1 song to convince someone to listen to your favorite band

[DietDrThunder]

Nothing - by No one.

 

[BUTCH1]

that's me, 100%

hmm, yes it does. You're not going to get into things like Bolt Thrower or Dead Milkmen unless you have a weird edge. And if you do, you will find them.
I think (read: it's divine truth) that novices should not be exposed to artists that have specifically tried NOT to target them.

i've been in music as a professional. i'm tired of people listening to LITERALLY 5 seconds of my Hot Rats (Frank Zappa) tape and immediately condemning it as shit because it doesn't have a commercial production sound and doesn't have a kick in the first 3 seconds, and the hook within 5.

i've had innumerable times my tapes of bowie being kicked out of the stereo because everyone wanted to listen exclusively to 1. madonna 2. duran duran 3. some commercial crap italian singer which is the same exact music that was on rotation on the radio and ALL they deemed worthy of consuming, because their mind was like a trash can to be stuffed by the industry.
AND THEN having the same people show up when bowie dies and saying oooh major tom we're gonna miss you. really.

i'm not worried that you might like what i like. i'm concerned about the effect that i know for a fact will happen when people who don't know their head from their ass are exposed to good music.

A few points here, you rail about people dismissing different forms/types of music because the "hook" is not present, then say they should "not be exposed" to artists who are unconcerned with targeting a mass audience. Seems like you want it both ways to be honest, yea, I get that people get into horrible listening habits fueled by radio playlist's but how is that going to change if their not "worthy" of discovering something different.

 

[BUTCH1]

I actually heard that in a thrift store last weekend, I was kind of amazed.
Of course, before that they'd played Dylan's "Maggie's Farm".

Yea, Daltry at the height of his powers was a tremendous vocalist and that song shows it off. At least you have a station that will actually play those songs, we get "gimme three steps" and it's dreaded cousin "what's your name" again and again. Oh, wait, here comes Kashmir and more than a feeling yet again, ugh. I swear if I had just one afternoon programming at an AOR station I could have a shot of making a difference. Hell, any of us could for that matter.

 

[brianmanahan]

i don't want you to listen to frank zappa. i certainly don't want you to listen to david bowie. if somehow you haven't come to find quality artists through curiosity, i certainly don't want you to come in following the hype.

does toto's africa count?

 

[nakedfrog]

Yea, Daltry at the height of his powers was a tremendous vocalist and that song shows it off. At least you have a station that will actually play those songs, we get "gimme three steps" and it's dreaded cousin "what's your name" again and again. Oh, wait, here comes Kashmir and more than a feeling yet again, ugh. I swear if I had just one afternoon programming at an AOR station I could have a shot of making a difference. Hell, any of us could for that matter.

I feel like it must have been satellite radio or something, I've never heard any of the rock stations here veer out of the expected playlist. I still remember the day I shut the radio off in frustration when one of them was playing some tired song, so I switched to another and it was just at a different spot in the same song... that gave me enough incentive to get the CD player fixed.

 

[pmv]

can we do the opposite?

can we, say, stop people from listening to The Pixies ?

i've been listening since 1987, you guys only know Where Is My Mind from Fight Club. pls go away.

i don't want you to listen to frank zappa. i certainly don't want you to listen to david bowie. if somehow you haven't come to find quality artists through curiosity, i certainly don't want you to come in following the hype.

I think "Monkey Gone To Heaven" on one of those old Indie compliation tapes got me into Pixies (if you are to be a real snob you need to point out it's "Pixies" not "The Pixies"! At least that's what people seemed to do back in the '80s).

But I continue to not like David Bowie (I formed a negative opinion of him back when he made slightly crass comments how he could have been a good Hitler - indirectly inspiring Rock Against Racism, along with Eric 'Enoch was right' Clapton - and have heroically refused to change my mind since. I don't care how many times he dies, I don't like Bowie).

Incidentally I'm sure "This Monkey Gone To Heaven" was a line from the ancient TV show 'Monkey Magic'. I swear I remember the Monkey God character waking up surrounded by women and announcing "This Monkey gone to heaven!"

But I forbid anyone else to not like David Bowie. Stay off my 'not liking David Bowie' bandwagon.

Oh yeah, that also brings to mind an ancient NME/MM article about bands 'afraid to rock', which included the category of 'every 4AD band who aren't the Pixies'. Which makes me want to mention Dead Can Dance, especially Serpents Egg (OK, I can't remember which particular track I was thinking of..).

 

[Ns1]

I only like a few Bowie songs but I can certainly respect the influence he had on music and some of my favorite artists.

 

[DigDog]

A few points here, you rail about people dismissing different forms/types of music because the "hook" is not present, then say they should "not be exposed" to artists who are unconcerned with targeting a mass audience. Seems like you want it both ways to be honest, yea, I get that people get into horrible listening habits fueled by radio playlist's but how is that going to change if their not "worthy" of discovering something different.

the point is that if you are into mass-market music, it's already game over. if you get to be 20 and you didn't realize "why am i buying the same music that comes for free out of the radio?" then you're not going to be turned on by frank zappa.

my second point is directly related to frank zappa.

i've been listening to him since i was 15, introduced to him by my music teacher. i like zappa, but zappa is just a composer. a composer of rock music.
if you've ever composed yourself, sitting in front of some music paper and just writing down stuff, you can write anything that comes to your mind. you can write any weird-ass absurd piece of music, and while you might fill it with some technically-interesting sequences of notes, you're not a genius - you're a professional. mozart is a genius, schoenberg is not. and i can't take any more of the influx of absolute idiots who come to frank zappa and it's like they met jesus, and if you as much criticize anything, they rip on you because "zappa is a genius and you're a moron". zappa would have appreciated the criticism.

those who are fine with people - whose business is too feed you their product, regardless of quality - feeding your their product, regardless of quality, can keep listening to the radio. but places where they play zappa, let those be free of any of the aforementioned.
if you're dumb, you're dumb. adding zappa doesn't change that you're dumb.

 

[DigDog]

Bowie (I formed a negative opinion of him back when he made slightly crass comments how he could have been a good Hitler

bowie would have loved to be a hitler.

as for "not-Pixies" bands, i'm not really fond of any of them (Smashing Pumpkins, Sonic Youth, etc), but i'm ok with people liking them, i just bundle them into another type of music. To me, they are garage / indie, while the pixies are pure post-punk.

by which i mean basically just the Pixies, everyone else just went New Wave.

 

[DigDog]

to me Bowie's greatest achievement a a musician, is to have been independent. He would simply make his own records, with very little interference from anyone. And then sold them, and then set up the concerts .. he was a real musician as in business sense, AND he had talent in writing songs. His chord progressions are very interesting, albeit still being rock.

He also had the good sense to break free from a stage persona, and the various styles of music he produced over the years are completely different. He was mostly folk-rock in the 60s and 70s, changed to what i can only describe as "stage musical but rock" later, then pop rock, then hard rock, plus the various soundtracks and collaborations. His music doesn't try to fit into a category normally associated with an image, which is normally how modern music products are sold; so, Rancid are punk, and they look punk, and they sound punk, and their lyrics are punk, and the shows they play fill with punks. Bowie had a crowd of punks at the glass spider tour, dancing to "up the hills backwards".

 

[DigDog]

i'm writng many posts because:
1. i'm both angry and depressed
2. i want to avoid the wall of text
3. each is a separate concept

as a musician, you tend to "see" music in a different light. many songs lose the charm, they simply do not have the effect that they had, because you start seeing it, instead of as "magic", as a product. Something that someone made, and you can tell exactly what they did.

Now, sometimes, you can be a musician, and listen to the same song for 30 years, and simply not be able to wrap your brain around how the guy did it:

but a lot of other times, you just see great music as "cute". or "ok".

the thing is, the list of "good music" is enormous. what serious music historian would not recommend you to listen to master of puppets? or tina turner live in europe? or wilson pickett? james brown? the police?
and they would also go the other way, with commercial successes. Aquarium by Aqua is a mindblowingly good album, if you can understand it. So is Dark Intervals by Keith Jarrett.

And then you add classical music, and ethnic, and finally you just move on to sound, to rhythm, to techno, and to synesthesia, a thing so weird that the forum doesn't think it's even a real word.

so instead of dividing music into groups like "punk" or "skilled players", you divide into what level of understanding you need to consume it.

at this point, the concept of good and bad no longer mean whether you like it or not, but whether or not you are ready for it.

 

[Ns1]

how do you feel about a band like DEATH GRIPS? cuz I don't understand that shit at all.

 

[snoopy7548]

that's me, 100%

hmm, yes it does. You're not going to get into things like Bolt Thrower or Dead Milkmen unless you have a weird edge. And if you do, you will find them.
I think (read: it's divine truth) that novices should not be exposed to artists that have specifically tried NOT to target them.

i've been in music as a professional. i'm tired of people listening to LITERALLY 5 seconds of my Hot Rats (Frank Zappa) tape and immediately condemning it as shit because it doesn't have a commercial production sound and doesn't have a kick in the first 3 seconds, and the hook within 5.

i've had innumerable times my tapes of bowie being kicked out of the stereo because everyone wanted to listen exclusively to 1. madonna 2. duran duran 3. some commercial crap italian singer which is the same exact music that was on rotation on the radio and ALL they deemed worthy of consuming, because their mind was like a trash can to be stuffed by the industry.
AND THEN having the same people show up when bowie dies and saying oooh major tom we're gonna miss you. really.

i'm not worried that you might like what i like. i'm concerned about the effect that i know for a fact will happen when people who don't know their head from their ass are exposed to good music.

I was inclined to disagree, but you've made me consider a pretty good point - you introduce someone to say, Frank Zappa, he's clearly not for everyone. That person will listen to five or ten seconds and be like, "WTF is this shit?!" Then that person will tell their friends how much Frank Zappa sucks and to not waste their time. One of those friends might completely overlook Zappa when, if they just gave him a chance, they might absolutely love his music.

A co-worker told me about Frank Zappa and I love it. Then again, he knows I'm into weird shit (movies) and I've got a very open mind. At the end of the day, you just gotta know your audience. If it's not packaged all nice and neat with clean sounds and easy to mindlessly listen to, the majority of people won't like it.

And yeah, music is extremely personal to some people. I can understand the frustration when you absolutely love something but the second you share it with somebody else, they don't even give it a chance. Again, know your audience.

That said, there is no way anyone can dislike Die Antwoord. Especially not after listening to this song:

 

[Ns1]

I didn't like Die Antwood until I saw Chappie. Now they're ok.

 

[brianmanahan]

I have heard this song live more than once live, not at a sporting event. Makes me miss "better off alone" just for a little bit.

oh shoot it's been like 20 years since i heard that song

 

[Ns1]

they were bumping that shit in Mumbai when I was there in 2016

 

[BD231]

:I don't talk much but when I do it's about somethin while snitches fight over crumbs and can't figure out nothin.

BD for hire free runnin over b*tches !!!

 

[DigDog]

how do you feel about a band like DEATH GRIPS?

if they are avant-garde, the fact that they are avant-garde is more of a factor than the music they make. generally, i don't have a great opinion of that movement, but there have been some interesting things to come out of it.

 

[Drako]

 

[renz20003]

I need new music. I'm willing to give your band 1 chance.

Here's mine:

• Tool - Parabol / Parabola
• NIN - You Know What You Are
• Pink Floyd - Time

False

Tool - sober
NIN - closer
Pink Floyd - dark side of the moon

 

[renz20003]

Looks like a playlist for the most burned-out AOR we've been beaten over the head with for the last 30 years. Kids must think the Stones were a 3-song band. How about the Who Love reign over me?, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDbAtWpoA6k

Happy jack
Pictures of Lilly
Squeeze box

 

[Ns1]

I mean I kinda picked those tracks for a reason. Sober doesn't show off Tool's full range and is way too short. NIN was actually really hard because each album sounds so damn different.

Dark Side of the Moon, you know this is the "1 song" thread and not "1 album" right?

 

[WelshBloke]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHQngnnHE_0

 

[snoopy7548]

I hate Closer. It's a good song, but it's the only NIN song any radio station ever plays.

For Tool I might pick The Patient or Forty-Six & 2.

 

[Ns1]

I was actually torn between "Eulogy" or "Parabol/Parabola", although I personally love "The Patient". If someone can't get through 8+ minutes of Tool, I don't really want them listening to Tool.

I hated Closer for a while, but I still love hearing it live.