For Your Ears Only?

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You discover a new favourite band/artist. Better:
a)They're complete unknowns that have pressed 250 copies of their records and you've managed to obtain one.
b)There's a billboard on the highway with their faces on it.
?

― Mitch Lastnamewithheld, Monday, 12 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

False question. You can't judge music properly (let alone to the extent that it becomes a favourite) without a knowledge of its commercial context.

― Tom, Monday, 12 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Unfalsing the question: you hear track on radio, decide is brilliant, then napster others by band, become infatuated. Then you decide to find out about the band themselves -- in yr. heart of hearts are you secretly hoping that they're big or small?

Me? I'd rather discover an unknown then flog it to death and make myself look smart.

― Sterling Clover, Monday, 12 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I'm never sure how commercially successful my favourite bands are. I sometimes read that single X or album Y had a run of 1,000. I quite like it if no one has heard of them (is that a bad thing?)...I guess I like to keep some things a secret. But level of commercial success wouldn't be a primary influence on my liking.

― james, Monday, 12 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

oooh... that's a difficult one. there's the credibility factor and the excitement of owning an obscure record, but at same time you wish that everyone could appreciate the brilliance of the record.

personally, i'd prefer them to be unknowns, because there hopefully would be less chance of hearing their music on TV, in adverts etc, preventing the boredom and annoyance i get from repeated hearings of something

― m jemmeson, Monday, 12 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

OK, snotty answer aside. I dont have favourite bands, I have favourite records ("I thought he said snotty answers *aside*.") so my best scenario is to be the first to hear and recognise the quality in a song which then goes mad. So I get to say to friends "Have you heard the new single by [x]?" and then it's everywhere. Because I like songs to be everywhere, mostly - it gives me a warm and happy feeling. But I also like to discover something.

Small and obscure-ish bands - well, I do my best when I do find something I like to sneakily hype them, but then I also feel a terrible sense of "oh god, what if I'm wrong", much more than I do with pop. I recall being excruciated that anybody bought the Position Normal album on my say-so, even though I wasn't wrong on that one. My fear of being wrong isn't a fear of losing cred but a wish for friends not to be disappointed on my account.

― Tom, Monday, 12 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

It's always nice to be the first kid in your neighborhood with the (soon to be) cool toy of the moment, but you must admit that most of the time that's just luck. And in the end it really doesn't matter either. Plus there'll always be that other kid who'll claim he/she got it before you did. So I'm trying to be Buddhist about it and not care anymore

Here in Holland it's quite easy to stay ahead of the curve but in the end there's no gratification to it. As a matter of fact hearing last month's fave song only just now on the radio is turning out to be quite annoying:-)

― Alacrán, Tuesday, 13 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

i don't really mind, because the chances are, some will be small, some will be big. i already had the Position Normal album before you mentioned it Tom, because i am an indie lord (ha!). still sounds like Chris Morris though

― gareth, Tuesday, 13 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Blimey. OK, I'll grant you that the last track with the spooky doctor's voice on it is very Blue Jam, but the rest of it isn't like Morris at all. Much more childlike and much more finely constructed than anything Morris has done.

― RickyT, Tuesday, 13 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

i like it when you're listening to the radio and then you hear a song which is great and so you wait to the end of the song only for terry wogan to tell you it's cars and girls by prefab sprout the same as it was yesterday.

not really.

― wilde, Tuesday, 13 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I was wondering, do other people buy records at random, jusy coz they like the cover or something?

― james, Tuesday, 13 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Buying something cause you like the cover is not random, surely.

― Tom, Tuesday, 13 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

i bought a cd single once because it was limited edition and it was number 150. can't remember the band now but the cover had a really fat lady on it. she was eating ice cream in her bikini. so obviously that helped too.

the music was terrible, but i still have it just in case they make it big one day.

actually, i hope everyone involved is dead now.

― wilde, Tuesday, 13 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I like to aggressively proselytize. If I press an obscure band on friends and they don't like it, I just hector them on their lack of taste.

― dave q, Tuesday, 13 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

tom - good point on the favourite records, not bands. records will never let you down, whereas bands can always make subsequent shit records.

― m jemmeson, Tuesday, 13 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Although a fave record does give that certain band credit, even if the subsequent record sucks.

― Alacrán, Tuesday, 13 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Isn't relying on 'social context' to judge music pretty oppressive though, considering that in any large group of people things will boil down to a lowest common denominator? Doesn't matter how 'underground' the scene is. Maybe stuff can only be judged properly in a vacuum? And what's the proper way to judge something?

― dave q, Tuesday, 13 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

replace 'at random' with someting that makes more sense. I just meant buying things by bands you've never heard of or never heard.

― james, Tuesday, 13 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Maybe stuff can only be judged properly in a vacuum?

But you can't actually listen to anything in a vacuum -- so what would judging it in a vacuum achieve?

― Ian, Tuesday, 13 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

'what would judging it in a vacuum achieve?'

If nothing else, an awareness that the object is a thing-in-itself as well being the function of a context created for it by something else, which the listener or critic might have an inadequate grasp of.

― dave q, Tuesday, 13 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

you would sufficate and, i dunno, your eyeballs might explode.

it's like the tower of babel really isn't it? if you'd been starved of any music all your life and then was made to listen to 'angels' repeatedly you might think 'hmm... this has a good beat, and a catchy tune... i like it!'

― wilde, Tuesday, 13 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

But you can't actually listen to anything in a vacuum -- so what would judging it in a vacuum achieve?

If Groucho Marx were here he'd have said "Outside of a Dog, a good album is mans best friend. Inside of a Dog, the sound quality of the tweeter is severely muffled." But I'm sure the woofer sounds fine.

aaaaaaargh.

― Lord Custos, Tuesday, 13 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Judging things in a vacuum *cleaner* = critical status of Loveless?

― the pinefox, Tuesday, 13 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I seems that if you bring it down to the quality of the music itself it shouldn't make much difference whether they are totally unknown (although getting their discs would be a pain) or on a billboard (although then commercial radio would "flog them to death"). I guess that explains why my collection falls between the extremes...although I did see Sloan on a huge billboard in Toronto once...

― Ian M, Tuesday, 13 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

It doesn't matter! Either way I feel smug and pretentious. It's either a) Look how individual, cool, and smart I am for listening to this obscure person, or b) Look how individual, cool, and smart I am for not making judgments based on being different. It's a lose-lose battle.

― Maria, Tuesday, 13 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

B-but Maria I LIKE feeling individual cool and smart! It's a win-win battle, more like!

― Tom, Tuesday, 13 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Not wanting to look/feel cool & smart = indie-itis -- prefering bands which are at once complete unknowns and are popular with everyone else (i.e. the cardigan wearing crowd)?

― Sterling Clover, Tuesday, 13 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

i am like a pig who burrows to the centre of the earth to find a truffle. when i return to the surface i am covered in soil nobody recognizes me nor do they understand the words that come out of my mouth.(words that pigs use like "oink" & "squeal"). well that's getting tiring & i need to connect so "steps gold" it is then.

― bob snoom, Tuesday, 13 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

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