i went to see vampire weekend live and it was one of the rowdiest studenty/beer lad/borderline aggressive crowds of all time. insufferable. such a strange fit for the band
Where should I start? Can remember vaguely liking the greatest hits about twenty years ago but didn’t get properly into him or it but watched “show me a hero” recently and my interest was piqued.
Nebraska did it for me although I always loved Dancing In The Dark. I’m not sure it’s possible to be an indie prick re: springsteen but two of my favourite tracks are unreleased (Unsatisfied Heart and My Love Will Not Let You Down).
I think “The River” might be the album of his they best mixes the different elements of his music. Id say “Nebraska” is his strongest song-wise and “Born In The USA” is definitely his best hit-wise
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Thought The National were a right load of dreary old toss until I saw them live last year. Big fan now.
The Residents
I read on a forum a post from someone who had been to loads of gigs, loads of different genres and the crowd at The Smiths were terrible. Really violent and pushy from the outset. Seems strange doesn’t it?
Tbf if the Smith’s were ever to reunite I’d expect their crowd to be exactly that.
Grouper.
Saw her years ago and didn’t have the patience for it at all. Had also heard some of her earlier noodlings which sounded like little-thought-about guitar strumming and shit loads of reverb.
Later (after getting into Eno and other ambient stuff in a big way, i guess) I got obsessed with The Man Who Died In His Boat. Bought Ruins when it came out. Absolutely fantastic stuff. And really like the earlier stuff now I’ve gone back to it too. Had to grow into it I suppose.
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Television - Marquee Moon.
So many people would tell me ‘oh you’d love this album it’s totally your thing’ and I’d listen to it, every now and then, and be utterly baffled at best, if not outright fucking annoyed at how much I didn’t like it. It took years, giving it a try once every so often, before it finally clicked. I don’t know if it was simply repetition working its magic or that I’d just finally discovered something in there that I really liked (like olives - I hated them till someone described them to me as ‘nature’s chocolates’ and I discovered that black olives especially have a dark bitter chocolate taste if they’re not too salty).
Maybe someday the same thing will happen with The Knife’s Shaking the Habitual, but I liked The Knife before; I just can’t stand that album (or in fact Karin’s solo work).
This is really interesting as I’ve always been stuck at level 1 with Sparks, and “a bit grating” is probably the best description of how I feel about them (don’t like Franz Ferdinand much either, so FFS were a complete non starter).
So was it a particular record that got you or did those that previously irritated you just click eventually? I remember the latter with Trout Mask Replica - a lot of listens early on thinking ‘what the hell is this’ and then one day out of nowhere it suddenly sounded great.
Propaganda was the album that clicked with me, but I do think it’s just a matter of giving their records time. They are odd, and you have to adjust to their way of doing things. Listen to one of their good albums enough times and the songs just worm their way into your head. For a long time I used to find that I hated their albums the first three times I listened to them and by the time I had listened five times I loved them. They are a band that perhaps don’t suit the disposable streaming era very well for that reason.
Swans
Embarassingly late to the party, The Glowing Man wasn’t my best point of entry perhaps. Just couldn’t engage with it.
Some insistent recommendations from different people brought me back via To Be Kind and The Seer. Now TGM is making lots of sense and I’m working my way backwards through their discography.
Thanks for that, I’ll give Propaganda a few plays and see if anything clicks.
Completely agree on your point re streaming and the sheer volume of music available now. With Trout Mask Replica it was only because I’d spent what was at the time quite a lot of money to me on it and so I kept going back even though I hated it. Would probably have been less inclined to do so if I came across it for the first time now.
Still haven’t ‘got’ this. I bought a copy ages ago as research for a presentation into NYC music (somehow as part of an English degree), thought it was overblown guitar wankery and left it.
In the name of science, I’m giving it another go now.
With Beefheart I think it is a matter of Trout Mask Replica being the wrong album to start with. I tried and tried with it but found it completely impenetrable. Had I started with Clear Spot or Safe as Milk I think it would have got it a lot quicker.
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Yeah, nice. Not sure if it’s all-time favourite material for me, but it sounds great and is more fun than I remember. Lots of overlong solos, though.
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Yeah, I agree. That’s the flipside of the streaming era and amount of information so easily available now - that you can find out which are considered better ‘gateway’ albums to someone from the outset. In the pre-internet days, all I knew of Captain Beefheart was that TMR kept cropping up in those 100 all time greatest albums lists, and so that’s the one I went for first.
I think I did something similar with Aphex Twin - seem to remember being stuck on Classics for a while when pretty much any of his other albums would have been a better entry point.
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I remember years ago on another forum that someone started a thread called “Your favourite author” and I was obviously expecting them to open with some big hitting authors or some really tough stuff, because people rarely start a thread like that if not to show off a bit of culture.
And then the first post was saying their favourite author was Lisa Jewel. And most of the initial responses had that same feeling I did of, “oh…that’s…unexpected.”
And this is a roundabout way of saying, @hanshotfirst, that I was expecting your first post to reference someone like Steve Reich or Godspeed or something really fucking OUT THERE, and the fact it was Vampire Weekend is sort of pleasing on a level I can’t really express.
I’m still trying with Swans. I really like The Great Annihilator, which is meant to be their most accessible. Got the World of Skin/Children of God CD but have trouble getting through it. Listened to The Seer 5 or 6 times and really like about half of it and find the rest tedious or annoying. I’ve not yet investigated To Be Kind or The Glowing Man.
For someone who enjoys a fair bit of abrasive music it annoys me that I can’t seem to click with Swans except in small doses.
Sleater-Kinney: I downloaded all their albums about 10 years ago, but never really gave them much time. Individual songs made it onto playlists, but that was about it. Then I made a concerted effort with One Beat about 3 or 4 years ago & got obsessed with them pretty quickly. Listened to all their albums on near repeat for months.
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