March Music Madness: Lou Reed vs. Peter Gabriel [Archive] - Audio & Video Forums

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newtrix1
03-16-2005, 01:36 PM
Please consider the entire career of these 2 artists when voting (i.e. solo careers as well as period with V.U. & Genesis).

Ex Lion Tamer
03-16-2005, 01:48 PM
As my daughter would say...
"Puuuhhhleeeze"

Stone
03-16-2005, 01:56 PM
I'd say it was a relatively close race for me until I read the part about factoring in their entire careers - then it became a landslide.

Troy
03-16-2005, 02:07 PM
Metal Machine Music.

Puhleeeez is right!

DariusNYC
03-16-2005, 02:09 PM
Please consider the entire career of these 2 artists when voting (i.e. solo careers as well as period with V.U. & Genesis).

Another good matchup!

newtrix1
03-16-2005, 02:11 PM
(as of Tues evening anyhow)

Match 1: Nirvana (12) vs. Joy Division (10)

Match 2: Beach Boys (13) vs. Doors (10)

Match 3: Modest Mouse (9) vs. …and You Will Know us by the Trail of Dead (5)

Match 4: REM (12) vs. XTC (7)

Match 5: Miles Davis (10) vs. Jimi Hendrix (7)

Match 6: Gomez (5) vs. Doves (7)

Match 7: in progress

Match 8: TBA

newtrix1
03-16-2005, 02:29 PM
Please consider the entire career of these 2 artists when voting (i.e. solo careers as well as period with V.U. & Genesis).

Rock-n-Roll Animal is better than any single Peter Gabriel album, However PG's stuff has been (fairly) consistently good through his career.Otoh, LR's career is kind of like his collar on the cover of R&R Animal..."spikey". Overall, PG gets my vote for consistency, quality, and diversity.

Ex Lion Tamer
03-16-2005, 09:41 PM
This one is way closer that I thought it would be and way closer than it should be in my opinion, so I am moved to offer an argument in favour of Lou Reed.

Yes, Lou Reed's solo career is spotty, in comparison to Peter Gabriel's, but only because Lou took chances, while Peter Gabreil basically released the same album over and over again. Lou reed has 21 solo albums while P. Gabriel has what 7? 8? Some of Lous albums are bad, many are brilliant. I'd say Lou has more brilliant albums...(Transformer, Coney Island Baby, Berlin, Blue Mask, Street Hassle, New Sensations, New York, Songs for Drella), than Peter Gabriel has albums. Not to mention their respective influences on the R&R landscape. Lou Reed and the Velvets spawned an entire movement the reverberations of which is still being felt today. A list of bands influenced by the music of Lou Reed/Velvet Underground reads like a whos who of modern rock music. Literally 100s of bands, some marginal, many influential in there own right, are directly influenced by Lou Reed/Velvet Underground. Lou Reed, it could be argued is among the 5 most influential figures in rock and roll history. Peter Gabriel? Not in the conversation.

Troy mentioned Metal Machine Music as some kind of proof of Lou Reed's marginal output. I'm not sure what Metal Machine Music is, but it's only one of 21 albums over a 35 year solo career, to judge his career on this one album is rediculous in the extreme. Puuuhhhleeeze indeed!

This is an interesting match-up again Rick, but it really should be no contest.

-Jar-
03-17-2005, 08:32 AM
I voted for Lou, but I thought Peter would be destroying in the vote.

Guess I'm wrong so far, unless the proggies haven't all voted yet.

:confused:

kexodusc
03-17-2005, 08:38 AM
Hmmm....if Lou Reed was a bit more selective of the absolute junk filler that's made its way onto too many albums, I wouldn't think twice. Some musicians need "editors". This my chance to extract revenge for some the worst stuff I'll ever admit to paying money for...made especially painful because of the high potential for great music Reed has.
That being said, I think Reed's got better stuff than Gabriel, and he deserves acknowledgment for this, too.
I think both are close in their A material, with Reed having a bit more that I like...but Reed's "B" material is far worse, and more plentiful than Gabriel's.

A sad way to determine a vote, but, this (jaded) customer is always right....PG gets mine.

shokhead
03-17-2005, 09:06 AM
Dont like either one.

Mr MidFi
03-17-2005, 09:19 AM
Yet another excellent matchup.

I have to disagree with Ex Lion Tamer's take on this. It's not true that PG has been releasing the same album over and over. If you were to play Genesis' Trespass album, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, PG's first solo disc, and Up in succession, you would hardly think it was the same artist! And as for the quality vs. quantity debate...it's like Mozart vs. Beethoven. Two schools of thought there, but not a slam-dunk choice by any measure.

For me and, I suspect, for others, the debate comes down to "more influential artist" vs. "music I enjoy somewhat more". And in the final analysis, I'm in agreement with those voting for Lou Reed. I listen to Gabriel more, but I rate them fairly closely on my own personal faves list. But in terms of influence, you're right. No contest there.

Lou gets the vote. But it was a tough call.

Davey
03-17-2005, 12:31 PM
Not a very tough call for me even though I do love Peter Gabriel. Never much of a Genesis fan and my favorite is probably the one after he left, but those first few solo albums were the real stuff. I only listened to Peter Gabriel albums, though. I practically lived in some of those VU and Lou Reed albums. Could explore the songs for hours. Stuck in my head for days. Get rid of the Velvet Underground and probably a third to half of my record collection goes away too. Seems almost everything I listen to these days and for the last couple decades has a connection to VU or the Beatles.

newtrix1
03-17-2005, 01:52 PM
Mark hasn't been well since the hockey season was cancelled. He needs to pull out a nice slab of heavy weight vinyl and let the bass notes of Tony Levins chapman stick on something like "I Don't Remember" wash over him for a few minutes. Then he'll come around. ;)

dean_martin
03-17-2005, 02:22 PM
Please consider the entire career of these 2 artists when voting (i.e. solo careers as well as period with V.U. & Genesis).

Have to go with Lou Reed/VU on this one. I discovered Reed's and VU's music in depth at a critical stage in my life.

I've really only paid attention to Gabriel's singles and some of those I didn't care for, but I've been curious about his first 3 albums of late and will probably check them out.

Dave_G
03-17-2005, 07:09 PM
Duh!

PG all the way.

Dusty Chalk
03-17-2005, 07:22 PM
...while Peter Gabreil basically released the same album over and over again...This is so wrong. I really don't hear the comparison even between his first three albums -- the first one was audibly an album from a Genesis alumnus, the second one was a right turn into Fripp's and Eno's domains (not Fripp&Eno, though), and the third one is where he truly found his own "voice". And I really can't see how anyone who heard So and Security could say they were in any way similar.

And don't even get me started on Passion or Long Walk Home.

My vote goes to PG.

mad rhetorik
03-19-2005, 01:12 PM
Even with a spotty solo career, Lou over Peter anyday. His participation in The V.U. alone puts him over the top easily. Then you've got <b>Transformer</b> and <b>Berlin</b>, both superb (<b>Rock 'N' Roll Animal</b>, though acclaimed, never did much for me... revisioning VU standards as stadium-rock anthems was kind of a questionable move).

I never did get into Genesis much, and I have little experience with Gabriel's solo work outside of <b>So</b> (which never set me afire anyway).

edtyct
03-20-2005, 01:28 PM
I loved VU but wasn't wild about everything of LRs afterward, but I've always liked PG's work, even more solo than with Genesis. My feeling, however, is that the solo LR and PG aren't really comparable. I think of PG as more of a composer with a different sort of musical/lyrical agenda than LR. Something like the music from Last Temptation of Christ, Birdy, and the OVO Millennium Show aren't really what LR is all about.

So far as influence goes, PG's early and continuing involvement in World Music through WOMAD and Real World has had a big impact, and his early adoption of technologies to encourage more people to take an active role in making music flew in the face of purists but in the end was on the winning side. Witness the popularity of the drum machine and the ubiquitous synth (the worst effects of which probably weren't what PG had in mind). But I think it's true that he doesn't pave the kind of personal road that allows people to follow in his footsteps very readily or identifiably. LR does.

LR seemed to follow Andy Warhol's prescription of plugging away constantly and letting it all hang out (maybe not always to his best advantage). PG has a far more deliberate way of working, allowing for far less output. He seems to have more of an auteur/audiophile sensibility than LR. They just seem to be coming from different places.

Ed

thepogue
03-20-2005, 03:26 PM
I think it's a timing issue with me...hear Lou for the first time in a new way club in '81...great stuff...but kinda off his rocker..

Peace, Pogue