Unpopular music opinions

[Diamondback1]

That might be true if Charlie Christian or Django Reinhardt hadn't come along.

...how true....and then Wes Montgomery.

 

[Chas]

...how true....and then Wes Montgomery.

Yes, I know. It's like saying the tenor saxophone stops with Isham Jones.

 

[Diamondback1]

Yes, I know. It's like saying the tenor saxophone stops with Isham Jones.

Thank you.

 

[Smithy]

I'm very all over the show with my music tastes.

Although I love 1930s and 1940s big band and jazz (which is no doubt popular here) I like a lot of stuff which I am sure is unpopular.

I'm very keen on a lot of indie noise stuff from the early 90s (Curve, Ride, Chapterhouse, Lush, My Bloody Valentine, etc) and especially love Slowdive.

I also love Chicane (especially his early stuff, "Far from the Maddening Crowds" and "Behind the Sun", although his latest "Giants" which is a return to his early sound gets put on the CD player rather a lot) which I imagine is very unpopular round these parts.

A lot of 80s stuff I still love and is nostalgic to me, The Cure, Sisters, Joy Division and New Order, Cocteaus, Siouxsie, JAMC, etc. Although it has a tendency to get played in the early hours of the morning here when we're having a party with other old saps who remember it!

I also love Bob Marley, oh and a lot of classical (mostly German, Russian or northern European), and a lot of Norwegian rock.

So there's me, all over the bloody place as I said

 

[LizzieMaine]

That might be true if Charlie Christian or Django Reinhardt hadn't come along.

They *wouldn't* have come along if it hadn't been for Eddie Lang, though.

I like Christian, but despite that I dearly wish the electric guitar had never been invented.

 

[Blackjack]

They *wouldn't* have come along if it hadn't been for Eddie Lang, though.

I like Christian, but despite that I dearly wish the electric guitar had never been invented.

Music sure got a lot LOUDER because of it... I'm also a fan of acoustic sounds. There are more than a few clubs here around Chicago that you can hear some decent Gypsy jazz and Flamenco, most of the time I'll opt for the more laid back venue but every now and then I still like to hear a good rock band tear it up if I'm letten the dog out as they say...

 

[LizzieMaine]

See, that's the thing -- I can usually understand why people see something in any kind of music, even if it isn't my own personal taste. But loud guitar rock of any style I literally can't abide -- it gives me migraines, like the sound of pushing a row of garbage cans down a concrete stairwell. A violent cacaphonous din, full of sound and fury signifying nothing. Bah.

 

[Amy Jeanne]

Some of us still think everything that needed to be said on the guitar was said by Eddie Lang.

A nice South Philly boy! Lived just off of South Street! There's a plaque where we lived.

 

[Amy Jeanne]

And here are some unpopular opinions:

I like these songs:
"I Just Called To Say I Love You" (Stevie!)
"You're The Inspiration" (Chicago)
"Say You Will" (Foreigner)
"Take It On The Run" (REO Speedwagon)
"Look Away" (Chicago)

I like 80s CHICAGO! I like Peter Cetera, too. We share a birthday lol But seriously -- I like anything over-produced and schmaltzy. Crank it up -- sing at the top of my lungs!!

 

[Blackjack]

See, that's the thing -- I can usually understand why people see something in any kind of music, even if it isn't my own personal taste. But loud guitar rock of any style I literally can't abide -- it gives me migraines, like the sound of pushing a row of garbage cans down a concrete stairwell. A violent cacaphonous din, full of sound and fury signifying nothing. Bah.

Well I'm really talking about classic rock nothing metal, if the songs are we'll crafted and the musicians are talented I can appreciate almost every form of music, but I am a melody guy over all. Good vocals and melody will make or break most music for me.

 

[vitanola]

See, that's the thing -- I can usually understand why people see something in any kind of music, even if it isn't my own personal taste. But loud guitar rock of any style I literally can't abide -- it gives me migraines, like the sound of pushing a row of garbage cans down a concrete stairwell. A violent cacaphonous din, full of sound and fury signifying nothing. Bah.

I've just been subjected to a day of Ornette Coleman, including the score from "Naked Lunch", "the Shape of Jazz to Come", "Tomorrow is the Question!" and other such rot.

Sounds to me like a Complicated Cat-Fight in a Mustard Mill!

After listening to these discs one may easily understand why jazz became a cultural irrelevancy around the time of their production.


Rather like the modern "serious" music of the "Ode to a Dead Mock Turtle" school. I won't even deign to address "4'33" or "Landscapes".

 

[S_M_Cumberworth]

I've just been subjected to a day of Ornette Coleman, including the score from "Naked Lunch", "the Shape of Jazz to Come", "Tomorrow is the Question!" and other such rot.

Sounds to me like a Complicated Cat-Fight in a Mustard Mill!

After listening to these discs one may easily understand why jazz became a cultural irrelevancy around the time of their production.


Rather like the modern "serious" music of the "Ode to a Dead Mock Turtle" school. I won't even deign to address "4'33" or "Landscapes".

I'll have to wholeheartedly disagree. Although I don't like all of Coleman's stuff, especially later on, his harmonic and melodic experiments are much more interesting to me than other such experimentation in the 20th century (like, say, twelve-tone music).

And to say that jazz became irrelevant around or even shortly after 1959 (when Tomorrow is the Question! and The Shape of Jazz to Come were released) is nonsense. You had Miles Davis, with his hard bop group, producing some of his best stuff ever. Coltrane? Even if you eschew his later work (which I don't), A Love Supreme wasn't released until 1964. Eric Dolphy? Even Duke Ellington — as much as I love most everything he did, I'd give it all up for The Far East Suite. And don't even get me started on Mingus. He alone proves that jazz was far from irrelevant in the 60s. As far as I'm concerned, his output was flawless, even into the 70s.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Here's the ultimate musical heresy to chew on:

Music is merely a pattern of sounds, arranged in a pleasing manner. It has no cosmic/spiritual/mystical/higher-level-of-existance significance whatever beyond the fact that we find it appealing. We create all these explanations and rationalizations as a way of trying to figure out why it appeals to us, because we've been inculcated into thinking that simply saying "hey, that sounds nice. I like it," would be hopelessly petit-bourgeois of us.

 

[Kahuna]

Music is merely a pattern of sounds, arranged in a pleasing manner. It has no cosmic/spiritual/mystical/higher-level-of-existance significance whatever beyond the fact that we find it appealing. We create all these explanations and rationalizations as a way of trying to figure out why it appeals to us, because we've been inculcated into thinking that simply saying "hey, that sounds nice. I like it," would be hopelessly petit-bourgeois of us.

Exactly! Musical taste is very individual and not easily explainable. How else could I come to like both Harry Partch and Isham Jones? Which is why it's kind of pointless to win others over to your point of view. We like what we like even though we often cannot explain why. If music is meant to give us pleasure we should just give in to what we like and enjoy it without trying to make it right for everybody else.

 

[Chas]

They *wouldn't* have come along if it hadn't been for Eddie Lang, though.

I like Christian, but despite that I dearly wish the electric guitar had never been invented.

That's a "what if" question. Lang isn't necessarily on the same level of influence as, say, Louis Armstrong. If not Lang, then someone else would have come along eventually. It's not like he was the only guitarist of the era.

Here's the ultimate musical heresy to chew on:

Music is merely a pattern of sounds, arranged in a pleasing manner. It has no cosmic/spiritual/mystical/higher-level-of-existance significance whatever beyond the fact that we find it appealing. We create all these explanations and rationalizations as a way of trying to figure out why it appeals to us, because we've been inculcated into thinking that simply saying "hey, that sounds nice. I like it," would be hopelessly petit-bourgeois of us.

No, sorry. That's incorrect. The key to how we react to music has a neurological basis - there is research that more than suggests that it's good for you, so it's far from being a mere whim. More about it here.

 

[S_M_Cumberworth]

Here's the ultimate musical heresy to chew on:

Music is merely a pattern of sounds, arranged in a pleasing manner. It has no cosmic/spiritual/mystical/higher-level-of-existance significance whatever beyond the fact that we find it appealing. We create all these explanations and rationalizations as a way of trying to figure out why it appeals to us, because we've been inculcated into thinking that simply saying "hey, that sounds nice. I like it," would be hopelessly petit-bourgeois of us.

There's nothing heretical about that. The same is true of all things imagined and constructed by man.

But even then your preferences are artificial: they have everything to do with where you were born and when, how you were raised, what you've been exposed to throughout your life, cultural norms, etc. There are reasons you like what you like, and they have little to do with individual choice and personality. Our tastes have basically been conditioned by extra-personal factors.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Exactly! Musical taste is very individual and not easily explainable. How else could I come to like both Harry Partch and Isham Jones? Which is why it's kind of pointless to win others over to your point of view. We like what we like even though we often cannot explain why. If music is meant to give us pleasure we should just give in to what we like and enjoy it without trying to make it right for everybody else.

Or even worse, forming our tastes based on what has the appropriate academic/cultural imprimatur -- and being afraid to admit to enjoying anything that falls outside what The Right Kind Of People listen to.

 

[LizzieMaine]

That's a "what if" question. Lang isn't necessarily on the same level of influence as, say, Louis Armstrong. If not Lang, then someone else would have come along eventually. It's not like he was the only guitarist of the era.

True. I also like Roy Smeck and Nick Lucas. And that Blind Willie Dunn guy was pretty good too.

 

[Chas]

Uhhh.... Blind Willie Dunn was Eddie Lang. Or were you just poking us in the ribs? There was also Carl Kress.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Consider yourself poked.