What is your favorite thing about your favorite band?

What makes you like your favorite musician/s so much?
eg. What is your favorite thing about your favorite band?
If you can't list just one thing, list three things (but no more)
(and if you don't have 1 favorite band then pick one of your favorites)

how tlc smelled back in the day

I think this is actually a really interesting idea.

Louis, do Mansun.

mansun are like top 10 at best these days

i can do nick's though. long fin killie guitarist plays with drumstick and never solos MIND BLOWN

Hahaha, not listened to LFK in months, actually; probably should do so soon.

my favourite thing about cardiacs is that all their fans are as mental about them as i am. my favourite thing about them that they have direct control over is that JIM IS FAT

So let's try and get my favourite thing about Orbital down on paper / binary code...

I think my favourite thing about Orbital is that they manage, at their peak, to describe with their music both the rush of a great night out, dancing, adrenaline, sweat, euphoria, and the sadness that follows it; the absence, the walk home in the emerging dawn light. And they managed to make those sensations symbiotic, and concurrent, not sequential.

ooh i like that :) yeah they do combine happy, sad and everything in between with rare elegance. it is music about music, if that's not too trite.

The things I like so much about The Cure:

- The way they build songs, both in terms of arrangement and chord progressions; they pull a lot of tension and thrillpower out of third relationships.

- Robert Smith's wordplay, even when in rote mode, still hits emotional nerves I thought long dead, regressing me back to the emotional state of my teenage years. His peak time (81 - 89) is absolutely devastating but even now he still can pull some fantastic lyrical moments out of his hat ("Underneath The Stars", "The Only One" and "The Real Snow White").

my favorite thing about guided by voices / robert pollard is that there are so many songs that i will never get tired of all of them before i die and i probably wont ever even hear all of them

to expand my own 'thing' a little, cardiacs espouse a freshly-inquisitive and humble wet-spring-morning pop sensibility, where emerging from hibernation everything is a little too bright and chaotic and unlike any experience you can remember happening, but it's also somehow fundamental to the earth you totter upon and the air you gasp. then someone flings a great load of mud at you and you remember how to run. life's mischief and awkward beauty are splattered across your consciousness like paint from an old and slightly defective garden sprinkler. and yet you sense a creator, a composer who somehow gathered this experience together from its near-infinite significances. and your knees go a little weak.

i also like dan's; the cure are, for me, special in ways i can identify with that post. haven't really heard much or any gbv/pollard, and am intimidated by the amount of material. i hope someone does the fall.

New Order / Hooky's bass lines

Boredoms ability to mix the sonic variety of electronic music within the framework of playing live. Same goes for a lot of 70s space jazz like Miles and Herbie Hancock.

this is a good question

my favourite thing about richard d. james in his million and one projects is the way he uses drum sounds. things that anyone else would use as simple timekeepers or accents. in his hands snares and kick drums and cymbals turn into these living breathing creatures that take on lives of their own. it's as if he inverts music. the tonal or tuned instruments or sounds provide the rhythm while the percussive instruments or sounds provide texture and colour and form. like if he were an architect he'd build a skyscraper where the structural cage was made of glass and marble and ornamental material while he hung steel beams and bits of iron and massive blocks of concrete all over the outside of the building. yet he still writes really catchy choons even while he's doing these structurally impossible things that make you think 'how the hell did he just DO that?'

that skyscraper would not last long but that's well put

that's what is amazing about his music. it really shouldn't work. that building should come down in a stiff wind. yet the songs stay together and still sound amazing when i've been listening to some of them for 20+ years

mansun are like top 10 at best these days

― Inspiration for the sex robot sprang from the September 11 attacks (acoleuthic), Monday, January 11, 2010 7:30 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

The best thing about Mansun was they had a bass player called Stove surely?

actually it was that they had absolutely no idea what to do with their sudden success, and briefly presented a genius parody of what it was to be a big britpop band, all while making music that completely, wilfully defied what they were 'supposed' to be doing

Nicely put. They were actually my biggest obsession from about 1996-2003. I wouldn't name them as my favorite band anymore but my sensible reason would be either them getting a song as strange as Closed For Business in the top 10 or the amount of great songs they used to put out on those ep's.

they were my favourite band from 2005 (when i first heard Six) to 2007 :)

cardiacs ilx MERCILESSLY BEAT THAT OUT OF ME though

haha imo Being A Girl was their 'wtf wtf wtf wtf' apex

That third album really killed them. They tried to make a straight forward pop album but the songs just weren't there, apart from I Can Only Disappoint U. Being A Girl was a pretty big risk as was the whole of that second album. Brilliantly over the top live too.

Good times!

The Grifters
1. The Vocals\Lyrics
2. Stonedsy Rock n' Roll\Experimentation
3. All the Melodies

xp that third album was one of the great disasters of rock. believe me i know what they were trying to do (actually, they weren't really trying to do much of anything but their label rushed out a few hapless demos and passed it off as an album; the kleptomania sessions are WAY better than little kix) and it was a massive shame. but after six there was nowhere to go but down really. six killed them, in many ways, and also gave them an um legacy worth celebrating. lol.

Voivod
1. Combined metal and prog better than anyone
2. Never cared about being commercially viable, but made it onto a major anyway through sheer quality
3. Total nerds

I'm now listening to some mansun songs for the first time ever. The song Stripper Vicar which I found on youtube encompasses the best of 90s rock

Sparks: The deep sense of humanity in Ron Mael's lyrics (seriously!)

Melvins: I think King Buzzo's guitar tone on is pretty much my happy place

and i'm not a "guitar person" in the slightest bit

Souled American: that they just kept slowing down, more and more, unbelievably after a certain point

New Order: I used to love not finding a single interview in the pre-Internet days when I scoured library microfiche collections.

picking tyr because new order's been covered: when they lay v. simple folk melodies on v. ponderous-sounding rhythms

a viking metal band? another one I never heard before

70s Genesis: The ability to be extremely complex and musically sophisticated without ever losing hold of melody/harmony or long improvised instrument wanking solos.

Hmm.. That gave no meaning. Trying once more: The ability to be extremely complex and musically sophisticated without ever losing hold of melody/harmony and also without ever degenerating into long improvised instrument wanking solos.

jack white's enthusiasm

The Divine Comedy: Because he makes being a know it all fop sound like the most fun you can have. Also their orchestral arrangements are outstanding.

i would just like to say how unexpected and encouraging it is that the first 20 favourite bands on this thread are:

TLC
Mansun
Long Fin Killie
Cardiacs
Orbital
The Cure
GBV
New Order
Boredoms
Aphex Twin
Grifters
Voivod
Melvins
Sparks
Souled American
Tyr
Genesis
Jack White
Divine Comedy

....ILM contains multitudes.....

The Clean, back in the day...the way they meld together psychedelic surf music with minimalist funk and even dub (hello Slug Song) and still be as catchy as the Beatles...

The Ramones: Joey Ramone's ability to make "yeah" into a five syllable word.