THESE FORUMS NOW CLOSED (read only)
Fun Stuff => BAND => Topic started by: KharBevNor on 02 Jul 2006, 17:09
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This is inspired by the goodbye Sleater-Kinney thread.
This is the thread where you tell everyone about your favourite band. Not the coldly analysed, musicoligists 'greatest band of all time' or the band you want to say you rank the highest for cred in whatever scene you hold allegiance to. No, this is the thread where you talk about the band, or maybe bands, that slice right into the core of your fucking being. The bands who speak in your words, where every song sounds just like it was written for you. The band which delivers lines and riffs and solos the impact of which upon you no mere words could ever properly describe. Wax lyrical about them. Extol them. For you know, in your heart, no matter how many charts and arguments and statistics and critical opinions any spotty-faced music geek could ever bring out, that these bands are the best bands in the history of anything. Though the voices compel you to mention The Beatles, or The Clash, or The Rolling Stones, or Bob Dylan, or goodness knows who, you secretly know that these bands are better than all of them rolled together, because they are YOURS. They are the bands that sustain you, speak to you, move you, keep you alive.
Well, I suppose I'm a pretty lucky guy in that I have two bands like this, namely Skyclad and Sol Invictus.
I don't know how to seperate them really, or to say anything about them I have not implied above...shit, I dunno. I am as you might guess somewhat drunk and more than somewhat stoned, but...Gods. Both these bands...well Ok.
I guess the difference between them would be that both cut straight to the heart of my beliefs, my thoughts, and have maybe helped shape them, but both do it in different ways. Skyclad is something subtle, joyous even in the depths of misery. It works through the juxtaposition of the sometimes jaunty, sometimes heavy folk and metal instrumentation and the multi-layered lyrical complexity of Walkyiers...well, I must call it poetry, for to call it anything else would be to demean it utterly. You have to think about Skyclad lyrics, and as you think about them you get more and more out of them. You decode almost impossible subtleties of emotion that draw you utterly into the music...it's the personal nature. The same for Sol Invictus, and if I have to chose another band, Current 93. It is basically like reading a diary, like having a soul bared to you. The difference with Sol Invictus, of course, is the incredible, unbelievable bluntness. Where Martin wraps terrible, heart-rending tales of death and poverty and despair, interspersed with joyous paganism and sheer defiance at the world, all into complex extended metaphors and puns and wordplay of the most enjoyable kind, Tony Wakeford just comes out and smashes you in the face with it. For example, compare the two most emotionally affecting songs from both for me. We are talking about 'Here Am I' by Sol Invictus, and 'Something to Cling To' by Skyclad. They are opposite songs. One of hope, one of incontravertable despair. The bit in the Skyclad where, if I am not 100% contented or maybe a bit drunk, I will invariably start crying is when, after Martin after telling us how 'Sometimes life is like an Ocean, cruel and far too cold to mention', and describing how you are cast adrift by your fair-weather friends and you sometimes wonder, maybe I should just stop treading water, and the music lulls into this amazing, melancholy violin piece, then suddenly, WHAM, fiddle and guitar back on the upbeat and:
"Then as if from out of nowhere.
(and just when you least expected).
floats a single piece of driftwood - by some unseen force directed
It's a gift life often brings you.
when you thought all hope long gone.
sometimes a single dream to cling to.
gives you strength to carry on.
It seems the wisest words that I know,
(three which some dead scholar wrote)
are simply these: - "Dum spiro spero"
meaning; "WHILE I BREATHE I HOPE"."
And like, all the subtle intonations, all the meaning it's invested with for me, and for Martin that I understand from reading interviews and listening to every Skyclad and Sabbat and The Clan Destined song ever written or recorded far, far too much, is just...incredible. This song actually saved me from suicide once, no fucking lie.
However, if I had listened to Here Am I, I would be dead now. This song fully hit me once after a completely shit night out, sitting in the bus, depressed and drunk, and then suddenly, the simple, brutal words.
"And here you are, drunk and scared,
You've finally figured out: Life's not fair."
Fuck. Just fuck.
EDIT: Oh, and shit, in 'Kneel to the Cross', when he sings, with that almost unbearable agony 'AND IT'S EEEEEEVEEEEEER SO WROOOOONG, TO DAAAAARE TO BE STROOOOOOONG..." Yes! YES! SUCH FUCKING POWER!
Shit, what am I rambling on about. Er, you say something guys. Please.
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I don't know if anyone can follow that, but I'll give it a try.
My favorite band is Bedhead. I first heard them about 3 years ago, Transaction de Novo was the album. A good friend who has put me onto a bunch of great bands lent it to me. I fell in love with it on first listen. It was my first exposure to anything resembling what we call Post-Rock, and the interplay between sparse, beautiful near-silence and intense, crushing, mind destroying power blew me the fuck away.
Since then I've grabbed up all their official releases, WhatFunLifeWas probably being their best. I've also listened to side projects, former member's new bands, bands that namedrop them, bands that namedrop bands that namedrop them (I'm looking at you Explosions in the Sky), but nothing, absolutely nothing, can touch the sheer majesty of their stuff. I read somewhere that the band's motto was "Not a single unnecessary note", which is pretty astounding when you consider the fact that they had three guitarists. It's an unforgivable cliche, but I can listen to the same Bedhead song over and over 20 times and hear something different every time, but there's never so many things going on that any one part is drowned out.
And their drummer, Trini Martinez, aside from having the best punk-rocker name of ever, is jaw droppingly good.
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I love you, Khar. In a platonic way. Have I mentioned that?
Let's not make this weird. But seriously, I am going to figure out what I am going to say and then I am going to say it and then I'm going to thank you. Good idea.
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As much as I probably have to say about how X motivates and validates my everything and why s/he/it is my favorite person/band ever, but I think rambling that one time about Scott Walker is the closest to and probably last time I'm going to bare myself to the internet. In this case it's partiatly due to the fact that I had just done this exact thing only yesterday with someone I'm becomming close friends with. It's emotionaly exhausting to articulate that sort of thing, I've found at least.
Anyway, this is a great subject for a thread, but I'd like to say you might not want to go alienating people who's honest sentiment is that such people as Bob Dylan are their 'YOUR music'. I know someone who would meet your Skyclad and Sol Invictus with The Beatles and Fionna Apple, with reasons as deeply personal as yours.
Otherwise, bravo Mr. Sir!
-Man I used the word personal twice in like the same sentance, I hate that
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The Pixies' music embodies my perspective and personality in that there are strange, spontaneous, or sometimes dissonant sounds mixed with a pop-ish, accessible structure. I'm really hectic and offbeat, which can scare people off, but at the core, I'm a happy, friendly guy.
I might be perceiving myself or The Pixies entirely wrong, but they speak to me, so whatever.
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i have always had the belief that Grandaddy is (was :c) the best band in the universe. their sound is chill and lonely and content, but deeply excited. and occasionally they are Arm of Roger and the Pussy Song if anyone knows what i am talking about.
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you might not want to go alienating people who's honest sentiment is that such people as Bob Dylan are their 'YOUR music'.
this is taking it a bit literally i feel. i think he means that it is a band which whenever you hear them, you are sure that you enjoy them just a little bit more than everyone else. it might not be true but sometimes art and culture can inspire such emotional response.
Yeah, y'know, I am de seeings what you mean. I think I might have gone and missed the point of that statement.
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Theres three bands for me that fit that category for me. Nargaroth, Judas Iscariot and Opeth.
I don't know how to describe Nargaroth, Kanwulf is one of the most dedicated and commited Musicians I know and he writes some of the most beautiful, enganging and emotional music I've heard. When I listen to the song Manchmal Wenn Sie Shlaft (Sometimes When she Sleeps) off of he's 2003 master peice Geliebete Des Regens (Beloved of the Rain) I get tears in my eyes and I don't even understand the words he's saying (their in German) the music is that powerfull. I don't know any other artist who can write a 17 minute song with only two riffs in it and keep me that engaged. I first heard this album when I was going through a difficult time in my life and it helped me get through it so I'm forever greatful for that.
Kanwulf's other records are excellent as well, each album has a different sound on it. Herbstelyd he's first album released in 1998 5 years after Nargaroth was formed contains some of the best Keyboards and samples I've heard, with some excellent tracks like Amarok - Zorn Des Lammes and the title track. The "Fuck Off Nowadays Black Metal" demo is a BM "Kvlt" classic which contains one awesome track (Shall we Begin) as is he's next release the seminal 2001 release "Black Metal Ist Krieg" While the album cover and title are a source of much amusment for some people, (see Khar's avatar). The album is Kanwulf's tribute to the Black Metal scene, it contains four very well done covers, my favorite is 'Far Beyond The Stars' by the relativly obscure band Azhubham Haani. The other four tracks are all very different, Erik May you Rape the Angel's is dedicated to Grimm the former drummer of Immortal and Borknager, a close friend of Kanwulf's who commited suicide. The Amarok trilogy (started on Herbstelyd) raps up on this album and the track Sever Tears are Flowing to the River, is some great foreshadowing of what was to come on Gelebiete Des Regens. He's latest album 'Prosatanica Shooting Angels' which was released late in 2004 is Kanwulf condemning the modern BM scene, the back of the recordsleeve has the words "No Darkthrone Fan". It also contains one of the greatest song titles every the wittily named "Love is Always over With Ejacultaion"
Well since I crapped on for ages about Nargaroth I'll keep the other two brief if I can. Judas Iscariot, put simply is the greatest band to come out of America period. Like Nargaroth Judas Iscariot is a one man project, this time belonging to Akhenanten, Akhenanten is a self procalimed nihilist and most of the early lyrics at least revolve around Nietzsche and Heidigger. From the first album "The Cold Earth Slept Below" in 1995 onwards Akhenanten basically put out 5 perfect albums in a row culminating with what is probably he's most well known work "Heaven in Flames". After a relatively long break in which a few split relases and an EP were put out JI returned in 2002 with their last ever album "To Embrace The Corpses Bleeding" Akhenanten was inspired by a trip to Kronstadt in Romania where he visited the site of a masacre of 30,000 poeple who died at the hands of Vlad Tepes on Saint Bartholomew's night in 1460. The events inspired him to write a concept album based on the events of that night and the result is he's greatest album. It contains several excellent tracks including "Spectral Dance of the Macabre", "Terror from the Eastern Skies" and the excellent "In the Valley of Death I am Their King". After the album Akhenanten announced he was disbanding JI saying he had achieved everything he wanted to with the band.
The Last Band for me is Opeth, unlike the other two bands Opeth are not Black metal and they consist of more then 1 member. Many people classify Opeth in different ways, some people call them Melodic Death Metal but I disagree with this, to me they are more of a prog band with DM influences. I'm sure many people on this forum are familiar with them, they are truly an amazing band for me their first three albums "Orchid", "Morningrise" and "My Arms Your Hearse" are all master pieces, their other albums whilst good don't quite reach the same heights.
Their debut Orchid has an almost Jazzy sought of feel to it and many excellent tracks, Mikael doesn't use he's clean voice very much in this album, if I recall correctly its only used briefly in one track. The stands outs for me from it are "The Apostle in Triumph", "The Twilght is my Robe" and the beautiful piano instrumental "Silhouette".
Morningrise is my favorite Opeth album and to me it has a pretty folky feel to it. It contains my favorite Opeth song "The Night and the Silent Water" a song Mikael wrote about the death of he's grandfather. The last 5 minutes or so of this song is some of the most beautiful music I've ever heard. The last track on this album "To Bid you Farewell" is almost entirely acoustic and is the first Opeth song to be done entitirely with Mikaels clean singing. Their newest album Ghost Reveries has a similar feel to this album for me.
Lastly My Arms Your Hearse, is the first Opeth concept album. The Lyrics are very good on this album, probably not as good as the lyrics on the next album "Still Life" but damn close. My Favorite tracks from this album are "April Ethereal", "When" and "Credence". This album was huge for me when I was at high school and I basically wore out my first copy of this cd from playing it so much. The reissue which I own now contains two cover songs stuck on as 'bonus tracks' at the end, which annoy me a bit as they break up the continuity of the albums concept a bit. It's really annoying to sit through the really mellow ending of Epilogue to then get jarred out of the mood by the heavish Celtic Frost cover 'Circle of the Tyrants'. I saw Opeth live on their Black Water park tour a few years later, Alchemist opened for them and its one of the best concerts I've seen.
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Actually, Judas Iscariot are pretty fucking bitching. I never got as much in to Nargaroth, but, for the record, I don't deride Kanwulf for the BLACK METAL IST KRIEG! shit. Actually, if anything, I love him for it. Like with Immortal and, well, everything they've ever done. Actually, when I think clearly about it, I think very few things are derideable or 'sad'. Actually, sad used in that sense is one of my least favourite words. Actually, the only thing I really think is 'sad' is being trendy. Do your own thing, or, as old Marty put it:
"Stand your ground behind the times -
and refuse to follow fashion.
Write your poetry with anger,
(and then sing it with a passion)."
@Fortnight: I have much love for Bob Dylan and The Beatles. Of course they can be 'YOUR music' as it were, but I was trying to...oh, you know.
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Sorry, I wasn't trying to imply that you were making fun of it or anything, merely pointing out the ongoing jokes about the album title that abounds on the net. Theres a pretty interesting interview with Kanwulf on this http://herbstleyd.he.funpic.org/articles_int9.htm talks about he's views on the BM scene etc.
I have to ask you about Sol Invictus now, I'm pretty curious about their sound now. I've heard of this band quite a few times but I've never checked them out, any reccomendations for a starting point, what do they sound like, all I know is their often lumped together with people like Boyd Rice and bands like Death in June under the 'neofolk' label. How similar are they to these sought of bands?
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Well, if you know Agalloch, which I'm sure you do, Sol Invictus are basically the biggest non-metal influence on Agallochs first two albums and their concomitant EPs. The song 'Kneel to the Cross' is a cover of them.
Basically, the neo-folk label is a bit wide. They don't actually sound too similiar to Death in June, NON or Current 93. Each is somewhat different. Sol Invictus have a sort of rawer, folkier, more medieval sound than these bands, but they also have a jazz influence, and make pretty heavy use of tape loops. The over-all feel of the sound is very melancholy and entirely hopeless. Lyrical themes are basically the inevitability of death, decline of western civilisation, hatred of capitalism and christianity, dark tales of cannibalism, incest, madness, murder and whatnot, paganism, settings of poetry and folk songs (normally of the morbid variety, ie Twa Corbies) and so forth. I suppose you could call them the most straight-forward of the big neo-folk bands. Lyrically, certainly, there's less of the cryptic, occultic/poetic stuff you might have expected from listening to DI6 or C93, but there's also more of a feel of rawness to the music. Though I must say Tony Wakeford is probably the best composer in neo-folk at this moment, and there are multiple layers of complex instrumentation on a lot of their tracks, there's always strong acoustic guitar chords, or a powerful brass, woodwind or violin line out front leading everything, the subtleties enhance rather than concealing the main thrust of the music.
Just listen to them, tbh. I recommend Hill of Crosses, Death of the West or The Devil's Steed as a starting album.
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My favorite band is Bedhead.
i love this band. matt and bubba kadane also have a fantastic band called the new year and matt also played keyboards for the band silkworm.
The New Year is pretty fantastic, I saw them play a few weeks ago, but their drummer just doesn't hold a candle to Trini. I haven't given Silkworm much of a listening to, although Matt is crazy awesome. He played drums in Consanant too. Maybe I'll give them another shot.
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sorry, i have to address this where i see it. there is no band called 'the pixies'. check the albums if you don't believe me! i believe they are called 'pixies'.
I've heard the band referred to with and without the definite article, and I have also heard that the band's definitive choice is without, but I just prefer to use it. I figure that as long as it's recognizable, it'll work fine.
And some people like cucumbers pickled.
Huh?
What?
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Okay, when I got home from Winnipeg I wrote about it in one of my three new leather-bound gift journals. This is the entry, and after some deliberation I've decided to post the full writing.
"Wilco"
It's been four days since I graduated but it's really felt like one.
My grad was, in a word, anticlimactic. I feel like I've gained less than I've lost; in both my personal and scholastic lives, I've encountered some changes with what seem like ill effects, changes I won't print because I know what they are, dammit, and they aren't the point of this entry.
Well, I think I might have been a little hasty, writing that. They're not the point but I guess they are important.
I got a little additional closure this week - additional and unexpected. A friend of mine whom I've been romantically pursuing for a little over a year has, it turns out, a boyfriend. End chapter. Happy graduation.
I wish I could say it surprised me, but it really didn't. You hesitate, you lose, and God damn if I didn't hesitate.
Thank goodness we're still friends, right?
But that is important, because about 21 hours previous to this writing I was in winnipeg with my friend and travelling companion Jim, on foot and headed towards The Forks (a local "mall" with specialty and gift stores, a plaza, tours, etc.). We were a little distance away from some great Sri Lankan food and across the street from a big public Canada Day party when Jim broke my minor daydreams with "Johnny, it's Canada Day, we're in Winnipeg, and in a couple of hours we're about to see Wilco. Everything's right with the world."
And honestly? He was completely right.
Wilco has a place in my heart that was not built for more than one band. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was responsible for veering me away from mall-punk culture and into, well, music culture. Something about that album's supposedly "unmarketable" sound, its cohesive aural microcosm of human experience, resonated with this fifteen-year-old to such an enormous extent that, now eighteen, he is able to recall the exact moment that "I Am Trying To Break Your Heart" made him think, "I've been listening to the wrong music." It was the moment where, for me, electric guitars and bluesy solos and spiked hair and juvenile music videos and jumps and crowdsurfing and flipping one's guitar around one's back and catching in order to show off became not so much irrelavant as just not important anymore. It was new.
(for the record, that moment is at 4:14)
So seeing Wilco - making a drive which, there and back, was about eleven to twelve hours - was phenomenal. What away to close out high school, a semi-failed relationship, a year (as a June baby, I have a right to say this) of my life!
An hour and forty-five minutes worth of material is hard to disappoint with, and Wilco delivered everything I could have possibly hoped for. Had I been thinking I would have copied down the set list - but then again, is that really needed? At every break, I realized that the preceding song was one that I would be eternally grateful to see live, and I think that's what matters.
Oh, fine. They hit the necessary songs from Yankee and A Ghost Is Born, plunged into their back catalogue, bantered, showboated, and sweated. (Rather profusely, I might add.) Both encores were stunning.
I'd been waiting months, and the performance was a definite release. Basically, it was the closure I'd needed.
Thanks, Wilco.
It's not as great as the Sleater-Kinney mourning but I think it gets the point across, guys.
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Brilliant idea for a thread. It would seem an easy task to ignore critical examination and declare a favorite, but I found it suprisingly difficult. When I was younger, I had an intense, unflinching love for Radiohead. And while they still do it for me sometimes, I don't get as much out of them as I used to emotionally. I didn't love Radiohead because they sustained me, I loved them because they convery a wonderful hopelessness and detachment. Thom Yorke's mewling falsetto, the computer glitchiness, the space, the dischord. All this was beyond compare for quite a long time. Today, Radiohead aren't "mine" anymore. I still adore them, but they don't have the connection to me they once did.
I put forth a great deal of effort to come up with a single band, but I ended up unable to decide between two disparate groups. To give an honest answer, I have to reply with the odd combination of The Decemberists and Tom Petty (& the Heartbreakers).
The Decemberists -
This band does everything I could ask for lyrically. Not only do we have discussion of pirates, but also of crooked French Canadians, lengthy stories of revenge, peasantry, and turn of the century athletics. Colin Meloy doesn't just mess around with cutesy lines about how neat pirates are. He uses astounding language that would please even Wittgenstein. Meloy also employs some lovely alliteration: "Seraphim in seaweed swim where stick-limbed Myla lies".
There is also a great variety of songs on each album. Though this is not uncommon, each song, no matter the mood or style is done brilliantly. There's no differentiation that leaves me disappointed by the inability of the band to succeed in making the song work. From the touching ("The Engine Driver," "Of Angels and Angles," "Red Right Ankle") to the lush ("Leslie Anne Levine,") to the spriteful ("Sixteen Military Wives," "July, July!") to the epic ("California Youth and Beauty Brigade," "Odalisque," "Mariner's Revenge Song," "The Tain")...all of the Decemberists exploits succeed. I also happen to love Meloy's voice, which matches flawlessly with the musical landscape. Getting to see "The Engine Driver" live was one of the most powerful numbers I've seen performed. When Meloy varies the notes 3 minutes 16 seconds into the song, in the third chorus, my spine is filled with chills. I almost lost it when it was live, it's a perfect musical moment.
Tom Petty -
How anyone cannot flip the hell out about Tom I will never understand. I couldn't care less that "Free Fallin'" is a super-popular song. Do you know why it's so popular? Because it's fucking amazing. The moment when the backup comes in on "...venture boulevard" makes me want to sob. It is one of the most important and powerful moments in any song...ever.
Tom Petty makes music that is consistently baffling in it's simplicity and power. His work with the Heartbreakers and his solo work are impeccable. Even unknown songs like "Up In Mississippi Tonight" are better than anything you'll ever hear. The first time I heard that song I did speak for thirty minutes except to ask my friend who was driving to play the song again...and again.
As if each song is not enough, the albums Petty releases convey such emotional complexity. My favorite, Wildflowers, details an inward emotional journey of a man who is displeased with himself and trying to rediscover who he is and why he should be himself. The song has catchy, peppy moments that lend hope ("You Wreck Me," "Wildflowers"), moments of escapism ("You Don't Know How It Feels"), and moments of self-discovery ("Crawling Back To You" -- my favorite). The closing track, "Wake Up Time," is placed exactly right, bringing the journey, both physical and emotional to a close.
Petty's lyrics can be simple, but there are moments that make me want to scream because they connect with me at such a deep, almost visceral level. When he sings
"Hey baby, there's something in your eyes
trying to say to me
that I'm gonna be all right
if I believe in you
it's all I want to do"
I can't help but feel like my life will be all right.
I could bloviate all day about these bands, but I ought cut myself off at a point. While they are quite different, they're both my personal favorites.
As a closing note, I want to give honorable mention to The Postal Service because innumerable significant occurances have occured with them playing, most all of them during a song that matched the event.[/u]
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Oh man, this is an easy one for me.
Elliott Smith
I don't know one person who has heard his music and said "That's horrible" sure, some people say it's not their thing but I've never heard anyone say anything horrible about him.
Back in 7th grade I was big into punk (or what I thought then was punk), somehow I found heatmiser. I'm not even sure how they got lumped into any of the bands I was trying to find, but I thought it was okay. It should be obvious that I stumbled upon elliott after that (seeing as he was the bands singer and one of the guitarists).
I first bought his album Figure 8 and oh man, I had major chills after that one. The amount of melody and feeling he put into his songs was amazing. And I continued buy any of his albums that I could find. Sure, some weren't as orchestrated as others, but they all had feeling and told a story through the melodies, even if the lyrics came short. It reminded me of beatles, who I leter found out where a HUGE influence on him.
Then after almost completely finding all of his albums I figured "man, he'd be great live" so I checked the web. That's when i found out he wasn't even alive anymore. I was absolutely crushed seeing how my favourite artist of almost 3 years (and many more to come) died before I even I heard about him, and I still feel bad to this day that there will never be a chance to see him live, there's no chance for a reunion tour like other bands... he won't be coming back.
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Pretty easy for me as well.
Paul Westerberg (of the Replacements)
(http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a26/sjbrot/paulwesterberg.jpg)
I first heard about him from a Magnet cover story for one of his solo albums, which means I was rather late coming to the party. Still, there was something about his story that appealed to me. And his music stands out as well. There's something about an artist who makes broken music, an artist who's always in perpetual struggle, that makes me able to relate to him more than any other artist.
He's an unparalleled songwriter in my mind. His last solo album, Folker, was filled to the brims with dirty pop gems that are in near constant rotation on my iPod. "Anyway's All Right" especially. His work with the Replacements is completely ace as well. Tim and Let It Be are inescapably brilliant.
There was a quote in that Magnet article from Westerberg that went something like, "When you swing and miss, people start routing for you." That about sums it up.
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His touting of Westerberg is entirely justified, people.
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Bob Dylan's my first and only, my one and only love. Awesome lyrics, got me through tough times, influenced everybody, etc. But there are entire books about how awesome he is (and I'll probably write one someday), so I guess i'll just talk about Architecture in Helsinki.
Lemme set the scene for you. Gray day in July. I'm friendless in Australia but I've got tickets for Belle & Sebestian. I'm in the back of the arena. surrounded by people in scarves I don't know. Feeling lonely. Band gets up on stage. I haven't heard of them, but when they play, i'm just... HAPPY. I don't know why, but I'm happy. I can't remember the rest of the show. I dont' even think I enjoyed B&S. But my gig book said "check out Architecture in Helsinki", so for my first real local Aussie gig I go see them.
I'm in a converted church. New Buffalo and Sparrow Hill open and its pretty and perfect. When Architecture get on its amazing again: 8 people on stage and just freeform dancy james. HAPPINESS. This is before I can remember specific songs.
Two months later I see them again at a university. They ask everyone to act like animals and a girl bites me on the ankle as an alligator, winning the prize.
At this point they're just a live band to me. Happy, good vibes. I've downloaded a few tracks but nothing serious. A few months later, having missesd two of their shows, i buy 'In Case We Die'.
HAPPINESS
PURE HAPPINESS
Just bubbly twisting amazing twee happiness, with cute lyrics and neat twists and a million different instruments and just... happy. The album becomes essential to my existence, along with guys like The Decemberists and Dylan.
Hell, their video for 'Do the Whirlwind' http://[url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXIzyquw-kcis perfect, a slice of nostalgia pixel stuff.
I love them, and they're a recorded band.
See them at Homebake. Gush about how great they are to one member and get thanked for dancing to their show.
Later I see one of the members at a record store. We talk a bit.
She supports Jens Lekman (as in backs him with some other members of AiH, not opens for him) and after the show she mentions that i'm a 'strapping young lad'. I got laid that weekend and this made me happy.
So... AiH are just HAPPY. I'm not going to claim they're great musically, though they're 8 members of pure oddness and tweeness. They're just happy: live, on stage, in person, in interviews, on LiveJournal, in videos, whatever. Happy nice yay fun loving people.
And long after I forget them i'll still be listening to Dylan
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There are tons of bands that I enjoy. Tons. But there are only a few that I really feel are my bands. I love every goddam song by them, I love every note in every song, I love their style, and I love their everything. These few are The Sugarplastic, Mr. Bungle, and the EELS.
The Sugarplastic are first because no matter how many times I listen to them, they continue to baffle me. How can a band so incredibly poppy and catchy have songs with so much complexity and technicallity woven in? Every single one of their songs is a pop gem, but they aren't pop. Every single one of their songs has a genius guitar part, but nobody knows Ben Eshbach's name. They are incredibly accesable, and yet utterly obscure. They can cover a huge range of music, from the childish jingle-esque "Underwater" to the utterly desolate "Mercurochrome", from the epic build of "Soft Jingo" to the subtle nuances of "Please Mr. B". They are my band, because in every song I hear the best elements of so many other bands: The Beatles, XTC, The New Pornographers, Starlight Mints, The Shins and so many more. The Sugarplastic can always cheer me up. Unless I need a sobering, humbling moment. In which case there's always "Will", the world's saddest song without words.
Mr. Bungle are next because, despite being defunk'd for 4 years now, they're music is still ahead of our time. The blend of precise playing, perfect chaotic compositions, and an unbridled sense of humor makes them one of the most well rounded bands in... ever. Their music keeps me on my toes in that, whenever I feel like all music is full of dead ends and the same damn things recycled over and over again, Mr. Bungle remind me that music can always surprise you. They seem to have a song for every mood, and for any genre you feel an urge to listen to. If I was forced to choose 5 albums that were the only albums I could listen to for the rest of my life, all 3 Mr. Bungle albums would be on that list. I could probably listen to "California" alone for the rest of forever.
I love every single one of the 175 Eels songs in my iTunes library immensly. I cherish each one, they are my children. I love how E can transform the most simplistic chord progression into a masterpeice, which he seemsd to do in every song. The sound of the Eels is always changing, as the emotion behind it changes as well, and it's always good. No, it's always GREAT. There will never be a second in my life where I won't want to hear an EELS song.
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Tom Waits.
Bone Machine was the first album I bought with my own money, and it's still my favorite. I've never experienced such excitement discovering a song, album, or artist, as I did with that album.
A lot of people I talk to about Waits will say something about how Beefheart did it better, or at least first. While it's true that Waits made Swordfishtrombones as a direct result of his future wife giving him Trout Mask Replica, he took the idea of musical surrealism to a much more earthy, folk-lorish place that experimented not only in theory, but in timbre. And he can write an absolutely beautiful ballad.
I've spent more time/money on him then any other musician, having all of his albums, the out-of-print Big Time VHS, and a signed press picture that someone from his label got for me once *swoons*. I've never seen him live, but he's doing a tour this summer, so I'll probably make it out, despite his tickets always being damned expensive.
Hmm, I'm being curt so as not to ramble, and I guess that's it.
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For me, Voivod and Thought Industry.
Voivod are generally labeled as "progressive thrash", and I think this is pretty much appropriate. I don't think it paints a complete picture by any means: Anacrusis and Coroner also fit under that category, yet neither sound like Voivod. I think the most important aspect of Voivod's sound comes from their late guitarist Piggy. He played in a metal style, with heavy distortion and lots of palm muting, but what made him stand out was his chord vocabulary. The harmonic content of a Voivod riff is probably closer to jazz than anything else, really, and it's just completely wonderful. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to me like Piggy was all that influential, because the standard harmonic fare of metal guitar playing still mainly consists of power chords and triads, which is fucking boring, if you ask me. Even the jazzy technical death metal bands like Cynic and Atheist seem greatly limit their harmonies in their "heavy" riffs. There's a lot more to say about this band, but I'll stop here.
Thought Industry whose extreme obscurity really does not make sense to me. They aren't even popular in the underground metal scene, somehow, and are far better than nearly all of the bands therein. Thought Industry changed their sound very heavily over the course of their career, but maintained a great level of creativity and consistency throughout, which is very appealing to me. Many bands change for the worse, but not Thought Industry. Early albums blast your ears with bombastic and ambitious prog metal, sometimes resembling Voivod. It seems like with every album, they stripped down their sound further and further, leaving more and more space and bare-boned songwriting, culminating in their penultimate work Black Umbrella which barely retains any semblance of metal, being much more alt-rock than anything else. For their last album Short Wave on a Cold Day, they had finally shed the last shreds of metal influence and, using their last album as a launching point, created an insanely lush and beautiful pop album. Weird ones, for sure, but amazing.
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Tom Waits.
Bone Machine was the first album I bought with my own money, and it's still my favorite. I've never experienced such excitement discovering a song, album, or artist, as I did with that album.
A lot of people I talk to about Waits will say something about how Beefheart did it better, or at least first. While it's true that Waits made Swordfishtrombones as a direct result of his future wife giving him Trout Mask Replica, he took the idea of musical surrealism to a much more earthy, folk-lorish place that experimented not only in theory, but in timbre. And he can write an absolutely beautiful ballad.
I've spent more time/money on him then any other musician, having all of his albums, the out-of-print Big Time VHS, and a signed press picture that someone from his label got for me once *swoons*. I've never seen him live, but he's doing a tour this summer, so I'll probably make it out, despite his tickets always being damned expensive.
Hmm, I'm being curt so as not to ramble, and I guess that's it.
Do you have "Dead Man Walking"?
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Tom Waits.
Bone Machine was the first album I bought with my own money, and it's still my favorite. I've never experienced such excitement discovering a song, album, or artist, as I did with that album.
A lot of people I talk to about Waits will say something about how Beefheart did it better, or at least first. While it's true that Waits made Swordfishtrombones as a direct result of his future wife giving him Trout Mask Replica, he took the idea of musical surrealism to a much more earthy, folk-lorish place that experimented not only in theory, but in timbre. And he can write an absolutely beautiful ballad.
I've spent more time/money on him then any other musician, having all of his albums, the out-of-print Big Time VHS, and a signed press picture that someone from his label got for me once *swoons*. I've never seen him live, but he's doing a tour this summer, so I'll probably make it out, despite his tickets always being damned expensive.
Hmm, I'm being curt so as not to ramble, and I guess that's it.
Have you seen any of his movies? Down By Law is good, Shrek 2's cameo is really random, and i haven't seen the others
I <3 Tom Waits. I stole this username from a guy who runs a Tom Waits board who stole it from a Tom Waits song
Any love for his earlier 'grand weepers', like 'Time'? So very good
Le Creme, the Sugerplastic sound like exactly the band i NEED. I'm searching for them now (not that i don't like Mr Bungle and The Eels)
the Hold Steady
Not much to tell, really. Heard 'My Little Hoodrat Friend', loved it, and saw them live. The show was INTENSE, but too loud to hear the lyrics. Chris Finn was like a man posssessed.
Got 'Seperation Sunday', their latest album.
5 months later and i'm still listening to, quoting it in my head and planning RPG campaigns based on the lyrics. its just amazing... brilliant, heartfelt clever funny streetwise lyrics a Springsteen/Elvis Costello sung/rapped blues style... just spit out all one after the other. The band's great, all classic rock swagger, and the lyrics are a great story... tottally specific and kinda universal too: "City centre used to be the centre of are scene/now city centres over/no one ever goes there/We used to hang out under this railroad bridge/sometimes the cops wouldn't even go there there were too many people"
I LOVE them. They're the best Catholic bar band retro rockers ever
The Fiery Furnaces
Amazing live show.
I interviewed Matt last week and it was great. I almost mentioned QC. My first real itnerview I was nervous, but i got through it... got published on a website. Things started to turn around; i got a job and i'm seein them next week.
I've written so much about them and its hard to write more now.... i will after their show
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At the Drive-In
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I'd say my band is Harvey Danger.
Yes, I just said fucking Harvey "Flagpole Sitta" Danger. I have gone out of my way to find music by them spending ridiculous amounts of money on trying to get every track they've ever recorded.
Harvey Danger started as a "What the Hell" thing for me. I was a kid and I loved Flagpole Sitta when I first heard it on the radio. I still have the cardboard version of Where Have All the Merrymakers Gone? around here somewhere. When I listened to the actual album, I fell in love with the band's ability to produce music that really seems both literate and filled with frustration and melancholy. Not to mention, Carlotta Valdez basically is all about one of my favorite movies: Vertigo. (I was angsty as a teen. Give me a break. The music still holds up as meaningful and beautiful though. "Jack the Lion" is still my favorite song ever because of the memories it invokes with me holding my once strong grandmother's hand as she died.)
Then, King James Version came out and no one noticed. This is the largest music atrocity ever perpetrated by corporate America. Pike Street to Park Slope is beautiful. The entire album is probably the most genuinely literate and lyrically interesting collection of songs I have. Notice I keep saying literate? It's because Harvey Danger's lead singer holds an English degree and you can tell.
Now, years later, we have Little by Little and an upcoming tour. Cream and Bastards Rise is a brilliant single waiting to happen. Moral Centralia; War Buddies; and Wine, Women, and Song are also just about the best piano pop I've heard in a long time.
I get so worked up about HD that I have trouble really make a clear cut argument about why they rock so fucking hard.
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Mine is Bob Marley, but I'm not going to expound on it, because it would probalby sound pretty lame.
The day I got my iPod I downloaded his discography. Woot.
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Supertramp or The Legendary Pink Dots, for various cheesy sentimental reasons I'm not going to go into.
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Okay. Anybody who has me on their last.fm or read my posts on the Sleater-Kinney thread or some of my posts on the Battle of teh bands-related stuff would probably know which two I'm to list out.
The Smashing Pumpkins
Soundtrack to my adolescence and teenage years, no doubt about it. I've always listened to their singles but I never truly got into them until when I was 13-14. Okay, another kind of generic phrase but, in all honesty, I had felt like the awkward outcast teenager. I didn't really have a lot of friends, especially ones that I could connect to (hell I have the same problem now), and I just never felt right or comfortable ANYWHERE. I was just always on end with everything. But somehow, as indulgent as MCIS can be or tracks like Silverfuck, somehow the Pumpkins always had soothed me. I'd rock out to Siamese Dream, cry to sleep with Adore. Whenever I listened to them, they made me feel at home more than I had ever felt in my actual home. They just basically fed me for a full two years and a half. With them, I never had to think "is this shit? is this good?" or weigh out their strengths versus their weaknesses, cuz shit, I LIKED their weaknesses, because they were MINE.
And listening to them always carries me on this journey down memory lane, for good or for worse. I guess it's worth of note that the last moment I saw a bunch of family members before they died, I was listening to Dawn to Dusk, so it certainly evokes memories.
Sleater-Kinney
They have been a newer discovery to me, but nothing short of another milestone band. While the Pumpkins cushioned me like a security blanket, Sleater-Kinney had always infused some sort of hidden confidence in me somehow, as cheesy as that sounds. I played the Woods a lot last summer, which was the peak of my moments of confidence-and-existing-backbone. I really liked my last summer, it was a summer of a lot of firsts, when I really tried to reach out to the community and actually you know, DID something with myself, and I couldn't give a shit what other people thought of me! I was going out trying new things even if it resulted in me smelling like soil and compost for half the summer. Whenever I play Sleater-Kinney, they remind me of those days, and I just get a little boost in self-confidence, and so pull me through the day.
Too bad Sleater-Kinney's about to get defunct, and I'm not that hopeful with the new Smashing Pumpkins. But I guess all is alright in the world as long as I have their records.
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I've already made a thread about them (which was throughly toasted by the community) but I'll mention them for good posture. Machinae Supremacy (http://www.machinaesupremacy.com) is my opinion of God's gift on earth. Epic, charged and very inspirational, these guys are awesome. Most of their songs are free, which is always a plus.
And they're Swedish.
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The Dresden Dolls. The genre that they give themselves is "Punk Cabaret" or "Dark Cabaret". Their music is a delightful mixture of melodic to..almost thrashing sounds all brought to life with simply piano and drums perfectly synchronized (or not,depending on what they are aiming for).
Mix this with heavily emotional and sometimes highly,comedically satiric lyrics,and you have a pretty good idea of what The Dresden Dolls are.
Iron and Wine. Sam Beam has introduced an outstanding combination of light,lovely sounds with brilliantly insightful lyrics and fabulous intrumentalism. That's about all that needs to be said,I believe.
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Hey coffee eyes. You've got me coughing up my cookie heart, making promises to myself. Promises like seeds of everything I can be.
If those lines don't say it all, nothing does.
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This is a sweet thread.
So. Last year I was totally into the classic rock. But I didn't really enjoy it on a level that I enjoy music now. It was fun to listen to, and it could up my energy a little, or maybe calm me down a little, but other than that it didn't do much. I started getting bored and began to find my music choices limited. Anyway, the guy sitting across from me in my math class kept going on about this band he had heard of from his older brother. Sigger Roos or something like that. I was still pretty deep into my classic rock habits, so I didn't pay a lot of attention to him. But then I got another recomendation for the same band, from a completely different (and somewhat anonymous source). A website made by someone of my age who lived in my area recomended Sigur Ros. I think I decided to check them out because my best friend was getting deep into electronic music and the website touted them as somewhat electronicky, so I wanted to hear some good electronic music. I went to their website, and downloaded a few songs (http://sigur-ros.co.uk/media/). It was pretty good, so I made a mix and played it for my family when I got a chance. My older sister liked it, so I got a CD. ( ), the untitled album. It was okay...kind of boring, but the last song was golden. I listened to the last song over and over, and ordered Agaetis Byrjun off Amazon.com. Then I went out of town for a week and a half. When i got back, my sister had received the CD and listened to it. She said it was pretty good. Over the next few weeks I got to know the album by listening to it all the way through about every single night. It was PURE. FUCKING. BEAUTY. (In my opinion anyway.) The vocals mixing with the bowed guitar mixing with the strings mixing with the bass...just awesome. Agaetis Byrjun still makes me feel great, and Sigur Ros is still my favorite band.
Steely Dan. My dad introduced me to them when I was in 5th or 6th grade, and I still love them. Aja is probably one of my favorite songs, and Donald Fagen and Walter Becker are basically my favorite lyricists. The lyrics are so snarky and satirious, while the instrumentals are tight and perfect. Whenever I get bored of listening to music, I just put on some Steely Dan and I regain my interest. Plus, Steely Dan is the name of a vibrator. Tee hee.
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Do you have "Dead Man Walking"?
I have a great boot of the whole show, but I haven't seen the official release yet, no.
Have you seen any of his movies? Down By Law is good, Shrek 2's cameo is really random, and i haven't seen the others
Ooh, yeah, seen both of those. Have you ever seen the music video that's an extra on the Criterion release of Down By Law? It's a cover of Cole Porter's It's All Right With Me, which I guess he recorded for a benefit album. Cool stuff.
Any love for his earlier 'grand weepers', like 'Time'? So very good
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.
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Man, reading this thread is melting my face off with awesome. Beautiful, chaps.
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Bogus Blimp.
Now, I'm not one to pick my favorite band of the moment, but for me that's hard to do. I listen to music by my mood. I have a whole host of bands that I occasionally jones for, but all of them can last a good while, then I have to move elsewhere. I occasionally even get moods in which I grow tired of music in general. But these guys are the only constant. It's not even like Bogus Blimp cover that wide a range of sounds, nor do they seem to cover a wide range of moods (though they do for me now); they only had three albums, scant information can be found about them at all, and most of their members (by an American's reckoning) have entirely disappeared from the eye of Music. I can't even give you a website, it's been defunct since I started listening. But their three CDs have been the standard in my record rotation, often either one start to finish or sometimes all three in a row. I've wondered often what makes me love them so, what is the combination of sounds, lyrics, melodies, etc. that really makes them stick with me, and I come up with nothing; upon analysis, they don't seem that remarkable. However, everything with this band continues to click right into place, no matter what I'm doing or where I am. The three albums flow into each other like they were one huge one, the themes and lyrics create a sense of drama and continuity without seeming to do so, the vocals and production take something that for most bands is beyond the reach of their concepts and incorporate it so seamlessly that you wish it had been in every song you've heard. They're remarkable, if a bit off-center, for creating a sound so gorgeous because it's like nothing you've heard or will ever hear (exaggeration, I'm sure... prove me wrong, please!). It manages to both overstate and understate, to mix irony and sincerity in perfect blend, to combine equal amounts of heaviness, calm, energy, delicacy, organics and electronics. But I extol beyond my qualifications... I suspect I'm getting redundant and slightly pretentious, so I'm stopping it there, but I hope everyone gets the idea and goes out to find these CDs. Find these people. Make them make more music!
*shakes head to clear it*
So, anyway, I also have a personal sentimentality for Pink Floyd and Opeth: the first bands to show me how deep the rabbit hole goes, thus my current love for music and my in-progress music major. Mad props to those lovely Europeans.
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I'd say my band is Harvey Danger.
Yes, I just said fucking Harvey "Flagpole Sitta" Danger. I have gone out of my way to find music by them spending ridiculous amounts of money on trying to get every track they've ever recorded.
Harvey Danger started as a "What the Hell" thing for me. I was a kid and I loved Flagpole Sitta when I first heard it on the radio. I still have the cardboard version of Where Have All the Merrymakers Gone? around here somewhere. When I listened to the actual album, I fell in love with the band's ability to produce music that really seems both literate and filled with frustration and melancholy. Not to mention, Carlotta Valdez basically is all about one of my favorite movies: Vertigo. (I was angsty as a teen. Give me a break. The music still holds up as meaningful and beautiful though. "Jack the Lion" is still my favorite song ever because of the memories it invokes with me holding my once strong grandmother's hand as she died.)
Then, King James Version came out and no one noticed. This is the largest music atrocity ever perpetrated by corporate America. Pike Street to Park Slope is beautiful. The entire album is probably the most genuinely literate and lyrically interesting collection of songs I have. Notice I keep saying literate? It's because Harvey Danger's lead singer holds an English degree and you can tell.
Now, years later, we have Little by Little and an upcoming tour. Cream and Bastards Rise is a brilliant single waiting to happen. Moral Centralia; War Buddies; and Wine, Women, and Song are also just about the best piano pop I've heard in a long time.
I get so worked up about HD that I have trouble really make a clear cut argument about why they rock so fucking hard.
I bought King James Version not too long ago at the local community radio garage sale. When I was showing off my wares to others, that was consistently singled out as one that everyone was surprised that I bought. Honestly, I bought it on a good word from the Internet and vintage memories of Grade Four and "Flagpole Sitta". And it's consistently better than a lot of the other albums I bought that day. Even Fred Schneider's first solo album.
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It seems that I've been beaten to it but I might as well give my particular reasons.
The Smashing Pumpkins:
I've been listening to the Smashing Pumpkins since before I can remember and in that time I'd end up not listening to them for about a year. Then one day I'd listen to one of their songs again and I'd instantly remember why I listened to them in the first place. This recurrence is one of the few things that I would say is almost central in my life.
They have seemed to cover almost the entire range of human emotion. Songs like "Crestfallen" are nothing but absolute melencholy but "Thru the eyes of Ruby" starts exactly that way but about minutes into the song thier overdriven guitars come in as strong as ever. Maybe I'm just reading too much into it but I think that's how things are, we're battered, beaten and broken but somehow we end up coming back stronger than we've ever been before. To this day, I'm having a difficult time finding a song that matches the fury and nihilism of "Tales of A Scorched Earth." They've sat there and covered that feeling when you've been sitting in a classroom for two hours being listening to some lecture on god knows what, the absolute boredom and what you end up doing to get through it and not kill someone.
They ended up taking a new direction in some of their later cd releases and a lot of people didn't like it but they did it anyway. They were essentially saying "Fuck you, We're not being caged by what you expect."
In the end, it always gave me that feeling of absolute freedom. No, I may not fit in, but it's not like I was trying to anyway. I'm me and there is no way you can touch me. I always felt like I was the highest of the high and the lowest of the low all at once.
Beck:
As a total 180 from I present to you Beck. There is no music that makes me feel sexier than Beck. You can sit there and pick apart a good number of songs and end up finding absolutely no meaning. It should be obvious though, there was no other or deeper meaning, it was made because he liked the way it sounded, and sometimes that's meaning enough. It's perfect for all those times when you're just sitting there thinking "I'm going to have fun and enjoy myself. I don't care if it's stupid or pointless;I'm just going to do it because I can."
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See... I'm a firm believer that Beck's song "Scarecrow" is actually about bible thumpers warning about the evil of homosexuality to protect the flock, but really only scaring themselves. My version of this song in my head is genius.
Edit: Also... King James Version is awesome and everyone should buy it.
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It seems that I've been beaten to it but I might as well give my particular reasons.
The Smashing Pumpkins:
I've been listening to the Smashing Pumpkins since before I can remember and in that time I'd end up not listening to them for about a year. Then one day I'd listen to one of their songs again and I'd instantly remember why I listened to them in the first place. This recurrence is one of the few things that I would say is almost central in my life.
They have seemed to cover almost the entire range of human emotion. Songs like "Crestfallen" are nothing but absolute melencholy but "Thru the eyes of Ruby" starts exactly that way but about minutes into the song thier overdriven guitars come in as strong as ever. Maybe I'm just reading too much into it but I think that's how things are, we're battered, beaten and broken but somehow we end up coming back stronger than we've ever been before. To this day, I'm having a difficult time finding a song that matches the fury and nihilism of "Tales of A Scorched Earth." They've sat there and covered that feeling when you've been sitting in a classroom for two hours being listening to some lecture on god knows what, the absolute boredom and what you end up doing to get through it and not kill someone.
They ended up taking a new direction in some of their later cd releases and a lot of people didn't like it but they did it anyway. They were essentially saying "Fuck you, We're not being caged by what you expect."
In the end, it always gave me that feeling of absolute freedom. No, I may not fit in, but it's not like I was trying to anyway. I'm me and there is no way you can touch me. I always felt like I was the highest of the high and the lowest of the low all at once.
I love the Smashing Pumpkins as well, completely get where you're comming from here. I had all these grand plans to perform a sweet cover version of 'Porcelina of the Vast Oceans' and then my band broke up :(
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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)
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Agaetis Byrjun still makes me feel great, and Sigur Ros is still my favorite band.
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.
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Do you have "Dead Man Walking"?
Any love for his earlier 'grand weepers', like 'Time'? So very good
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.
'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...
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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.
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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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Agaetis Byrjun still makes me feel great, and Sigur Ros is still my favorite band.
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.
I DID! I saw them live for the first time in May, and it was AMAZING. Untitled #8 was awesome, but Haffsol was the best! It ended with all the members leaving the stage until only Jonsi was left onstage, beating the shit out of his guitar with the mangled remains of his cello bow.
I'm still basking in the glow of that concert.
Sigur Ros always sound like they wrote their music just for me, and they don't give a shit about anyone else, it's just for me
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I don't really have a full band, I just have a sortof a band and a couple albums.
Silver Jews w/ Malkmus.
And not just kinda with Malkmus, like tanglewood and crap.
I'm really mainly/exclusively referring to Arizona Record/American Water.
I love them. I show em to people, lend them to people who, generally like my music, and they don't get it. And I just love it. It's amazing.
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Okay, when I got home from Winnipeg I wrote about it in one of my three new leather-bound gift journals. This is the entry, and after some deliberation I've decided to post the full writing.
"Wilco"
It's been four days since I graduated but it's really felt like one.
My grad was, in a word, anticlimactic. I feel like I've gained less than I've lost; in both my personal and scholastic lives, I've encountered some changes with what seem like ill effects, changes I won't print because I know what they are, dammit, and they aren't the point of this entry.
Well, I think I might have been a little hasty, writing that. They're not the point but I guess they are important.
I got a little additional closure this week - additional and unexpected. A friend of mine whom I've been romantically pursuing for a little over a year has, it turns out, a boyfriend. End chapter. Happy graduation.
I wish I could say it surprised me, but it really didn't. You hesitate, you lose, and God damn if I didn't hesitate.
Thank goodness we're still friends, right?
But that is important, because about 21 hours previous to this writing I was in winnipeg with my friend and travelling companion Jim, on foot and headed towards The Forks (a local "mall" with specialty and gift stores, a plaza, tours, etc.). We were a little distance away from some great Sri Lankan food and across the street from a big public Canada Day party when Jim broke my minor daydreams with "Johnny, it's Canada Day, we're in Winnipeg, and in a couple of hours we're about to see Wilco. Everything's right with the world."
And honestly? He was completely right.
Wilco has a place in my heart that was not built for more than one band. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was responsible for veering me away from mall-punk culture and into, well, music culture. Something about that album's supposedly "unmarketable" sound, its cohesive aural microcosm of human experience, resonated with this fifteen-year-old to such an enormous extent that, now eighteen, he is able to recall the exact moment that "I Am Trying To Break Your Heart" made him think, "I've been listening to the wrong music." It was the moment where, for me, electric guitars and bluesy solos and spiked hair and juvenile music videos and jumps and crowdsurfing and flipping one's guitar around one's back and catching in order to show off became not so much irrelavant as just not important anymore. It was new.
(for the record, that moment is at 4:14)
So seeing Wilco - making a drive which, there and back, was about eleven to twelve hours - was phenomenal. What away to close out high school, a semi-failed relationship, a year (as a June baby, I have a right to say this) of my life!
An hour and forty-five minutes worth of material is hard to disappoint with, and Wilco delivered everything I could have possibly hoped for. Had I been thinking I would have copied down the set list - but then again, is that really needed? At every break, I realized that the preceding song was one that I would be eternally grateful to see live, and I think that's what matters.
Oh, fine. They hit the necessary songs from Yankee and A Ghost Is Born, plunged into their back catalogue, bantered, showboated, and sweated. (Rather profusely, I might add.) Both encores were stunning.
I'd been waiting months, and the performance was a definite release. Basically, it was the closure I'd needed.
Thanks, Wilco.
It's not as great as the Sleater-Kinney mourning but I think it gets the point across, guys.
dude I was also at the forks on Canada Day, and then I went to wilco. that's neat.
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Man if you had chicken satay and then watched a terrible cover band try and play "I Love Myself Today," then you are basically me.
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Of course, to be Johnny C on that day, you would also have to be wearing a purple, sequined vest with a matching top hat.
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Don't forget the monkey with the fez.
Guys, I think I have another band I should include in here, and I will write it today and post after work.
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My band is Rush.
I became a Rush fan in possibly the most stereotypical way imaginable -- I was a D&D-playing teenaged nerd in the 80s. My older brother and his friends were much cooler than any of the people in my grade (for values of "cool" as defined by a D&D-playing nerd, anyway), so I hung out with them by preference and absorbed their music. The Who and Pink Floyd were prominent, Yes as well, but Rush was the centerpiece, as it were. Not too fancy, just three guys playing the hell out of their instruments, making it come together coherently, and making me think the way music hadn't done before.
Why are they still my band? To an extent, I don't know. There's the nostalgia factor, certainly. That wasn't always the best part of my life, but the parts that had Rush associated (including my first concert) were as good as it got.
I love that the same three guys have been playing pretty much whatever they want for more than 30 years now and making a very successful living at it.
I love that they come on stage to the "Three Stooges" theme.
I love the "freeowwww" at the beginning of Tom Sawyer, and the Morse code of YYZ.
I love that they can still set my brain on fire with new material -- Vapor Trails had some remarkable stuff on it.
I love the fact that it takes me three or four listens of a new album before I manage to really hear everything that's going on.
And I love seeing them in concert, both for the music and for the atmosphere. Most folks are familiar with the scene from PCU where a character is told "You're wearing the shirt of the band you're going to see? Don't be That Guy."
At a Rush concert, everyone is That Guy, and we all know we're being That Guy, and nobody cares.
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I'd like to talk about two bands that I feel are kind of mine, hence my first post on this forum. They are both Swedish, they are both duos, but they differ alot in type of music.
First I will talk about Johnossi. Two guys, John, guitar player and singer, and Ossi, on the drums. But that doesn't really matter, bacause in some way they manage to sound like being atleast 4 or 5 people on stage or in the studio. And the music shoots straight into my stomach, making me want to jump around and bawl. They sing about being in your twenties and feel that you haven't achieved anything in your life. Pretentiuos maybe, but the frutstration is compelling, and as they offer no way out, no life changing solutions, so I just tag along and bang my head.
http://www.johnossi.com/
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=49632866
Next up is the Knife. I don't know, maybe some of you have heard of them, in Sweden they are getting kind of big. The Knife consists of a sister and a brother, and they play electronica. So for you who can't stand that, keep away. But (musically) they are one of the best things that have ever happened to me. It took some time to get into their music, as it's not allways easy to listen to, espacially their last album is kind of dark, but when I did it was so amazing. I won't even try to explain, I just want to ask you to give them a chance. They get into my head, they mess with my feelings, some songs makes my skin tingle in such a way that I just don't know what to do. It is strange and awsome.
http://www.theknife.net/o0o.html
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=16339226
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The Knife are hella awesome.
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I saw them, the Knife, live just a week ago. They don't give alot of shows, so it was kinda special, and it was truly awsome. They had a big black transparent screen if front of them on stage, with projections on it, and they stood behind it in black clothes, with their faces glowing somehow. It was realy spectacular, and made me love them even more.
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For me, it's got to be Opeth. The musicianship in this band is absolutely second to none, and the lyrical prowess of Mikael Akerfeldt blows practically everything in todays current metal scene away. From the fantastic and tragic story told in "Still Life", to the epic tune "Deliverance" and practically everything else this band has created, Opeth have managed to keep hold of their unique sound. This is a band who can be crushingly aggressive one minute and hauntingly beautiful the next, often numerous times within one song alone. Slayer they ain't.
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As for bands, I'm going to have to be typical and say that the Beatles, Radiohead, and the Kinks are the bands I always go back to, with phases of being really into other bands in between. I love these bands because they have such a wide discography and cover a lot of ground while being pretty consistently good (although I don't really listen to the Kinks past the 1960s stuff).
As for singers, I'd have to say that Gram Parsons is my favorite. Does anyone else listen to this guy? He appeared on some pretty popular albums like the Byrds' 1968 breakthrough 'country/rock' album 'Sweetheart of the Rodeo' and he sang lead on all the early Flying Burrito Brothers stuff (my favorite being 'Sleepless Nights'). He put out a few solo albums in the early 1970s, 'GP' and 'Grevious Angel' and a lot of his work featured duets with Emmylou Harris at the beginning of her country singing career. He wasn't around very long (dead at 26 in 1973) but he was maybe the first person to mix country with rock music, and had such an amazing voice and timeless-sounding songs for such a young guy.
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For me it is the Who. They brought into the classic rock sound at a young age, this band wast introduced to me and i took to it like a jelly fish to a pale rich buisness man in the ocean.if that makes sense. The thing that really got m hooked to the band was when my uncle caught me listening to one of their albums. He explained the troubles and struggles the band went through, i didnt have any of the words sink in but i wished i did. As i grew older i researched the band and learned their names, their styles, and their part of the band. I listen to them more, i knew the lyrics by heart, i slept with my who Cd spinning in my CD player. I saw one of their concerts and thought it was great. it is one of the things i forget the details but i remember being there in the crowd with out a mind as everyone shouted along. a few years later i recieved a guitar. my first thought was their lead guitarist using his arm as a windmill to strike the strings and then smashing his guitar at the end of the show. As i listen to more of their songs i could here a lyric that explained my situation of th moment. a worship of the band might have started if i was richer. apprently i cant afford a shrine extenion in my closet wit my own pocket money. The Who became my branch towards other music. not only was it classic rock but new rock, alt rock, punk rock, and then into the blues. so if i ever get into a musical field of work, i have Pete, Keith, John, and Roger to thank.
and that is what the who is to me. "You only became what we made you." as they would say
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I really can't choose just one band so i'll be lining up three.
The first time i listened to The Flaming Lips's The Soft Bulletin it completely changed my view on music (actually i first listened to a single of theirs which had a couple of tracks from both Zaireeka and The Soft Bulletin (the incorporation of Heureka and Zaire is btw totally cool) . I listened to that album for months and months away. I sat in my room for days and listened to this fantastic album, and memorized the songs, danced and even wrote short stories about the two scientists in Race For The Price and Superman in Waiting for superman. Right from the starter Race For The Price, the fairy tales and adventure in both their lyrics, instrumentalism and layers and layers of electronic beauty is just astonishing. This is my one true childhood band, i will forever come back to them. It just got better when i listened to Yoshmi Battles the Pink Robots and afterwards Zaireeka. I really can't describe it, and i guess that's enough for them to be on this "list". I didn't sit and wait feverishly for the new album, for i knew with myself that they could never do anything better than The Soft Bulletin. At War With The Mystics is a great album though. I really wish i catched their show in copenhagen in may.
Wayne Coyne is, if anyone hasn't noticed, btw the nicest person on earth.
"Do You Realize, Oh Oh Oh
Do You Realize, that everyone, you know,
Someday, will die"
and
"Tell everybody
Waitin' for Superman
That they should try to hold on
Best they can
He hasn't dropped them
Forgot them
Or anything
It's just too heavy for Superman to lift"
<3
A lot of you people don't know this band, except from the times Praeserpium have mentioned them, but Under Byen are danish. This forever-changing lineup of unique and groundbreaking musicians continue to blow my mind, with every new album they send out. They have this amazing pianist who plays as if his it was his last day to ever touch the tangents. I would love this band, solely because of his fantastic playing but on top of that their front singer Henriette Sennenwald creates some of the most intense, delicate and emotional vocals i have ever heard. She whispers, she breaths and turns with the mic and transfers her soul to fucking sound. Also they have some kind of atmosphere no matter which album you set in the stereo, they have this feel that no other band can compete with. Their dreamy, winterlike and sometimes ethereal mood is just incomparable. It's hard for people who don't understand the lyrics to get this feel, though i think, but still i know a lot of people who can still enjoy the music all though they have no idea what this fairy is singing. But even i can't fully grasp the meaning of her lyrics, it's very cryptic and imagery, which is another thing i love about this band. It's too easy to describe the way you think you feel. She describes what's truly in your heart. Other than that i can listen to their discography from one end to the other without losing focus and that means a lot to me cus i have a nasty habit of changing the track all the time.
I'd have a translation of their lyrics here if i didn't think it would ruin everything.
Next band is Mew which is also a danish band, but i guess there is a much bigger chance of you knowing them than Under Byen. My big brother bought the record and i remember i didn't think much of it, except for the single Snow Brigade. Everything else was just too distant for me to relate to. But as i borrowed the album and listened to it from the start to the end, i realised i had been missing out on something huge. After that i listened to it now and then but never really got completely into the band, it was as if that album was enough. But it wasn't and i got completely hooked a couple of months later after listening to She-spider over and over again.
"After we go to sleep
Our sun rise
I will make it the truth of painfully helping me cover up things
I wish I never had found "
and then the amazing break
"CONFIDENT!
Tangled up in a nice life
Put the spider in you
Watching in
Disregard
You live a nice life
With the spider in you "
Yes yes yes!!
So i read about them, and found out that Frengers was just a bunch of old songs re-recorded and a couple of new tracks, so i thought to myself "I gotta listen to their old work" and i did. And it made so much more sense from that point on, it was as if i understood the band and what they were trying to do. I started to get the little emotional details in every word and every drum beat, i started to realise that this was my.fucking.band. And since the new album And The Glasshanded Kites, i have just been in awe of the journey they are taking their band through. This is true ambition, this is true urge to bring expression forth in sound and actually also graphics. At their shows they have this kind of slideshow/video thing running behind them with Jonas (the frontsinger)'s creatures, landscapes, worlds. He said that his only real inspiration is his dreams, in which these creatures come to life. All he's trying to do is capture this. Backed up by an amazing drummer and a fantastic (but not nearly as talented as the others) guitarist, it just all falls into place.
There are loads of other bands that just didn't make it to this list, but some of them are:
The Blood Brothers
The Stars
and The Mars Volta
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I don't have such strong feelings towards my music like some of you do. I used to idealize things and people, and those ideals quickly turned into obsessions, with all the pain, agony and depression afterwards. These days i like and listen to a lot of music, but i've lost this thin thread of spiritual connection to it.
The band that i appreciate the most right now would probably be Cradle of Filth. It's hard to explain why i like them. Perhaps there is some strange hidden beauty between the over-the-top vocals and preverted lyrics.
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Without a doubt for me it's the Minutemen.
No else else emboddied the free thinking, do whatever you want and don't get caught up in bullshit conventions models that I applied to my entire life. On top of that, they had the balls to be freaking gods with their instruments.
I've always been into punk, but not into punk fascism. D Boon said it best: "Punk rock is whatever I want it to be"
Also, I would not have picked up a bass guitar without MikeWatt. Period.
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hmmm...
i don't really have one or two favorite bands. but right now the ones i listen to most frequently are:
Anberlin, The Morning Of, Rookie of the Year, and Daphne Loves Derby
Anberlin is amazing. Stephen Christian has a great voice, and their guitarists are awesome.
i love The Morning Of for their creativity, i have yet to hear a band that sounds like them.
Rookie of the Year is also quite amazing. i really take their lyrics to heart, and a lot of their songs are pretty lol.
and Daphne Loves Derby mostly for the same reasons why i like Rookie of the Year.
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My band will probably always be Kyuss.
I got into music in the first place because I started downloading Queens of the Stone Age songs and for some reason they were ALL good. It used to be, I'd listen to a good song on the radio, download it, and I'd have it to listen to when I did my homework. Then maybe I'd go and download whichever other songs by that artist showed up the most times when I did a WinMX search for them. I was on a huge System of a Down kick after Toxicity came out, but that was more because my best friends played them all the time, it wasn't until Queens of the Stone Age that *I* had a definite favorite band. Their album filler ("God is on the Radio") was better than their singles ("No One Knows") and this was unheard of for me. I listened to very little else for a long time.
So after a few internet articles I decided to look into Kyuss, which is the band everyone mentioned when they talked about QOTSA. It was sorta hit-and-miss at first ... I loved some tracks and was sorta turned off by some others. I was gradually building up a collection, one track at a time, with no eye for which album it was in or how old it was or anything like that ... in short, I was applying the rules I'd always applied to listening to music (judge by track and find songs with random trawls).
Then I came across a 17-minute track labeled "Gardenia-Asteroid-Supa Scoopa and Mighty Scoop." It seemed absurdly long to me and I didn't have the patience to listen to it all the way through for quite a long time after acquiring it. But after reading an album review of "Welcome to Sky Valley," in which the reviewer described the way Kyuss had split the 10-song album into only 4 tracks so that anyone who wanted to listen to any of it had to listen to all of it "listening without distraction," I saw that track (and everything else Kyuss had done) in a completely different light. Suddenly the music was more than just something I listened to to pass time. It was more than sound. It was significant, in a way that demanded that I listen to it *without distraction.* It became an experience on its own, and it completely changed the way I listened to music.
More than any other band by a country mile, Kyuss is responsible for the relationship I have to music right now. I'd never be listening to Dead Meadow, or Om, or Sleep, or Acid Mothers Temple, or Bardo Pond, or Jack Rose, or 35007, or any of the other artists I think of as "my bands" if it weren't for Kyuss. The music I feel the closest connection to is "listen without distraction" music ... the stuff I can lose myself in and think of in terms of mental surroundings instead of simple sound. Kyuss is the reason why I listen without distraction.
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I hate to be that guy who is all "My band is the Beatles" because I know it can come off as such a clique, but too bad. I am going to be that guy.
Maybe its a context thing. I know so many people that grew up with the Beatles, and so they aren't a huge thing for them. I never grew up listening to any decent music, the most interesting CD in my parents house was a best of The Doors CD, which I did kind of get bored of after a while.
The point is, I didn't have any musical influences forced upon me from an early age, and like a lot of teenagers, I found myself drawn towards music that at best can be described as "Angsty and anti-social" and at worst can be described as "Green Day"
So anyway, I went through my mid teens listening to a lot of stuff by the Vandals and Nirvana, and in general, having taste in music that wasn't particularly melodic or intrinsically dynamic. I got into a lot of metal in my mid-late teens, and by the time I graduated high-school, I'd started to grow tired of it, and I was wondering if there was really much music that was worth listening to. Now, I had listened to some Beatles. In fact, I had listened to a lot of stuff that I would come to love in the future, but none of it had really ever clicked with me and hit me in the face and said "I AM AWESOME, THE SHIT, SUPERB, LISTEN TO ME". I guess maybe I just didn't really have an appriciation of melody. I had sat around listening to Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds getting stoned, as a matter of course. (I hated that fucking song then, and I still hate it now)I had heard Twist and Shout and I Wanna Hold Your Hand on the radio. In fact, I had heard a pretty decent chunk of old Beatles on 4KQ at various points, but then one day, something changed.
Pretty much, to cut a long story short, for various reasons, I had bullshitted myself into a corner where I pretended I was actually a Beatles fan in order to get into a ladys pants. I realized that I would have to actually listen to a Beatles record in its entirety in order for this to be even moderatly successful, so I bought the first one I could find.
The first one I could find was Revolver. From the moment Tax-man came on, I didn't quite understand what was going on. The bass was carrying the melody, the rhythm was bouncing like mad, and the lyrics were so much more intriguing than anything I'd ever heard (A potent combination of LSD and Tool had pretty much destroyed my ability to interpret subtleties in lyrics by this point) and I couldn't believe this was the band so many people I knew had described as banal, overrated trash.
I dunno, maybe because I was never heavily exposed to the Beatles like a lot of folks, I was able to see it in a lot more of an innocent light, like one of those screaming teenage girls in the black and white TV spots. The point is, that this was the first music I was ever exposed to that had real melody, basslines that weren't just constant root notes being played with simplistic rhythms, married to the bass drum. I mean, there are bands that I like more than The Beatles, but there is no way I would be able to enjoy those bands nearly as much nowadays. Somehow, something about the Beatles clicked that part of my brain that really enjoys music into gear, and I owe them my allegiance for life as a result.
You know, even though they're dropping like flies.
Oh shit I have been going on for pretty long huh? I could probably just ditch those first few paragraphs and it wouldn't matter but oh shit I am doing it again
Long story short, Lady Madonna, Lovely Rita and Got To Get You Into My Life are the two songs that make me happy, no matter what kind of fucked up shit is going down. I really want all these songs played at my funeral, especially the last one, for that perverse sense of irony.
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Although a number of bands could fill this spot, I will put down Bright Eyes as the strongest candidate, Wilco and Radiohead in how pursuit.
A lot of people will call Bright Eyes an emo band, which is probably true, but Conor Oberst developes vivid, emotional imagery in his lyrics partially through blatant and brave personal information as well as terrific command over the language. And he delivers all this through a quaking, soulful voice. Granted he isn't great shakes of a singer, but the intensity of "The Calendar Hung Itself" and "Lover I Don't Have To Love" is hard to match, and Conor plays the other side just as well, making the quieter songs intimate.
In the end it comes down to the fact that I was knocked back by the fervor when he sang, "I guess we all fit into the slogan on your fastfood marquee / red blooded, white skinned, and the blues / Oh and the blues, I got the blues, that's me!" and then later in the same song chills shot down my back with, "Well I awoke in relief, my sheets and tubes all tangled / weak from whiskey and pills in a Chicago hospital / and my father was there in a chair by the window, staring so far away / I tried talking, just whispered, 'so sorry, so selfish' / He stopped me and said, 'child, I love you regardless'"
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I'll give three.
Neutral Milk Hotel- I can't explain, not even to myself, just why Neutral Milk Hotel is the best band ever, and the best there ever will be. The sound of Jeff Mangum's voice sends me into a dreamlike state, transcending anything I would have thought capable of a mortal man. In the Aeroplane Over The Sea as a whole communicates much more than the sum of it's parts. I sometimes feel as if the meaning of life is contained in it. I've listened to the album at least a hundred times, just in the last year, and it blows me away every time. I've gone thrugh Neutral Milk Hotel mania. I've downloaded early demos and countless bootlegs. I spent the entirety of a day once just listening to it all.
Akron/Family- I've introduced this band to a lot of people, and I seem to be the only one who finds them revolutionary. I think they are to me what Radiohead are for a lot of people. This is some of the most beautiful music I've ever heard, and at the same time, it's very unique. Though they're usually compared to Devendra Banhart, Animal Collective, and the like, I think they sound like a stripped down, experimental Radiohead, without the traces of pretention that prevent Radiohead from achieving perfection. The fact that most people haven't heard of them, and many don't like them makes them feel even more like MY band.
Belle and Sebastian- Belle and Sebastian is a perfect pop band, but subversively so. Stuart Murdoch has a very beautiful and soothing voice which complements the lush arrangements. But their music is also filled with irony. A quintessential Belle and Sebastian moment is on "Dress Up In You", when Stuart gently croons "They are hypocrites so fuck them too." And "The Stars of Track and Field", for some reason, sounds to me like it could be a great punk song. The fact that it's done as a light, airy pop song makes it all the much better. But even without this irony, Belle and Sebastian's delightful twee sounds great on it's own. And as I am a generally pleasant person with a tinge of subversity, it really speaks to me.
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My band is Pain of Salvation.
They're a Swedish progressive metal band who have been putting out concept albums since 1997. They've often been compared to Dream Theater, Pink Floyd, etc. with vocals evoking anyone from Freddie Mercury to Mike Patton.
Why are they MY BAND?
Well it comes about from my personal situation when i discovered them. My Issues, if you will.
Their two best albums, The Perfect Element and Remedy Lane, deal with depression. The former deals with general depression and feelings of being unable to escape one's heredity/given legacy/etc. It also shows the main character learning to own up to his mistakes, to stop blaming others. The latter is more specific, dealing with a relationship breaking down.
Two years ago, when I first heard this music, I was mired in both.
The albums are not uplifting in any sense of the word. They involve the main characters attempting to improve their situations, yet failing. Instead these albums provide a sort of Walpurgisnacht (the night in which Evil is purged, usually taking all the Good along with it). In addition, several lyrical passages have been extremely poignant and offered me a sort of comfort.
The songs "Morning on Earth", "Reconciliation", and "The Perfect Element" off "The Perfect Element" and "Ending Theme", "Undertow", "Waking Every God", and "Beyond the Pale" off Remedy Lane fit this description.
Furthermore, Daniel Gildenlow, singer, songwriter, and guitarist for Pain of Salvation, has crafted some of the most watertight concept albums, surpassing even the likes of Roger Waters and Pete Townsend, in my opinion. Both of these albums share a few common structural elements, such as a mid-album "Song of (short-lived) Hope" as well as a 10-minute epic track that wraps up the album, both in terms of the concept as well as being a musical tour-de-force (in the good way, IndieTits fans).
These albums will change you. I believe that these albums helped me stay functional throughout the past tow years.
end.
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The Eels.
The goddamn Eels, man.
E writes what he feels down and puts it to music. It doesn't get any better than that. I've listened to so much E and Eels stuff that sometimes I feel like I actually know the guy.