Music!

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Music!

Post by Scott McCloud »

Since the ClearChannel topic is getting a bit grim, let me just say for the record, that although I think radio these days is horrificly bad, MUSIC has never been better!

Currently buying/borrowing/enjoying:
  • White Stripes
    Radiohead
    Beck
    Blur
    Lemon Jelly
    Amon Tobin
    Moby
    Eels
    Mike Patton
    Kinky
    Missy Elliot
    Aphex Twin
    Pizzicato Five
    TMBG ("No!")
    Caleb Sampson
    a whole lot of older stuff...
If I had a million dollars today, I would spend a thousand of it immediately on music and check out the many acts that I'm just now becoming aware of.

I still enjoy plenty of older music from Purcell to Stravinsky to Hindemith to Billie Holiday to Louis Jordan to Nick Drake to Roxy Music. But I feel no yearning for the "good old days". These ARE the good old days. I just want to start downloading for 49 cents a song NOW so I can have twice the buying power cause I want MORE, MORE, MORE!!! and the prices are still too damned high.

*sigh*

Okay, calming down now...

Anyway, um...

Discuss.

Any favorites you'd like to recommend?
Last edited by Scott McCloud on Mon Aug 04, 2003 1:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Greg Stephens »

I'm SO not up on music these days.

In the other threat I mentioned "Something Dangerous" by Natacha Atlas, which I continue to enjoy.

Looking forward to "Reality" by David Bowie this September.

I could make a list of CDs that are within arm's reach right now (starting with "Heathen," "hours..." and "Heroes" all by Bowie. Always lots of Bowie lying around, but those are the H's) but I think I'm going with quality over quantity and I'll just recommend:
"Lil' Beethoven" by Sparks
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Post by Scott McCloud »

Natacha Atlas' version of J Brown's "Man's World" is very cool actually. I'm thinking of checking her stuff out more. Very eclectic.

And good ol' Sparks! (Ivy is your friend for life now, Greg :-).
I'd heard "Rythm Thief" a while ago and thought maybe it was them but didn't have it confirmed until now. If you recommend L'il Beethoven, we might very well get it soon. Thanks!
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Just looking at what is on the shelf right now...

Post by Cyborg Caveman »

FREAK OUT - Alice Cooper

Maladroit - Weezer

Pinkerton - Weezer

Gotterdamerung - Wagner

The Best of Spike Jones - Spike Jones and his Wacky Wacketeers

The Heart of Saturday Night - Tom Waits

The Black Rider - Tom Waits

Rain Dogs - Tom Waits (I can't recommend Tom Waits enough! Such a versatile ecclectic individual.)

Tarkus - ELP

License to Ill - Beastie Boys

The Unacceptible Stench of Bullshit - Various Artists (fantastic punk compilation featuring Joolz, M2, the Damned, Capt. Sensible, Sex Pistols, and literally too many artists to list here. SIX discs! I found it for eleven bucks at a used record place in Savannah!)

A Night at the Opera - Queen

Yessongs - Yes

Seventh Son of a Seventh Son - Iron Maiden

The Mighty Blacksmith - Handel

And some others I can't read clearly as they are buried both under and behind a stack of paperbacks waiting to be read.
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Post by losttoy »

I agree with most of what Scott says above. Music on the radio sucks. I listen to NPR when in the car or at work and there is no new music there. So my tastes tend to be the old but good music. I never thought I would get to the age where my music was old ... sigh.

Favorite bands ... and some of them are still publishing music after all these years (in no pictural order):
Simon and Garfunkel
Joni Mitchel
Sarah McLauchlan
Depeche Mode (and their new solo work by Martin Gore or Dave Gahan)
Cosmicity
Moby
BT
Thomas Dolby
The Cure
Recoil
Kraftwerk
Philip Glass

There are others, but nothing picturaly new. I like a lot of the artists listed by Scott, but do not have the time or money to follow them. In fact on top of the list of what I would get if I won the lotto would be half of Border's music and book selection. Until then I listen to the same CD's ... sigh.
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Post by NatGertler »

Well, I've admit, I've got enough music. That's not to say I won't welcome finding something new and great, but I'm not eagerly seeking out the new at this point. I never feel "I need some different music to listen to".

Currently in the car is an MP3 CD I burned (all from CDs I own) of the complete Moxy Fruvous and the no-longer-quite-complete Barenaked Ladies.

Hanging around the CD player are Lisa Loeb, Bowie (Ziggy), Jill Sobule, The Presidents Of The United States Of America, Joni Mitchell, Jill Sobule, Frente!, Fleetwood Mac, Meat Loaf, Guys & Dolls soundtrack (Nathan Lane version), Boomtown Rats, Dave Brubeck, Suzanne Vega, Kansas, Tori Amos, Alan Parsons, Al Stewart, and Buffy The Vampire Slayer "Once More, With Feeling".
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Post by Greg Stephens »

Scott McCloud wrote:Natacha Atlas' version of J Brown's "Man's World" is very cool actually.
That's the song that sold me on buying the CD. I heard snippets of three tracks from the album. Two were her own compositions and the third was "Man's World" which really served to demonstrate to me what her sound was all about.
Scott McCloud wrote:I'd heard "Rythm Thief" a while ago and thought maybe it was them but didn't have it confirmed until now. If you recommend L'il Beethoven, we might very well get it soon. Thanks!
The entire CD is a little different, even for Sparks, but I quite enjoy it. "Rhythm Thief" is a keeper, but most of the songs are even more clever. A personal favorite is "Your Call's Very Important To Us, Please Hold." If you've read the track list, you'll see that Sparks sums up much of the state of current alterna-rock music with a track entitled "What Are All These Bands So Angry About?"
Cyborg Caveman wrote:A Night at the Opera - Queen
Queen just rocks. There's almost no better way to put it. While reinstalling Windows over and over again last week, I put on "The Miracle" and "Innuendo" over and over. It really helped.
losttoy wrote:Philip Glass
There's a Bowie connection there, since within the last five years, Glass recorded both the "Low Symphony" and the "Heroes Symphony" which are Glass-style reworkings of two of Bowie's Berlin-era albums. He also performs on the Truman Show Soundtrack, which is one of my favorites (and I haven't been fond of many soundtracks in years).
NatGertler wrote:Tori Amos ... Buffy The Vampire Slayer "Once More, With Feeling"
Tori has a relatively new CD out, right? (Yes, Amazon confirms) A friend played some of this CD and I thought it was quite good.

And the Buffy musical soundtrack is great fun. Probably more fun if you've seen it and are a fan of the show, but I played it for my parents on the pretext that they enjoy musicals and might be able to relate to it. I'm not sure if that experiment worked or not...
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Post by Guest »

Greg Stephens wrote:And the Buffy musical soundtrack is great fun. Probably more fun if you've seen it and are a fan of the show, but I played it for my parents on the pretext that they enjoy musicals and might be able to relate to it. I'm not sure if that experiment worked or not...
I'm thinking about experimenting with that disk when making a tape for Mom, trying to see if I can set up each song enough for the story to make sense, for her to understand (although probably not feel) the impact.
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Re: Just looking at what is on the shelf right now...

Post by Rip Tanion »

Cyborg Caveman wrote:Seventh Son of a Seventh Son - Iron Maiden
I just saw Maiden at Madison Square Garden, this past Wednesday, with Motorhead, and the Midget Master of Metal, Ronnie James Dio (I'm an old school headbanger from the '80s - and damn proud of it). In the middle of the show, Bruce Dickenson went into a five minute tirade about how the music industry sucks, and how all these bands out now are all crappy clones. I can't say that I disagree with him. He then went on, saying that Maiden sold out the Hammerstien Ballroom (a block or two from the Garden) a couple of years ago, and then sold out the Jones Beach Amphitheater (out on Long Island) and the Garden this past week...yet you never see a an Iron Maiden video on the "telly".

After his speech, they did a tune from the new Maiden album. It's wasn't great, but it wasn't plodding, like some of their other, more recent stuff, such as The Clansman (the Scottish kind, not the K.K.K. kind). This was more akin to the Maiden I grew up on, then the bands previous two or three albums.

Dickenson also said he had no problem with people downloading their tunes off of the net. I guess he's the polar opposite of Lars Ulrich, of Metallica. But then again, I wouldn't bother downloading the new Metallica. I've already heard it and it's mediocre at best. No guitar solos. What ever happened to guitar solos? Am I the only one wonders what happend to guitar solos? I was a huge Metallica fan in the eighties and early ninties, but I haven't bought a Metallica album since the Black Album, back in '91 - which incidently was also the last contemporary vynil LP I ever bought.
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Cyborg Caveman wrote:A Night at the Opera - Queen
Queen just rocks. There's almost no better way to put it. While reinstalling Windows over and over again last week, I put on "The Miracle" and "Innuendo" over and over. It really helped.
To quote something a friend of mine once said, "That beaver-faced sissy could really sing!" Thank God Queen put out a good, rockin' album right before Freddie died, because pretty much everything between The Game and Inuendo was, for lack of a better word, crap.
Cyborg Caveman wrote:Yessongs - Yes
If there's one band I've never seen live, but would love too, it's Yes. They played here last summer, but it was the same weekend as The Who at M.S.G. (I make it a point to NEVER miss the Who - bought the tickets before Entwistle died, but they SILL rocked), and I just didn't have the cash or enrgy to see both.
Scott McCloud wrote:But I feel no yearning for the "good old days". These ARE the good old days.
Sadly, these ain't the good old days for good old rock 'n' roll. Guitar virtuosity is gone. Almost nobody in the genre sings anymore. They either rap or scream and grunt into the microphone. Ironicly, the only band that seems to have any balls nowadays, are the Donnas, a chick band. I don't think I've bought a CD by a contemporary band since Soundgarden broke up.

O.K., maybe I'm stuck in the past, but I like it there. The last concert I went to see before last week's Maiden show, was Neil Young, about a month or so ago. Can't remember the last one before that, it was so many, many months ago. And right now, as I type this, I'm listening to KISS Rock and Roll Over (all this talk about Gene Simmons, the Somnvore, inspired me to put it on) and before that, I was spinning Black Sabbath Vol. 4 (Wish I had me some "sweet leaf" right now). Hey, I'm turning 34 in a couple of weeks, so get me my walker and Polydent.
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Post by Greg Stephens »

Rip Tanion wrote:Thank God Queen put out a good, rockin' album right before Freddie died, because pretty much everything between The Game and Inuendo was, for lack of a better word, crap.
I'm going to disagree with you on that one, since my three favorite Queen albums are "A Kind of Magic," "The Miracle" and "Innuendo," but it's all opinion, right?

I'm one of those people who's usually more interested in a songwriter's or goup's later works than earlier ones. I think it has to do with being interested in how their style grows and changes. I would agree that these sorts of later albums are not generally as vital and powerful as earlier ones, but I'm more interested in artiface.

And, besides, if you call everything between "The Game" and "Innuendo" crap, then you're dissing "Under Pressure" which- although the song has been overplayed to death and beyond- wins me over for reasons which should be obvious.
Rip Tanion wrote: If there's one band I've never seen live, but would love too, it's Yes.
I've seen Yes a couple times and the experience varied a bit. When they're good, they're good. When they're not, they're tepid. Shouldn't be too hard to catch them, though, as they seem to be on almost constant tour these days. Don't know what their latest US tour dates are but you can keep an eye out.

Related to this is the fact that a bit of artwork I did for a friend's YesLogos website wound up as part of the artwork for the CD insert on Yes' 1999 "The Ladder." If anybody has that CD, when you look at the big collage of art and find the little Yes logos that look similar to this, then those are the ones that my friend and I did (I created one version, and he color-shifted them to make about 50 variations).
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Post by josner »

I'm mainly happy, where music is concerned, about digital remastering -- its upshot is that the rural blues, once available primarily to those who owned Victrolas and collected 78s, is now filling a couple of shelves at Tower Records or the equivalent -- Mississipi John Hurt, Big Bill Broonzy, Blind Willie McTell, and much more. Discovering this (about 3 years ago) was what got me listening to and playing music again after a bit of a hiatus.
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Post by losttoy »

I forgot one on my list that came out with a new album late last year from an old guy that would shame all these new guys ...

I used to be a CD junkie, but currently the economy has limited my spending. Now, I usualy go to Borders about once or twice a year. Once around the holidays with the gift cards I get. Then maybe once during a year if something actualy grabs my attention enough to go to the store. This year that attention grabber was Gore and Gahan from Depeche Mode doing their own solo CD's (Gahan's album is really good). However, the story here is about Up from Peter Gabriel.

When I heard that Gabriel put out an new album I had to investigate. He had not put out an album for ten years, save for some random songs on various soundtracks. I got a listen and let me tell you, this CD is the best album I have ever heard. Some of the songs have a simular sound to some of his early work in the 70's, yet put together technicaly that would put sound masters like Moby or BT to shame. It is really hard to explain the sounds to these songs as they are so widely influenced from so many styles and places. All I can say is check it out.
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Post by Greg Stephens »

Yeah, PG's new CD is in my car right now. "Signal To Noise" is a favorite from that, as is... well, most of the rest of the album, actually.

But there're two album-length projects PG did between "Us" and "Up" that not many people know about. The first is OVO: The Millennium Show, available in England, but not in the US, which may appeal more to general PG fans, because it's similar in tone to "Us." He even included two tracks from this in the setlist for his recent tour (or, at least, he did when I saw the show). PG only sings on a couple of the songs, but don't let that throw you- the music is pure Gabriel.

For the more hard-cord fans (who probably already know about this), the second is the soundrack to Rabbit-Proof Fence, Long Walk Home, which is similar in nature to Passion or Birdy.

All are recommended.
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Post by buzzard »

For some reason I stopped buying PG records after So; I'll have to check out the newest.

Also, I haven't bought much new music in the last two years, since I haven't been exposed to much. So any recommendations I can offer are going to be dated:

Lisa Germano, who actually put out a record this year (people I recommend her to rarely get into it, though, but she's my fav so I have to try)

Belly, from the early 90s, whose second record King apparently tanked, despite being a better record than the first

Magnetic Fields' Sixty-Nine Love Songs if you somehow missed it being on everybody's best-of list in 1999

Mr. Bungle California continues to amaze me when I listen to it because so many of the things they do seem so unlikely you'd ever think you could get away with and call the end result music.

Recent-purchasing-wise, I'm currently on a classic-rock kick--picked up Fleetwood Mac Rumours and the Who Who's Next, both of which I find just amazing.

And ok, maybe this should belong in Hype!, but since it's music and kinda MI-like, I've been doing an experiment with posting around one sketchy rock-ish instrumental a week on my website.
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Re: Just looking at what is on the shelf right now...

Post by Cyborg Caveman »

Rip Tanion wrote: He then went on, saying that Maiden sold out the Hammerstien Ballroom (a block or two from the Garden) a couple of years ago, and then sold out the Jones Beach Amphitheater (out on Long Island) and the Garden this past week...yet you never see a an Iron Maiden video on the "telly".
Which might not be a totally bad thing. I caught some of the old Maiden videos during a "classic block" on the tv. Scary to think Maiden is now considered "classic". Anyway, they were pretty awful, especially Can I Play With Madness, which I seem to recall thinking was the most awesome thing I had ever seen when I first saw it as a young lad.

Rip Tanion wrote:To quote something a friend of mine once said, "That beaver-faced sissy could really sing!"
Before Clear Channel owned every station in my area one of the djs at a local station introduced one of Queen's songs and sent me into fits of hysterical laughter. I almost ran my car off the road.

"And now it's time for the man with teeth like the cowcatcher on a steam locomotive and the voice of an angel..."

Also, as an aside, need I say I am jealous of you seeing one of my all time favorite bands, the Who, while I myself have not?
Rip Tanion wrote:Sadly, these ain't the good old days for good old rock 'n' roll. Guitar virtuosity is gone. Almost nobody in the genre sings anymore. They either rap or scream and grunt into the microphone. Ironicly, the only band that seems to have any balls nowadays, are the Donnas, a chick band. I don't think I've bought a CD by a contemporary band since Soundgarden broke up.
Eh, I don't miss the sometimes almost masturbatory guitar solos (which seem to go hand in hand with a lot of 'good old fashioned rock'n'roll') all that much, but by the same token the almost complete lack of them nowadays creates a void in the musical scenery waiting to be filled. I do miss singing however. Not everyone has to have pipes like Freddy Mercury, but something other than the rock-rap fusion stuff is always welcome. Not even so much for the fact that the rock-rap fusion stuff is bad and more because EVERYONE is doing it, which gets old. The Strokes was the last cd I bought recently, but Eminem was right before that so take my opinion for what you will.

Of course my cd intake is pretty low these days as I live in the boonies and have to drive for more than an hour just to get to a marginally passable music store. I haven't bought an actual album in years, mostly survivng on my what remains of my parents' old collection. Even then I haven't had a chance to listen to them in awhile because the needle is broken and I haven't replaced it yet. It's kind of funny. Some people discover I still own a record player and they look out the window as if they expect my car to have suddenly become a horse and buggy.
Rip Tanion wrote: before that, I was spinning Black Sabbath Vol. 4 (Wish I had me some "sweet leaf" right now).
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Re: Just looking at what is on the shelf right now...

Post by Greg Stephens »

Cyborg Caveman wrote:Of course my cd intake is pretty low these days as I live in the boonies and have to drive for more than an hour just to get to a marginally passable music store.
Amazon. Dot. Com.

Seriously. I live in L.A., where there are no shortage of good music stores (and several good comic shops, too), and I find Amazon to be invaluable.
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Post by Greg Stephens »

And related to this whole conversation:
David Bowie wrote:How adventurous are the audience, though? What I mean is, people are producing really good shit, but it's gonna be very hard to get to hear it. How determined is the audience to go find it?
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Post by Greg Stephens »

Currently enjoying: Warren Zevon, "The Wind"
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24-hour album

Post by Guest »

I saw Scott's link to the "Album-A-Day" 24-hour project page on Thursday, and started one Friday night.

Here's the result: <a href="http://nothings.org/music/frenzy/">Doppleganger: Frenzy</a>
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Re: 24-hour album

Post by buzzard »

Anonymous wrote:I saw Scott's link to the "Album-A-Day" 24-hour project page on Thursday, and started one Friday night.
Oops, that was me.
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Post by Greg Stephens »

Greg Stephens wrote:Currently enjoying: Warren Zevon, "The Wind"
Because, really, there won't be any more. Warren Zevon: 1947-2003
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Post by Rip Tanion »

Greg Stephens wrote:Because, really, there won't be any more. Warren Zevon: 1947-2003
I must have slipped into an alternate universe, because I thought I heard he died a few months ago. I know he had been terminaly ill for over a year. Maybe the news I heard concerned the release of his farewell album, instead. Either that, or somebody has been fooling with the time stream. After all, I could have sworn I heard that Waylon Jennings died twice in a two month period.
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Post by Greg Stephens »

buzzard wrote: Mr. Bungle California continues to amaze me when I listen to it because so many of the things they do seem so unlikely you'd ever think you could get away with and call the end result music.
I'm listening to that right now for the first time and... Wow. So cool. A co-worker loaned it to me and I'm probably going to have to get myself my own copy.
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listening...

Post by kaos_de_moria »

...to pizzikato five roght now. beautyful japanese trash... *GREAT*
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