the 'unexpectedly affecting' canon

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i see this lots when those evil faceless rockist critic people are reviewing dance or hiphop albums and they come to the track with the mournful string loop and are suprised when its emotional in a way that they don't expect those musics to be. but i'm not sure that's what i'm talking about. i wanted to start this thread with number 1 in the list but when placed under this heading the affecting bits of the songs suddenly seem terribly obvious and not at all unexpected. i think maybe this thread was inspired by trife's description of the "u not like me" beat as "indescribably small and futile, like a tiny wind up robot hitting a wall over and over". so, the kind of reactions you'd call idiosyncratic. i guess. i think i should've left this whole explanation bit out.

1. i think the most i've been suprised by my response to music was when i started crying tears of joy at the first few seconds of the breeder's "no aloha".

― mitch lastnamewithheld (mitchlnw), Sunday, 10 August 2003 21:31 (twenty-three years ago)

2. wheatus (shd be no.1 surely?)

― mark s (mark s), Sunday, 10 August 2003 22:12 (twenty-three years ago)

i was trying to escape its massive influence through outright evasion

― mitch lastnamewithheld (mitchlnw), Sunday, 10 August 2003 22:14 (twenty-three years ago)

Like "Don't Stop Believin'"?

― Sonny A. (Keiko), Sunday, 10 August 2003 23:22 (twenty-three years ago)

Is this related to Dave Q's Scorpions thread? Or to strong drink?

― Tom (Groke), Sunday, 10 August 2003 23:23 (twenty-three years ago)

I think part of what killed 1nd13 for me was the whole 'expectedly affecting' thing - I poured so much of myself into Certain Records that every time I listened to one I had ridiculously high and austere standards, unless it reduced me to some kind of hopeless wreck then it wasn't doing its job properly. "No, make that hairshirt hairier!".

The last thing to take me by surprise and touch me a lot was "It Couldn't Happen Here" which I'd resigned myself to thinking was the worst track on Actually and suddenly the line "in six inch heels, quoting magazines" struck me as supremely sad in a way I'm sure it never will again.

― Tom (Groke), Sunday, 10 August 2003 23:27 (twenty-three years ago)

I guess the part where it gets all quiet-like in Whitesnake's "Still of the Night", and Coverdale is doing his moaning vox thing, right before Vandenberg SHREDS.

I really like that album actually, brings back some nice memories.

― ham on rye (ham on rye), Monday, 11 August 2003 03:09 (twenty-three years ago)

i haven't read the dave q thread, and i wasn't drinking (just overtired). but somehow i was certain this thread was somehow distinct from the 'ambushed by unexpected emotion' thread but it's really not.

― mitch lastnamewithheld (mitchlnw), Monday, 11 August 2003 06:01 (twenty-three years ago)

Elvis Costello - 'Tramp the Dirt Down'
Bellatrix - 'Jediwannabe'
The Kinks - 'See My Friend'

― Justyn Dillingham (Justyn Dillingham), Monday, 11 August 2003 06:52 (twenty-three years ago)

That's John Sykes shredding on "Still of the Night". (Breeders seconded, Sykes seconded for Blue Murder's "Jelly Roll")

― dave q, Monday, 11 August 2003 07:30 (twenty-three years ago)

Redd Kross 'Saragon' when it goes to the D-G-A sequence at the end
Urge Overkill "Positive Bleeding" when the vox goes "Blee-eed" then there's a 2 bar guitar solo

― dave q, Monday, 11 August 2003 07:39 (twenty-three years ago)

Whitesnake - "Here I go again on my own"

Heartbreaking...

Actually, wouldn't a horrifically expensive strip club that played nothing except rock ballads and rnb slow jams be great?

― Jacob (Jacob), Monday, 11 August 2003 12:55 (twenty-three years ago)

Tom that's the best track on "Actually", and you are not alone, let's get INDIE sometime

― Andrew Thames (Andrew Thames), Monday, 11 August 2003 13:02 (twenty-three years ago)

I poop on Wheatus.

― Anthony Miccio (Anthony Miccio), Monday, 11 August 2003 17:36 (twenty-three years ago)

The first time I heard Jim O'Rourke's cover of Burt Bacharach's "Something Big," I surprised myself by actually laughing out loud. For like the whole length of the song.

― jaymc (jaymc), Monday, 11 August 2003 18:27 (twenty-three years ago)

I like music that has no obv feelings attached to it.

With free improv, when it comes across especially well on record, I have a feeling that I'm 'overwhelmed': too many feelings that cannot be registered in a descriptive fashion and that's fine to me.

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Tuesday, 12 August 2003 08:26 (twenty-three years ago)

The 'overwhelmed' thing is generally (but not entirely) what I'm looking for in music, but that's not what I sense this thread is about. Rather I think it's about one particular feeling being resonated specifically through you by one peculiar moment of a song, be it a lyric or a hook or whatever and it goes beyond simply 'enjoying the sound' of something into a whole other level of emotional response, like when you suddenly smell a scent you haven't come across in years and it immediately sends you back to being a kid or something. And the unexpected part means it ought to come from a source that doesn't normally deal in that kind of emotional trigger. As such I won't add the openign line of Elbow's "Scattered Black & Whites" ("been climbing trees / I've skinned my knees / my hands are black / the sun is going down") even though it's stupidly redolent of my own childhood and makes me crumple like a gibbon. So instead I shall mention the opening chords of De La Soul's "Eye Know", which fill me with such childish, simple joy and pre-cynicism love that I regularly think I'm going to explode when I hear them.

― Nick Southall (Nick Southall), Tuesday, 12 August 2003 08:38 (twenty-three years ago)

I am not looking for anything in particurlar in music. The 'overwhelmed' thing is very affecting to me.

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Tuesday, 12 August 2003 08:42 (twenty-three years ago)

this was the original thread (but mitch IS asking a difft question):

Ambushed by unexpected emotion

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 12 August 2003 10:46 (twenty-three years ago)

I don't really understand the difference but anyway I hope this is right:

3. That line in The Barafundle Bumbler by Gorky's that goes "And if my father asked me / I'm only collecting stamps up a tree - ooohh". I don't even like stamp collecting!

― N. (nickdastoor), Tuesday, 12 August 2003 11:02 (twenty-three years ago)

Maybe you like trees.

― David. (Cozen), Tuesday, 12 August 2003 11:03 (twenty-three years ago)

Yeah, they're pretty good. I think it's the dad thing actually.

― N. (nickdastoor), Tuesday, 12 August 2003 11:06 (twenty-three years ago)

Maybe you like dads.

― David. (Cozen), Tuesday, 12 August 2003 11:10 (twenty-three years ago)

canon = building a consensus as to who is most likely unexpectedly to affect the greatest number of ilxors!

it's a very paradoxical and interesting — bcz auto-destructive yay gustav metzger!! — concept

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 12 August 2003 11:12 (twenty-three years ago)

God "It Couldn't Happen Here" is so crushingly beautiful! "We know how to make a relationship work, we're smart, we're mature, we know exactly what we're doing, we're not like the rest" and it makes no fucking difference. Aww.

― Andrew Thames (Andrew Thames), Thursday, 14 August 2003 13:13 (twenty-three years ago)

Wow, is that what it's about? I wanted to write that song.

― N. (nickdastoor), Thursday, 14 August 2003 17:03 (twenty-three years ago)

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