i heard he was a big influence to kurt cobain..this true?
did he ever have anything to do with pearl jam?
all i know is courtney love hated him.

people just felt they had to kiss his ass. kurt might have paid lip service to him, but i don't see how he was an influence on nirvana's music or the way the band was run.

i don't think he had anything to do with pearl jam. other than the fact mainstream bands were required to make his own shitty music seem rebellious in contrast.

some of that shit is kind of adorable, but once the novelty wears off and it becomes tone-deaf raffi, you can appreciate how little kurt's music owed to him.

Apparently I'm supposed to be seeing him play live soon and it's a really big deal? I've never heard of him.

EDIT: According to a Facebook message I got about this:

Also, cmon, if everyone that Courtney hated deserved it the world would be a horrible place.

With your expansive knowledge of music history, by way of "way too many years of music education," how the fuck did you skip over Calvin Johnson's MASSIVE impact on Independent music in America?

Johnson has gained a reputation for being a big stupid cockface, because he kind of is. But he kinda has a right to be. K Records (which, yes, he started himself) was an extremely influential label, and has remained so for over 25 years now. Not to mention this was before SubPop, or Kill Rock Stars, or Suicide Squeeze, or Up Records... there simply WERE NO other decent independent labels based in the northwest back then. K was straightforward about being anti-corporate, and Johnson was dedicated to releasing local music that wasn't gonna be heard otherwise.

Anyways, Kobain had a major boner for Beat Happening's 2nd album, Jamboree. I think it's boring as shit, personally. But the music was cool and lame at the same time, cute but sardonic, catchy yet repulsive, which has since become par for the course in the grey, moist logging-town region we call Washington State.

Basically, without Calvin Johnson, we'd have missed out on a lot of musical styles that we now consider commonplace; plenty of which have increasingly been exploited and beaten to death by college radio for the past 2 decades.

All you really need to know is that modern "indie rock" darlings like Ben Gibbard or Nada Surf or The Gossip, owe their entire career to Calvin Johnson and K Records. In one way or another.

I seriously hate this thread.

I guess partly because I'm English, partly because it tended to focus on genres and movements rather than specific individuals, and possibly because he's not as big a deal as people think (a guess). He seems from what's being said to have been a big influence on grunge, which is both a) not quite old enough for much to have been written about it, and b) a massive dead-end in the evolution of rock music (in my opinion, but in a few other people's as well).

Ben Gibbard = never heard of
Nada Surf = forever ago, unless they've made some big comeback
The Gossip = shit and going to be forgotten very soon

I'm not trying to belittle the guy because I really have no reason to, but I don't see any real reason why I should've heard of him. He's a label owner and most of the bands he's named in reference to seem to be rubbish.