Harsh Musical Truths (1 Viewer)

We still have a fairly constant supply of good gigs. We've had Mastodon, Red Fang and Thurston Moore's new band playing here in just the last week.
Xfactor's shit and so is MTV Rocks but you don't need to even turn on tv these days to find out about decent music. And it doesn't cost an arm and a leg to acquire.
There's still a lot of terrible music being made but it's easier to ignore these days. While you've pissing and moaning about all the shit stuff that's come out lately Converge, Torche, Goat, Deerhoof, Death Grips, Theesatisfaction and Deafheaven have all been bringing out deadly albums
This might be blasphemy around here but I think pitchfork's ok. I've found out about some great stuff from there. Once I avoid anything with the word shoegaze or doom metal in the description it's generally alright.
And personally, I'll take mediocre surf over shit grunge or britpop.


We don't agree on anything except Deathgrips so I won't go into this too heavily, however my problem with the internet, of T.V and Radio is that when I was growing up, listening to music was something I did to relax, it was something I could do passively and when things were good, 120 minutes, or John Peel or alternative nation etc I could relax and be exposed to plenty of music that I otherwise wouldn't have heard. The internet is a great tool for "finding" music but the act of looking breaks the relaxation aspect of it for me and as such it's less affecting.

MTV rock is a pretty perfect example of what's wrong with music now, it's been divided into genres and reduced by search engines to the point that if you listen to a band you like instead of getting something "new" from the internet you typically get something that sounds exactly like the band you've been listening to. Hence the Surf Rock thing and why I don't get it. Friends of mine listen to it and I'm convinced it's all the one band, it's not but because they can get hold of so much of it so easily they own 20-30 albums all of which sound exactly the same. And it's not just surf either, god forbid you listen t The Jesus Lizard and play any of the suggestions generated by the internet, you'll see what I mean.

All of that being said I have listened to internet radio stations and had the same relaxation/exposure thing happen but it's rare bacause the stations themselves subscribe more and more the the "internet" ideal of how to produce their shows and so again it seems to be a constant barraige of identical bands.
 
Actually I do agree with you about looking for music being less relaxing than it used to be but I think that's down to there being too much choice. You can waste hours on youtube just browsing from one band to the next.
I know what you mean about the Jesus Lizard thing, it seems like there's been a million sludgey rifftastic stonery sludgey metal bands appearing in the wake of Blood Mountain.
The thing is that the music on 120 minutes could be just as generic as the stuff that's being pumped out by mtv rocks nowadays. Personally speaking, I don't have the time like I used to to wait around for a decent song to come on, there could be some amazing music that I'm missing out on there but I'm not willing to sit though 15 Arctic Monkeys videos before it's played whereas before I'd happily sit through a bunch of crappy L7 videos because hopefully they'd play some flaming lips or Jesus Lizard next.
 
Actually I do agree with you about looking for music being less relaxing than it used to be but I think that's down to there being too much choice. You can waste hours on youtube just browsing from one band to the next.
I know what you mean about the Jesus Lizard thing, it seems like there's been a million sludgey rifftastic stonery sludgey metal bands appearing in the wake of Blood Mountain.
The thing is that the music on 120 minutes could be just as generic as the stuff that's being pumped out by mtv rocks nowadays. Personally speaking, I don't have the time like I used to to wait around for a decent song to come on, there could be some amazing music that I'm missing out on there but I'm not willing to sit though 15 Arctic Monkeys videos before it's played whereas before I'd happily sit through a bunch of crappy L7 videos because hopefully they'd play some flaming lips or Jesus Lizard next.

I guess that's the problem with attention span and it's ever shortening of it, I never would have heard half the bands I now love without sitting through shite like Bush or The Offspring to get to them. The thing is the hope for the unknown.

I know I compare a lot of things to football but youtube is a bit like watching Barcelona, you expect them to be brilliant and win,

What we (I) grew up with regarding radio and TV was more like the the way most of the rest of us watch football - expecting it to be shit and lose and we are pleasently surprised when we (whenever the we in question is) play well and win.

The internet has raised the bar of expectation so far that anything other than immediate excellence is immediatley skipable. Unfortunately the amount of choice diminishes the amount of time you will invest in something. So for example the first time I heard Pavement (doesn't matter if you like Pavement it's just an example) I didn't think much of them, but because I had to sit through them a few times it started to click. The same goes for hip hop which seemed so completely alien to me that if I had the option to just skip over it I probably would have, but having to engage with it was a blessing. The best example I can think of is this

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This used to come on Alternative Nation and freak me out, if I'd had the option to skip it I would have because it's so difficult. I think that the fact I couldn't and eventually started liking it made things like Tom Waits, Sun Ra, Captain Beefheart and films like Eraserhead or Dead Ringers more ....eh ... not accessible that's not quite the word, but, I had more impetus to invest in them because I'd been rewarded by the experience of sitting through something so wilfully difficult.

That's my big fear with modernity, it's so easy to disregard so much that immediacy becomes even more vital than depth. As a result the amount of young folk who engage with X factor and disregard something less flashy means that the future becomes more grim for the "art" as a whole.


Lastly the fact that in spite of all the advances I'd rather listen to radio online rather than "hunt" for bands is either a damning reflection of me (and I accept that it is wholeheartedly) or it's a damning appraisal of the internet and how it hasn't really advanced the way we take in music as much as it's commonly believed to have.
 
it is absolutely ridiculous that the stone roses have a shane meadows-directed documentary about them, a movie based around their spike island gig coming out and have had hundreds of thousands of people worldwide wetting themselves with excitement that they've reformed....
 
it is absolutely ridiculous that the stone roses have a shane meadows-directed documentary about them, a movie based around their spike island gig coming out and have had hundreds of thousands of people worldwide wetting themselves with excitement that they've reformed....
It sure is, if only they hadn't made The Second Coming I'd probably say fair play to them though.
 
I am literally dumbfounded by the weak melodic construction of most current music.
And don't get me started on the piss poor powers of harmonic invention on display in a lot of what passes for popular music currently.
You're looking at this all wrong Gaz. Pop is about sex, euphoria or sentimentality. The actual music is only the delivery vehicle
 
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I remember that Tom Waits video from No Disco. I really liked it back then, in much the same way that I loved Come to Daddy by Aphex Twin. I'd actually think of those videos as something that stuck out straight away and really grabbed your attention. Maybe it was slightly different for me because I grew up in a house where I remember my dad and older brothers would have been watching stuff like Twin Peaks, Wings of Desire etc. from a really young age so that probably shaped my tastes.
I really liked Pavement and I do remember liking them the first time I heard them. I've never listened to Beefheart or Sun Ra. Don't know where to start with either of them. Any recommendations?
I don't think we really need to worry about the next generation too much. X factor is awful but seems to be on it's way out. And the people who are watching x factor now are the same one's that were listening to 2 unlimited while we were listening to Pavement. There's always going to be people that will look for something deeper in art and music. You just have to look at how well a band like the Knife are doing despite their overall oddness and how poorly received a band like the Vaccines have been despite a wave of hype. Maybe people are being more discerning in their tastes than we're giving them credit for.
And even when you think back on shows like Alternative Nation and No Disco, they were showcasing music that wasn't mainstream (the clues were in the title) and were on in the middle of the night. As far as I know they probably are still showing stuff like this at 1am but that's way past my bedtime these days.
Although having said that I did switch on MTV Rocks at the weekend. They were showing a really long ad for Jersey Shore. I never made it as far as seeing any actual music.
 
I've never listened to Beefheart ... Don't know where to start ... Any recommendations?

Safe as milk is wonderful and a gentler introduction. Trout Mask Replica to jump right into the weird shit, although I found when I first listened to it that it wasn't as out there as I'd anticipated, possibly because I'd spent years listening to stuff what influenced it. I imagine it was properly gorundbreaking at the time.
 
You could enter on so many points - all of the above are great or you could try Spotlight Kid for lightness, Lick my Decals Off Baby and Doc at the Radar Station for a bit of edge, and Mirror Man if you like your grooves long.

Must pull our Mirror Man. It's been too long.
 
Yeah
Any of the ones mentiond above, I'm not mad on Ice Cream for Crow and Trout Mask Replica isn't something you'll listen to every day but the rest mentioned above are excellent.

Sun Ra wise, anything you can find will be madness anyway.
 
See the problem there is they're shite.

This is how it's done

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