Shoegaze was and is much more than Muffs and power chords. It's about pedal placement and getting interesting sounds. I love SRV too, but a lot of people feel the same way about him as Mick evidently feels about the Shoegaze sound.
That Pedal Show Absolutely! I just felt that more of the sonic idiosyncrasies could have been addressed in a Shoegaze show. Like reverbs and chorus before fuzz and delays, the use of multiple delays, etc... Having said that, I do look forward to the show every week and appreciate that they even come up around holidays.
You guys should do a video checking out the old school effects units that the early shoegaze band used, like the alesis midiverb 2 and the yamaha fx500, exploring those reverse reverb sounds that bands like slowdive are known for. Amazing show guys! greetings from a fan in Bolivia! :D
great muff sounds, but you guys probably should have tried covering a few shoegaze songs to get the proper feel of them, I've found that the wall of sound is mostly created by even, non-patterned strumming. Also Sonic Youth is not shoegaze!
+Robin S Yeah, I expected better from these guys. Their videos are usually informative but this one falls short in favour of shallow cliches :| +Ray Grimm Exactly! reverse reverb>fuzz what a missed opportunity!
I'd put some Sonic Youth stuff into the shoegaze category. they're a band that took the shoegaze thing and did something else with it and combined it with other things, sort of like Smashing Pumpkins (although they combined it with other stuff obviously).
Sonic Youth didn't "take shoegaze and did something else with it", they were doing the big guitars + melodies thing way before shoegaze was a thing and always kept an experimental edge even when they mellowed out later in their career. They never straight up chased the blissed-out straightforward structure most shoegaze bands had. Granted, with bands like Swirles lumped into 'shoegaze', it's apparent the term 'shoegaze' is a bit meaningless in the wider picture. Sonic Youth shared similarities with what would become shoegaze, but saying any of their stuff is shoegaze is a bit of a stretch.
Wow are you serious? Lets see. "Shoegaze was around before Sonic Youth." SY formed in 1981 dipshit, shoegaze was popular in the late 80s. SY a garage band, the end? Oh so now we're just gonna focus on their early 80s discography? Ignoring the fact that they have 20 YEARS worth, which includes albums ranging from daydream nation to rather ripped? Shoegaze being shoegaze because of the amount of pedals they used and melodies/droning guitars? What do you make of post rock then? What about bands that aren't my bloody valentine? I don't need you to tell me what shoegaze is. People like you need to be less self righteous and do some reading up. I agree that lots of bands try to shoegaze but rarely get it right, especially those that try to rip off mbv with power chords.
That Pedal Show have you ever heard of this band in the early 90s called "Adorable" with their album called "Against Perfection" that's a total shoegaze
"We realised we knew nothing about a genre and didn't fancy learning about that genre, so here's some pedals that are almost totally unrelated to that genre"
go watch all the episodes and then read your comment you will understand that your argument is super invalid … you learn A LOT with this youtube channel … and this not television if you dont like it just go watch another show … you know you have that power on youtube right ????
I can't believe you guy's lived in England and missed out on all that great stuff from late 80's and 90's music coming out of England at the time. "Shoegaze" was just a bit of all the great stuff coming out then. I grew up listening to The Smiths, Ride, Stone Roses, etc... mainly coming out of England.
+Jin J We didn't 'miss it', more ignored it. In the same way the metallers ignored blues, or the punk ignored jazz. Dan grew up in Australia, btw, and he heard no music at all. Just shearing sheep and fighting crocodiles his entire childhood. ;0)
@@ThatPedalShow LOL. Love shoegaze but who cares if you got it wrong or right. Learned about fuzz and made me want fuzz pedals. I think a LOT of people are just discovering or re-discovering shoegaze now anyways. A bit late to be so hard-core.
@@ThatPedalShow There's a huge story there you've only got bits of. MBV's Loveless came out six weeks after Nevermind. Yes, grunge largely eclipsed the UK indie-alt sounds (Manchester 'baggy,' shoegaze, and a universe of other great bands like House of Love, Adorable) for a few years. You're right to note the 'trance' bit and certainly there was plenty of MDMA involved. Till the grungies went and made heroin chic again. By '95 of course it was all cocaine and Britpop.
I applaud the guys for stepping WAY out of their comfort zone, but they may as well just have done a video about fuzzes and left the shoegaze part out of it. :)
I'm a big fan of this show, and I realize that this is years ago that you taped this, but honestly, the ignorance and condescension shown in the first 8 minutes of this episode, aimed at a very robust and distinct genre of guitar music is kind of appalling. Being able to play blues riffs is not the pinnacle of guitar achievement and you guys looking down your noses at a style that doesn't necessarily include traditional solos is a bit boring and tawdry, don't you think? I've learned so much from you both. And that makes me feel quite embarrassed to think that you have no idea what you're talking about when it comes to this style, and then you act like it's a style searching for legitimacy. My guess is that you'd both learn a great deal about guitar from spending time with Kevin Shields, or J Mascis, or Adam Franklin. They've all made incredible contributions that should be celebrated, not lampooned as some fringe genre that you've tackled as a way to cover fan bases. I've never seen you both act so smug, and it's quite off-putting.
We know we know we know. The learning point is NEVER try to be funny and lighthearted with a genre of music whose fans are so passionate about it. As a fan of blues, I’ve got so used to having the shit kicked out of me by people who don’t like it that I’ve sort of come to be at peace with it. And it’s a really serious learning point of departure where we realise that EVERYTHING is subjective and personal about guitar. And, ultimately, if you’re offended by somebody else’s approach to music or media in general, you just have to get over it. It’s your problem. But yeah, it was a bad video and we should never have made it. Would you like us to delete it? I’d be very happy to. Cheers! (Mick here)
@@ThatPedalShow Thanks for the reply. In truth I didn't think you'd bother considering how old this video is, and I'm not sure my attitude deserved a response anyway. I probably would have told me to fuck off. Clearly I had one too many glasses of cabernet when I wrote that, so apologies for going a bit overboard with my indignance. The video is still very useful for what you go through, so I wouldn't delete it. Again, sorry about the aggression. The internet got the best of me. You didn't deserve that. Thanks for what you do.
You know you Love playing Shoegaze ,its so much fun playing with pedals. Better than those boring old blues riffs that Everyone plays over and over. The 5 tones dull the senses. Do you buy pedals just to make your blues playing sound better? How did it feel having hair? Shoegaze is pedals and this is a pedal show. Theres more out there than Overdrive and Am pentatonic LOL !!!!
Love the show, but I have a bone to pick. What does this episode really have to do with shoegaze? You mentioned Verb, but there was no real discussion of how some of the textures in shoegaze are created. Kevin Shields is famous for running a reverse reverb into his fuzz. Many other players have used delay and other types of echo in front of dirt/fuzz to achieve different textures. This episode is focused solely on fuzz pedals...yet no discussion about rethinking the pedal chain to achieve true shoegaze tones. And no mention of the Keeley Loomer pedal which is essentially Kevin Shields tone in a box. Love the show! Cheers!
Yeah: wrong amps plus wrong pedals plus a pretty vague understanding of what differentiated shoegaze from the US noise-pop side (Dinosaur Jr, Pavement, etc.) makes this frustrating to watch.
Would love to see a Dinosaur Jr/Sonic Youth centered episode! The former is the reason I bought a Jazzmaster. Also good news for Dan, you actually won't need to get an offset on loan for that kind of episode; J Mascis uses a vintage Tele into an AC30 on a lot of the post Farm studio recordings.
For anyone still watching this today, it's great that the TPS guys mentioned the current climate and how it would suit a revamp of the shoegaze scene. So many great young bands doing this kind of thing like Slow Crush, Elephant Tree and even bands that do similar things mixed with heavier metal genres like Deafhaven, Respire etc.
Yeah you just kinda have to listen in a different way. Particularly when you have weird things like verb before your gain, or subtle modulation, or tremolo bending techniques, there can be a whole lot in that sound if you listen closely. And it can become mesmerizing as Daniel was noting towards the end of the clip. In ways it's like when you guys sit and listen and pay attention to all that detail in the trails of some of those reverbs or delays in those shootouts... it's just about coming up with songs specifically around those sounds. It's just a different mindset you take when you sit down with the guitar. Things become much more about texture, tone, and melody than riffyness, and playing off the heavily effected or drawn out vocals which can obviously be off-putting or boring to some players... depending on what you grew up listening to. For several of the bands there is an element of 60s pop or surf throwback if you listen to it carefully. It's just that they've taken a little more melancholy approach in key and texture. I was in jr high and high school when the genre first emerged. Here in the States it was kinda one of the sub-genre's of alternative (120 minutes anyone?), but wasn't breaking into the mainstream like others were at the time. I was more into Jane's Addiction, Primus, Rush and getting into the Pumpkins first album around that time... but have been completely sucked into the genre over the past 6 months or so.. and my "Shoegaze, Fuzzy, Reverb" playlist on Spotify has become my daily go-to it seems. There's a lot of good stuff that's come recently though that's either completely steeped in the genre or heavily influenced by: Fleeting Joys Ringo Deathstarr Whirr Cheetahs No Joy Nothing Pinkshinyultrablast Sounds Like Sunset Flyying Colours Deafcult Infinity Girl Amusement Parks on Fire And more of that surfy pop thing going... The Brother Kite Raveonettes Real Estate Diiv Lots of big effects boards with those guys.
Offset guitars? Lush; Gibson ES-335, Epiphine Riviera, Rickenbacker, Telecaster, Gibson SG. Ride; Gibson ES-335, Les Paul, Rickenbacker, Gretsch Tennessean. Swervedriver; Les Paul. Slowdive; Telecaster, Epiphone Casino, Telecaster, Rickenbacker. MBV play Jazzmasters and the singer of Ride plays a Jaguar. But in the main it's Telecaster/Rickenbacker/Gibson - plus they were old instruments that sounded amazing.
Smashing Pumpkins was very much Shoegaze on their first LP, Gish.Corgan has said that Gish was a conscious MBV ripoff. Siamese Dream kept the Big Muff thing going, big time.
Verve's first album 'A Storm in Heaven' is my personal favourite of the genre. Saw them live in '94, when they had just added 'The' and were transitioning to a more classic rock sound. But Nick McCabe still brought on the wall of beatific noise: Strat or 335 through a Quadraverb and tape echos into cranked Mesa/Boogie and Jazz Chorus amps.
shoegaze was never about big muff, MBV, Slodive, Ride, JAMC, Swirlies never used muffs. Big muff kills all the chime of the guitar but shoegaze sound is mostly based on oldschool jangly sound
Seriously, I was expecting more RAT based pedals especially considering that's what Kevin Shields was using as his primary drive pedal for live shows. Never understood and association with big muffs and shoegaze, it always sounded more like cranked AC30/Marshall tone to me with a lot of open/suspended chords
Not to sound like those metal kids but Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr. While not Shoegaze are 2 bands that really inspired Shoegaze. UK/Ireland bands were playing their version of American Noise bands mainly Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr. Think of those 2 bands as the Chicago Blues and My Bloody Valentine and Slowdive as Cream
man! i love you 2 guys! my fav gear show of all time! but in this episode you kinda made me mad! caus you kinda made fun of the shoegaze movement, sound and even the people involved, i love shoegaze! and love good old fashion guitar rock, love hendrix, SRV, etc wish is obiuos your main thing ,but as i went on to see this episode of the show! every few minutes i couldn't help feel a little offended by some of your comments! i know it your showan you can do as you please! but one of the things that made me love you guys! was the way you passionately talk of all music! and today wasn't like that! this doesn't mean i wont wash the show any more and its not like my opinion really matters and maybe you won't even read the comment! but i just felt like saying tis! you guys rock too much to be making fun of a genre just because it's not really your thing or because you think it's not as good as some other things! im a big fan of that pedal show and shoegaze music so after the long rant ! hope you the best awesome show
I was today years old when I found this episode and my god was it worth the wait. Watching these guys make good fun of an entire sub-genre (which I consider myself a big fan of) was hilarious...and holy balls were these guys baked.
Commenting in 2024. Can you guys get out of your comfort zone and give me the real sh!t again. The awkward intro where Mick hasn't got a clue. C'mon! Give it to me!!
Ride from Oxford started as a top shoegazing band, also The Dandy Warhols wandered there every now and then in the early days. I personally think it started with the availability of cheap strong cider, and army surplus stores! :) The best version was Curve, they took the essence of it and added a dance beat... ultra hypnotic! Check out their LP Doppleganger... very cool still.
Clearly, you don't have any respect for shoegaze guitar players. That's okay. But if you open your minds and ears to the possibilities, you might actually find something useful that you can apply elsewhere. Personally, I like lots of different music, including shoegaze and despite what Mick inferred, I'm not a druggie, yet I've enjoyed MBV loud as f*** shows that were amazing. I also saw SRV back in the day because he was amazing too. Love of one does not preclude love of the other. For the record, Jazzmaster pickups also differ in that they have their magnets as pole pieces whereas P90s have screws as pole pieces with large magnets underneath. Completely different construction and completely different sounds. Fender has further complicated this issue by making some JM pickups like P90s (the J Mascis signature guitars all have P90 style pickups in JM shells). I wish you both all the best. Cheers!
+Thomas Kirby Don't be offended Thomas. Not liking something is not about being closed minded - it's just a personal preference. I worked on music magazines for nearly 20 years in an environment of radically different music tastes. People argued passionately about why music was 'good' or 'bad' and it all just seemed so stupid to me. You either like it or you don't and there's no good or bad about it. Some music you can work at - I really couldn't understand Zappa for example, but now I love him. Some of him. On the respect front, we respect anyone and everyone who plays the guitar and cares about it. We might poke some gentle fun from time to time, and we know that anybody with a backbone should do the same to us. For me this video proves what I kinda know. We absolutely should not touch stuff that we're not passionate about because it just kills it. Maybe there's a route that involves getting guests in. That might work. Thanks for watching!
So no delays? Reverse reverbs? Modulation? Stacking Fuzzes? Idk if I would call this a shoegaze video, more of a "lets try out a bunch of big muff clones that you could theoretically use in a shoegaze context". In some weird way it makes me happy that some people dont give af about shoegaze. And ps, Brian Eno said in 91 when MBV put out Loveless that "MVB is the new template for pop music".
"imagine a room of likeminded unwashed..." Dan that should be the title of your next novel! That was bloody poetic ;) Great show and a great excuse for you guys to mess around with alot of fuzz pedals. Love it! I'm imagining a cock-rock-chorus-extravaganza for your next installment ;)
I know a lot of people have commented on this video to complain, and I'm sorry to be another one but I'd like to say that there's much more to shoegazing than just plugging into a dirt box and cranking your amp. Things like chord voicings, alternate tunings, drones and whammy bar technique are as important to the sound as pedals. Actually, take away the distortion and a lot of those bands play chords that are surprisingly folky.
While Kevin Shields and some others played through Marshalls, you'll often see players like Neil Halstead (Slowdive) playing through JC 120s. And I recall seeing a lot of Boss pedals on boards (PN-2, DD-3, etc.).
Thanks for the videos though, I really enjoy them. I guess I was just a little disappointed after the initial excitement from reading the title. I was hoping for you guys to play with reverse reverb into Fuzz. Delays into fuzz. Fuzz into delays. Tremelo gliding. Alternate tunings. 7th chord and open voicing dreaminess etc.
I do not understand why people say Nirvana killed shoegaze when bands like the Smashing Pumpkins and Stoner Metal bands like Kyuss did essentially noisy early 90s metal/grunge but with a shoegaze effect. SP was literally interviewed about how shoegaze impacted their sound. Nirvana even replicates their sound too. I think the problem was more labels ignoring shoegaze and focusing on the gritty side of grunge/desert-stoner and even sludge metal. I also think it impacted doom metal and trip hop too. People just forget how much of an impact it had. Trance/Techno even replicated that loud trance state to a degree.
Interesting! It’s kinda funny when we can zoom out and look at it historically. I think it’s been the same down the generations, Mick here. You have artists who want to do their thing, then you have labels and press who need to label it, put a package on it and sell it. I guess what ‘killed’ shoegaze is what ‘kills’ any band or movement, and that’s a withdrawal of income. “That blonde-haired dude with the habit is going to sell all the records this year, so unless all you other assholes want to keep doing it for the art, it’s over.” I genuinely believe record labels and press are that cynical. Ergo, it’s all just music. The money and the sales effort is what forces it into a genre that can be sold to da kidz. I wonder if Cobain hated Nevermind? It’s a slickly produced pop record. Hmmmm?
Years ago, I was watching a live Pearl Jam video . My father walked in, stood there for a second, and then said, "Why do you insist on associating with the unwashed set?" I really miss those little nuggets.
One would think "That Pedal Show" would have been a staple of shoe gazers had youtube been around. The very idea of shoe gazing was guitarist staring down at their massive pedalboards.
+Robert Murphy Indeed. To be fair we did call it Shades of Shoegaze and led on the fuzzes and verbs. Still, seems that it's a very well loved and protected genre!
I think we should appreciate that while Mick and Dan may not be the biggest fans of the genre, they still researched, recorded, and edited an entire show based on viewer requests. I think they did a great job demoing the pedals, and I could handle the sometimes negative comments about a genre I really like. I know I don't have only nice things to say about all kinds of music. The satire at the beginning was cheesy and funny too, and I think it came from a good place, not meant to be totally dismissive. Thanks for putting on this show guys!
+Tim Dubroy Thank you Tim, very balanced of you. I think we always knew we would antagonise some people if we took a lighthearted look at a genre and you're right - it always comes from a good place with us. People see it as some kind of snobbery which of course it isn't. Hard for us to be snobbish about music! We like rock'n'roll ferchrissakes. Thanks for watching!
Not a problem! You guys put in a lot of work and should be allowed to state the occasional opinion (you are usually unbelievably balanced). Big thank you for the show and for the advice. Per your suggestion I swapped my modded SD-1 for a Tube Screamer Mini into my Dr. Scientist Frazz Dazzler fuzz, and that helped bring some mids into my Fender clone!
Well said, Tim, this was pretty much my take on it as well. Also, if anyone (like I do) wants really fine-grained and super indepth discussion of various shoegaze sounds and how to achieve them, there's no shortage of that on the internet.
Agreed! The Internet does provide every flavour of critic and as detailed a discussion as anyone needs (or doesn't need) about this any any other guitar gear topic. I hope that Dan and Mick continue to take a fun and lighthearted approach to this stuff, especially when they go outside their comfort zone based on fan requests.
39:38 Mick: "What have we learned?" Dan: "I learned that... I like Big Muffs".. - I was sooooo thinking Mick would say "...And you can not lie". (ala Baby Got Back).
A Jazzmaster!!!! Finally!!!! I LOVE my Jazzmaster!!! But you gotta have the rhythm circuit. It MAKES that guitar. So versatile. But I think this episode might have been more aptly titled "Doom Rock riffs". Lol! Love the show. Keep it up!
Love your shows generally, but this was awful. You totally missed the musical point of the genre, AND you totally missed the sound by not using any of the relevant pedal chains. Basically, you did a show about big muffs playing loud. A few hints: try a REVERSE reverb effect (eg Hardwire RV-7) IN FRONTof a fuzz/muff, try mixing that with a little dry signal, and try playing some maj7 shapes with drone notes on the high strings and some moveable power shapes on the low string with syncopated rhythms. Try again, PLEASE, because you guys are awesome. Maybe bring in someone who knows the genre and have a show that expands your own horizons while you expand ours? That would be cool :)
+John Peterson Thanks John. Yep, we got pretty beat up on this one. It's what happens when you do stuff you don't really like. We're up for revisiting if we could get a prominent shoegazer to come on the show, but we also learned a lesson. I sort of take the blame - Mick here. I really didn't want to do the episode. Dan did. Neither of us put the time in however and that's when it's crap. We live and learn!
Only Shallow is SUCH A GOOD SONG. Also, I have Earthquaker Devices Hoof Reaper (cloven hoof, tone reaper and octave up button all in one box) and it rocks. I also have their avalanche run reverb and delay and the two together (reverb before fuzz) gets that shoe gaze sound no problem.
HAHAHAHAHA Brilliant!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm not a massive Muff fan, unless it's on a Davey G solo..... This video is however one of the best ones you guy's have done yet! Absolutely hilarious, and when I thought the jokes were over.... "that's not a knife!" HAHAHAHA mint!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Great demo! My ehx little big muff sounds good with digitech polara, obscura, boss dd7, eqd depth and mxr dyna comp.. Kevin shields has a little big muff.. Stay home
I think Bilinda Butcher from My Bloody Valentine was a Boss HM-2 user? How about doing an episode on the Boss HM-2 as well? Seeing how this pedal is a pretty coveted pedal once again recently.
Ahhhhh, smell the snobbery?......not to be confused with shrubbery....Love the show boys...and to be clear, Mr. Mick, power chords are magical... power chords led to my first snogging. LOVE power chords
+Aaron Carothers Hey I didn't say they weren't magical, I just said I was running out of them! They are the most magic thing of all - I grew up on Quo fercrhrissakes! ;0) Thanks for watching.
I just put one speaker in from of me and the other behind and sat in the middle with 2 delays (set at different speeds) and a reverb on. It was my first time. We always remember the first time ;) Props to the vid.
I've been on a shoegaze fix for a couple of months now and been GASing for a Jazzmaster or Jaguar. Then you guys come along with this video. I haven't clicked on a video this fast.
yeah I'd second this, affordable, punchy and have kept their aftermarket value and even increased for good reason. Mine has been a workhorse for nearly ten years since I blew my first student loan on it in '08. Good times.
Thank for the reply, bands like Mogwai, Russian Circles, God is an Astronaut, Godspeed you Black Emperor (and many other) are often tagged as post-rock. Some of them have obvious influences of shoegaze and ambiant music that rely a lot on guitar effects to create very cool textures and layering. P.S. you can have a different name for it, I just use the tag my music store uses to identify those bands.
That Pedal Show - Mick: In general terms, post rock is a broad term used to describe music that combines traditional and non-traditional rock instrumentation with non-traditional song forms. Sometimes there's a hefty noise element a la shoegaze, though sometimes not. There's usually a heavy emphasis on dynamics. Quite a lot of post rock is instrumental, though not all. Songs can be quite long, rather like journeys. In addition to the other bands mentioned, check out Rachels and The Dirty Three.
Whoa. Flashback time. Used to hang out with a band called Chapterhouse. Ah, those were the days. Or at least I think they might have been. If only I could remember.....
+FAgraphicandart Hahaha!!! A few people I know who were into Shoegaze are grandfathers now, let alone dads. Although let it be said that while are lighthearted in this one, we wouldn't make fun of anyone's taste or contribution to music. We say a few times how important the genre was. We'll happily take the mediocre comment though. Do you think we'd be making RU-vid videos if we were actually any good at being musicians? ;0)
I´d like to see a show about rare Boss pedals (if you can get your hands on some). There´s a lot of cool stuff there that you rarely see. Speaking of Boss, maybe a comparison of all the different Boss drive pedals? And if it´s not against your policy or something, a comparison of different looper switchers (obviously TheGigRig wins, but it would be nice to hear Dan´s take on the alternatives). Oh, and a show where Dan fights a crocodile.
