I got a little into Tull back in the day, too. Always liked how "Living in the Past" was in 5/4 time, like "Time Out" by Brubeck. The unusual time signatures frequent in prog were always something I was drawn to.
I personally place more value on creativity/invention than popularity. Just being "really good" playing the stuff others have basically played before doesn't seem HOF-like to me.
Lionel Ritchie sold a shit-ton of records, but I'd still take Devo for their sheer inventiveness. Their cover of Satisfaction was brilliant:
There's a cool story about Mick Jagger giving his approval to Devo's version of Satisfaction:
One afternoon in 1978, Mark Mothersbaugh and Gerald Casale—the two prime architects of the band Devo—were fidgeting in Peter Rudge’s office, near the Warwick Hotel, in Manhattan, with Mick Jagger. Rudge was the Rolling Stones’ manager, and Devo had recorded an odd cover of the band’s hit “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”—so odd that their label said they needed Jagger’s blessing to release it. Mothersbaugh put the tape in a boom box and pressed Play. As the sounds of the cover filled the room, Jagger sat stone-faced. What he was hearing didn’t sound much like the “Satisfaction” he’d written. Keith Richards’s iconic riff was gone, and the original melody was nowhere to be found. Was this a homage, Mick must have wondered, or were they mocking him? “He was just looking down at the floor swirling his glass of red wine,” Casale recently remembered, adding, “He didn’t even have shoes on, just socks and some velour pants. I don’t know what his habits were then, but this was early afternoon and it looked like he had just gotten up.”
For thirty seconds or so, the men sat in silence, listening to the weird robo-funk coming from the boom box. Then something changed. “He suddenly stood up and started dancing around on this Afghan rug in front of the fireplace,” Casale said, of Jagger, “the sort of rooster-man dance he used to do, and saying”—he impersonated Jagger’s accent—“‘I like it, I like it.’ Mark and I lit up, big smiles on our faces, like in ‘Wayne’s World’: ‘We’re not worthy!’ To see your icon that you grew up admiring, that you had seen in concert, dancing around like Mick Jagger being Mick Jagger. It was unbelievable.
The Story Behind Devoâs Iconic Cover of the Rolling Stonesâ âSatisfactionâ
In 1977, five misfits from Ohio took a rock-and-roll classic and mutated it beyond recognition.www.newyorker.com
I just love the image of Jagger dancing to Devo's version.
Old people are right sometimes too.
Are you talking about Cleveland's own Matthew Abelson? I often chatted with him at the old Arcade a couple of decades ago. Nice fellow.
You’re goddamn right, I am. He performed at my middle school in 1994 and his rendition of Simple Gifts on the dulcimer was so beautiful it brought my teacher into labor on the spot.
Wait, he's Not??
Neither is Pavarotti.
I have to admit my ignorance of "Tortoise", though I'd wager their muse was the despicable recurring William S. Burroughs character.
Was just goofin. Nobody knows Tortoise. Good song though.
Well whaddya know, I think I'll just plug some Tortoise into my post-rock Pandora station.
