#49: The Feelies, ‘Crazy Rhythms’ (1980) vs. Sleater-Kinney, ‘Call the Doctor’ (1996)

January 13, 2020January 21, 2020 ~ VanJam 80s v. 90s Music War - 50 Album Battles to See Which Decade Rules! ~ 2 Comments

Interesting match up. The indie boys of light eighties punk versus the indie girls of heavy nineties punk. Different in some ways, but they are both in the same family. The Feelies being the brothers to the Sleater-Kinney sisters. The former ruling the teenage roost with a subdued confidence and the latter raising hell with a brash insecurity.

Its hard to select a clear winner here. There isn’t much difference between them. Both albums contain extremely catchy and very rhythmic songs filled with bursts of high spirited nervous energy. Crazy Rhythms’ zero-distortion-two-chord-rifforama is clean and very pleasing to the ears. However, it is unassuming, filled with space and at risk of getting lost in the background. Call the Doctor’s all-distortion-three-chord-rifforama is completely in your face and requires full attention be paid to it. But that is just attitude. Change the dynamics of a strikingly wonderful song like “I’m Not Waiting” from Call the Doctor and it can seamlessly sit as a track on Crazy Rhythms.

Despite their seminal stature both of these albums are new discoveries for me. From what I can gather, they equal in their impact and influence on the indie rock sound, so I can’t differentiate them that way. So essentially it comes down to the MEAT of both albums and I have to say that there is more to chew on in Call the Doctor. Ultimately there are more riffs, more rhythms, and more progressions. Even though Crazy Rhythms’ minimalism is a punk rock triumph, Call the Doctor’s maximalist punk sound wins by a chord.

WINNER: Sleater-Kinney, Call the Doctor (1 point)

BATTLE TALLY

80s: 1

90s: 1

EARNED POINTS

80s: 1

90s: 1

Next week’s battle – #48: XTC, Skylarking (1986) vs. Weezer, Pinkerton (1996)

#50: Madonna, ‘Madonna’ (1983) vs. 2Pac, ‘All Eyez on Me’ (1996)

January 6, 2020January 21, 2020 ~ VanJam 80s v. 90s Music War - 50 Album Battles to See Which Decade Rules! ~ 2 Comments

Right out of the gate we see why this blog is a good idea – where else can you pit synthesized girly pop against bad ass gangsta rap? This is all the more interesting considering these two secretly dated for a while, and it led to a wacky appearance by Madonna on David Letterman (Tupac would later apologize in a very expensive letter, apparently).

tupac-madonna[1]

Anyway…Madonna’s first album holds up a lot better than expected. With infectious songs like “Lucky Star”, “Borderline” and “Holiday”, the pop star burst upon the music scene fully formed, knowing what she wanted to do and how she was going to do it. The world didn’t know she was going to change pop music, but she did.

But does it have the gravitas to topple Tupac’s post-prison magnum opus? Actually, yes. All Eyez on Me has lots of great stuff and is overflowing with ambition and hefty themes, but it is far from perfect – it’s hard to make a 2+ hour album without filler. It was a grand statement from a guy who continues to have influence over his genre (To whit: The world’s current greatest rapper, Kendrick Lamar, closed his masterpiece To Pimp a Butterfly with a fascinating imagined conversation with 2Pac). But it’s a lot of work to sit through.

And, he was just one of several legends of 90s gangsta rap. Madonna, on the other hand, is one of a kind — the archetype for every pop princess who would follow, from Britney Spears to Rihanna to Katy Perry to Keisha (why am I naming some of them – it applies to all of them). She would have even better albums still to come, and not just in the 80s, but it all started with this one.

WINNER: Madonna, Madonna (1 point)

BATTLE TALLY

80s: 1

90s: 0

EARNED POINTS

80s: 1

90s: 0

Next week’s battle – #49: The Feelies, Crazy Rhythms (1980) vs. Sleater-Kinney, Call the Doctor (1996)