Again I know Dylan knew Johnson and I know he was crazy about him. I’ve read Chronicles. My point is I’m not sure when Dylan learned of Johnson. My belief is Dylan was already fully formed by the time he did, but I might be totally wrong.
Anyway. Robert Johnson is an easy name-drop because everyone is arguably a Robert Johnson rip-off.
How so? Check the timeline. License to Ill released in 86 and they’d already been around for a while. NWA didn’t get going til 87. I was actually quite surprised when I realised this.
No I know and I know Chuck D admits they had the better beats. Beasties were incredible, no doubt. But in terms of influence on the zeitgeist, not the same as NWA.
Stockhausen said that rock degraded music that was building for the last 300 yrs to degenerated levels!
I love and respect all of those artists mentioned in the OP but only in this shitty world we can put them on the pedestal next to our greatest geniuses of the past.
What i wanted to say is that they were only the best at doing mediocre things! Same goes for electronic music… even the best em is not at the level of the majority of classical music compositions or the worst Beethoven’s or Mozart’s compositions.
Where to start, I could probably recommend every one of their albums from Not For Threes onwards. I love Aphex for melody, but Plaid also have a way with melody that is unique to them (maybe even more so as I hear more similarity with Aphex, Vibert and uZiq than with Plaid and anyone else), and I would say they are my favourite electronic artists ever. Spokes was the first album that blew me away, maybe start with that and also check out their latest album Polymer…but if you like Aphex for melody you really should listen to Plaid’s entire back catalogue. Honestly I think they deserve way more credit. Sorry for the essay but I get excited every time I think about Plaid. I once posted on Twitter that I almost love them as much as my wife and was very happy that they responded by following me ha ha.
There couldn’t be a modern equivalent to the Beatles because no group of white guys would be allowed to steal that much from black and Indian culture and get away with it in this day and age.