents weren't into Michael Bolton by that point. A firm grasp of the Stones sets you up for a happy life in both the hipster scene AND the better end of commercial pop. All of this is to say that in a horrible decade (really crap from 1993 on--excepting hip-hop and Radiohead), 16 Stone stands as a pretty decent album. It is no underground gem, but it is definitely on the better side of commercial rock. And it sure holds up better than Stone Temple Pilots...but maybe that is because I have reread STP through the lense of Velvet Revolver--sorry, a leader of the supposed grunge upheaval teaming up with Slash is like the Clash doing a variety show with Bad Company.
Everything Zen is better than Machinehead. Really, what we need is for Matthew to list a bunch of 90s bands, and people can just answer "good" or "bad" for each band. I'd vote "good" for Bush, I suppose, although I probably haven't listened to any Bush song in a decade.
Nirvana naysayers sound to me a lot like the anti-Beatles or (ironically enough) anti-Clash folks who can't see the forest for the trees. Nirvana broke a particular sound without which most of the 90s, for better or worse, would have sounded quite different. Cobain was a wild talent, but he's responsible for some of the best songwriting of that decade, which is really no small thing. The band also brought people now in their mid twenties to early forties - as well as MTV for a short, sweet time - a little outside of the mainstream. Without 120 Minutes as part of my formative years, I'd likely be among the legions of people who think U2 invented music.
Jhupp, Smashing Pumpkins definitely were not nearly as popular as Pearl Jam, but besides that,I call them the definitive 90's band mainly because they were the most imitated band of the decade, although usually very unpleasantly.
jhupp: You're correct about Sublime's "Sublime," but you're more than wrong about 40oz. I'm not sure what that means about the band as a whole, but hating on that album is worse than flaying kittens.
Obligatory Corrs post. The Corrs - Irresistible.(Live) The Corrs Breathless.. Sydney Australia Live The Corrs - Hideaway (Montreux Jazz Festival 2004)
Angry Sam, U2 actually deserves credit for two of the 1990s best albums. Not a popular opinion, but Achtung Baby was a great complete album and the 1998 album Pop is forever misunderstood and wildly underrated IMHO. I find this particularly puzzling when I talk to big fans of Radiohead's OK Computer, an album with similar departures into electronica and similarly critical of technology, who have long forgotten the Pop album released in the same year. I see U2's crime as turning away from an ambitious experimental turn in the 1990s to the militant schlock we have had to endure in the 2000s. I still remember when they had artistic integrity, so I'm still a fan.
I also love most mid-90's alt. rock, and agree that Bush is generally a terrible band. The only thing they ever had going for them was that riff from "Machinehead." Everything else sucks (and is not zen).
Okay, mad...j: admittedly my calculus for that comparison was total crap and based primarily on wishful thinking. (Here it is: Pearl Jam's bigget selling album was released in 1991, pre-Nevermind, so it doesn't really count as being part of "the era." Mellon Collie was released in 1995, so it is indeed of the era, and no other alternative rock band could possibly claim to be in the same sphere as those two. Therefore, the Pumpkins were bigger. As I say, this is utter crap, but I still maintain they were better.) You're right about the legacy-jumping bands, though, although sometimes I think bands that get that label actually sound more like Alice in Chains copies. Still unpleasant copying, though. michael: yeah, Pop is way better than it's credited with being (but not nearly as good as OK Computer). The problem with it was that U2 is one of the least ironic bands ever, so people thought they were playing straight. Nobody got the joke.
Like a lot of other bands, Bush seems to have done a lot of their best work after people stopped paying attention. The album "The Science of Things" is pretty damn good, still in my rotation to this day. What made it work so well is that they started ripping Catherine Wheel instead of Nirvana, made some songs of terrific depth and dissonance. Check out "Spacetravel" or "Warm Machine", pretty blistering songs.
The 90's did bring us the best Shoegaze bands: Lush, My Bloody Valentine, Catherine Wheel...
clearly machine head -- and it's not a close call. though i can't remember who came down where on the best gin blossoms song but its 'found out about you'. consider this a belated endorsement of whoever came out that way
Living in Ohio, I associate "Machinehead" with bad hockey. Gavin Rossdale hit his career peak as a sperm donor.
I knew a girl in college who thought the song was called "Mushyhead." Yes, she was. Just to recap: "Everything Zen" is superior to the overly repetitive "Machinehead" and Pumpkins' catalog can't hold a candle to Pearl Jam's. That said, "Drown" and "Geek USA" beat a whole lot of PJ's tunes.
I'm totally willing to defend Pearl Jam. Their first 3 albums were great, big, kick-ass rock records, with enough of an edge to still qualify as 90s alternative. Along with Nevermind and some scattered songs from the Smashing Pumpkins and Soungarden, those albums are early-90s rock. Then, Pearl Jam released a bunch of more subdued albums that still really kick ass. They're just a solid band. I'll defend "Sublime," the album, too. It's not as good as 40 oz to Freedom, but it's packed almost start to finish with insanely catchy pop tunes. That's really, really hard to do. If we hadn't all OD'd on those songs in 1996, it would be much easier to appreciate the album today. It's not like they "sold out" by changing their sound, they just made it tighter and catchier. Oh, and the singer died, that helped. And Bush sucks. Bush is to Nirvana as Warrant was to Van Halen in the 80s.
@ Angry Sam: Yeah I'm one of those guys who doesn't like Nirvana or The Beatles. Or I should say that I liked Nirvana when they broke but I later got lost in the subsequent punk revival and was never heard from again. Regarding The Beatles, I like A Hard Days Night, but after that I associate all of their music with my parents, who were big fans. Parental approval of one's musical selections is like some sort of musical kryptonite for a 14 year old. Even now I can't shake the association. Oh, and I think the music is pretty boring, or in the case of Nirvana, boring and self-indulgent.
"jhupp: You're correct about Sublime's "Sublime," but you're more than wrong about 40oz. I'm not sure what that means about the band as a whole, but hating on that album is worse than flaying kittens." Thank you, Travis, perfectly stated. 40oz. is a nearly flawless album. Definitely one of the best of the entire decade. To hear someone compare Sublime to 311 hurts my soul. As far as Pearl Jam, we have to remember that after 'Vs.' they made a conscious effort to move away from the mainstream. I'm not a huge Pearl Jam fan, but overall, they are certainly a better band than Smashing Pumpkins. Also much, much, much more popular.
Top 5 in no particular order... * Sublime--40oz. to Freedom Honorable Mention *Wu-Tang- 36 Chambers
My top 5 90's albums: 1) 40 oz.
My top 5 90's albums: 1) 40 oz.
You folks are mostly talking about music I have to admit that I really don't care about. Grunge and post-grunge always sounded like the same old/same old to me. I'll throw out Elvis Costello's "Beyond Belief" as a potential favorite song.
I thought Bush was an OK band at the time, not great, not terrible. I never could figure out why they got so much airplay. I have a soft spot for Stone Temple Pilots; they're certainly not as good as Alice in Chains, Smashing Pumpkins, or Nirvana, and their songs are very repetitive, but it's very easy on the ears for me.
Beyond Belief...now there's a crazy good song. EC is about as timeless as you can get.
ChuckE, nice on the sperm donor remark! My $.02: Bush was the heavy Oasis. I hated them but oddly found myself singing along and must admit that their songs weren't half bad. That said, they were kindof a joke compared to the big boys. THE quintessential 90's band was Soundgarden. They WERE grunge. Although techinically Alice In Chains was a close second right on down to the obsession with heroin. Pearl Jam and Nirvana were both total pussy bands compared to Soundgarden & AIC. STP was a nice PJ tribute. Best 90's albums (in no particular order): Louder than Love- Soundgarden (they had better albums but this defined Grunge) If an alien wanted to know what grunge was I would play this album (or maybe Badmotorfinger) for him/her/it. Gish- Smashing Pumpkins (Siamese dream was better, but Gish was unlike anything I had ever heard) Throwing Copper- Live (it was a hit for a reason) Undertow- TOOL (darkest album ever) Dirt- Alice In Chains (the only music that ever made me want to do heroin) VS. - Pearl Jam (they took the Neil young wannabe thing a little too far, but at this point it was incredibly cool.) Honorable Mentions: Singles Soundtrack
Bush was a classic journeyman post-grunge band. A few decent songs, not horrible on the level of Creed or Nickelback, but hardly memorable. I'd vote "Machinehead" for their best song, though "Little Things" is also quite good. Pearl Jam (at least early-to-mid 90's Pearl Jam) hold up quite well. The first three albums were just as musically interesting and emotionally powerful as anything Nirvana produced, without indulging the woe-is-me narcissism that was Cobain's tragic flaw. Eddie Vedder could actually write songs about people other than himself and do a good job of it, so big points there. Vitalogy in particular is a criminally underrated album. I haven't listened nearly as much to their later work but what I have heard, I've mostly liked. Smashing Pumpkins were good, but jumped the shark after Mellon Collie, which went right to the edge without going over it. Siamese Dream is a top 10 90's album, though. I agree that it's a crime against music to compare 311 to Sublime. As far as 90's bands that haven't aged well, I've got to nominate Stone Temple Pilots. They somehow managed to produce a few decent songs but a majority of their catalogue sounds like crap when you're no longer 14 years old.
Can't really listen to Nevermind anymore, except for Territorial Pissings and Breed – the rest got so much airplay that it just sounds like radio to me. Bleach, In Utero, Incesticide are all still great though. Top '90s records not mentioned, probably Loveless, Midnight Marauders, Illmatic, Dry, and Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, could go for stuff on Stacy's and laborlibert's lists too, it's been a while since I've really thought of my favorite '90s stuff. "Beyond Belief" is such a great song.
Top 5 90s albums: 1. Dinosaur Jr. -- Green Mind
What a bunch of late 20/early 30 year olds! Arguing about who was the best early 90's alternative band (btw clowns, it's Blind Melon =P) .
I don't think "grunge" really describes a coherent sub-genre of pop music. But I wouldn't describe Pearl Jam or Smashing Pumpkins as "grunge" - they never had that heavy, sludgy, Black Sabbath sound. In any case, I don't know why anyone would want to listen to groups like Bush when there was so much other great heavy rock bands that they were trying to imitate: not just Nirvana, but groups like Dinosaur Jr., the Pixies, Husker Du, the Minutemen, the Meat Puppets, Black Flag, Mission of Burma, Mudhoney, Soundgarden, etc.
Uncle Eb, I liked Throwing Copper back in the day, but a nostalgic listening session a year ago revealed a wealth of unintentional comedy on that album.
1. R.E.M. -- Automatic for the People
Well shit, as long as we're doing this, my favorite 90s albums (subject to revision every few minutes, of course): 1. MBV - Loveless Ugh, that list makes me feel smugly indier-than-thou. 6-10 would have been less so, but top five seems to be the going rate, so there you have it.
Clearly not a hip hop thread, but I think Illmatic easily dwarfs Ready to Die (and gets my vote for best rap album of all time). Biggie was good, but also falls into the James Dean/Kurt Cobain overrated category. I like Only Built for Cuban Linx as the best Wu Tang related album of the decade although Liquid Swords is very close. I just like Ghostface better than GZA and the production style a little better on Cuban Linx, but both are great. I'd probably take Reasonable Doubt over Ready to Die as well. As for Bush, they were considered a second tier band even at the height of their popularity, so it's hard to even consider them as one of the best bands of the 90s. Add in that they really didn't have a particularly distinct sound or much staying power and I really just don't see it. I will say though that maybe we'll look back in twenty years and feel differently, but the 90s really do seem like a tremendously bad period for rock music. The beginning of the decade was dominated by grunge with the end dominated by rap rock, not exactly banner eras. On the other hand, when I was a teenager in the 90s, the 80s seemed completely lame but now I probably appreciate more music from the 80s than 90s, so who knows?
Pearl Jam (at least early-to-mid 90's Pearl Jam) hold up quite well. The first three albums were just as musically interesting and emotionally powerful as anything Nirvana produced, without indulging the woe-is-me narcissism that was Cobain's tragic flaw. I get where you are coming from, but I don't think Nirvana struck people as narcissistic at the time. They touched a nerve and ushered in a new era of music. Their music may have been self-directed, but it captured the zeitgeist better than anything Pearl Jam did. Peal Jam was a good bad, but they always seemed a bit too much polish to really fit in with the era. For what it's worth, while it's not really a grunge album, Celebrity Skin by Hole would be on my list of the best albums of the decade.
Uggh... I was in college was Nirvana first hit, and I wasn't a big fan of them then, but in retrospect they're pretty good. Pearl Jam was pretty damn solid for the first three albums, too. Soundgarden, very good also. I live in Southern California, though, and I have to say that a lot of the post-grunge that got all the airplay on KROQ in the mid-90s in Nirvana's wake was just crap. Bush, while hardly distinctive, at least had a couple of decent tunes (not Glycerine, though), which is more than you can say for, e.g., Candlebox, Collective Soul, Live, etc. And then it got worse with post-post-Grunge. Is there any reason to ever listen to the likes of Puddle of Mudd, Atreyu, Black Flys, etc.? And Sublime --- don't get me started. I grew up in Long Beach, and these guys were the biggest names in the high school fraternity party scene, the parties where the rich guys with big houses would have 300 people over, everybody'd drink beer and then think they were deep by having a white boy reggae band like Sublime play and smoking weed. I was too much of a nerd to ever go to these parties, mind you, so when they suddenly became famous a couple years after I went off to college, there were some mixed feelings. "Hey, those guys are from my hometown" mixed with "all the obnoxious frat boys listened to them." Anyway, my own 10 favorite 90s albums, alphabetically:
Ack! I overlooked Boards of Canada's MUSIC HAS THE RIGHT TO CHILDREN when I put together that list. Sorry, Beck, you've been knocked off the list.
Nice list, Adam, but I'm pretty sure Violator was late 80's, no? I'd also like to have an amendment here... *Tool- Aenima (Soul crushingly awesome)
80+ comments and no lame Kate Bush jokes. Well, I guess I won't start now.
Top 11 90s in no particular order: 2Pac - All Eyez On Me
I have constructed the definitive Bush ranking. Warm Machine > Chemicals Between Us > Comedown > Machine Head > Glycerine > Letting the Cables Sleep > Everything Zen
How could I forget illmatic? I don't want to lost me against the world (in my opinion superior in every way to all eyes on me), so I will instead increase my list to 6. DM
Violator came out in early 1990.
I liked Greedy Fly, but I think that was because I really liked the video. But I think Machine Head was their best. By the time I'm done listening to it I'm doing about 15mph faster on the road.
On the whole I think Xeynon's description of Bush is right. I admit to being fond of "Out of This World," but that's mainly because it was used to good effect in an episode of Buffy.
I know someone had to have mentioned that, but how "come down" isn't the number 1 Bush song is BEYOND me.
Violator came out early in 1990, like around March, around the same time as the "Enjoy the Silence" single. The "Personal Jesus" single had come out earlier, in late 1989.
In this song, Bush have done us all an important service by reminding everyone to continue their respiratory functions.
Gotta second VelvetElvis, I love me some Cracker. Kerosene Hat is a truly great album, as is the eponymous "Cracker." I was a bit you to remember Camper Van Beethoven, but "Low" is a terrific listen, as for pure pop "Satisfy You" off of Cracker is pretty hard to beat.
er, young, not you.
I'll throw the Red Hot Chili Peppers into the mix because they deserve some recognition for starting the decade off on the right foot. And all you pups crying about the quality of music in the 90s obviously didn't have to live through the 80s and all the crap produced/played endlessly on the radio. The music that came out of the "Seattle scene" (fuck the term grunge) and everything that followed in its wake was an absolute breath of fresh air for those of us that survived the Reagan years. Bush turned out to be not much as a band, but Sixteen Stone rocked for its day - and that's all you can really ask from a band...
Angry Sam, yeah I hear you on the "comedic" elements of Throwing Copper, but Dam at Otter Creek, I alone, Iris are all still quite rockin'. And White Discussion is one of the best "last tracks" on an album. Personally, I think their album Secret Samahdi is better, but I was talking more big-picture/cultural relevance context rather than my own taste. I would put "A Live One" by Phish on the list of best albums from the 90's but I wanted to stick in the alterna-grunge scope and didn't feel like welcoming the inevitable onslaught of hacky-sack, LSD, Ben&Jerry's jokes that I would expect. Stacy- Aenima is probably my favorite TOOL album, but in my opinion it was Undertow that really showed that they were heads and shoulders above the rest (Coal Chamber, Soul Coughing, Korn etc.) Other honorable mentions from my heavy list would be: Refused "The Shape of Punk to Come" and Snapcase "End Transmission." Not to mention Rage's debut album. And fuck, how did I forget to mention Deftones "Around the Fur" or "White Pony." Too much good music for one decade.
Stu is right about Oasis: awesome, even if they're just a second-rate rip off of the Stone Roses (a pretty great band to be a second-rate rip off of). I know I'm replying a bit late here, but this is a bizarre assertion. Oasis aren't a Stone Roses rip off. They're both Manchester guitar bands, but beyond that they're not really all that similar. Not that I'm a particularly big Oasis fan or anything (and I much prefer the Stone Roses, as it happens.) I guess it just struck me as a strange thing to say. And obviously my take on the matter is authoritative, as I'm from Manchester. Go me, eh?
Comments closed July 01, 2008. |
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Heads in the Sand
Agreed. "Machine Head" is about the only decent song Bush ever released. I have to confess that I also liked "Lightning Crashes" by that loopy Hare Krishna-looking duders Live.
Posted by Joel | June 17, 2008 5:10 PM