Fun Stuff > BAND
YOUR bands.
Thrillho:
My favourite band is Pink Floyd. As much as I grew up with the Beatles, as much as I enjoy the genius and eclecticism of Bob Dylan, and as much as I could listen to all of Wilco's albums until the end of time pretty much from front to back, the Floyd have to be my favourite band. It's them I always come back to even if I don't listen to them for a few months. It's them who got me into songs longer than four minutes after Linkin Park being my favourite band for three years. It must be noted that I now hate that album and have hardly listened to its songs in about a year (excluding when they played them at Live 8, an event at which I nearly went into orgasm.)
At first, I hated them. My brother and my dad loved Dark Side Of The Moon and would play it while doing the dishes. I pretty much hated it the whole time.
Then, around three years ago, they were playing it again, and as 'Time' segued into the 'Breathe' reprise, it just washed over me, and I could feel it strike a chord in my brain. The harmonies on it were angelic. The guitar was fantastic. And the lyrics meant the same to me then as they had to the people listening to it thirty years earlier.
From there, I just looked into my brother's MP3s of them and listened to everything on there. I think I'm one of about 1% of Pink Floyd fans who has equal love for Barrett, Waters AND Gilmour-era Floyd, as well as liking solo work by all of them. I'm also probably the only person who thinks Rick Wright wrote any songs worth listening to.
Barrett may not have been a genius, but he wrote great pop music and fantastic psychedelic music. The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn is a wonderful psychedelic pop record, with 'Astronomy Domine' still being one of my favourite Pink Floyd songs and, of course, 'Bike,' which is such a glorious exercise in rhyming that it first turned me onto how good 67-era Floyd really was.
Waters was a genius lyricist, going from ripping off Chinese poetry on 'Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun,' to the stuff that he calls 'sixth form poetry' on DSOTM to the imagery that still gives me chills on Animals and The Wall.
And Gilmour. I don't care what anyone says. Momentary Lapse Of Reason is one of the worst Floyd albums there was. It had a handful of wonderful songs on it, like 'On The Turning Away,' and 'Sorrow,' but is really only of value as a time capsule of what rock was like in the eighties. However, The Division Bell, the album cover of which is printed on the front of the first band t-shirt I ever bought, is a masterpiece. The lyrics aren't that great - although some of them I still love - but the music is beautiful, and I won't hear any different. I think 'High Hopes' is one of the finest closing tracks ever to appear on a Floyd album. I still remember first hearing it on the Echoes compilation, and it took my breath away in its sparse arrangement, its power.
I could go through which albums I like and all that, but I think I'll just put some of the lyrics that hit home with me, for whatever reason, be it reminding me of events in my life, being funny, featurying a gratuitous swear for no reason but for a laugh, or just being a lovely few lines.
So I open my door to my enemies,
And I ask 'could we wipe the slate clean?'
And they tell me to please go and fuck myself
Lost For Words, (The Division Bell, 1994)
After the service, when you're walking slowly to the car
And the silver in her hair shines in the cold November air
The Gunner's Dream, (The Final Cut, 1983)
Fuck all that, we've gotta get over these (fuck all that!)
Gotta compete with the wily Japanese
Not Now John, (The Final Cut, 1983)
I'm most obliged to you for making it clear I'm not here.
Jugband Blues, (A Saucerful Of Secrets, 1968)
We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl
Year after year.
Wish You Were Here, (Wish You Were Here, 1975)
Hush now baby, baby, don't you cry
Mother's going to check out all your girlfriends for you
Mother won't let anyone dirty get through
Mother's going to wait up until you get in
Mother will always find out where you've been
Mother's going to keep baby healthy and clean
Babe, you'll always be baby to me.
Mother, (The Wall, 1979)
So I spy on her, I lie to her
I make promises I cannot keep
Take It Back, (The Division Bell, 1994)
I've got a bike, you can ride it if you like
It's got a basket, a bell that rings
And things that make it look good
I'd give it to you if I could, but I borrowed it
Bike, (The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, 1967)
Valrus:
--- Quote from: greenMonkey ---Agaetis Byrjun still makes me feel great, and Sigur Ros is still my favorite band.
--- End quote ---
You must see them live. It is imperative. I don't think I can say they're my favorite band, but Sigur Ros put on the best live show I've ever seen. You thought Untitled 8 was amazing on the album? It fucking blew me away live.
The Eyeball Kid:
--- Quote from: SensoryOssuary ---
--- Quote ---Do you have "Dead Man Walking"?
--- End quote ---
--- Quote ---Any love for his earlier 'grand weepers', like 'Time'? So very good
--- End quote ---
Time isn't exactly his earlier stuff per se, since it was on Rain Dogs, which has a lot of his most "out-there" tracks too. "Time," et al. are real diamonds in the rough, though. I don't like his 70's stuff as much just because the whole bumbling alcoholic psuedo-hobo schtick wears a bit thin on me.
--- End quote ---
'Rain Dogs' is the perfect album (IMHO) 'cause it balances both sides: the later Waits with stuff like 'Singapore' and the early Waits with 'Time' and 'Jersey Girl' and stuff. I was using 'Time' as an example of the earlier style.
I think the piano ballads are beautiful, but i'm a sucker for that stuff.
To clear the air from the hipsterism, i give you The Barenaked Ladies and Meatloaf.
BNL... 'One Week' was one of the first songs I ever liked. The album it was from was the first non-classic rock album I bought. I was over at CTY (a camp in upstate New York where alot of who later went to Simon's Rock ended up) and used to listen to it in the dark. The songs were surprisingly strange and scary ("I'll be that girl/you will be right over/if I was a field/you would be in clover/if I was the sun/you would be in shadow/if i had a gun/there'd be no tommorow") and i just ate it up.
I ended up buying everything they did. I got addicted to them, and though i've moved on a bit i still listen to pure pop with clever lyrics... which is what BNL were, basically.
Meatloaf... first rock album I had (my dad had a copy). Loved his stuff. Still do. Tottally over the top and insane. Don't see how the Fiery Furnaces are anything like him, but the pure gothic grandeur of it... the utter sincerity.. is really neat.
The Hummingbirdds: These guys are 'my band' since hardly anyone knows them. A mention on a single by another obscure local band (Modern Giant) and a song on a friend's mix tape lead me to a thrift shop copy of their classic 'LoveBUZZ', which I don't think anyone has heard of. Just beautiful, perfect jangle-pop.
I got a new job and the guy at work knows both the bands i mentioned... they're not hard to find in Sydney.
I tend to... 'own' bands. Promote them. Get obsessessed. Make them my own. I could go on about the White Stripes and Bruce Springsteen and Leonard Cohen, and probably will...
Narr:
First off, hi again to anyone. Been absent for a couple months. Fucking WoWcraft ate my soul again and whenever I logged on to here, I just didn't find any threads that compelled me to post.
Cept for this one.
And the odd thing is, I don't think I can answer the question of "favorite band" or even favorite song. A problem I've always had with music is actually paying attention to the lyrics. There's songs I can sing along with, but it doesn't mean I connect with them spiritually or whatever you might want to use.
I think a lot of that has to do with how I suppose I shift as a person on a monthly basis. I'm not the same guy week to week, or sometimes it seems to me. I guess that's one reason I'm hard to get along with? I dunno.
(OMG PSYCHO ANALYSIS BROUGHT ABOUT BY THIS THREAD?! NO WAI)
I think I'm going to have to go with Audioslave. I'm sure this draws the ire of a lot of folk, but meh. Chris Cornell's got a voice I envy (I would KILL to be able to sing like that guy) and I think all the musicians in the band are awesome. I'm a fan of where both sides of the band come from, too, and thing it takes no small doing to combine two radically different music styles into some kick ass rock music. They put on a helluva show live, as well.
The Eyeball Kid:
My friend found me a copy of Audioslave's 'Ave Maria' cover. It became sort of a... personal touchstone up at the Rock.
Not a fan of the band but that song is IMPORTANT
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