Hate to say it but I loved it. First I’ve seen of them since Brockie died - good to know the show goes on.
I sort of relate to the feedback Bo is getting here. As a lover of sean nos music, I totally get what it’s like to love something that no one around you wants to share.
Sean nos is not meant to be beautiful, although sometimes it is, that is certainly not the point. The ultimate compliment is to say “that’s a fine fierce song.” Strength of tone (which is more a nasal, breathy thing than most other genres would tolerate) and extremes of ornamentation are the goals.
e.g.
Another genre that falls in this category is atonic or “Free” Jazz.
What they all have in common is that you have to listen for a long time before you are going to “get” it, and many people have no desire at all to make the commitment. If you do listen long enough though, the human mind will search for and eventually find the patterns, connections and flow that make it pleasant or evocative or fascinating to it’s proponents. In may cases, it may be that what it evokes is something one individual would never wish to experience, while another finds release in sound which recalls emotion or even trauma from their own lives.
For many Westerners Chinese opera might also fall into this category, but I think that falls into a different definition of beauty, (i.e. the human voice replicating a bamboo flute as closely as possible) rather than belonging with music not meant to be beautiful.
Very nice words there, TruCelt!
I like bagpipe music, but a lot of people think it’s ugly.
Sun Ra’s Door Squeak?
That’s fucking gorgeous.
And my copy of the LP is autographed. 
I find a lot of the instrumental Zappa to be ugly…like G Spot Tornado.
Some of PJ Harvey’s older music could be called ugly, especially the Rid of Me album.
Is atonic or ‘free’ jazz like in the movie “The Sweet Smell of Success”
- where Martin Milner is in a 50’s downtown jazz combo and it’s all discordant “BLAAAAAAAHHHH… BLAHHHHHHH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!”
Well, I’m sure y’all are nominating some truly “ugly” songs, but for acts that are popular and renowned, I’ve always thought AC/DC is some of the ugliest sounding “music” that commonly airs. The guitars sound ugly, the singers are horrid… ugh, just ugly music.
I don’t think I could put this into a strict food analogy. I enjoy eating but it’s also a necessary thing for survival. Hearing is something that enhances survival but isn’t necessary for it. The differences between the two things are blocking me from making meaningful comparisons.
I like the music itself, if I like it. Sometimes the novelty is part of it, yes, in that I find the recording or the performance to be an amazing and unique event; my pachinko parlor recording, for instance: what an awesome thing to frame and what a terrific experience to close my eyes and feel like I’m in the middle of a parlor in Osaka!
The reaction of others isn’t a factor. I listen to most music alone in my house or in my car. I do know through long experience that a lot of what I enjoy listening to others do not. Yes, it’s terrific to find someone else who likes what I like, but that’s true of any area of interest and isn’t a factor in whether or not I like the music.
Sure.
Frank Zappa described music in The Real Frank Zappa Book as sounds ordered in time. And there’s a notion that anything that you frame is, by definition, art: the act of framing presents that which is framed for contemplation, after all. When I was a kid, there were commercially available albums of whale “songs” and recordings of noises on city streets were presented as artistic pieces themselves or altered and re-presented as art (Steve Reich is a big favorite of mine, for example). When I read that bit in the Zappa book, I shouted “YES!” because this was very nearly a concise version of my own thoughts. My definition of “music” is pretty damn broad to begin with: sounds (and the absence of sounds) ordered in time.
I don’t enjoy everything, of course, so even tho I think a recording of a guy with a drill beating it against shovel while screaming incoherently is music, I may not like it.
That stuff I listed up there, tho, is all stuff I like. 
Sean nos is either painfully boring or deeply moving music.
Excellent post, TruCelt. You make a lot of terrific points.
You touched on what I meant earlier when I wrote of someone not being educated in metal (but it’s not just metal, it’s music).
When you have a frame as big as mine, it lends itself to finding things to frame. And the thing about music is that neither the amount of sound nor the amount of time is fixed; all things are variable. That means that knocking Shave & A Haircut on a door is a valid musical expression, as well as singing the first verse of Hello, Dolly. It means that standing in a crowd and listening for 2 minutes is a musical event, something to be noted and contemplated and, yes, enjoyed.
I enjoy the act of hearing, the use of this sense, a great deal. I appear to be hardwired this way.
But as far as appreciating what I listen to, well, a lot of that took me some time. I didn’t sit down one day, pop in Cerebral Bore and say “whoa! this is what I’ve always wanted to hear! No more J-Lo albums for me!” It takes a while to go from Black Sabbath to Motörhead to Judas Priest to Metallica to Pantera to Korn to… you get the idea. To a large degree it was a progression as I heard one thing I liked I’d look for a similar thing. Eventually some new element would be added and I’d like that so I’d look for more of that. And so on and so on, until now it seems perfectly normal to listen to a CD that to most of the world sounds like people with instruments being attacked by unruly weasels while their amplifiers feedback uncontrollably; to me it’s a highly captivating and energetic display of technical prowess, but it could use a few more hooks, you see.
I first heard The Residents in 1979, I think. I was instantly captivated. All their tonal qualities were annoying and high pitched and they never seemed to resolve anything, to always leave their music poised at that moment just before something bad happens but after you know it inevitably will. That’s a rare thing, to conjure up music that inspires that description right there.
I’d say that it appeals to me if an artist can do something that is very unique (or is trying to), either through innate talent or deliberate intent (Jandek comes to mind here, as well as Apex Twin and Sunn O))), just from my previous list). It’s something I’ll at least give a listen to, to see if maybe their talent or vision is something that appeals to me and often it does, again, prolly because my definition of music is so large.
I agree. The singing really puts me off. I’ve been told that people who don’t like the singing style “just don’t get it” and that “only true rock fans can appreciate it.” Whatever.
I’m probably going to get skewered for this but I think Tom Waits fits in this category. His are not tunes for a beautiful Spring day lush with newly growing, verdant life. I hear the decay of an urban gutter in an alleyway of some seedy bar, and the slow inescapable drip of life falling through the grates, wasted. I would put Billie Holiday’s last album in here as well. Broken, unfulfilled and gut wrenchingly human.
Not when its done well.
I LOVE AC/DC, but I certainly understand why some people don’t! I’m not sure I could handle a concert of theirs, though.
What about when 2cellos does it?
“Back in Black” was the soundtrack of my teenaged angst and anger, so I’m sure I hear it differently than you do.
The Melvins (or are they just “Melvins”?) made some of the ugliest music I can personally remember hearing live (they opened for Rush one tour).
Plebes, all of you. Death Grip is very clearly the king of this. Song start around 15 seconds in.
You might think he loves you… Death Grips - You might think he loves you for your money but I know what he really loves you for... - YouTube