A question of music

[azekeil]

kissycat1000 and I have been having an animated discussion about music. We're currently listening to the Iron Maiden album Seventh Son of a Seventh Son (one of the tracks is 'Can I Play With Madness?'). Now, I appreciate Iron Maiden as ground breaking for their time, but unfortunately I have to say that no matter how much I try I can't seem to muster enthusiasm for them.

I think I've worked out why.

To me, music is all about discovering an artist you like and following them and their career, letting yourself be pleasantly surprised by their progress; indeed, even hearing them develop through their music - hearing them express different emotions through their songs, taking you on an emotional journey. It's why I really only enjoy whole albums, and then only ones that allow me to experience what they are experiencing.

This rather limits my musical tastes I feel; I don't like manufactured.. well.. I stop short of even calling it 'music'.. I find it harder to associate with music that sounds 'samey'; Iron Maiden being a case in point. You play any Iron Maiden album and you know what to expect. Try the same with Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin or Tori Amos for example and you'll get completely different and compelling music.

However, that's not enough. Artists like Madonna failed to captivate me because perhaps it's too.. manipulated. Or perhaps I just didn't like the music. But artists like Kylie Minogue or Britney Spears have changed slowly and significantly over the years and are worth exploring, in my opinion.

So, my question is, how do you appreciate music in the context of what I've said here? I'd be very interested to know, oh, and plus, your favourite bands/artists and why..

Comments

[dylan.livejournal.com]

Yep, I'd say Kylie and Britney are worth exploring...

[azekeil.livejournal.com]

You dirty dirty man. You know what I was talking about. (however I think we're all in agreement *winks*)

Hmmm...

[lazrus-armagedn.livejournal.com]

... Difficult

I started out with electronic (Jarre, Tangerine Dream, Vangelis et al) and a bit of Mike Oldfield

As the years went by, my tastes changed ... moving on to pop ... then prog (Genesis, etc.) ... then rock (bizarrely, by way of Jethro Tull) ... then a strange mish-mash period, where I was listening to the stuff I already listened to, plus Talking Heads, Lloyd Cole, Kate Bush and God knows what else ... then moved on to foreign artists/bands (Jean-Jacques Goldman, Bap, Alice, Paolo Conte, Renaud) ... hard-rock (as it was then - what we'd call stadium rock now, I suspect) and the likes of Alice Cooper ... then early Dance/Techno ... then a brief flirtation with Goth (Sisters, Nephilim, Cure, Bauhaus, etc.) ... then Industrial ... then Sheep On Drugs ... then Orbital, Eat Static and stuff like that ... then Rave (Prodigy, KLF, et al) ... then Psytrance ... Then Hardhouse/NRG

So, I've kinda come full circle, incorporating elements of what I found along the way - The electronic sounds, the balls of rock, the drive of industrial, and so on

Back when I was listening to bands, I was a completist (six or eight Kate Bush albums, ten or twelve Genesis, twenty Jethro Tull ...)

I had my favourites by any and all artists I listened to, obviously

Did I enjoy listening to them change?

Dunno ... I find that if I like a band, if they change their sound too much, I don't like it ... I can forgive one album in five or so I don't like, because every band does that ... but if they don't return to the form I liked them for in the first place, I lose interest

One example of that would be Marillion, whom I liked about ... wow ... almost twenty years ago (doesn't time fly?) - After Fish left, their sound changed so much I never bought another album by them

Different is OK ... it's interesting to hear new sounds and melodic progress ... but it has to retain what it was that made me like the band in the first place


And these days, I'd find it hard to name any artists that I like - maybe two or three (Weirdo, Captain Tinrib and Chris C spring to mind)

Labels, yeah ... DJs, of course ... particular nights out/events (such as Super/Fish), naturally ... even a producer or two

I only notice artists' names these days, if they produce so many tracks I like that I can't help but notice

Whereas I could reel off a string of DJs and labels without hesitation


Music is, for me, about the sounds and the journey ... the composition/arrangement ... the different sonic textures and patterns ... the interplay between them

So, I don't really mind who made the music I like, I just want to hear as much of it as possible ... and if that means stringing a whole load of different artists/bands together, rather than listening to the output of a single artist/band, then that's what I want - I listen to the music, not the artist [1]

I like change across both the tracks and the set - I don't like boom, boom, boom, boom (which is why I could never get into D'n'B) ... I like music to be complex and clever ... with new twists around each corner as well as a solid bedrock of sound and pattern ... and reprises always work for me ... a new way of seeing/hearing the sounds in a new context (which is wjy I like re/mixes so much, I guess)


So, no, although I have an awful lot of music by a number of bands I used to like (one or two of whom, such as Orbital, or the Prodigy, that I still do), I don't really listen to them any more ... I don't follow the progression of the artist(s) any more ... I listen to what the label, or DJ, or genre does as time goes by

First, and foremost, I listen to the sounds, structure, composition, etc. ... I listen to the music


[1] Although ... having said that, I do listen to DJs very carefully ... their technique, skills, set programming - A set is just one long track, so I analyse/enjoy the artistry of that as much as any single component track ... How was it structured? What sounds followed what other sounds? How did the mood change? ... and so on

And I do the same for genres that I like - I like to see how the whole sound across the board develops and progresses

Re: Hmmm...

[azekeil.livejournal.com]

Yes.. I find too much change is off-putting for the same reasons you do; I suppose I didn't really make that clear.

Thanks for the feedback :)

my musical tastes...

[rik.livejournal.com]

... seem to be similar in reasoning to yours. i don't like manufactured stuff either, but i think i like anything where i can appreciate that some skill has gone into the music, which usually means a band, it's usually also something i can sing along with. this means that i can appreciate that iron maiden have some skill, and can listen to them, even though a lot of their music sounds a little samey.

for reference, in my CD wallet, i have Stone Roses, Dream Theater, NIN, Tool (okay, i'm not such a Tool fan, but sometimes, G3 - Aftershow (Satch, Vai, and some other guy who was replaced by John Pettrucci from Dream Theater on the next tour), Incubus, Turn On Tune In (Jazz that was used in adverts), An unlabelled writable CD, more NIN, Fun Lovin' Criminals first album, more DT, Liquid Tension Experiment (DT side project), some more DT, some more Incubus, A Perfect Circle - Mer de Noms, Queensryche, and This Is Cult Fiction (theme tunes from cult TV shows).

On my minidiscs there are things like Stabbing Westward, Pink Floyd, Kittie (an exception to the 'i must hear some talent' rule. 17 year old girlies jsut can do a proper death metal deep voice. it makes me laugh), some RHCP.

In my collection of mp3s i have the strange and random stuff. recently (in the past year), i have found that i really like covers of other tracks. it's like constrained writing (link is an example with explanation). there's a set piece you can't deviate from, with enough room to change the feel and the timings, the style, and so forth. takes some skill to pull off and leave it sounding good, or at least adequate. this is why i have Richard Cheese with Lounge Against The Machine (lounge covers of rock/punk), most of the covers Serena accumulated, a bunch i accumulated, and some that air_bizkit gave me by a Bristol-based cover band (the ones who did a skiffle cover of Ace of Spades).

other bands i enjoy, from the collection available are Dire Straits, Blues Brothers (fun music, to sing along badly to), some CCR, Drowning Pool, Eric Clapton, Filter, Flanders and Swann, Foo Fighters, Frank Sinatra, Goo Goo Dolls, Iron Maiden, Jimi, Tom Lehrer, Weird Al.

so. yes. i like weird stuff. i think. maybe. i 'unno.

[gerald_duck]

I can like a piece of music because I consider any of the following aspects good:

• The memories it brings back
  
• The melody
  
• The harmony
  
• The rhythm
  
• The orchestration
  
• The instruments and/or voices themselves
  
• The performance
  
• The recording
  
• What the lyrics express
  
• How well they express it

The lyrics are less important than the rest, for me — some of my favourite music contains none at all.

There are a few artists I trust to produce good music, whose albums I will automatically buy. But only a very few: Jean-Michel Jarre, Eurythmics, Queen, Dire Straits, Zang Tumb Tumb, Weird Al Yankovic. But it seems to me that to like a piece of music because I like the artist is to put the cart before the horse; those are simply the artists who have never put a food wrong.

Zang Tumb Tumb, incidentally, are a kind of thinking man's Stock Aitken and Waterman. Principally consisting of Trevor Horn and Steve Lipson (with Paul Morley as publicist and sleeve copy writer for a while), they arrange, orchestrate and engineer some of the finest music: Annie Lennox; Pet Shop Boys; Frankie Goes To Hollywood; Propaganda; Grace Jones; Seal; 808 State; Art Of Noise; Mike Oldfield — Tubular Bells II; Kirty MacColl; The Pogues; etc. (in some cases they only worked with those groups for an album or two).

But those are just the consistently good artists. A lot of people produce the occasional good album amongst the dross, or even just the occasional good track. That music is still good.

Consider, oh… Ultravox, for example. Vienna is a fabuous piece, but I've never heard anything else by them that I considered even mediocre. Or what about Andrew Lloyd Webber? While most of his stuff is populist formulaic claptrap, take a listen to his Variations album sometime. More completely, Variations on the theme of Nicolò Pananini's Caprice number 24, it's pure musical genius. The second variation is the most famous — it's used as the titles music for The South Bank Show.

But what music do I consider the very best; what is absolutely outstanding in as many ways as possible?

• Jean Michel Jarre — Arpeggiator
  
• Mike Oldfield — Amarok
  
• Gabriel Fauré — Cantique de Jean Racine

Those, in that order, are unequivocally my favourite three pieces of music, and have been for years.

It should go without saying that I also like a whole bunch of other music. Quite an eclectic selection, in fact (though I don't actually like all the music I have, and some stuff I lack because it's in my housemate's collection).

One final thought: I don't need music to be a window onto the artist's soul, provided it's a window onto my soul.

Off topic

[lazrus-armagedn.livejournal.com]

You remeber that discussion a while back, about the Internet/Web and community ...

I've changed my mind - I think you were right

[ex-lark-asc.livejournal.com]

I find the kid of music I can actually relate to and listen to as anything other than pleasant background noise has to have genuine emotion in it that accurately reflects things I feel and ways I react to the world around me. It's nice to be able to follow an artist but not always necessary; some of my favourite songs are just isolated moments that capture something I feel. New Model Army are one of my all-time best; I like Evanescence for similar reasons, though their Christian-ness makes me wary. I find Tori Amos way too chaotic and unstructured; Madonna is a supreme publicist but the music's OK to have on while you're doing housework or similar.

[air-bizkit.livejournal.com]

OMG! You certainly know how to open a can of worms and NO mistake.

I'll try not to get too.....erm.....musician-like anally retentive about this one.

Being a gigging musician, I am really annoyed with the "British Music Industry" (note the inverted commas, replace with " The lets get money out of impressionable teenagers industry") I mean come ON! Will Young? Gareth "cheese" Gates? Ad nauseum. Sure, I don't mind well done electronica with reasonable sampling or even reworks of classic older tunes, but the shit that is churned out these days really gets on my wick.

So, my personal favourites?

I guess pretty much anything that has "attitude", "punch", "groove" and "style", um, not sure if those are quite the words I should be using but they come close enough to the mark to describe the qualities the music has.

One of my favourite bands of all time has to be Deep Purple. There's just something about the way the classic rock riffs, complemented by the almost fugue like Hammond organ of Jon Lord. Mmmm!

I must admit, the late 70's - early 80's rock bands appeal slightly more than the modern stuff. i.e. AC/DC over Korn for example. These sort of bands never lost their "hard edge" over time.

I find I get disillusioned with modern bands once their career passes the third album. I assume this is because when they first release stuff they are skint, at odds with the world, angry etc and as the albums continue and the cash starts coming in, the reasons behind the writing of the music change and IMHO they don't have the same kind of worries that they had, and their music mellows too much because life gets too easy for them.

A classic case is "Disturbed"

The first album "The Sickness" had a lot of real solid rock riffs interspersed with David Draiman's patent "Animal Noises" (best way I can describe them really) and had a real driving feel to it.
The second album "Believe" well, ok, the same basic song structure and style are there, but you can see that the lifestyle of the band has changed so much, due to the lack of the "Animal Noises" and the fact that the last track on the album is practically an acoustic ballad.

Anyway, I talk too much.

See ya pal.