Music Forum General Chat Thread • Page 2

Please sticky @Henry

 

I accidentally hit post before I was done typing lol. Please reread my edit

 

RIP Charlie Watts

Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts dies at 80, publicist confirms

 

one of the best behind the kit. just an absolute madman

 

watched the Woodstock 99 doc last night and it threw me into a nu-metal tailspin that I am digging through today. Obviously a ton of shitty music came from those few years, but it's really interesting looking back at it.

the Woodstock doc does a really good job highlighting the fact that nu metal had the tendency to take the worst parts of rap (misogamy, homophobia, etc) and mix it with the intensity of metal, but without the nuance or understanding of either genre. Kid Rock and Limp Bizkit's Woodstock sets really showcased all of this.

That being said, I'm going through a lot of old nu-metal music today for nostalgic reasons, probably going to make a 20-song mix of the most memorable songs from that era just for fun.

I think one of the reasons Linkin Park kinda stood the test of time was a mixture of them pushing the boundaries of what the genre was and somewhat moving past it, but they also didn't bring the outward agression but rather focused on internal issues that the consumer could connect to in a more emotional way.

When numetal was the biggest, my top bands in the genre were Linkin Park, Papa Roach, Orgy and Crazy Town

 

White Pony is nu-metal right? That’s the peak of the genre to me.

Also enjoyed the Woodstock doc, but that one old dude who had an excuse for everything and refused to take any responsibility for the shitshow seemed like a jackass

 

I would consider White Pony nu-metal, but the less cheesy side of things haha.

And yes, the guy who ran the festival was TERRIBLE and I think that was the point, the viewer is supposed to hear his words juxtaposed with what was actually happening and realize that he's a piece of shit.

 

Woodstock doc was comically bad, trying to turn nu-metal into a moral panic that incited a riot, instead of just the obvious fact that the festival was a logistical nightmare and that was the cause lol

 

Also comical was Moby acting all high and mighty and above it all, when he knew he was full of shit

 

That's not how I interpreted the doc at all and that's a weird take. The doc shows a TON of logicial issues, from top to bottom, and lays them all out very obviously. If you missed that, not sure what you were watching.

And while the simplistic sentence of nu-metal turning into a moral panic that incited a riot is a simplification of what happened, there is no denying that the acts billed in 1999 were a very obvious reason that the specific crowd attended versus the acts that were billed in 69, 94 or even Coachella of 99

 

The thesis that nu-metal was somehow unique in the way it channeled white rage did not ring true for me at all. The comparison to 1/6 was over the top and silly

 

I guess I really didn't have that takeaway. My takeaway was that after 3 days of terrible living conditions, no actual security, rampant sexism without any oversight, and growing crowd rage they had bands that this mess of a festival got worse and worse and worse. And yes, part of that was bands telling the audience to break everything, let out their rage, and it obviously contributed to it. I did NOT find the doc to say "It is because of nu metal and that's the reason this happened."

Personally my biggest issue with the doc was the consistent showing of nudity and actual sexual assaults while saying how bad the misogamy and assaults were. None of the women in the film consented to being in this film in any realistic way. It would have been very easy to blur out their breasts and assaults, or not show them at all, but they chose not to

 

Was there not a bit at the very beginning of the doc about how much of a shitshow Woodstock 69 was as well?

 

Moby seems pretty insufferable. Wasn’t there a part where he was complaining about not being able to find his name on the poster? Lmao

 

Got a good chuckle out of hearing Dave Matthews saying the phrase “an abundance of titties”

 

I feel like you’re definitely in the outlier that you didn’t interpret the doc as blaming tons of shit on nu-metal/cultural issues of the time lol. That’s definitely how most people have been talking about it - regardless of whether they’re praising the doc for making that argument or ridiculing it for doing so. Even when pointing out that Woodstock 69 was also a shitshow, you still gets tons of people acting as if a dumb music festival was this horrific precursor of things to come

Like the movie is full of moral panic shit - that dude acting aghast that a bunch of white people in 1999 would be shouting the n-word in the call-and-response when DMX was encouraging them to do so, or one of the organizers acting like a bunch of women walking around topless at a music festival was completely alien to him lol.

 

It should be noted that, while certainly not included in the documentary for narrative purposes, Fred Durst had at several points reminded the crowd to watch out for each other’s safety, and to help others when they fall. Whether the Red Hot Chili Peppers did the same during their set — which occured during most of the rioting from that weekend — I’m not sure.

 

Anyone know of a decent "Best Songs of 2021 So Far" list? I need to catch up but everything I'm coming across is more just a recitation of the most popular songs this year lol

 

I dunno I know a lot of people on here are younger than I am but as someone who was in middle and high school during that period, a lot of nu metal EXPLICITLY catered to white male rage and that was what drew a lot of guys I grew up with to it.

The doc tries to oversimplify the narrative way too much though. Like, reaming Limp Bizkit and RHCP, but skipping right past Rage playing between them because, let’s be honest, we like Rage, was so dishonest. Just because they’re good and their politics are good doesn’t mean they weren’t tapping into and feeding anger and aggression too.

 

some nu-metal is good. system is legitimately great. like people said, deftones were and are still great. the people that took the overly macho angle with it were weird but actually few and far between.

 

turnstile is nu-metal

 

I don’t disagree. I’ve held on to a handful of stuff from that era all along.

I deeply disagree that the overly macho component was a rarity amongst its fans though. Way too much firsthand/anecdotal experience otherwise. I’d never heard the word toxic masculinity in my life, but I knew some of those shows were filled with the worst kinds of bros.

 

i didn't mean the fans. i meant the actual bands associated with the genre.

 

It was a mixed bag. Korn does not deserve to be lumped into that bag at all, despite the fans they drew.

Bizkit, Puddle of Mudd, Nickelback, Trapt, etc.? Very much deserve that broad brush

Edit: Actually, I just remembered a certain Korn song that I think I’d repressed that’s pretty horrible

 

It's not that nu-metal wasn't full of toxic macho bullshit, it's just the pretending as if nu-metal was at all novel in that regard, or that it was even an outlier at the time. Practically the entirety of pop culture at the time and any time prior was catered towards those kinds of people in one way or another lol. Grunge/nu-metal's "novely" (or whatever you want to call it) was that it was just more heart-on-its-sleeve about its aggressiveness/angst, which obviously drew in some people ever harder while alienating others. It's not as if Nirvana or RATM's progressive views made a difference as to whether anyone liked them at the time or not - it was about whether you preferred music that was far more aggressive and in-your-face