have you ever
This is one of the posts where a talk about a music-related phenomenon. Last time it was "one-liners," today it's the rediscovery.
The rediscovery is a bit like a double-take. The first time you listen to the artist you don't see anything special about it. In fact, you may hate it. But then later on in life you give it another listen and it triggers in you something that it hadn't the first time.
This can happen for different reasons. Maybe the first time you listened you were just not in the right mood. Perhaps you were up for some System of a Down intensity rather than a soothing musical treatment. You could have been pissed off or impatient, too distracted with other issues to give the music your full attention.
In most cases you probably weren't into the music because your taste hadn't matured to the point that you could appreciate it.
We all have a certain origin of taste in music... a sort of personally specialty. And whenever we reach out into a new style it's a confusing and tentative experience. You don't know what to look for, and it may seem like too much work trying to figure out what this new style is all about. Often it's uncomfortable, and you'd rather just retreat to artists you can trust.
Some types of music are easier to conquer than others based on your origin of taste. It's not much of a challenge to expand your tastes from punk rock to ska. While not so difficult, these types of taste-expansion also aren't as satisfying as a more daring one.
Whether all the stars were aligned and the situation was perfect, or you were simply incredibly persistent, you can dig a formerly foreign music genre and add that to your audio arsenal.
If you do attempt to expand your taste, you constanty musically mature. I think of it as filling in links between styles/artists. Example:
Offspring ---> Nirvana ----> Pixies ----> Radiohead ----> Clinic
Very small steps, but there's a huge difference between Offspring and Clinic.
Some of the bands that I've had to rediscover are Pavement, Radiohead, and Spoon.
When I first downloaded Radiohead on a recommendation from a friend, I thought they were shit. The guy sang like a pussy (which he does)... I just wasn't into it all at. Now there were a variety of forces at work to make me hate them. The song I downloaded (Fake Plastic Trees) was not a rocker, and Radiohead can rock quite well. If I had downloaded "Paranoid Android," I might have become a Radiohead fan then.
But I didn't, because at that point in time I wasn't musically mature enough to understand "Fake Plastic Trees." A year later I was playing random songs on my computer, "Fake Plastic Trees" came up, and I was completely under its spell. Why? My taste had expanded beyond hard rock.
I read about how Pavement was maybe the most important/best band of the nineties, so I listened to some of their stuff. However, the songs I chose to listen to were all off their low-recording-quality first album. I wasn't ready to make the jump from polished music to this lo-fi indie stuff, and forgot all about them.
One night around exam time last semester I'm studying at the coffee shop and these really great songs are on the radio, clearly by the same artist (they were playing a Pavement CD). First I thought to myself... "these guys are Weezer ripoffs, but they do sound good." When I got back to my room, I looked up the lyrics and was shocked to discover it was by this group I had discarded a long time ago. (Also turns out they didn't rip off Weezer, it was the other way around.) Once I got home I re-listened to the songs I obtained previously and wondered how the hell I didn't get into them.
So bust out that cd you hated the first time around and give it a listen, because it might be just what you're looking for a year later.
Song that won't disappoint: "Paranoid Android" by Radiohead.
Why?: They've described it as "Bohemian Rhapsody" meets The Pixies... and if that concept doesn't make you think "oh hell yes" then something is very, very wrong with you. (This is most definitely one of the greatest rock songs of all time.)
The rediscovery is a bit like a double-take. The first time you listen to the artist you don't see anything special about it. In fact, you may hate it. But then later on in life you give it another listen and it triggers in you something that it hadn't the first time.
This can happen for different reasons. Maybe the first time you listened you were just not in the right mood. Perhaps you were up for some System of a Down intensity rather than a soothing musical treatment. You could have been pissed off or impatient, too distracted with other issues to give the music your full attention.
In most cases you probably weren't into the music because your taste hadn't matured to the point that you could appreciate it.
We all have a certain origin of taste in music... a sort of personally specialty. And whenever we reach out into a new style it's a confusing and tentative experience. You don't know what to look for, and it may seem like too much work trying to figure out what this new style is all about. Often it's uncomfortable, and you'd rather just retreat to artists you can trust.
Some types of music are easier to conquer than others based on your origin of taste. It's not much of a challenge to expand your tastes from punk rock to ska. While not so difficult, these types of taste-expansion also aren't as satisfying as a more daring one.
Whether all the stars were aligned and the situation was perfect, or you were simply incredibly persistent, you can dig a formerly foreign music genre and add that to your audio arsenal.
If you do attempt to expand your taste, you constanty musically mature. I think of it as filling in links between styles/artists. Example:
Offspring ---> Nirvana ----> Pixies ----> Radiohead ----> Clinic
Very small steps, but there's a huge difference between Offspring and Clinic.
Some of the bands that I've had to rediscover are Pavement, Radiohead, and Spoon.
When I first downloaded Radiohead on a recommendation from a friend, I thought they were shit. The guy sang like a pussy (which he does)... I just wasn't into it all at. Now there were a variety of forces at work to make me hate them. The song I downloaded (Fake Plastic Trees) was not a rocker, and Radiohead can rock quite well. If I had downloaded "Paranoid Android," I might have become a Radiohead fan then.
But I didn't, because at that point in time I wasn't musically mature enough to understand "Fake Plastic Trees." A year later I was playing random songs on my computer, "Fake Plastic Trees" came up, and I was completely under its spell. Why? My taste had expanded beyond hard rock.
I read about how Pavement was maybe the most important/best band of the nineties, so I listened to some of their stuff. However, the songs I chose to listen to were all off their low-recording-quality first album. I wasn't ready to make the jump from polished music to this lo-fi indie stuff, and forgot all about them.
One night around exam time last semester I'm studying at the coffee shop and these really great songs are on the radio, clearly by the same artist (they were playing a Pavement CD). First I thought to myself... "these guys are Weezer ripoffs, but they do sound good." When I got back to my room, I looked up the lyrics and was shocked to discover it was by this group I had discarded a long time ago. (Also turns out they didn't rip off Weezer, it was the other way around.) Once I got home I re-listened to the songs I obtained previously and wondered how the hell I didn't get into them.
So bust out that cd you hated the first time around and give it a listen, because it might be just what you're looking for a year later.
Song that won't disappoint: "Paranoid Android" by Radiohead.
Why?: They've described it as "Bohemian Rhapsody" meets The Pixies... and if that concept doesn't make you think "oh hell yes" then something is very, very wrong with you. (This is most definitely one of the greatest rock songs of all time.)
posted by tightropewalker | 2:21 PM
4 Comments:
OH THE IRONY!
lmao this is just too hilarious
in response to this post...I haven't had the chance to give that NMH song another try...it's on the horizon, though
its only a coincidence that writing this happened around the same time as the NMH thing. when i started this blog i came up with about 15 ideas for posts and just typed up summaries, so everything's pre-cooked, i just microwave it.
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