Television or Siouxsie & The Banshees

[joels344]

Siouxsie and The Banshee and I’d even take Juju over Marquee Moon (both brilliant albums, regardless).

[bobzilla77]

I used to like the Banshees pretty well, even saw them live in 1986 and 91. The first one, at the Pier in NYC, was a good night out; the latter was the first Lollapalooza and I became deadly sick of them halfway through their 90 minute set. Maybe it's just a case of too much at once, at the end of a long day, but that experience, where I really wanted them to stop playing and they would not, has kind of kept me from getting more into them.

Television is fucking great though. I can listen to them any old time.

[pcqgod]

There's just more Banshees to like!

Yep.

[echolalia]

The Banshees really evolved, from a pretty (musically) limited origin (I’m thinking pre-Scream bootlegs and demos) to what was a pretty good debut album. It always sounded to me like some of the rubbish got saved for Join Hands. From Kaleidoscope through to Tinderbox they had an amazing run-incredibly varied music. Fret-wankery. Not a bit of it.

I really like Join Hands (but not as much as The Scream). Icon is a great track. And Playground Twist. The guitar mayhem makes Television sound like knitting. Nothing wrong with knitting after all! And I do like Television, but prefer the Banshees by a distance.

[HarryIrene]

Television may be cooler and have that hip NYC new wave post punk cachet, but as back catalogues go, this is an easy win for The Banshees purely on quantity of very good albums. Marquee Moon is a classic and JuJu and Kiss in The Dreamhouse are the only Banshees albums that come close in terms of that rarified quality, although neither quite match it. However 'Adventure' and 'Television' , whilst they have some great moments, fall well short of said debut's level of excellence. The Scream, Kaleidoscope, Hyaena, Tinderbox, even Peepshow, all effortlessly surpass those 2 efforts. Even taking Tom Verlaine's rather fine solo career into account in order to try and even up the numbers, there is a shortfall in true excellence. Siousxie and The Banshees have never managed to earn the cool that their contemporaries like The Clash. The Pistols, P.I.L. Magazine, The Slits etc now have. Maybe they were too close to Goth but somehow that doesn't even work as The Cure are so revered now and they were very close to The Banshees. Maybe they will get their day.

[The Modernist]

Siousxie and The Banshees have never managed to earn the cool that their contemporaries like The Clash. The Pistols, P.I.L. Magazine, The Slits etc now have. Maybe they were too close to Goth but somehow that doesn't even work as The Cure are so revered now and they were very close to The Banshees. Maybe they will get their day.

I think you're right. I'm not sure what it is ..the goth tag certainly doesn't help. I also think there's an element of male journalists not knowing what to make of Siousxie.

[Insouciant Western People]

Siousxie and The Banshees have never managed to earn the cool that their contemporaries like The Clash. The Pistols, P.I.L. Magazine, The Slits etc now have. Maybe they were too close to Goth but somehow that doesn't even work as The Cure are so revered now and they were very close to The Banshees. Maybe they will get their day.

I think you're right. I'm not sure what it is ..the goth tag certainly doesn't help. I also think there's an element of male journalists not knowing what to make of Siousxie.

Purely based on my own circles of friends (and this is people who got into them in the mid-to-late 80s and early 90s), the Banshees albums never seemed to permeate into peoples' affections the way that say, individual records by Joy Division, The Cure, The Bunnymen and The Smiths did. People would typically have Unknown Pleasures, Closer, Crocodiles, Ocean Rain, Porcupine, Heaven Up Here, Head on The Door, The Top, Faith, Seven Seconds, Disintegration, The Queen is Dead, Meat is Murder, Strangeways... etc.

And then they'd have The Best of Siouxsie & The Banshees.

[Fonz]

The Banshees really evolved, from a pretty (musically) limited origin (I’m thinking pre-Scream bootlegs and demos) to what was a pretty good debut album. It always sounded to me like some of the rubbish got saved for Join Hands. From Kaleidoscope through to Tinderbox they had an amazing run-incredibly varied music. Fret-wankery. Not a bit of it.

I really like Join Hands (but not as much as The Scream). Icon is a great track. And Playground Twist. The guitar mayhem makes Television sound like knitting. Nothing wrong with knitting after all! And I do like Television, but prefer the Banshees by a distance.

You definitely picked the two best tracks off Join Hands.
‘Icon’ made a great live opener.

[The Modernist]

Siousxie and The Banshees have never managed to earn the cool that their contemporaries like The Clash. The Pistols, P.I.L. Magazine, The Slits etc now have. Maybe they were too close to Goth but somehow that doesn't even work as The Cure are so revered now and they were very close to The Banshees. Maybe they will get their day.

I think you're right. I'm not sure what it is ..the goth tag certainly doesn't help. I also think there's an element of male journalists not knowing what to make of Siousxie.

Purely based on my own circles of friends (and this is people who got into them in the mid-to-late 80s and early 90s), the Banshees albums never seemed to permeate into peoples' affections the way that say, individual records by Joy Division, The Cure, The Bunnymen and The Smiths did. People would typically have Unknown Pleasures, Closer, Crocodiles, Ocean Rain, Porcupine, Heaven Up Here, Head on The Door, The Top, Faith, Seven Seconds, Disintegration, The Queen is Dead, Meat is Murder, Strangeways... etc.

And then they'd have The Best of Siouxsie & The Banshees.

You could maybe say the same thing about Magazine. I think it's more to do with The Banshees emerging a couple of years earlier than the bands you mention.

[naughty boy]

Except there's no Magazine - The Singles

No. Nick's right.

[The Modernist]

Except there's no Magazine - The Singles

No. Nick's right.

There was a Magazine compilation, I can't remember what it was called now.

Nick's right about what? You only have to look at The Banshees album sales to see they were one of the most popular alternative bands of that era.

[naughty boy]

Yeah, OK. It's not so much that he's right - rather that I had the same experience.

You'd get fans of alternative music who'd single out Cure, Bunnymen, JD, Smiths, whatever albums - but I don't recall anyone talking in the same way about the Banshees. In fact I barely remember them being mentioned at all. It was only when I went to uni in the late 80s that I met fans, and they weren't common.

Maybe it's a north/south thing. They were seen as a little too distant, too esoteric somehow for folk from Barnsley or Hull or Gateshead.

[The Modernist]

Yeah, OK. It's not so much that he's right - rather that I had the same experience.

You'd get fans of alternative music who'd single out Cure, Bunnymen, JD, Smiths, whatever albums - but I don't recall anyone talking in the same way about the Banshees. In fact I barely remember them being mentioned at all. It was only when I went to uni in the late 80s that I met fans, and they weren't common.

Maybe it's a north/south thing. They were seen as a little too distant, too esoteric somehow for folk from Barnsley or Hull or Gateshead.

As I say, it's an age thing. If you or the people you were talking about had been five years older, they'd probably perceive The Banshees in a very different light. I understand what you and Nick are saying - I felt more attached to The Bunnymen, for example, than The Banshees.But that's because I bought their debut single, they were the first live band that I saw and so on, whereas The Banshees were already pretty well established by the time I got into alternative music/ post-punk. Given I think I'm a few years older than you and Nick, I'd imagine it's similar for you but even more so.
I think we sometimes try and objectify what are actually quite personal experiences when it comes to music..not that that's a bad thing necessarily, we wouldn't have a lot of debate without it! But it sometimes means we pigeonhole particular artists according to the personal context with which we first encountered them.

[naughty boy]

Yes, I think that's definitely true.

Still - I just don't think they were anywhere near as popular as the aforementioned bands, despite performing as well (I think!) in the singles charts. They're certainly less often cited today.

[Brickyard Jack]

Third division really. A new low.

[The Modernist]

..which brings us round full circle to the points Harry Irene made. I do think they're deserving of more credit, people forget what a big influence they were on bands like Joy Division and The Bunnymen. Their musical footprints are all over that period of British music from 1979 through to about 1982.

[naughty boy]

No. They're rubbish

[yomptepi]

I think it is a valid point that the Banshees have never made a classic album.

Marquee Moon certainly is.

So maybe making five or six really good records does not add up to the same as one classic album.

That could be true.

[naughty boy]

And talk about SELL OUT! the Banshees gave up all the unlistenable tribal 'esoteric' garbage in 1983 to wage war on the pop charts!

[Quaco]

I can't be said to be an expert on either one, but I do listen to this



quite a bit more than I listen to this