Who?

sometimes i wonder if you've ever even listened to or like rock music beyond 4 or 5 bands, or if you just use your knowledge of theory to cover your arse.

I think the thing is that I tend to listen to how things are put together and ignore the electricity side of things. By which I mean I hear MBV and go 'three-chord pop' because I don't really listen for the finer subtleties of tone production once it's past the phase of attack.

I sometimes wonder if your willfull ignorance of the diverse act of experiencing music is an act of internet antagonism or due to your overwhelming vacuity.

90% of the cutesy indie songs i've heard sound like a cover of sunday morning, that's only one song so i'd say a massive influence is present

You don't hear them in The Fall?

A bit, yeah, but I can hear Bo Diddley and skiffle more.

any one who has ever listened to and enjoyed a beatles album has been influenced by it, whether they know or not.

more people listen to beatles than ramones, hence, more influential

I think to be fair that while its obvious the Velvets had a massive influence on The Fall, it's only on their really early releases that it's really pushed to the fore. Certainly by the time Brix joined they'd lost most of it.

Speaking of Bo Diddley, you won't have heard anything better then this today.

the Beatles songbook is the single most covered in the history of rock n roll.

I think it is well into the multiple tens of thousands AT LEAST of recorded cover versions.

While I see what you're saying I think that enjoying something you're exposed to doesn't necessarily lead to you being influenced by it, at least not in any meaningful sense. I've listened to and enjoyed innumerable pieces of music that I can quite safely say have had no significant influence on me, other than that I quite liked them.

Sister Ray was one of the songs that inspired Mark E Smith to form a band. To name only one recent Fall song, '50 Year Old Man', the guitar part is lifted wholesale from the Velvets. I don't hear VU too much in Loop myself, more Can and The Stooges. They were undoubtedly a big influence on them, though.

Look dude, see the poll, and observe who I voted for. This is just ridiculous.

They haven't influenced everyone.

The thing is, VU didn't invent that way of playing guitar - watch the Bo Diddly Herr Rail posted - that's not a million miles away from Sister Ray. And, of anyone, I think the Fall are much more aware of the rockabilly/ early Rn'R than most white boys with guitars. I think Smith takes from a similar pool to VU, but he talks a lot about Reggae as well, which you can only really hear in the parity of the basslines.

Y'know, I should add, I don't really care either way. I'd like to think that the Fall exist in a hermetical bubble, but they clearly don't. I personally have a hard time hearing much influence one band had on another, and when I do no-one ever seems to agree with me when I do (NIN = sexless Prince, for instance), so it's really not worth me pursuing.

I'm the same when it comes to Loop. To be honest, were it not for their cover of Mother Sky I'd be pretty hard pushed to find much of a Can influence either.

Sure, the Velvet Underground themselves were massively influenced by blues and soul music, as well, to an extent, by contemporaries like The Who and The Rolling Stones. This without counting the whole Theatre Of Eternal Music thing, and girl bands that were knocking around at the time.

You don't really hear much of an influence on their records in terms of, say, blues music, though, and that's because they had this idea that it was ridiculous for a band of white boys and girls to try out-bluesing the real deal.

They even had a rule in the band that said you'd get taxed if you tried to play blues bars on a VU song. At least that's what the legend says, and it was confirmed by themselves at the time of their reunion.

It's not so much in the way the songs themselves sound, I hear it more in their repetitive playing, and the way they made use of the voice.

That's interesting, given that a lot of what I've heard of solo Cale seems to be almost like meditations on blues scales. Makes a lot of sense now you've said it though.

The idea of having that rule in the band was Lou Reed's, so it makes even more sense.

i would say the beatles for reasons that they where around before the ramones and they have broader appeal. not that they are better or worse and the bands/people they influenced dont always make the most creative interesting things but it was the liverpool for sure.