I know jackshit

After a couple of years of recurrent annoyance and angst about keeping up with things and not being fond of that, I think it's important to listen to something new every day, even one song, to not give a damn whether said new song is in fact new or just something you haven't heard yet and may not be even slightly au courant anywhere, and to spend other listening time indulging yourself.

Important? . . . Important? . . .)

Anything! Flip on the radio to a station that plays something you don't normally listen to and give an ear. Use the 'Dare You!' thread and try out all the suggestions. Etc.

But that's only a good source for older stuff.

Also, what Ned said.

All these arcane bands mentioned here--look them up. Treat AMG like a Choose Your Own Adventure, following influences/influenced/sounds like lists to heart's content. Be careful, though, as it tends to suck away hours.

This is really silly.

Why is everybody talking about this like it's some kind of pursuit of nirvana? How pretentious.

Record guides and websites (like allmusic.com) are great resources. You may not agree with everything written, but it lets you know about a lot of bands.

I think most people discover music genre by genre. They start digging on a band and then research other bands that are similar in style or background. At least that's how I approach learning about bands.

and dont avoid jazz. avoid jazz snobs, yes, but not jazz. jazz is actually really easy to get into because of the process by whcih sidemen work their way up to being leaders. if you, say, start with miles davis, and explore the work that his sidemen did as leaders, you can easily discover the work of Bill Evans, John Coltrane and Herbie Hancock, whose styles are quite divergent (ultra-sensitive, romantic and elegant standards vs passionate search for freedom vs funky funky funk to be quite general).

in general, there is no right way to get into music, just trust yourself and your own tastes. never be intimiadated because most snobs are just people who listen to underground bands that do exactly what mainstream bands do but without music videos.

"dump it out on the street" = pursuit of nirvana?

Pretty much stock answers here, but some of my favorites...

I find most of the above posts to be OTM.

Also the NEW Mountain Goats, Electrelane and Charizma & Peanut Butter Wolf.

Orbit, isn't it weird how Iggy-centric 103.1 is? They seem to play a different Iggy song every hour. From "I Wanna Be Your Dog" to the Peaches duet, they've got it all covered. It's great! The only Iggy songs I remember hearing on the radio before were "Lust for Life" and that duet with Kate Pierson.

My friend heard them play "This Town Ain't Big Enough for the Both of Us" the other day! I wish they'd play more stuff like that.

Pretty much what Jody said. Go cheap and you'll be surprised. If you dig any good stuff, tell us about it.

What I meant was, 'important' is really where you find it.

I don't know anything either, just jump in! Check out anything that catches your eye or ear and try to figure out why it did that for future reference.

T.S. Eliot was of the opinion that artists should view all work as equally relevant, regardless of age. I think he stole the idea off some old Chinese poet. I'd check the book I read it in but there's someone asleep next to my bookshelf.
Going through ALL music chronologically sounds cool though, even if not for "just-starting-outers".

Here on the board? Or just elsewhere in life? Either way, it's not that you don't know anything and/or are missing out -- if a band or song makes you happy, that's justification enough.

(oh and post-post ned otm!)

I could make you a mix tape too, if you like (now that you have put down a list I've got a few ideas).

depends which version of the album!

I do, however, like Sugarcult and Three Doors Down.

well i've never heard of either, so, see, you know more than me!

You may be better off for this.

Which one is the ok one? The first release? I've got the "enhanced version" and I like it, but everyone always raves about the original.

(Some of these suggestions are things I'd like to do.)

(I'm taking off next week. Maybe I'll try putting a new disc drive into my PC.)

Stevie Wonder: Innervisions
Clash: London Calling
Mos Def: Black on both sides
Swayzak: Fabric Mix
Pavement: Crooked Rain
Miles Davis: In a Silent Way
Fugazi: In on the Killtaker
Wu Tang: Enter the 36 Chambers
Daft Punk: Homework
REM: Murmur

BTW, if you want a CD that's REALLY outside the canon, check out 'Tormato' by Yes. Currently even the notorious 'Topographic' gets some props as a magnificently mad gesture and time-capsule cred, but this 1978 item is utterly dismissed even by progsters! The thing starts off business-as-usual ("Future Times/Rejoice"), but you notice that Squire has this echo-flange-filter discotron thing on the bass, which to my ears is an improvement over that dry adenoidal midrange competing-with-Howe thing. Chris meets Bootsy! The next track is the eyebrow-raiser. First of all it's disco, second of all it's called "Don't Kill the Whale". First the lyrics, of course it's not exactly "Fuck tha Police", but considering both the theme and Anderson's previous (as in 'previous offences', non-Brits), it's done with a surprising amount of deft sarcasm ("In beauty, vision/ do we offer much?"), not cringeworthy at all! Also, Jon sounds like he's singing about something he actually cares about, which has got to be a first for this bunch, well done. I hope they opened and closed the set with it in Japan.
"DKTW" also offers an important clue into the nature of 'rockism', along with "Miss You" and "I Was Made For Lovin' You" - namely, how much of the auteurist stamp does the artist in question feel the need to impose on an 'alien' genre? I feel "DKTW" is the essence of 'rockist disco' - it's disco, but with endless chord modulations and a particularly abrasive if not grating (perhaps programmatic in light of the lyrics) schlock-horror kybd fluorocarbon emission from Rick Wakeman (who throughout the album is either crapping on the material or misguidely trying to define it). Is the essence of 'rockism' believing you can elevate source material by individualising it? (Compare to Donna Summer's "Hot Stuff", which REALLY rocked the disco, or "Another One Bites the Dust", which subordinated itself completely to black radio conventions and thus absolutely KILLED every other dinosaur disco attempt.) 'DKTW' is one of those experiments that failed big enough to give rise to its own self-contained 'ecosystem' (everything's gone green!), and incidentally, Wakeman's 'contribution' would have Add N to X or Throbbing Gristle reaching for the earplugs!
"Madrigal" is a Howe/Anderson mellow thing that I'm sure is very nice, but with "Release, Release" we're back aboard the Event Horizon, and unlike Laurence Fishburne we haven't seen nearly enough yet. This is a fast, rockin' number, and if not for Anderson and Wakeman (who present a musicological problem as great and complex as the 'problem of free will to do evil' has for theologians - maybe it's the SAME problem!) it could be Tool OR the Talking Heads in the engine room, using the Lottery machine to generate time sigs as they do - until it breaks down into this bizarre middle section where crowd noise is overdubbed, and there's an unnaccompanied drum solo then a guitar solo - and they're both REALLY SHITTY! What were they trying to say here? "This is what the idiots who come to our show will eat up"? "This is as good if not better than the complicated stuff and our audience (and maybe us!) are too pretentious to realise it"? Or, heaven forbid, "THIS IS NEW WAVE? WE CAN DO THIS!"? That's two in a row where they faced down Freddy's mob ("Sheer Heart Attack") and tripped over their shoelaces! FWIW, the lyrics are sort of "Going for the One pt 2" - remember that one? "I tink I'll try and write a punchline/ but they're so hard to find in my cosmic mind/ so I think I'll take a look out the window"? This one talks about "Lack of concentration" and "we're not moving". Bauhaus all the way. As in letting the plumbing and electrical wires show, not as in lame goth shite.

The second side is what launched a thousand haircuts, and I can't imagine what it must've sounded like in 1978, but..."Arriving UFO". Poly "Klaatu Niktu Barada" Styrene fans complained about this one? More Wakeman keys that are abrasive and actually physically painful DESPITE WAKEMAN'S PROBABLE INTENTION (although he was probably sleeping in a gutter at the time), which makes all the difference. "Circus of Heaven". Twee pseudo reggae, which of course they can't do straight, but this time they subtract the beats instead of subdividing them, and if you're going to be 'twee' then go all the fucking way and have your five-year-old kid talk in the outro, which is what Anderson's done here. I actually like this song a lot. As 'ingenuousness' goes, this makes Jonathan Richman sound like Chuck D. Onward to "Onward". "Through the long night...the long night...of my li-i-i-i-i-ife..." A wedding song, and here's what to blame for every shitty AOR cash cow produced by Ron Nevison. Starship stole their whole career from this thing. Not only that, but Metallica stole ALL of "For Whom the Bell Tolls" from an incidental Howe noodle, which places those thrashing Napster nemesii 'zackly in the Bay Area post-hippie AOR context I'd always feared they secretly had the secret handshake too. Then there's the last track, which sounds like a band trying to be Yes, but without a clue. Like they're trying to learn "Siberian Khatru" off some old sheet-music but the music has mistakes in it and they have to keep going over it. I love it when bands parody themselves, don't you? Especially unintentionally!

Which brings us back to the Shameless Bid for Publicity of course!

-- dave q, November 24th, 2001.

And some day someone'll also tell you avoid all things jazz, too. And they'll be wrong, too.

"news from the Department of Duh!"

It's the Dave Q review, coming right at you . . .
It's the Dave Q review, coming right at you!

That's all I really had to say.