Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Joey DiMaio is bassically a guitar player playing bass so he has the strings on the same stringspacing found on a guitar, it just makes things easier for him.

I saw Manowar a few years ago at a metal festival and they put on a great show with a lot of anthemic songs that everybody sang along, I had a great time.

So everybody who says that Manowar sucks, care to clarify WHY?

"It has nothing to do with whether they are great bass players, what kind of influence on music they had or anything else.....it is simply a matter of taste and Rush, The Who and Yes are bands that are, to me, unlistenable."

Oh, I know you're not saying they suck. It's just interesting to me that like, the bands that were the foundation of the genre to which Manowar (among others) belongs are not even listenable to you. Maybe I'm just weird or something, but like, one of the reasons I like early Metallica and bands like Soundgarden and Rage Against the Machine and Dream Theater is precisely *because* I can hear the influence of those older bands. I hear "Master of Puppets" and I think, "Wow, Cliff Burton is obviously a fan of Geddy."

I dunno. I haven't heard enough Manowar to say whether I like them or not. There are very few bands that I truly and completely dislike, and it's almost never a question of the talent of the players in the band. It just struck me as odd that someone would enjoy a genre, but not its prototype.

Edit: and actually, as a kind of follow-up, there are bands that I like, but yet can't understand the idolizing of certain members of said bands. This comes up a lot, but, despite thinking Led Zeppelin are absolutely amazing, I never understood people's obsession with John Paul Jones. I can hardly name a more awesome or influential band, but I can think of tons of bassists whose playing I like infinitely more. I guess it's kind of the same thing that you were talking about.

All this talk of blowing got me thinking.........

Anyone recall the name of the Go Go's bassist?

(Bad Gary)

Kathy Velentine was the bassist for the Go-Go's. While obviously not a giant among bassists, I thought her lines were just right for the song. Get Up and Go and How Much more were fun songs to play back in the day with really up and poppy riffs to them.

Wouter - Manowar sucks because eight-part, 27-minute metal anthems about the "agony and ecstacy of Achilles" sung by a shrieking vocalist with an obnoxious backup band wearing loincloths are lame. IMO, YMMV, etc.

Robert - have you listened to "The Lemon Song"? "Ramble On"?

Some would say that 12-minute prog anthems about Samuel Taylor Coleridge poems sung by a shrieking vocalist is enough to make Rush suck...

"Wouter - Manowar sucks because eight-part, 27-minute metal anthems about the "agony and ecstacy of Achilles" sung by a shrieking vocalist with an obnoxious backup band wearing loincloths are lame. IMO, YMMV, etc. "

John - You obviously know NOTHING about Manowar, true; they have long songs but no 27 minute long ones. Their songs usually are four munites long. As for wearing loincloths, the Beatles wore matching outfits and hairstyles that looked really lame. As for "shrieking" vocals, does the song "Sweet child in time" ring a bell?

"Some would say that 12-minute prog anthems about Samuel Taylor Coleridge poems sung by a shrieking vocalist is enough to make Rush suck..."

Obviously, they would be mistaken though .

It's a strange thing taste. Why would the idea of Manowar in loincloths be enough for me to dismiss them completely, but I can forgive Rush their kimonos as they have no bearing on the music?

You can not escape the logic here that Manowar's costumes don't play a role in the band's music. Because with an album of theirs you'll get the music, not the visuals, the same with Kiss, their albums have their Music, not their make-up.

Same with Rush and Yes, they wear outlandish costumes too but could you tell they do so by listening to their music?

Arguing about a subjective topic like "music" is a waste of time. There is no right or wrong. Posting that a band "blows" is only going to raise some hackels and lead into a long pointless discussion on the relative merits of certain groups. Zzzzzz.....

Oh yeah, Kathy Valentine's bass line in "Head over Heels" rocks! Just my opinion...

What ever happened to the lovely Ms. Valentine?

Oh oh, looks like she developed an ego and became a guitarist & singer.

(ducking & running)

Have we really wasted 5 pages of precious bandwidth on "Manowar"?!?!

I think I'm gonna start drinkin' early.

"Robert - have you listened to "The Lemon Song"? "Ramble On"?"

Yes. I own every Led Zeppelin album. I think I've probably been through this discussion maybe 3 times or so on this board, at various points in time. There are a select handful of songs (particularly "The Song Remains the Same") where I really like JPJ, but for the most part, I would say that Zeppelin could've lived without a bass at all. JPJ's keyboard/organ/clavinet work was much better, in my opinion.

But yeah, I have to agree about the pronouncement that arguing about music tastes is stupid, even though I tend to do it quite a bit (what can I say, I'm young and opinionated). I would like to offer a counter, though, to the idea that 27-minute metal anthems about Achilles make a band suck . . . does that mean that if a band makes a 3-minute verse-chorus-verse-chorus song about not having a job or something everyday, that it is automatically NOT ****? I think Billy Joel had a song about this kind of thing called "The Entertainer" . . . pretty ironic coming from a guy whose songs tended to be on the short, radio-friendly end of the spectrum. So yeah.

Back to the original topic, somewhat . . . whether or not a band looks appealing at first glance to me, if their bassist is using a Ric, they automatically merit at least one listen, simply because I like Rics so much. If this weren't the case, I would've dismissed Deep Purple with "Smoke on the Water", but I found out Roger Glover used a Ric and decided to give them a shot, and came away with brilliant stuff like "Lazy" and "Fireball" and "Rat Bat Blue" and "Space Truckin'". Rics make me open-minded?