The line about everyone who bought the first VU album started a band is usually attributed to Brian Eno. I wouldn't say they were a precursor to punk so much as

The line about everyone who bought the first VU album started a band is usually attributed to Brian Eno. I wouldn't say they were a precursor to punk so much as to all things indie. The Stooges were the biggest precursor to punk. John Cale, the avant-garde genius from the Velvets, did produce the Stooges, but that was after Lou Reed had kicked him out. I've never been a huge VU fan musically though I like them fine, but there's no denying they were sui generis and everything art-cool in rock music since can be traced back to them. (I was a huge fan of Cale's 1970s solo albums though. Do you know them? Equal parts exquisite and menacing.) Pixies... why sorry? I admit I never got them though - not then and not since. I need more melody and song structure than that, and the ironic-detached thing only gets me so far. Re Cobain, he may have said that, but it isn't true. Nevermind is classic because he pulled off what no one else had and blended the indie-noise thing with classic pop songwriting. I think that was genius and his tragedy was being embedded in a subculture that didn't respect that. There's a documentary floating around online (edit: at http://www.dangerousminds.net/comments/kurt_cobain_about_a_son http://www.dangerousminds.net/comments/kurt_cobain_about_a_s...) in which he says that his original idea for a band was Black Sabbath crossed with bubblegum and that no one else got it. In that subculture (which I remember well, and the pretentious twattage that went with it) it was de rigeur to piss all over the pop side; that was how you established your cred. It was also a limiting move: it's why the music from that period isn't anywhere close to the level of the Ramones or Pistols or many others. (I suppose we disagree here.) Anyway, Cobain put them together and millions of people loved it and he never lived that down. Nor alas did he ever do it again. Re the Pixies - have you seen http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEPi5EQjEpw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEPi5EQjEpw? David Sanborn, yuppy purveyor of intolerable smooth-jazz, somehow had the coolest musical thing going on TV in the late 80s. It was canceled after he had the Residents perform with Conway Twitty!