How do I get some really big guitar sounds like Creed/Alter Bridge/Breaking Benjamin

[grimtraveller]

the America/Steely Dan/Fleetwood mac/Deep Purple folk.

Maybe it's because I've long had very wide music tastes but I can never see why there's such conflict between lovers of different genres. Or for that matter, what's so odd about liking lots of different genres.

I loved it, mind you my flares, long hair & beard didn't relly fit the music.

Jeans, T-shirts, and Chuck Taylors was my uniform as a kid, and still is to this day.

I remember in the early 80s when you could pretty much tell who liked what music simply by what the person wore or how their hair was. Nowadays it's a bit more difficult although the uniformity is still there in the post rap period, if you know what you're looking for. My clothes haven't changed since the 70s ~ jeans, T shirts, jumpers or sweatshirts, trainers. I'll wear a suit to a wedding though !
As an aside, there used to be a time when you could tell, during the summer tourist season in London, pretty much where people came from but since hip hop and the uniformity of clothes for teenagers, it's virtually impossible.

Pretty vacant.

The best thing that came out of British punk, really. In every way, a supreme and seminal track.

Sid was and remains an icon - of fashion, decay & the myth of punk.

He was definitely stylish and iconic in a visual sense, in the same sort of way that the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Michael Caine were during the mid to late 60s or the Jackson 5 were in the early 70s and Bob Marley was in the late 70s.

the difference between the US and UK scenes

while I love a lot of UK punk, the American stuff is just way better to me. It speaks to me better. I can relate to songs about drugs, girls (not getting them), and alienation more than I can about saving queens and class warfare. I love punk music, don't love "the look".

The real difference for me between US and UK punk was that US punk grew as a natural occurence and a stripped down continuation of what was already there. Because even American psychedelia was raw compared to it's British cousin. Firstly, the early crowd like the Stooges, the Dolls or the MC5 were from the 60s {or at least began playing then}, grew up digging all the usual 60s bands as well as free jazz and avant garde stuff. The MC5's manager may have wanted to overthrow society but the bands didn't arrive on the scene declaring everyone to be dinosaurs and criticizing people for making money and getting profficient on their instruments.
UK punk feels really contrived. It even felt that way to me in the 70s when I knew zero about it. But the one thing I loved about it and still do was the idea that you don't need expertise and expensive equipment in order to make music and have fun doing it. But there was a whiny, moaning, "politics of envy" quality to British punks that wasn't there with the Americans. The Americans didn't spit on artiness and intelligence. Many of them may have been messed up but they allowed you to be messed up in your chosen way of life whereas the Brits were ever so "superior". Pete Townshend called them middle class brats trying to be tough.

And this has nothing to do with big sounds on guitar so my apologies but I've enjoyed the exchanges and thoughts so sue me !



That was a joke by the way.

 

[Greg_L]

The Americans didn't spit on artiness and intelligence. Many of them may have been messed up but they allowed you to be messed up in your chosen way of life whereas the Brits were ever so "superior".

Right. Only in the US scene could bands like the Ramones and Dead Boys peacefully co-exist with stuff like Blondie and the Talking Heads - because the NY scene was about music first and foremost and not really about fashion or being cool. Johnny Thunders didn't walk down the street breaking bottles and trying to scare old ladies. He just wanted to play his guitar and cop some smack. Lol. There were no Sid Viciouses or Soo Catwomen in NY. There was no official uniform to the NYC scene. The musical snobbery was much less rampant in NYC.

 

[grimtraveller]

Because the American punk scene didn't appear lambasting Captain and Tennille, the Beach boys and Manhattan transfer and moaning about Nixon and then Carter and 8 minute guitar solos or epic progressive rock from Topographic oceans, while spitting at the audience and being spat on, it became part of the mainstream and there were no big philosophical issues attached to being so. And consequently, it lasted. Whereas British punk fizzled out after a year and a half and mutated into new wave and for the last 35 years the so called dinosaurs of British rock have been laughing their rocks off, reforming, getting richer, still touring and selling and saying "We're still here !".
I guess when it comes down to it, American punk was, in a word, mature. American punk didn't really scare American bands in the mid to late 70s like the British contingent did. But it was a quick fright as the bands here soon discovered the scary tiger merely had rubber teeth and claws.