You have no idea what I'm talking about.
The Ramones and Stooges et al COULD play their instruments and play them well enough to get stuff to stick to tape. I'm not talking about raw, rough-edge style, because that requires musicianship to get down in the studio also. I'm talking about people who simply cannot play their instruments, period.
Like the recent drummer we had in who's fills and breaks sounded exactly like someone filled a gigantic balloon full of drumsticks, suspended it over the drum kit, and then popped it with a knitting needle, letting the sticks just randomly fall all over the kit. And that's not counting the fact that he couldn't hold his beat with a wheelbarrow, even with click track or MP3 of the original playing in his cans. And he actually thought he was a very good drummer.
Or the sax player with the $4k+ Selmer saxophone but (I swear to god this is true) couldn't hit one single note correctly; who spent two hours of studio time just punching a simple two-bar 2/4 accompaniment, or the bass player who swore up and down that he had practiced for hours to the sheets and the recording, and was ready as possible to record, but who, when the red button was pushed was playing the whole damn thing in the wrong key.
I wouldn't even bring it up if these were rare aberrations, but they're not; they are more commonplace nowadays than anything else is. The difference between now and a couple of decades ago is one of either self-awareness or of self-respect. Time was when these guys would have known how they actually sound - or rather don't sound - and have waited a bit longer to actually build their talent until they stepped into a studio, but now they either just don't know or just don't care.
This has nothing to do with whatever one may or may not have listened to on some lame-assed TopRock radio station when they were younger, that represents the music of any given decade about as well as McDonald's represents the food cuisine of the same time period.
G.
