3 ms·

I wish I could grok these references :/ I didn't grow up in the US, so my musical knowledge ends with classical rock (and even that's not very deep).

gruseom 15y ago
Do you like rock n roll? If no, I wouldn't bother. If yes, there is an unbelievable world of music to explore, and you're in luck, because you can easily get most of it on the internet instead of spending countless hours combing through dingy record stores as we used to have to do. As far as alternative rock music (the stuff that never got played on commercial radio) goes, there are basically two schools: the kick-ass school (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDNzQ3CXspU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDNzQ3CXspU) and the melodic school (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=844bENvq0e0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=844bENvq0e0). If you like either of those, there's a universe out there. I've always loved both. And that's not to mention the parallel/intersecting universe of black music with its tremendous riches. The five peak years or so of late 60s soul, when blues and gospel merged, are particularly great. Their emotional resonance is unmatched by anything anywhere. A mid-period example is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5fqWugnIhk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5fqWugnIhk (1967) and a late one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPUGC4zFMjc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPUGC4zFMjc (1971 or so). Again, there's a whole universe of this. Several, rather. The 60s and 70s were a musical supernova. Especially the 60s, though the 70s stuff often sounds better. It seems you can spend the rest of your life finding amazing stuff from that era. A guy I knew named Greg Shaw who was one of the great champions of punk and garage rock had over a million records. He went all over buying them for pennies at yard sales because people thought they were junk. Later he released selections of his favorites on low-budget compilation albums. Every generation rediscovers this music. Stuff like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoBB0e-dVhc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoBB0e-dVhc and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZXkzao9KvA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZXkzao9KvA. As far as rock music goes, the best material today is no different from the best of decades ago. It's the exact same patterns being reworked. Take e.g. the Black Keys- that's all they do. That's no criticism; it's the same thing the "originals" were doing. It's a little weird that 45 years mean so little culturally - i.e. that the music of 45 years ago and today are (technology aside) about the same. The process hasn't been linear. It's more like a state change occurred in the post-war years and we've been living in that reality ever since.
- akkartik 15y ago
  Thanks for that slam-bang tour, I'm going to digest it slowly. I like rock, but I don't tend to put on music as much as others. I'm more likely to hum it than listen to it. I usually have something stuck in my head. I watched Soylent Green a few weeks ago and had Beethoven's ninth stuck in my head for days. Anyway, I think not tending to turn on music makes me less likely to discover new music.
tptacek 15y ago
The Velvets are The Velvet Underground, a New York band best known for songs like "Who Loves The Sun", "Sweet Jane", and "Heroin". They're one of the precursors to punk music. Listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xcwt9mSbYE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xcwt9mSbYE The joke is, almost nobody bought the first Velvets album, but everyone who did started a band. Which brings us to the Pixies, which is a Boston band from the late eighties that combined sounds from the Velvets, surf rock, punk, and "college rock" indie like Husker Du and is more or less the greatest band of all time sorry Daniel but it's true. Listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdzoK5jwESM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdzoK5jwESM All this is just to build an elaborate and overwrought metaphor; Kurt Cobain from Nirvana famously claimed that everything on Nevermind, their best-known album, was more or less lifted directly from the Pixies. The Pixies are another band notorious for being more influential than commercially successful. So the point being, Peopleware, decades old, blog posts today, &c, you get it.
- akkartik 15y ago
  Yup, got the reference. Thanks for the musical links as well.
- gruseom 15y ago
  The line about everyone who bought the first VU album started a band is usually attributed to Brian Eno. I wouldn't say they were a precursor to punk so much as to all things indie. The Stooges were the biggest precursor to punk. John Cale, the avant-garde genius from the Velvets, did produce the Stooges, but that was after Lou Reed had kicked him out. I've never been a huge VU fan musically though I like them fine, but there's no denying they were sui generis and everything art-cool in rock music since can be traced back to them. (I was a huge fan of Cale's 1970s solo albums though. Do you know them? Equal parts exquisite and menacing.) Pixies... why sorry? I admit I never got them though - not then and not since. I need more melody and song structure than that, and the ironic-detached thing only gets me so far. Re Cobain, he may have said that, but it isn't true. Nevermind is classic because he pulled off what no one else had and blended the indie-noise thing with classic pop songwriting. I think that was genius and his tragedy was being embedded in a subculture that didn't respect that. There's a documentary floating around online (edit: at http://www.dangerousminds.net/comments/kurt_cobain_about_a_son http://www.dangerousminds.net/comments/kurt_cobain_about_a_s...) in which he says that his original idea for a band was Black Sabbath crossed with bubblegum and that no one else got it. In that subculture (which I remember well, and the pretentious twattage that went with it) it was de rigeur to piss all over the pop side; that was how you established your cred. It was also a limiting move: it's why the music from that period isn't anywhere close to the level of the Ramones or Pistols or many others. (I suppose we disagree here.) Anyway, Cobain put them together and millions of people loved it and he never lived that down. Nor alas did he ever do it again. Re the Pixies - have you seen http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEPi5EQjEpw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEPi5EQjEpw? David Sanborn, yuppy purveyor of intolerable smooth-jazz, somehow had the coolest musical thing going on TV in the late 80s. It was canceled after he had the Residents perform with Conway Twitty!

gruseom 15y ago

Do you like rock n roll? If no, I wouldn't bother. If yes, there is an unbelievable world of music to explore, and you're in luck, because you can easily get most of it on the internet instead of spending countless hours combing through dingy record stores as we used to have to do. As far as alternative rock music (the stuff that never got played on commercial radio) goes, there are basically two schools: the kick-ass school (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDNzQ3CXspU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDNzQ3CXspU) and the melodic school (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=844bENvq0e0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=844bENvq0e0). If you like either of those, there's a universe out there. I've always loved both. And that's not to mention the parallel/intersecting universe of black music with its tremendous riches. The five peak years or so of late 60s soul, when blues and gospel merged, are particularly great. Their emotional resonance is unmatched by anything anywhere. A mid-period example is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5fqWugnIhk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5fqWugnIhk (1967) and a late one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPUGC4zFMjc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPUGC4zFMjc (1971 or so). Again, there's a whole universe of this. Several, rather. The 60s and 70s were a musical supernova. Especially the 60s, though the 70s stuff often sounds better. It seems you can spend the rest of your life finding amazing stuff from that era. A guy I knew named Greg Shaw who was one of the great champions of punk and garage rock had over a million records. He went all over buying them for pennies at yard sales because people thought they were junk. Later he released selections of his favorites on low-budget compilation albums. Every generation rediscovers this music. Stuff like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoBB0e-dVhc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoBB0e-dVhc and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZXkzao9KvA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZXkzao9KvA. As far as rock music goes, the best material today is no different from the best of decades ago. It's the exact same patterns being reworked. Take e.g. the Black Keys- that's all they do. That's no criticism; it's the same thing the "originals" were doing. It's a little weird that 45 years mean so little culturally - i.e. that the music of 45 years ago and today are (technology aside) about the same. The process hasn't been linear. It's more like a state change occurred in the post-war years and we've been living in that reality ever since.

akkartik 15y ago
Thanks for that slam-bang tour, I'm going to digest it slowly. I like rock, but I don't tend to put on music as much as others. I'm more likely to hum it than listen to it. I usually have something stuck in my head. I watched Soylent Green a few weeks ago and had Beethoven's ninth stuck in my head for days. Anyway, I think not tending to turn on music makes me less likely to discover new music.

tptacek 15y ago

The Velvets are The Velvet Underground, a New York band best known for songs like "Who Loves The Sun", "Sweet Jane", and "Heroin". They're one of the precursors to punk music. Listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xcwt9mSbYE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xcwt9mSbYE The joke is, almost nobody bought the first Velvets album, but everyone who did started a band. Which brings us to the Pixies, which is a Boston band from the late eighties that combined sounds from the Velvets, surf rock, punk, and "college rock" indie like Husker Du and is more or less the greatest band of all time sorry Daniel but it's true. Listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdzoK5jwESM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdzoK5jwESM All this is just to build an elaborate and overwrought metaphor; Kurt Cobain from Nirvana famously claimed that everything on Nevermind, their best-known album, was more or less lifted directly from the Pixies. The Pixies are another band notorious for being more influential than commercially successful. So the point being, Peopleware, decades old, blog posts today, &c, you get it.

akkartik 15y ago
Yup, got the reference. Thanks for the musical links as well.
gruseom 15y ago
The line about everyone who bought the first VU album started a band is usually attributed to Brian Eno. I wouldn't say they were a precursor to punk so much as to all things indie. The Stooges were the biggest precursor to punk. John Cale, the avant-garde genius from the Velvets, did produce the Stooges, but that was after Lou Reed had kicked him out. I've never been a huge VU fan musically though I like them fine, but there's no denying they were sui generis and everything art-cool in rock music since can be traced back to them. (I was a huge fan of Cale's 1970s solo albums though. Do you know them? Equal parts exquisite and menacing.) Pixies... why sorry? I admit I never got them though - not then and not since. I need more melody and song structure than that, and the ironic-detached thing only gets me so far. Re Cobain, he may have said that, but it isn't true. Nevermind is classic because he pulled off what no one else had and blended the indie-noise thing with classic pop songwriting. I think that was genius and his tragedy was being embedded in a subculture that didn't respect that. There's a documentary floating around online (edit: at http://www.dangerousminds.net/comments/kurt_cobain_about_a_son http://www.dangerousminds.net/comments/kurt_cobain_about_a_s...) in which he says that his original idea for a band was Black Sabbath crossed with bubblegum and that no one else got it. In that subculture (which I remember well, and the pretentious twattage that went with it) it was de rigeur to piss all over the pop side; that was how you established your cred. It was also a limiting move: it's why the music from that period isn't anywhere close to the level of the Ramones or Pistols or many others. (I suppose we disagree here.) Anyway, Cobain put them together and millions of people loved it and he never lived that down. Nor alas did he ever do it again. Re the Pixies - have you seen http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEPi5EQjEpw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEPi5EQjEpw? David Sanborn, yuppy purveyor of intolerable smooth-jazz, somehow had the coolest musical thing going on TV in the late 80s. It was canceled after he had the Residents perform with Conway Twitty!