Best Musical City: NYC VS London?
 

for me its NYC all the way. birth of bebop, punk (and arguably post-punk with no wave), hip hop and DJ culture in general, disco, etc.

and here's a picture of a punk lolita nyc scenester completely irrelevant to this topic, but i;m gonna post it anyway

http://robertcarrithers.typepad.com/...f4f3970b-800wi

definitely new york.
they have Animal Collective and Battles,
guitarist/keyboardist/singer guy from battles is a genius so i'm gonna put tyondai down too, for his awesome solo albums.

Led Zeppelin
Rolling Stones
The Kinks
Queen
Sex Pistols
Cream
T.Rex
The Clash

I like more bands from London than I do New York, so London for me.

New York is pretty useless to me as far as punk goes (NYHC is a joke, and I have little to no interest in protopunk or No Wave). There's some pretty good Long Island bands though. London gave us my all time favorite band, The Clash, as well as Pink Floyd and The Who (if they count) so I guess it's that. I voted for New Orleans though.

the NYHC documentary was a joke and does not represent the new york punk scene in ANY way

I didn't get my opinion from a documentary, I just really hate NYHC.

I'll go with NYC. DJ Eco, Avenger, and Filo & Peri are all from there. I enjoy some British producers but none are from London.

London.

London is great but as far as I know it only started being a great musical city in the 60s while amazing stuff was coming out of New York many decades before that. My vote goes with NYC.

Neither.

Definitely New York over London. my best choice would be though Los Angeles or Atlanta

Atlanta? Hell no. There are probably more good bands coming out of London or New York in a year than have ever come out of Atlanta.

Why are New York winning so heavily? I really can't think of THAT many great bands to come out of NYC..

Are you kidding? There are a TON of great bands from NYC. And that goes back a good 70-80 years, from the recent Brooklyn indie scene to the birth of hip-hop in the Bronx to all the way back to the jazz age in Harlem.

Off the top of my head I can think of Sonic Youth, I'm either having a mental block (which is more than likely the case.) But I don't think I have THAT many bands from NYC, then again a lot of American bands I like I'm not sure of where they're from, because it doesn't mean as much to me as it does when the band is British..

Music of New York City

Some of my favorite New York bands: Velvet Underground, Silver Apples, Television, Modern Lovers, Suicide, Sonic Youth, Swans, No Wave scene, Laurie Anderson, Glenn Branca, Ut, Liars and many more. So yeah, New York for me.

Well there's a pretty good chance if it's American indie/garage rock/whatever from the past decade or so it's from New York for starters.

Woah, woah, woah. Easy there. Modern Lovers are from my hometown of Boston. Let's give credit where credit is due. :)

Didn't realise they had a good garage rock scene, if you can call it a scene.. I love the raw energetic sound, but I don't have enough garage rock as I should have. I may have to look at some great NYC garage rock bands later when I'm not in work. Any stand out NYC garage rockers that are a must hear? I think I definitely need to improve my collection of music from NYC, at the moment it looks a bit flimsy.

Oh, yes :banghead: Whenever I think of Television, Modern Lovers immediately come to my mind, so I always put them together. Silly me.

Well I'm not really a big fan of neo-garage rock so I'm not the best person ask, and I'm sure you're familiar with the Strokes and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. I just know that in the early 00s a huge chunk of American indie-ish music was coming out of Brooklyn and garage rock was a part of that.

Despite being from London, I would say if you`re into punk, new-wave, indie or garage then it has to be New York for all the rest though then London.

Also, any city that produces a band like Sonic Youth must be f**cking A.

All the rest? Surely not jazz or hip-hop.

Yeah Yeah Yeah, I like both of them bands. (See what I did there?) I probably like more bands than I realise, though not enough. That said, I feel London does have the stronger bands. However, I must find some great New York bands when I get home, I feel I'm missing out on a great music scene.

I`m into rock and metal therefore I`m pretty ignorant on stuff like hip hop etc:p:

Blond Redhead is another New York band I like. I'm not really a fan of the new wave, post-punk, garage revival scene from the 00s, but I liked the first album from The Strokes and I love The Rapture (I've only heard one album though)

The thing that's great about New York is that it's not just one great music scene, it's a whole array of great music scenes spanning many, many decades. Bebop, punk, indie, hip-hop, merengue, metal, hardcore, no wave, house music, swing, salsa, dancepunk, folk and many more have all had significant scenes in NYC at different points in time.

There's been a decent amount of metal from New York over the years. I know there are a lot of great metal bands from the UK, but are many of them actually from London?

I'm too simple for all them genres. :o: I've only just started to dip my toe into a bit of Hip-Hop never mind Salsa..

I tried to get into some Soul, but it didn't really happen. But yeah, I guess New York is better even if you're not necessarily into the fast array of genres they've put out there, you still have to respect it. I'm still going with London, just because I like more bands from there.. But that may change soon.

Even in terms of just rock music NYC has a ton to offer. And if you're dipping your toes into hip-hop New York really can't be beat, being the birthplace of the genre and all.

^ exactly the same for me, also some good older bands like The Fugs and all the great jazz music that was around in NYC. Also, one of my old favourite hardcore bands (Reagan Youth) are from New York. Great city for music... my favourites are basically the ones you listed though.

^^And I forgot to mention Live Skull. I also love Bongwater but I'm not sure if they were exactly from New York.

Btw, GravitySlips, of all the people here that I've noticed, you have the most similar taste to mine:beer: And thanks for recommending Sun City Girls. Torch of the Mystics is great and is quickly becoming one of my favorites. So I'll be checking out their other albums for sure.

You heard it here first folks, you're never going to beat london because 50 years ago they had some decent bands.

I don't know about you guys, but in the next American Presidential Election, I'm voting for Harry Truman.

you see for me the velvets alone **** on all of those bands..

London has a lot of bigger name bands...the kind of big name bands critics love to suck off every chance they get. The thing about NYC, it has a whole rich underground scene with these amazing bands you never heard of, that only put out one record or so.

Not the best examples man.

What's wrong with Queen and the Sex Pistols? Great bands. Even though I've not listened to either in months.

I don't like either.

Merely stating personal preferences means I'm saying London is the be all and end all of music?

If you read the conversation that followed, it's more me not having much music from New York and me having more from London, so at the moment I prefer London, even though New York probably shits on it because of the wide range of music that came out and is still coming out of New York. And I plan on changing that and listening to a bit more music from New York, but at the moment I prefer London, maybe that will change. We'll see.

Yeah, I did notice we had very similar taste :)

I'm delighted you liked Sun City Girls, that album is one of my favourites for sure. And that reminds me, I've still to listen to that Cromagnon album you sent me, I'll get to that soon ;)

Interesting you mention Live Skull, I have an EP of theirs and it's very good - I always wanted to check out more but it's hard to find their stuff. But the mention of them has reminded me of two other NY noise rock bands I like a lot - Cop Shoot Cop and Band of Susans. I really wish I'd been around New York in the 80s when all these bands were playing live regularly (including Ut, SY and Swans).

I think London is the city of Music many Art and Music's best schools are over there and NY is the business hub, people there only think about money.