bands you were wrong about

I think up until the age of 25 I was actively opposed to Abba. Now I love them so much. Think I must have 180'd on them overnight. What acts have you changed your mind about, for better or worse?

gay dad

i thought medeski martin and wood were worth listening to

all of them.

rihanna, fergie

Fleetwood Mac, Steely Dan.
Dad's hatred of the former and love of the latter infiltrating my younger self.

i quite liked the Beatles when i was a kid

I suspect I was wrong about Beach House.

Same here with ABBA. Hated them, but now I love them more than I ever hated them.

More recently, I hated the Hold Steady on first listen. I just couldn't get around Craig Finn's vocals on Almost Killed Me, which sounded brash and arrogant. I thought the same thing about Separation Sunday, too. I guess it was my third listen when the band just floored me.

i used to rmde at springsteen as a youth, despite actively loving all the songs of his that i knew---it was like the ~idea~ of springsteen was offensive to me or something. i realize now that i was rong.

I suspect I was wrong about Beach House.

― chupacabra - a delicious burrito (DJP), Sunday, June 19, 2011 3:27 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

in what sense?

okay now I am second-guessing, I thought it was Beach House that I did the 180 on but apparently they don't do a song titled "Boyfriend" or "Girlfriend" or something similar?

basically there's some "dream pop" group from last year that I thought sucked that I heard a different song by and was all "woah this is actually awesome" but now I don't know who it was

Sonic Youth.

AC/DC - didn't like Bon Scott era for years, said it all 'sounded the same'. RONG
W.A.S.P. - thought they were generic hard rock at first. RONG. love em, at least the classic albums.

i remember writing about this when i first joined ILX, but Talk Talk. "Spirit of Eden" sounded like sparse easy listening mixed with Adam Duritz vocals or something to me, for maybe a few months. then one day, ilxor elan was playing them around sunset and i got it all of a sudden. for months after that was the most played thing on my itunes.

Jay-Z - just flat out hated him, thought he was a mediocre rhymer

I spent far too much time liking indie rock.

Wasted years.

I hated Judas Priest when I was younger. I think initially I didn't like The Mars Volta, I liked the other ex-At The Drive-In band.

I also remember insulting Blind Guardian and calling them a buncha dorks who read Tolkien to people on stage.

I hated Neutral Milk Hotel at first, thought Mangum's voice was horrible and the music was blah campfire folk. I listened to Into the Aeroplane, Over the Sea over and over on the last long road trip I took.

I also 180'd on Pavement.

Most shamefully, I didn't get anything out of electric Miles the first time I listened to it.

I hated The Fall until I was almost 30 at which point I listened to "Palace Of Swords Reversed" and heard it completely differently.

I couldn't stand James Brown's ubiquitous funky drummer beat in the early 90s. Ten years later I heard a singles comp and flipped for him.

I was always luke-warm to 60s garage rock and hated psych until this year.

It happens, that's why I learned never to say never about any music, and will revisit things to see if my perception has changed.

xpost to kraudive. Amen!

The Grateful Dead. Everyone I knew who tried to find a good entry point for me (knowing that my benchmarks are the Who and Miles Davis) would say the same thing: "The studio albums aren't that great; you have to hear their live stuff!" Fair enough; which ones? "Oh, ALL of them, man!" So I assumed that the aimless half-asleep noodling of the 80s/90s Dead was how they always were (and that the FM radio hits were the result of a herculean effort at cohesiveness). Thanks to one Scott Seward, I realized that the Dead have good eras and bad eras (like any band); and the Dead's good era (roughly '67-'72) is far better than I ever thought possible. Live/Dead got me hooked, and I've listened to nothing but the Dead for the last two months (haven't made it past '72, though). This is the most extreme and unexpected 180 I've done on any band, ever.

Now that I think about it, I just listened to a random ambient Eno track the other day and loved it. The last time I listened to his ambient box I was uninterested, so I'll give it another review and expect to like it much more this time.

Actually, all reggae was the really big one for me. Hated literally anything I heard in the 1980s with a passion. When I went to university I got into On U Sound via the tenuous industrial connection and got into bands like African Headcharge and Dub Syndicate but it wasn't until about ten years later when I heard the 100% Dynamite compilation on Soul Jazz that I realised fully how insanely wrong I'd been. It's a great compilation but that's probably not the whole story. I was pretty uptight when I was a teenager.

tbh up until this v moment i didn't think there was a single person on the planet that actually ~hated~ reggae

Morrissey?

But yeah, I fucking loathed it. Admittedly I'd only heard mainly things like Bob Marley and the Wailers (who I still hate), UB40 and then the kind of top 40 pop cross over stuff. But I hated the sound of it.

Like I say, love it now. It was a massive lesson for me never to write a genre off.

Ask Markers is making me listen to nu-metal with fresh ears

don't.

i went to college and they made me listen to neutral milk hotel and i was like this sounds like better than ezra where are my death records but that band turned out to be pretty good

I never used to be able to feel dub, and that's changed a lot in the past year. I used to feel the way gbx did about Bruce Springsteen as well, hated the idea of him but liked all the songs. (Same with Fleetwood Mac, really, but that changed looong ago.) It took me ages to get the Fall, too. Derrick May. So much stuff... I love that about listening.

I associates reggae with hippie toering shite until I heard Horace andy and the soul jazz comps as a student. I blame a gcse music module where they made us count all the bars in an Aswad song for some stupid reason. I'd say my fondness for reggae is now on a par with my most favourite styles of music now. Can take or leave marley.

Yeah, I hated Aswad but now there are a few records by them that I'd hold up as fucking smoking, their live album being one of them.

i used to think aswad was a crust band i was wrong

I pretty much hated Led Zeppelin up until a couple of years ago.

Ask Markers is making me listen to nu-metal with fresh ears

― vmic damone (rip van wanko), Sunday, June 19, 2011 5:58 PM

*like*

I pretty much hated the grateful dead until a few years ago

ditto, for basically the same reasons i disparaged springsteen

I still haven't come around on them but I also haven't tried to either.

Tom Waits and Talking Heads were two groups I used to really loathe hearing. Then I discovered 'Closing Time' by Waits and fell in love with the song Martha. Slowly I've started to like a few songs off other records of his. When I heard 'Remain In Light' everything by the Talking Heads suddenly made sense and I felt foolish for disliking them for so long.

OTOH that PM Dawn album I "awarded" 5 stars in 1992 (& compared to Brian Wilson!) sounded pretty boring when I played it in the 21st century

the negative reaction to some of the pavement poll results makes me think i'm "wrong" about them. i mean, i'm a big fan, but for the wrong reasons i guess.

i keep trying over and over again to like a KISS album every year. no luck so far.

I loved Aesop Rock when they were new, kinda meh on it now

KISS wasn't very good outside Destroyer imo. Love Gun was mostly filler.

ZZ Top

Had no love for them since all I knew growing up was the 80s stuff. Just recently got into their first 3 LP's and have completely flipped on them. The song that did it was Brown Sugar:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPVxMB6w8PU

Love how he holds that note until the drop, love the guitar throughout, love the groove. ZZ Top have swing, that elusive "it" that all bands strive for, just some cool-ass dudes imo.

If I ever change my mind about Sublime, one you ilxors come and beat me up. Deal?

deal

r.e.m. in that i couldn't stand stipe's voice, then got pretty heavily into them.

i wouldn't say that i *disliked* them, but as i've grown older i've become much fonder of springsteen and macca. paul > john.

the biggest switch will happen if i ever accept steely dan. as it is i respect them, but don't want to listen.

Your last line reminds me of Derek Zoolander on Sting:

"Sting would be another person who's a hero. The music he's created over the years, I don't really listen to it, but the fact that he's making it, I respect that"

i'm guessing the stupid fucking name didn't help

it's better than "Animal Collective"

I think the whole AnCo-maximalism thing only kicked in aroud Strawberry Jam and before that they were a better and less obvious band

― the wedding preset (dog latin)

Yeah that’s how I feel about them. Feels is still my favorite thing they’ve done and have trouble getting into much of what they made afterwards. I think their EPs are better than their albums: Fall Be Kind, Prospect Hummer, Meeting of the Waters, Water Curses…)

I was wrong about Lana Del Rey.

wait now you like her or now you don't? i think i became more impressed with her as time went on. i took her more seriously.

I like her!

xxp yes I agree - Fall Be Kind and Prospect Hummer are probably my favourite things by them. I don't HATE Strawberry Jam or Merriweather, they're just very hit-and-miss and were the start of the band becoming actively cloying and making some indefensible musical choices. Moka did you listen to Isn't It Now? It's actually very very good, especially 'Defeat' which really feels like a return-to-form

Animal Collective has put a bunch of live shows on bandcamp, and I'll recommend listening to some. Even the songs from Painting With make sense when they become live noise/drone/psych jams. And the earlier live shows pretty much all sound incredible.

always found it a bit odd that they don't have a big community of people trading boots the way bands like Ween do. their live shows are often way different than the studio records - when I saw them sometimes it would take me a minute or two to recognize what song they were even playing. in particular "Wide Eyed" was just so much different live than on Centipede. they're not always good of course but at least they're willing to fall on their faces.

Now that I think about it, I just listened to a random ambient Eno track the other day and loved it. The last time I listened to his ambient box I was uninterested, so I'll give it another review and expect to like it much more this time.

― Gerald McBoing-Boing, Sunday, June 19, 2011 5:38 PM

I did like it much more, in fact I went out and bought the box and got much deeper into ambient after that.

always found it a bit odd that they don't have a big community of people trading boots the way bands like Ween do. their live shows are often way different than the studio records - when I saw them sometimes it would take me a minute or two to recognize what song they were even playing. in particular "Wide Eyed" was just so much different live than on Centipede. they're not always good of course but at least they're willing to fall on their faces.

― frogbs, 27. januar 2025 23:06 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Yeah, a lot of the talk was about them always playing the next album on tour, never playing the songs just as they were. When I saw them after Strawberry Jam, they must have played MPP tracks (can't recall what they sounded like, never liked that album), and I think the only recent 'hit' they played was the Fireworks/Essplode medley. It would make sense with a lot of bootlegging.

The recent Sung Tongs anniversary live version is pretty great. Really goes in on the 'early Kompakt played on acoustic guitars' vibe.

they did! pre-Feels, they had their own message board. that’s how former ilxor lfam got them to hear the live at Haverford College show that he recorded in April 2005, and how some tracks from it were included on the Japanese version of that record.

this version of Banshee Beat made me cry when they were playing it and it still does, probably more from nostalgia now tho.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kU-_l-7Jds

Not so much wrong as deeply neglected Skinny Puppy for years after a brief intense obsession with Last Rights until I revisited their 1987-92 period and realized wow, what they're doing is so clear actually, such a unique band, they hit more times than not, and I want them as a daily companion. Who else is going to give me this mix of fluid dark textures, threatening ambiances, cool samples, machine rhythms, melodic hooks, sense of intimacy, mastery in layering and trippiness.

Also makes me realize there is a genre music VS general canon fight to carry on, like there is in literature.

Never liked The Cure that much. But hearing some of their output in the tracks thread is making me think again.

Not so much wrong as deeply neglected Skinny Puppy for years after a brief intense obsession with Last Rights until I revisited their 1987-92 period and realized wow, what they're doing is so clear actually, such a unique band, they hit more times than not, and I want them as a daily companion. Who else is going to give me this mix of fluid dark textures, threatening ambiances, cool samples, machine rhythms, melodic hooks, sense of intimacy, mastery in layering and trippiness.

Had this same experience a few years ago but the one album I knew was Rabies and I became deeply absorbed in everything from 1984-1992. (I saw them on the Last Rights tour, but was mostly there accompanying my wife, who was a much bigger fan. I had been hoping to see Godflesh, but they couldn't get their visas sorted to enter the country and had to cancel.)

This morning I heard the instrumental "Theme for Great Cities" on a compilation and now I'm wondering if I might have been wrong about Simple Minds all this time, since other than this I only knew the Breakfast Club song...

It all went wrong on Sparkle In The Rain for Simple Minds, everything before that is gold.

^^^ very much so

Och, we already knew that.

yeah, i had my Simple Minds wake up call when they released the X5 boxset of all the early albums and 12" versions etc.
had ignored them up until then due to having no interest in what came later.

Hey xyzzzz my generalized level of enjoyment of The Cure is tepid at best but the new album is really, really incredible

Yeah, its really caught me by surprise.

Took me a while to get early Simple Minds, as I kept going to the first album and being a bit 'meh' (understandably)

I recall Jim half-dismissed their debut by saying it was "a bit Boomtown Rats" which did not impress Geldof

i like it more than any boomtown rats album and i am a tonic for the troops fan. SM debut always reminded me a little of the Japan debut. i think simple minds are one of the greatest post-punk/80s bands whose reputation was sadly tarnished by their later success. i love everything they did up until once upon a time. and they did a LOT before that. like 7 albums and a zillion singles. in 4 years or so! unbelievable.

New album by the Cure hasn't changed my mind, sadly, since I kinda wanna like them and was hoping this would be the one. I just find their general sound to be ploddy and their attempts at atmosphere fail to transport me with these droney held keys. So many of their songs seem to be based on fairly predictable (but unhooky) chord progressions and I'm not really getting any sense of funk or syncopation or experimentation that I want from this kind of music. I know there are probably loads of exceptions, of course, and i do like a good few of their songs, but overall they just don't hold my interest. Also those intros go on for way too long and I find myself playing a game in my head where I'm like "Okay is Robert gonna start singing now? Nope! How about now?"

Maybe it'll all click one day. I have Seventeen Seconds on vinyl.

listen to The Head On The Door.

Okay, will do. I love Close To Me, actually- that's a great song

The Top is cool too. feel like it gets lost in the shuffle.

and its varied. and weird. because acid.

The Top goes with Hyaena. they should come together as a double CD.

I heard there's a virus going round that makes people forget the names of eighties bands and no one knows the cure

after being a huge deal for me in my teens i'm rarely in the mood for them now tbh. the 'japanese whispers' comp is the one i would reach for though if you were to make me listen to them right this minute (could do without ever hearing lovecats again though)

I'm not really getting any sense of funk or syncopation or experimentation that I want from this kind of music

hey now...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6vVP91C3Iw

i was surprised how much i enjoyed kissmekissmekissme recently. i haven't listened to it in years and years. i played it a ton when it came out and then never really played it after that. it was more diverse and the songs were way better than i remembered. it has a lot going on.

1979 to 1989 cure is all good with me pretty much. there is so much there. 10 years of goodness. i don't really listen to them beyond that. i'm sure there is lots of good stuff for the faithful. i just don't for some reason. i fell for them in 1982 and was all in. (happily ever after...was so huge in the early 80s if you were a suburban u.s. cure fan because i could not find those albums by themselves anywhere.)

Also those intros go on for way too long

a feature, not a bug

i was surprised how much i enjoyed kissmekissmekissme recently. i haven't listened to it in years and years. i played it a ton when it came out and then never really played it after that. it was more diverse and the songs were way better than i remembered. it has a lot going on.

_Also those intros go on for way too long_

a feature, not a bug

The Cure are my all-time favorite band and surprised dog latin doesn't get them. I too was going to suggest KM3 as it's off the wall and is so varied that it might work. Head on the Door is sort of the perfect choice tho. But i actually think Pornography should be the one as it's quintessential Cure, it's so heavy that it's almost Metel. But it seems to be the stuff that he is complaining about, so maybe not the right fit.

Or just do what almost everyone in 1986 did and listen to Standing on a Beach.

The "Staring at the Sea" side of the cassette was my favorite Cure listen for a long time.

The Cure is my by friends best band, so I've heard it so many times without being the one who put it on. We got into music around 2000, so his gateway record was Bloodflowers, which is still probably the one I know the best. And this might be my favourite Cure song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuoCTPmaiPU

Other than that, I'm team Head On The Door all the way.

The Cure are my all-time favorite band and surprised dog latin doesn't get them

Right? And that's why I want (hoho) to like them more, because they absolutely should be my thing*. I'll give the classic albums another shot, starting with HOTD, then KM3.

*Do we have a thread for this? Acts who absolutely should be your thing but don't click at all? Nick Cave is the other big one for me, and Joy Division/New Order - I have a love of flamboyance and noir. I'm a huge fan of artsy crooners like Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits and Scott Walker; of loads and loads of new wave and post-punk bands too, but those acts do nothing for me

The Cure have never done it for me either, fwiwi

A great series of singles from "Killing an Arab" to "Friday I'm In Love"

Do we have a thread for this? Acts who absolutely should be your thing but don't click at all?

We do! It's right here

And The Cure are on that list for me, I like the odd single but Bob's voice is just too whiny after a while. And I've tried repeatedly to revisit.

With any artist/band there are decisions/aesthetics/tendencies that work for some listeners and don't work for others. Funnily enough, DL, (although I love New Order beyond belief) I've never opened my heart to either Nick Cave or The Cure. With Nick it's something weird about "place" I guess, I can't deny songs like "The Mercy Seat" but it generally feels like he's doing Americana the same way Drake does rap. With The Cure, it's always just me feeling like "OK that's the decision that was made, here?" whether it's the first 90 seconds of "The Holy Hour" making me want to turn it off (this is not a bass riff I enjoy to listen to, and I'm allergic to flange) and rendering me unable to enjoy "Faith" (The Cure album); or the endless smudge of an endless slog of an endless intro to "Plainsong" always making me reticent to attempt once again to enjoy "Disintegration" (The Cure album) after so, so, so many failed attempts. God, "Plainsong". I've heard three different masters of it by now? I think? hoping for 'a way in' to this supposedly classic album, different volumes, moods, speaker combinations, headphones, times of day, and not once have I felt anything less than repulsed by the sonics of it, the ponderousness of it, the meander of the melodies. I'm unable to enjoy The Cure just as some diners are unable to enjoy cilantro, I guess! Doesn't mean I think they're a bad band by any stretch, they've written five-to-ten songs I adore, but there is no album of theirs I've enjoyed... until the most recent one!

Idk why the new one clicked for me, it's even MORE ponderous and dense and ridiculous, but I think it just took it so far in its density that it became incredibly charming. And "A Fragile Thing" is gorgeous. My only complaint on it really is that Reeves (my favourite Bowie guitarist, love his cameo on "Wrong Number") kinda drops the ball on record, I'm used to feeling transported by his solos but heard nothing especially elevating here.

I don't understand saying you're "unable to enjoy" a band who've "written five-to-ten songs you adore". Wouldn't you just call that inconsistency?

I think with The Cure there is a stark divide between their pop single side and their more gothy dirgey side. My introduction to them was the Standing on a Beach singles collection, which I loved, and I also loved Kiss Me x3, but most of their other albums didn't really connect and I jumped off at Disintegration.

Idk why the new one clicked for me, it's even MORE ponderous and dense and ridiculous, but I think it just took it so far in its density that it became incredibly charming.

This happened to me with Celtic Frost and the work of Tom G. Warrior more broadly. I liked the early, ultra-primitive proto-black-metal of Hellhammer and the first CF album, but as they got artier and weirder I liked them less and less. Then, the final CF album, Monotheist, absolutely blew me away: they had become this crushingly heavy doom band, and it was great. And then CF broke up and TGW started a new band, Triptykon, who pushed even further in the doom direction - their first album has a 19-minute song called "The Prolonging," ha ha. I love Triptykon more than I ever liked CF, because they are/were just so impossibly slow and heavy that it feels like the end of an aesthetic line, like there's nowhere else he can take it without them just turning into Sunn O))).

tom is the best. he's so ancient and so awesome. i was proud to write the monotheist review for decibel. i came to CF via Into The Pandemonium when it came out. i loved it. and then loved the previous albums after the fact. i never numbered the albums i reviewed but i think they gave it a 9 or a 10.

(my editor had to guess my score by my review, i guess. might have been tricky sometimes...)