Oh, come on.

It's okay to just admit you said a silly thing, Harmless.

I said that there was reasonable debate around the possibility that The Beatles were not in fact 'free as a bird' and could be called a manufactured band. Some have said that. But apparently I'm wrong just because spenno says I'm wrong. It doesn't matter though, none of this does.

There is no reasonable debate about this. Formation does not equal marketing once signed to a label. Monkees and Sex Pistols were manufactured (created by an entity, the band did not come together "organically"), Beatles and Ramones were not (though perhaps a little of the Ramones image was suggested to them by Danny Fields, if you read The Oral Uncensored History of Punk Rock, one of my favorite books of all time).

It's funny, the course of history would have been COMPLETELY different had the Sex Pistols never existed, because the Ramones were going to be the punk band that made it. Talent-wise, it should have been the NY Dolls (well, "sort of" punk - managed by the guy who created the Pistols, and were his inspiration to create the Pistols) or the Stooges, but both were too fucked up. The UK brought us the Sex Pistols and The Clash, and because of coke and heroin, all the NYC scene could produce was...Blondie, and Patti Smith; The Ramones were marginalized commercially because they were viewed as "Sex Pistols, USA edition", a bitter irony to everyone involved.

Heroin, coke, and the Sex Pistols set back the commercial existence of punk attitude in popular music by about 15 years. Some may view this as a good thing in hindsight. However, the thought to ponder is that bands like the Dead Kennedys and Bad Brains and Minor Threat/Fugazi may have made it big were it not for the Pistols, too. That's a reaaaaaaaaaaally interesting thought to me, especially when considered in what actually came to pass in the 1980's.

i dunno man. i love DK but i have a hard time imagining them 'making it big' b/c they were so radical. do you think a record company would could market a song like "kill the poor"? i think green day's lyrics made it easier for punk to mainstream

Take A Walk On The Wild Side is worse than anything the DK's did and just as overt.

I like the Dead Kennedy's but will admit that there's no mass appeal to their music. Sex Pistols were contrived to be a pop band of sorts, so it's no surprise they were/are vastly more popular than DK or other punk bands. The only intent of the Sex pistols was to sell in order to make money. I don't think the same can be said for most of the other punk bands of that era.

Really, you think the voice behind Just Breathe or Unthought Known is good?

is it bad?

I think it's bad. The penchant for overly sentiment lyrics does not help his cause. I can't see Pearl Jam ever having made it if that was his voice on Ten.

I think it's unlikely, but it would have been possible. All members of the band have shown they're not against commercialization, they just disagree at times as to what that means. You might have had a slightly slower, slightly less offensive DK had punk become more of a movement than it did, under the purpose of getting the message out to the masses. Sure, "Kill The Poor" could never have been a radio single, But "Let's Lynch The Landlord" or "Halloween" could have been. They could have been sold as a faster, more political Talking Heads.

the lyrics aren't very good but i think he sounds great.

I think we'd be lying if we all didn't admit that Ed's voice is still one of the best features of this band. For me, it used to be the voice and the drummer. That was a long time ago; Ed's pretty much kept me here.

Man, I loved Ed's voice 98-00. When they started tackling things like "Soldier of Love". Still had some of his youthful intensity and passion, but had a little more polish than the early days.

and yet that's part of the period (96-03) that I probably like the least

Ed's Voice -- his quiver makes me too

Welp, it's official. Harmless lost.