Fun Stuff > BAND
How'd you start listening to that? (a bloggy thread.)
Nodaisho:
--- Quote from: KvP on 20 Feb 2011, 02:23 ---Shut up I was in a hurry to get to a hardcore show geez
--- End quote ---
Why? I've heard the kind of hardcore bands Fort Collins gets. The less you hurry, the less you suffer.
KvP:
There was an asian dude with a sax so I guess that was pretty gay (white dudes screaming guitars ftw) but it was fun shut up Fort Collins is adequate.
Anyway I will have Stories later on for you Roo.
KharBevNor:
Traditionally I have had two primary methods of discovering new music: nerdery and cover versions (with the occasional tidbit of advice from a friend or acquaintance and on a few memorable occasions a chance live viewing). Nerdery revolves around both research into various genres and artists and also (much more so when I was first starting out) trying to find songs that are about things I liked. Here's a classic train (simplified a bit): When I was younger I was obsessed with vampires. One time I typed into Kazaa (this dates things a touch!) 'Countess Bathory'. These are probably the best two words I ever typed, as they lead me to Venom's 'Countess Bathory', Candlemass's cover of the same, Tormentor's 'Elizabeth Bathory', several songs by the band Bathory and Cradle of Filth's 'Bathory Aria'. I wasn't really ready for Tormentor or the early Bathory material at that time, but I jumped straight in to the other bands. Cradle of Filth were particularly key in my musical development, not because of their music per se (although internet research, populated largely by rants about how shit they were, lead me to listen to Emperor, Satyricon, Dimmu Borgir, Dissection, etc.) but because of the various bands they'd covered. At the time of first listening to them Cradle of Filth had covered tracks by The Misfits, Sodom, Venom, Sabbat, Sisters of Mercy and Iron Maiden. In fact, I got into the true classics of metal entirely arse-backwards, through covers (Cradle of Filth's 'Hallowed be thy Name', Arch Enemy's 'Starbreaker', White Zombie's 'Children of the Grave', Graveworm's 'Fear of the Dark' (reliably mis-labelled as CoF on early file-sharing networks). Research involved identifying the genres of my favourite artists and looking through reviews, sites etc. online to try and find the supposed exemplars of these styles. This lead me to many of my favourite bands in various genres: Darkthrone, Burzum, Edge of Sanity, Bolt Thrower, Alien Sex Fiend and so on were all discovered in this way. Obviously, I was using filesharing much more than I was physically buying music, a pattern which largely continues to this day (I only really buy vinyl now).
I was never in the 'metal ghetto' exclusively for very long. I had always had an interest in industrial rock (the first CD I ever bought was Rammstein's 'Mutter', the bonus disc edition, now rendered unplayable by a long succession of £10 CD walkmen), and I decided at about age 14 that I was a goth. I researched the matter of being a goth fairly assiduously, reinforcing Sisters of Mercy and Nine Inch Nails with Bauhaus, ASF, Joy Division, Christian Death, and so on. I also got in to EBM, Futurepop and related acts, much to the derision of my rocke friends (who bizarrely considered VNV Nation and Funker Vogt to be 'chav music'). I also had some punk and classic rock taste inherited from my parents.
Probably the biggest seismic shift happened when I discovered neo-folk. I actually came to post-industrial before I had really penetrated to the roots of real old-school industrial, at I guess the age of about 16 or 17. I'd actually picked up a few random releases which I'd had (and enjoyed) for years before I realised that it was a particularly widespread style of music. I can't really remember how I came across them (probably chance downloads on DC++) but I distinctly remember having Of The Wand & The Moon's 'Emptiness:Emptiness:Emptiness' and, bizarrely, Backworld's 'The Orchids' EP (an obscure release by a fairly obscure band). What really got me hooked was another cover version. This one being Agalloch's cover of Sol Invictus' 'Kneel to the Cross' (from the 'Of Stone, Wind and Pillor' EP). I downloaded Sol Invictus 'Death of the West' (the album from which Kneel to the Cross comes) and was blown away. Further Sol Invictus followed; internet research kept turning up the names 'Current 93' and 'Death in June'. I remember, the first time I heard it, listening to 'A Song For Douglas After He's Dead' by Current 93 about a hundred times in a row. I burned 'Rose Clouds of Holocaust' and a few tracks from 'But, What Ends When the Symbols Shatter?' to a CD and listened to them for weeks on the way to and from school. This was, for me, the ultimate shit; though try as I might I could never get any of my friends very interested in it, which upset me a bit. It was from this point that I actually got into real industrial: I downloaded Coil's 'An Angelic Conversation', thinking it would be neo-folk, listened to it once and was obviously dissapointed. A few months later it came back on Random and I scrambled to download everything Coil related I could get my hands on. Love's Secret Domain was the soundtrack to a fantastic week in the spring of 2005 when my father was away on business and I simply skipped school entirely, and lay in a hammock in the back garden smoking, reading Illuminatus! and listening to LSD on my stereo. From thence, Throbbing Gristle, Psychic TV, Laibach, The Legendary Pink Dots, Einsturzende Neubauten, Cabaret Voltaire, etc. etc.
These days, a lot of my music comes from last.fm recommendations or from scouring the charts of known fellow-travellers. I sometimes wish that my process of discovering music had been less...isolated I suppose is the word I suppose I might use. I have met very few people in real life who share my tastes and obsessions, none of them fully, and given how huge a part of my life music is, that's rather sad for me. I listen to music literally all the time: whilst I work, whilst I sleep, whilst I walk, whilst I run etc. and the seperation of my tastes from other people, I think, is a contribution to my pangs of anomie and alienation. I suppose you could say that I am diametrically opposed to the cliche of the 'poseur', someone who affects a taste for (often a watered down, commercialised version) of some subcultural or slightly abstruse music genre in order to appear 'different', in that I, often, feel my 'individuality' to be something rather negative to my mental health and wellbeing. Particularly when I was younger I made numerous attempts to appreciate more normal or well-known musical genres. I tried forcing myself to listen to Radio 1 (literally couldn't stand it), tried going clubbing at 'indie nights'* and various hip-hop, garage etc. things (Became intensely agitated, had to leave early in most cases, unless I was taking drugs), and buying various almost instantly regretted albums. I remember buying Nirvana's 'Nevermind' and trying on and off for weeks to listen to it but I actually physically couldn't last one playthrough. I have no idea why, particularly, except that I found it intensely boring, and my mind was constantly running through the hundreds of CD's I had by bands I did like, or the literally weeks of MP3s squirrelled away on my hard drive, and I would almost inevitably just crack about the fourth or fifth track, turn it off and put some Orange Goblin on.
Like, seriously, I have an almost physical revulsion to music I don't like. I think there might be something wrong with me. The only thing that saves me, really, is that my taste is very broad, and constantly broadening, so maybe one day I will finally expand my horizons enough, or mainstream culture will change enough, to produce music I like, so i can actually go out and socialise normally and not feel like I've just dropped through a fucking warphole into the Evil Mirror Dimension. Not gonna bank on it though.
*In the UK the words 'indie' and 'rock' are essentially synonymous in the minds of promoters
Fissioninferno:
For most of my life, I listened pretty much to what my parents played on the radio. Being where I'm from, that happened to be country. While I can't say I enjoy country any longer, I can't say I hate it, though it does get on my nerves at times. During middle school I listened to some rather run-of-the-mill stuff (or crap, whichever you wish to call it): Rob Zombie, Nickelback, AC/DC, some others. During eighth grade my friend lent me his copy of Opeth's Ghost Reveries and, well... my "love" of the other bands I listened to quickly diminished. I became enraptured by the album, listening to Ghost Reveries on repeat for hours and hours. After Opeth, my friend introduced me to other bands: System of a Down, Megadeth, Dragonforce, others. After that I quickly became obsessed with all ranges of heavier metals, thrash and power and black and death. After I started going to Jeph's streams I starting listening to more electronic, including Daft Punk and Fuck Buttons. Music shapes my life, it's very rare that I'm not listening to some thing or another, be it blast-beat-filled black metal or droning dark ambient or chugging death metal. I can be a snob about it sometimes,
Playing instruments has a longer history for me than listening. I started playing violin in fifth grade and played up until tenth where I pretty much abandoned the instrument, and almost immediately following that I bought my first real guitar: a red, BC Rich Warlock, platinum series. Pretty cheap guitar, bought a cheap amp with it. I've played by ear and learned tabs, but most of the time I just improvise in different tunings to get my coordination and rhythm up. Haven't actually written a song, though, since I come to a mental block when I imagine putting one together. Someday, though, maybe. I play mostly for fun and relaxation, maybe for a bit of narcissism since I enjoy hearing myself play.
ruyi:
Thanks for sharing, you guys!
Khar, I am kinda jealous that you've been so successful in researching music that you like. This has actually never been the case for me! There's a lot of music that's about things that I find interesting, and when I was younger, I downloaded quite a bit of music because I liked either what it was about or what had been written about it, but I generally ended up not enjoying this stuff all that much. I think a big reason for this is that lyrics factor very little into my experience of listening. It's odd, because I do believe that lyrics can be very important! (And in fact, in writing about music for classes at the moment, I rely quite heavily on lyrics in making my arguments.) I guess my brain just works a little differently, because if there's music going on, it's very, very hard for me to be able to follow lyrics that are sounding at the same time. Actually, even when I watch films in English (my native language), I feel a lot more comfortable with subtitles on, so perhaps it's just an auditory processing thing.
Sometimes you post pretty harshly about popular genres and their listeners, so it's interesting to find out that you tried so hard to learn to like those kinds of musics when you were younger. But I guess it shouldn't be surprising--I mean, strong feelings have to come from somewhere, I imagine.
I actually didn't know anyone who liked the music I do either, believe it or not! It's really only recently that I've started to find people who like even Michael Jackson, for example :-) I guess it just goes to show how idiosyncratic the particular communities that we come from can be. (and uh feel free to make a joke about how lonely I must have been to not know any Jackson fans)
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