The White Stripes. And any band (e.g. Raconteurs) involving Jack White.
I like all sorts of bands that people who like the White Stripes also like, but just can’t get into the White Stripes, or any of Jack White’s other musical incarnations.
Yeah, my sister made me a copy of one of his albums (Slow Turning, I think) a while back, thinking it would be right up my alley. Nope.
John Prine. He’s OK, I don’t dislike him, but he’s definitely one of those artists that I’ve always felt I should like more than I do.
I don’t guess the DMB are quite in my wheelhouse, but they get played a lot on alternative stations, which is mostly what I listen to. I think of them as a UVa frat boy’s idea of what alt rock should sound like. They don’t do a blessed thing for me.
Adele. I can kinda see what other people see in her songs, but they don’t do much for me.
Personally I am (or was…still kinda am) a big Dead fan. I don’t care about all the arguments over noodling or whatnot. The concerts were flat-out some of the best times I have ever had. Especially back in the “old” days when you could camp around the concert venue with no need to drive home.
And yeah, it was partly drug fueled.
I saw Jerry’s last concert (it was in Chicago at Soldier Field). I snuck onto the field (I had tickets but not that good) and sat in some empty seats near the recording section (the Dead are, perhaps, the only band ever to allow people to record their concerts so there was a whole section dedicated to people putting their recording equipment in and a lot of it was really nice equipment).
Hoping no one would show for the seats I co-opted someone came moving down the aisle with snippers and cut the plastic ties holding all of the folding chairs together. Within minutes all of the chairs had been folded up in the area and piled into a heap which made for a big dance floor.
No one cared, indeed everyone thought it was great. Stadium staff didn’t seem to care and it was a great time.
One of the people I was with actually did not like Dead music at all but he never missed a concert because he thought the concerts were a blast.
So yeah…I will never get into an argument about whether Dead music is good or not. It was just fun as hell to be there. If someone doesn’t like them that’s fine.
Rush isn’t anywhere near my musical wheelhouse, so I won’t criticize what I can’t understand. But Geddy Lee’s singing always makes me think of an overly caffeinated mouse.
Sorry about the missing link to the 1971 “Hard is to Handle.” Here ‘tis:
[/QUOTE]
Yeah, the live Dead recordings just don’t do anything for me, not even that one. I don’t know why. I really feel like this is a band I would enjoy live in their heyday, but not having grown up with the Dead scene and never seeing a concert in person, I just don’t connect with them like I do, say, the Allman Brothers if we’re looking at contemporaries.
Oh good, I participate in good faith and get slagged twice. “Too Cool…”? Nope, I’m about the least cool around. All I was doing was ask a question. Guess I’m not cool enough for the Dope.
I remember back in grade school there was a math textbook that for some reason used a list of the Beatles number one hits. As I recall there were about 70. I remember thinking to myself at the time that they could not possibly be that good. And I still think that. I feel like their music was popular at the time because there was nothing else really like it and that there was a dearth of choice in general for entertainment options. They have just never appealed to me.
Big Star - “the quintessential American power pop band” (allmusic.com)
Two of my musical heroes - Scott Miller of Game Theory and Paul Westerberg of the Replacements - worshipped Big Star.
I tried so hard to get into this band, but I’d put their music on and… promptly forget I was listening to anything.
**Nick Cave. **An essayist for the New Yorker wrote about one Nick Cave song with a fervor that, in other contexts, would prompt onlookers to consult the American Psychiatric Association’s DSM Handbook.
Me, I got his CD “The Boatman’s Call” as a present and promptly gave it away.
I have a long-standing theory that true deadheads fall into one of two camps: the Allman Brothers deadheads and the Dylan/The Band deadheads. I’m definitely a Dylan/Band guy…never crazy about southern rock at all.
(One of the most rabid deadheads I’ve known listened only to the Dead, and to 20th century avant-garde composers like Varese and Boulez. Another one engaged in heated debates with me about the relative genius of Brahms vs. Wagner.)
jaycat and digs, in all honestly (I’m not being sarcastic or cool or whatever) can you please tell me what the hell I did to piss you off so much?
Thanks
My musical map goes all over the place and Primus really ought to fall somewhere in the middle of it but they just don’t. It’s strange because that degree of weirdness + technical proficiency is something I typically love from other artists but it doesn’t click for me with those guys. I had never really inspected why but now that I’ve thought about it, it’s mostly Les voice that puts me off.
It’s very rare that I can get into a band who plays in the traditional rock/blues format that neglects to hire a good singer. If it is an improv based act whether jam/jazz/prog or what have you, I can grant them a lot more leeway but generally there isn’t any sound musical reasoning for fronting a band with a bad/grating vocalist (guitarists who can’t sing, here’s looking at you!) You wouldn’t hire a drummer who can’t keep time, nor bassist, nor lead guitarist who doesn’t know any scales. So the guy/gal draping their voice over the top of the sonic landscape probably shouldn’t come from the Yoko Ono school of singing, lest you want that voice to be the thing people identify your band by, which they will (which is a damn shame when its a good band)
This is also how I feel about Tori Amos and Liz Phair, who unlike Adele and Tori cannot sing, although she does have very good observations about male/female relationships.
The Pixies are another band that doesn’t impress me. I saw them when I was in college, and while I had a great time with the people I went with, including some crowd-surfing, the show itself was meh.
p.s. I think Les Claypool is vastly overrated as a bassist. He just plays one chord, over and over, very fast.
You didn’t piss me off at all, and if it seemed that way, I apologize. I was just joshin’ you about your remark that Paul McCartney has a whiny voice. Heck, most of the time he does sound kinda namby-pamby. Just not in the two examples I provided.
Agree here. I first heard them when their first album showed up at the record station. Nothing terrible, but nothing stood out. I try again every once in awhile, but I still can’t see what the fuss is about.
Huge apologies! Rereading everything, I sounded harsher than I meant to. And assumed wrongly that you were being sarcastic.
Here’s how it happened: after McCartney was accused of whining, you linked to two songs without comment, so I didn’t know if you agreed, or were saying the opposite. I listened to the linked songs, didn’t hear whining, and wondered if you were saying “Whining? Oh suuuuure…”
And here’s why I sounded pissed off. Because in the last week or so, especially in the Covid and racial threads right now, there have been so many posters saying the exact opposite of what they mean. In person, it’d work, because we’d see their shrug, their wink, their facial expressions. But on a message board, that really isn’t working.
The frustrating thing is that it has derailed so many threads as they devolve into “I can’t believe you proposed that!” And the perpetrator doesn’t say “Oh, I’m sorry, I was just being sarcastic.” No, they see that they can pull people’s chains and double down on sounding fascist or racist. One poster, after a page of hateful accusations back and forth, finally wrote “Seriously, people, do I have to put ‘(sarcasm)’ after all my posts?”
But you’re innocent of that, and I jumped to conclusions. So sorry! I’ll go find someone doing that in the Pit, and yell at them.
