Albums/artists you just DON'T GET.

[simon silverdollar]

the thing i really like about villalobos is that however out there he gets, he's really just into banging out tunes that sound amazing on 6 a.m dancefloors. so you get very avant stuff being used in quite a brutally functional way. i think you need to listen to his music a great deal for it to really make sense, though: there's lots of very classic dance music tropes buried in there, half submerged, that come to the fore when you listen to it over and over again, like all those monkeys with those tiny symbols.

anyway, i don't get mid to late period beatles at all. i've tried, i really have, but it all sounds so bloodless and over produced. i find it way too controlled; there's a sense that every sound has been mapped out perfectly. i love some music like that, but in pop it just doesn't work. it needs to be a little out of control or messy. i woud say its like a group of record producers writing songs, rather than a proper band, but the Knack are proof that great stuff does happen when record producers get together.

 

[gumdrops]

led zeppelin
i hate any of the boring blooooze tracks led zep do, esp with plants weedy voice all over them - cant really take them seriously. prefer led zep when they do the folkier stuff, i dont mind that. but the rest is really quite horrible and pompous.

the stones
i like stones songs like bitch, honky tonk woman, undre my thumb, midnight rambler and that sort of thing but the dirgey slower more purist-like blues/country songs they do are unlistenable IMO and just very very boring. jaggers voice seems especially crap and hard to endure on those songs too. i also hate street fighting man, sympathy for the devil and gimme shelter.

 

[nomadologist]

it is truly embarrassing what terrible musicians all of the stones were. can't stand the idea some people have that they were musically significant. maybe as icons, or whatever--sure get a keith richards haircut, but he has to be the single worst guitarist who's ever made that much money from being a "guitarist." they have to tune him down so he can't play the wrong chords. if you can't play, admit it. and do somethign else.

 

[gumdrops]

everyone goes on about their rhythm section being the best everrrr but mostly i just find it a bit 'flat'. they dont seem to have that force/momentun or edge. i know some people say that they simply 'simmered' instead of rocking out and thats great, but often - and this is more about their straight forward rootsy blues/country stuff - its almost like they were so reverent of their influences that they forgot to really put some muscle into it. the beatles rhythm section was much more dynamic and supple.

 

[swears]

swears, the whole i hate rock thing is so played out.

Only because the whole rock thing is played out. You know somethings cliched when it's detractors are cliched!

 

[Parson]

xiu xiu

 

[shudder]

Yo La Tengo
The Pixies

I think both are definitely over-rated, but they each have some good songs... Check out YLT's "deeper into movies"

 

[ford.anglia]

Boards of Canada
The Pixies[

I don't just get the Pixies (dont believe there is anything to get) ...just hold them responsible for the whole advent of grunge which gave sad US rock dinosaur journalists/musicians some idea that another pathetic "development" on the rock n roll template had any future when the rest of the world post 87/88 had left the American music white/rock scene behind mired in its own irrelevance

 

[muser]

Captain Beefheart (I really like safe as milk but trout mask replica I find pretty unlistenable)
Justin Timberlake, have no idea why hes got such a following from underground scenes.

 

[Eric]

@Albert Ayler

I can't really listen to his pure free stuff, agree with you there. But *New Grass* is quite amazing. He apparently tried to sell some albums (i suppose) by making a funk (?) record, this is New Grass; it sounds on one level completely straight up and obvious (if slightly terrible) and on another level 100% wrong. Somehow the entire tone is just weird. To me it redeems all the rest of his output.

Second the Zeppelin. The Pixies aren't so bad though, why not?

 

[baboon2004]

I third Zeppelin - just...terrible.

xxpost, Timberlake gets such a following because of the amazing beats (Cry Me a River alone would be enough), and his pretty divine falsetto. I can't understand anyone who doesn't get him.

Which is another question to be asked int he future...

 

[muser]

I third Zeppelin - just...terrible.

xxpost, Timberlake gets such a following because of the amazing beats (Cry Me a River alone would be enough), and his pretty divine falsetto. I can't understand anyone who doesn't get him.

Which is another question to be asked int he future...

musical taste isn't it, allthough this is one of those things where its coming from people who like alot of music I like, but I still cant listen to justin timberlake, dont think timbalands beats are that special either, but thats just me.

 

[Guybrush]

and his pretty divine falsetto. I can't understand anyone who doesn't get him.

Good Lord! Being far from ‘divine’, I contemn him, and that frail voice of his, for being so criminally middling. The praisal he enjoys lends me to suspect that the bar for what constitutes artistical excellence has been substantially lowered over the last decades.

 

[qwerty south]

there is nothing to 'get' with timberlake

great dancer tho!

 

[Parson]

the pixies are great because they have awesome songs and tons of them
every album is fantastic front to back

if you dont like the pixies you are probably thinking too hard

 

[enoki]

villalobos/getting minimal techno

although i've never had the chance to hear fizheuer zieheuer at 6am slightly mashed atm fabrique or a club with a similary great p.a. (believe me i would like to) i did hear it the other day at my friend's house on his excellent stereo on vinyl. it was astonishing. it doesn't work as an mp3 at all or through less than great speakers. the difference between the mp3 and vinyl is astonishing.

as with most villalobos records, the beauty of its sonic depth is in intricate production (barely audible bass squirges, subtle re-orderings of the horns) and with the mp3 that i think most people have heard - well, it just doesn't come through.

those trying to *get* minimal techno/whatever should read philip sherburne's this month in techno from april: pitchforkmedia.com/article/feature/38938/The_Month_In_The_Month_In_Techno

some of the best writing on the 'genre' ever i think. i'm new to dissensus so go easy on me if you disagree!

- c

 

[nomadologist]

yeah tried to listen to ach so on my iPod on greyhound today and it was awful. best to listen to most minimal-ish stuff on decent speakers --losing bitrate really dilutes the whole "precision" thing w/r/t tones and dynamics that minimal relies on to make it interesting at all.

what i don't get is why so many people insist on tacking "electro" onto the beginning of every electronic genre for no reason. like "electro-house". so which is it--an electro beat, or a house beat? i'm sure you could manage some kind of hybrid but it's so overused that it's meaningless. it was just a way of trying to sound more current like 5 years ago and then the indie press caught on when they realized "electroclash" was "hip" and then slapped it on anything to try to excuse it for being electronic. like "i can like electro-musics because they're all hip in an ironic way about how they suck for not rocking."

 

[mms]

anyway, i don't get mid to late period beatles at all. i've tried, i really have, but it all sounds so bloodless and over produced. i find it way too controlled; there's a sense that every sound has been mapped out perfectly. i love some music like that, but in pop it just doesn't work. it needs to be a little out of control or messy. i woud say its like a group of record producers writing songs, rather than a proper band, but the Knack are proof that great stuff does happen when record producers get together.

yes i agree*ish but with the beatles you just have to admire their huuge balls and absolute lack of fear and their complete revolution from a garageish band with fantastic singalongability.
i watched a programme on the telly the other night, some shitty no mark rock programme on the beatles and really the trajectory and amazing combination of personalities was astonishing.

led zeppelin, sure parts of the easrly work are a bit boring but again there was no one who could do what they did and it's a personality/psychic energy kind of combo, plus some of the musicality, ideas and depth, probably most of all mystery tho. Certain bands own periods of a certain current on popular music and zeppelin rode some kind of dark untouchable behmoth thru the 70's.

 

[Lichen]

I was listening to Led Zep III today and i reckon it's marvellous; phat, chugging boogie-woogie business.

Shoot me down...but it sounded like Funkadelic...only better


As for the Pixies, IMHO Surfer Rosa positevely crackled, but hasn't lasted like Husker Du


I do think that Sympathy for the Devil is quite the most boring dirge

And here's a thing: i got hardcore (still do in fact) but jungle (excepting jump-up ragga kit and the odd anthem i.e Marvellous Caine's Hitman) left me cold

 

[Guybrush]

Sex Pistols and Ramones (actually, most any 70s punk band) have no redeeming musical qualities to these ears; their (supposed) aggressiveness is imperceptible to me, they are raw in the worst kind of way (it sounds like shit without sounding thrilling or charmingly lo-fi), and the melodies are imbecile to non-existent.