Favorite Bands and lost youth

[Magpel]

[indulgent mini-essay to follow...]

 

Do you still declare favorites? And how binding is that declaration? How binding the declarations of your youth? It's obvioulsy one thing to know how to describe your sweet spot by a group of references that attempt to show its center and its remote borders, another to identify a special BFF-type loyalty to one particular band or artist.

 

I often hear, and articulate myself, the opinion that there just doesn't seem as much to get excited about in the major label music world as their used to be--when we were young in the '60s, '70s', '80s and '90s --and I wonder if part of this probelm is that I just can't, on a glandular level, get that excited anymore?

 

There's also the band = self identification thing which, thankfully, I think most of us grow out of. Idenitifying yourself through cultural tokens is a grind, man. It's a huge relief to care less about that.

 

There is also the possibility that we get more discriminating and that everyone...EVERYONE seems fallible and mundane in some ways, including the Be...The Bea...The Beat...no, can't say it.

 

The last band I really threw my lot in with, raised the flag and declared my favorite was XTC, an indentity I rode through the '80s and into the early '90s, by which time it was apparent that no band could live up to and fulfill that responsibility, certainly not the quirky chaps from Swindon. Oh, I flirted with Elvis Costello as main cat for a long time, and even tried on some select Indie college rock bands in the '90s, Pavement in particular. And there's always the Tom Waits flag I seem willing to wave when anyone is interested in knowing what "I'm about."

 

I still feel vestiges of the NEED for an enveloping, self-defining favorite everytime I find something new I like: could this be my new BIG thing, the one that I really get behind.

 

Recently, I've been thrilled by a lot of new music I'm hearing across the balkanized landscape of modern music. Four discs I've bought in particular:

 

--the debut album by The Bird and the Bee,

--Andrew Bird and the Mysterious Production of Eggs (which sounds about as much like an album I might make had I the resources and the skills as anything I've ever heard short of Revolver)

--The Ditty Bops

-Kismet by Jesca Hoop.

 

I'm overjoyed that this stuff is out there, overjoyed that cabaret-inflected rock has such a strong purchase on the fringe of mainstream music, and that these talented people are riding the bumpy road of development, oftentimes biting off more than they can chew and presenting themselves with more artistic grandeur than they've really earned yet...

 

And I feel paradoxically sad and somewhat liberated that I don't have to declare allegiance and a bonding affiliation with any of it. I am free in the world of music, and a free agent....except for the Beatles thing.

[Lee Knight]

I'd try to add to this but would only end up repeating what you said and not saying it as well. It really is a huge relief in a way to not tie myself to a favorite. But see what I mean? I can't really say it as well as you. I mean what you said. Down to the groups even...

 

...except I don't know any of the new groups you mentioned but I plan to.

 

I did XTC from the beginning. Costello from the start. Tom Waits from Sworfishtrombone... Crowded House. A fer others. But honestly, as Costello started taking himself more and more serious, and his voice took on a character I no longer found irresistible, I felt a strange anger, then release... and finally relief.

[spikemullings]

I am 40 years old this year and for the last two years I have (typically latecoming) fallen head over heels for Lucinda Williams in the same way that I fell for Ian Dury and the Blockheads and others all those years ago.

 

You know, fallen in a "this is that ideal thing I've been hearing in my head and nowhere else before now" kind of way.

 

And I'm going to see LW on Sunday so, rather unusually, and without any extra help from the serotonin re-uptake inhibitors, I'm a happy, happy boy

 

I declare!

[Magpel]

Lee, it has long been apparent to me that we have a broad common streak in taste. You are so right about EC. Anyone so very, very verbal, eventually wears out his welcome. His words are rain beating on a tin roof. Not even sure what he's on about anymore, except that it is very serious and very adult and mostly having to do with relationships, and Thatcher.

 

Spike says: "this is that ideal thing I've been hearing in my head and nowhere else before now"

 

I allow for this as a different experience than declaring a favorite. This is the powerful, sometimes even RUINOUS experience of finding that your very own musical soul already exists in a form higher than you can ever hope to attain. Jeff Buckley practically killed a good friend of mine this way; so deflating. Still, he champions the Buckley cause and loves, can't help but love, what little music Jeff left on the planet.

 

I kind of have that relationship with John Scofield. I hear my voice--perfected, fully relaized and taken deeper than I could even imagine--in his playing and writing. Luckily, I have no jazzpirations, so it's not a crippling thing. He gets to be the "secret weapon" of my quirky rock and pop tunes.

[offramp]

Any jazzpirations I had were erased by Pat Metheny. Any pop aspirations I had were erased by Sting/Police, with some assist by Jellyfish somewhere along the way. Sting is probably the musical soul that I was looking for, and, like you said, magpel, it exists in a higher form, so I'm dead in the water on that.

Unfortunately, because of this condition of aspiration erasure, I find it hard to get excited about much of anything musical, these past several years. Occasionally, someone will come along and catch my ear and give me hope--John Mayer did that for me--or the occasional relief from my boredom--Mute Math has been doing that for me these past few weeks, but otherwise, I'm pretty much dead in the water. It hurts.

[Magpel]

 

Any jazzpirations I had were erased by Pat Metheny. Any pop aspirations I had were erased by Sting/Police, with some assist by Jellyfish somewhere along the way. Sting is probably the musical soul that I was looking for, and, like you said, magpel, it exists in a higher form, so I'm dead in the water on that. Unfortunately, because of this condition of aspiration erasure, I find it hard to get excited about much of anything musical, these past several years. Occasionally, someone will come along and catch my ear and give me hope--John Mayer did that for me--or the occasional relief from my boredom--Mute Math has been doing that for me these past few weeks, but otherwise, I'm pretty much dead in the water. It hurts.

 

 

That's pretty honest stuff, and pretty heavy.

[coyote-1]

I have a clear favorite band: DEEP PURPLE. In their heyday they were a live act of staggering power.

 

I don't like them to the exclusion of others; I dig lots of music in lots of genres. I also don't go see them anymore, because they continue to play mostly the music of their heyday even though they have an entire new catalog.

 

Nonetheless, I still claim them as my fave! I guess.....

[Magpel]

 

I have a clear favorite band: DEEP PURPLE. In their heyday they were a live act of staggering power. .....

 

 

I dont want to come off as if I am micro-moderating my own thread, but I had to respond to this; Deep Purple were a big one for me to, though I've never given them the credit they deserve in my own development of taste. They were one of the key bands that got me OUT of the Beatles and into more visceral, intense territories, and they did it very musically, being perhaps an early metal band but by no means without the swing, groove, and imagination that most metal--to my tastes--lacks.

 

Coyote, they're pretty good with Steve Morse onboard, too.

[UstadKhanAli]

I have some old favorites, such as Led Zeppelin and things, but I get so much new stuff that I'm really excited about (admittedly, some being old stuff that I'm exploring, old field recordings, or reissues) that I'm always buzzing about those. I've been exploring a lot of the old Staples Singers stuff lately, and some Otis Redding, kozmigroov stuff, and Cuban funk from revolutionary-era Cuba, and really getting into that. For new stuff, I've really been enjoying the new Kings of Leon, RHCP, Sonelle, and some other stuff.

[blue2blue]

 

The (English) Beat or the (US/American) Beat?

 

 

 

When I was a kid in my mid-late teens I was all about defining myself in contrast to others by cataloging my likes and dislikes... I liked to think of myself as an elite of one. (I know, I know, it's hard to imagine... )

[Lee Knight]

In November of 1972 I bought the just released album They Only Come Out at Night by The Edgar Winter Group. I'd just turned 13. Up to that point I'd learn to fingerpick with Peter, Paul, and Mary records. I'd listen to some of my older sisters pop records (Beatles, Monkees), I'd experienced crazy rock imagery through a borrowed copy of Billion Dollar Babies... but none of this was my music (yet). Then I heard Frankenstein of all things, on my mom's car AM radio. A gimmicky tune that showed so much creativity. I was blown away. I wanted THAT.

 

That's not very cool is it? But it's true. So I did my first "take note of what the DJ says" and noted The Edgar Winter Group. Even that sounded cool to me. I went on a mission. I rode my bike to the Target equivalent at the time and having spent the last 2 years learning how to negotiate the record department in search of answers to my dreams via album covers, I went to the W section.

 

The picture of Edgar Winter. He was an albino queer?!?!?! This wasn't going to work. But Alice Cooper had that thing and the Bowie guy... maybe it was cool. Wait, I think it is cool. It's just a way to be freaky. I grabbed my bills and coins from my Levi front pocket and bought it.

 

I listened nonstop. Headphones, speakers. Wrote down the lyrics. Read every letter on the album jacket including the smallest print.

 

Then it hit me... "Hey, there were other records by him at the store." I bought each of his previous releases and devoured them. Working through the shock that they were different. This added to my admiration for him. It was like a crush except I'm not gay. A musical crush. I wanted to be him. I continued to buy his albums as I got older. See him live every time he came through, etc.

 

Then he started to age. His taste got corny. He gained some weight and started hopping around the stage like my dad might do??!?!? He wasn't perfect. And his albums started kind of sucking.

 

And I still held on for a while but finally let go...

 

I got out of high school and my tastes grew.

 

A year ago I was returning from London with my wife and child and Edgar Winter was in first class. I walked by him and froze inside. It's HIM!!!! Last year I was 47 but I was like a 13 year old kid. HIM!!!! I told my wife who he was and what he meant to me. She cracked up and said, "Go talk to him". I couldn't. Silly.

 

I woke from a mid flight nap and picked up my Learning the Secrets of Reason book and on the inside of the cover the words were written.

 

"Hey Lee. Keep rockin' Buddy!

 

Edgar Winter."

 

My wife just kept reading her book while she smiled.

 

I'm such a geek but this stuff runs deep. For my dad it's Winston Churchill, for me... Edgar Winter? Yep.

[Kendrix]

One other factor...besides age and lack of hormones.

 

Its hard to develop a deep emotional attachment to any artist or album when you barely have time to listen. Back in the day, when I had much more time for listening, such relationships could develop. Theses days even the new stuff i really appreciate only gets listened to so often - and so many times.

 

In addition I believe that moving from a 35-40 minute 2 sided record to a 50+ minute CD is also a barrier. It just makes the lack of listening time more accute relative to the material provided.

 

OTOH - as I produce my attempts at songs I listen to them enldessly.

As a result I love most of my own stuff.

Seriously, my focus on creating rather than on listening has definately cut into my ability to get to know others music- and to develop favorites.

 

One more point: Tina Turners legs circa 1969 will always be a favorite. Some things are timeless.

[Lee Knight]

 

Its hard to develop a deep emotional attachment to any artist or album when you barely have time to listen. Seriously, my focus on creating rather than on listening has definately cut into my ability to get to know others music- and to develop favorites.

 

 

Great points...

[blue2blue]

The (English) Beat or the (US/American) Beat ? When I was a kid in my mid-late teens I was all about defining myself in contrast to others by cataloging my likes and dislikes... I liked to think of myself as an elite of one. (I know, I know, it's hard to imagine... )

 

 

Looking up the (American/Paul Collins) Beat, I remembered they came out of the Nerves -- and that led me to pop that old, half-forgotten name into the Yahoo Music Unlimited (my new subscription service) search window, pulling up a couple albums by them (and I followed links to later band Code Blue, too).

 

I'm listening to the Nerves for the first time in probalby 30 years and -- man -- they are cooool!

 

(The sound is kind of like a punkier, more uptempo Pere Ubu.)

Anyone who doesn't like this can't possibly be hip.

 

 

________________

 

 

I've tried to move beyond the juvenile attitudes I lived by back when I was a teen but I still have a couple of cultural third rails... I just freeze up when someone says they love Michael Bolton or Kenny G.

 

When one of my (quite young) friends (who is not a musician or particularly deep into music) said she and her GF liked Kenny G I loaned her Coltrane for Lovers (an early collection of his softer stuff). She seemed to like it but Johnny Hartman's (wonderful but 'old-fashioned') singing on a couple tracks kind of threw her, I think. But I can understant that. First time I heard the 'Trane/Hartman collaborations back at the beginning of the 70s I was thinking... man... this is weirder than "Love Supreme"... in an old-fashioned, "cornball" way. (I shudder to quote my thinking with the word "cornball" but that's what I was thinking. Now Hartman just seems like the coolest guy ever...)

[MarkZ]

 

When one of my (quite young) friends (who is not a musician or particularly deep into music) said she and her GF liked Kenny G I loaned her Coltrane for Lovers (an early collection of his softer stuff). She seemed to like it but Johnny Hartman's (wonderful but 'old-fashioned') singing on a couple tracks kind of threw her, I think. But I can understant that. First time I heard the 'Trane/Hartman collaborations back at the beginning of the 70s I was thinking... man... this is weirder than "Love Supreme"... in an old-fashioned, "cornball" way. (I shudder to quote my thinking with the word "cornball" but that's what I was thinking. Now Hartman just seems like the coolest guy ever... )

 

 

Since we talking favorites here...

 

IMO, "John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman" is the greatest jazz vocal album of all time. It is a perfect 32 minutes of heart poured into every word along with Coltrane's brilliance in understatement, and McCoy Tyner delivering an underrated, masterful accompaniment. That version of "My One and Only Love" was my wedding song. If there is a finer rendition of "Lush Life", I have yet to find it. It is certainly in my top 5 albums of all time, probably in the top 3, maybe a deeply sentimental #1.

[Dean Roddey]

I love music from the doowap/girl group era until now, and classical music as well though I listen to it less often. I like to put on some Motown or some White Stripes, and lots of stuff in between. There's been good stuff in every decade.

 

In terms of my youth, I was kind of a Motown baby, as were probably most folks my age (45) since that's what was on the radio pretty heavily when I was young. So I could definitely have done worse. One of my earliest memories of being moved by music was Gladys Night doing Neither One of Us, and kind of realising, hey, there's something interesting coming out of that little box.

 

But the band that probably influenced me more than any other is probably Pink Floyd. I can't count the number of times I sparked one up back in the day and put The Wall on the headphones and just completely disappeared into it. Even now, though it's not conscious, the stuff I'm recording often has a fairly Floydian bent. Of course The Beatles influenced everything that came after them and I listened to them a lot and was heavily influenced. And Hendix, who every rock guitar player until probably recently wanted to be.

 

I was also heavily influenced by southern rock, having grown up in SC in the heyday of that genre. And highly technical rock like Yes, Rush, King Crimson, etc... And the whole grunge era, which I really enjoyed. I very much love Yes' work in that Yes Album/Topographic Oceans era, and the Moving Pictures era Rush stuff and was heavily influenced by that stuff.

[blue2blue]

Since we talking favorites here... IMO, "John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman" is the greatest jazz vocal album of all time. It is a perfect 32 minutes of heart poured into every word along with Coltrane's brilliance in understatement, and McCoy Tyner delivering an underrated, masterful accompaniment. That version of "My One and Only Love" was my wedding song. If there is a finer rendition of "Lush Life", I have yet to find it. It is certainly in my top 5 albums of all time, probably in the top 3, maybe a deeply sentimental #1.

That and the Coltrane for Lovers collection were my late cat Duke's favorite albums, hands down. Something about 'Trane's tone really turned him on. One time when he escaped (he was a rescue and sometimes the lure of the alley got the best of him) and decided to spend the afternoon in an absent neighbor's locked sideyard I lured him home by blasting 'Trane out my open windows...

 

 

[This is an actual picture of Duke in front of the speaker with Coltrane on.]

 

He seemed to recognize 'Trane sometimes even before I did.

 

All that said, my current kitty, Sophie, goes nuts when I draw-bend the 6 hole on my Lee Oskar G harp. Any note around there gets her attention but that one bend just really sends her.

[spikemullings]

Spike says: "this is that ideal thing I've been hearing in my head and nowhere else before now" I allow for this as a different experience than declaring a favorite.

 

You might be right John, but Lucinda was just fantastic tonight. Her guitarist Doug Pettibone is something else.

 

I'll say it again, I declare!

 

Oh, I am a bit drunk right now BTW

[BlueStrat]

You might be right John, but Lucinda was just fantastic tonight. Her guitarist Doug Pettibone is something else. I'll say it again, I declare! Oh, I am a bit drunk right now BTW

 

I like LW's songwriting, and have for years, and her guitar player is indeed quite good, but man, I just can't get past her "I just banged a half a gram of heroin" vocal style, which has become more exaggerated over the years. I watched her performance on Soundstage, and it was over the top drowsy and slurry. Different strokes, I suppose.

 

I find myself increasingly unable to have favorites. Unlike my youth, where I would be into one narrowly focused kind of music after another, I just pretty much like a lot artists in a lot of genres. I can't say I like any one of them more than another. I don't know if that's a sign of becoming old and 'out of it' or of merely growing up. And I guess I don't really care one way or another.

[Raymar]

 

I find myself increasingly unable to have favorites. Unlike my youth, where I would be into one narrowly focused kind of music after another, I just pretty much like a lot artists in a lot of genres. I can't say I like any one of them more than another. I don't know if that's a sign of becoming old and 'out of it' or of merely growing up. And I guess I don't really care one way or another.

 

 

Its easier to have favorites when you're young and have a clean slate, but as the years pass by you become aware of more and more artists and have to make more room. The internet has really opened me up alot but it seems that when it comes time to plunk down the plastic I'm buying(or ripping) older stuff like Christopher Parkening's Tribute to Segovia, Lutist Paul O'dette playing composer Daniel Bachelor music on The Bachelar's Delight, Kenny Burrell's Guiding Spirit, and I'm getting into Brahms too.

 

Steve

[John Sayers]

I played in a band called "Lost Youth" - it was my favourite band

[Gomer Pyle]

Beatles, Four Seasons, Doobie Brothers

[blue2blue]

I guess I never really addressed the lost bands of youth thing, personally (and I know everyone's dying to know)...

 

When I was in grade school I was a big fan of the Coasters, Gene Chandler, the Everlies, and when the twist hit, I went for Chuck Berry in a big way. And I liked surf instrumentals when they started showing up.

 

But I didn't like the British invasion stuff, I liked the Beatles songs but not their singing, I didn't like the new surf pop like the Beach Boys or Jan and Dean, and I didn't make the transition from R&B and the twist to the new discotheque dances or the Detroit soul bands.

 

Instead, I discovered FM radio -- there weren't a lot of stations the first time I fired it up but many of them didn't play any adverts at all -- many had no announcers -- and that hit me pretty well -- even when they'd have a minute or two of dead air while their sister AM station did did their commercials [in those days, FM was used for Muzak-type background music a lot]... I also got a lot farther into classical music -- I'd seen my first symphony in 6th grade -- the Santa Ana Symphony that in a sense, I guess, became the Pacific Symphony.

 

I also got into bossa nova and that dovetailed with my nascent affection for jazz -- I loved (and still do) the work by the Gilbertos and Stan Getz. Interestingly, I'd bought the first Getz/Gilberto album to get "The Girl from Ipanema" -- but the Gilberto on it was Joao Gilberto, not his then-wife Astrud. At first I was bummed, only playing the side with straight Getz on it but then I started flipping it (cheapskate that I was/am, it was an expensive album and I wasn't going to listen to just half it -- and I slowly but surely got drawn into Joao's unique style -- even among the bossa guys). He's one of my favorites to this day.

 

Eventually, drawn by, let's see... what would it be? Ah, yes, girls, I drew myself closer to the pop of the day.

 

That was easier because the record reviewers had decided that rock was intellectually worthy of them in a way that rock and roll hadn't been. And that kind of intellectual snobbery appealed to me so I started dangling a toe in the water -- provoked as much by the approving sanction of the crits as my get-with-it-man friends.

 

Probably the first rock band I had much exposure to then was the Doors, a pal loaned me the first album and the fact it had a Kurt Weill song on it just about sealed the deal. It was nothing like the silly I-Wanna-Hold-Your-Hand stuff that had driven me away. It had gravitas... and it had a 6 minute long song which appealed to my jazz instincts on some level -- even if the repeated bass riff drove me nuts and not in a good way.

 

After that, I went looking for the nastiest, craziest, most psychedelic band I could find... and that put the very first Grateful Dead album in my hands.

 

I expected psychedelia -- but what I got was what I described as "biker R&B" (not a bad description, I think, of that album). The next couple GD albums (Anthem of the Sun and Aoxoamoxoa) were properly spacey, with long, weird psychedelic jams.

 

I went to see the Dead and the Airplane in '67 and I was sold on both bands. The Dead were way spacey... a wall of distortion and feedback and long jams -- the Airplane a vital bridge to my folk roots -- but with a wild, everything goes attitude in the front line singers and the greatest rhythm section I'd ever seen.

 

From there it was the other SF bands and I developed a HUGE love of the Buffalo Springfield and the Byrds.

 

Later, in my last year of high school, I went to an outdoor Jefferson Airplane show at what would become my college, Long Beach State, with the Canadian pyschedelic outfit, the Collectors, and a jazzy but rockin' band called Chicago Transit Authority (I saw them another 4 times and really dug them but they eventually changed their style and name and I lost interest -- I guess you could say the same thing happened -- even worse -- with the Airplane). But on that day, I remember surveying all the hippies sitting on a big, sloping hill watching the Airplane play Saturday Afternoon/Won't You Try and then Young Girl Sunday Blues and thinking, man, I've found my people...

[Rabid]

Great story Lee. And one I can relate to, except for meeting him in person.

I was in high school band and on band trips we always took my big stereo 8track player that consumed 8 D batteries per trip. ZZ Top, Led Zeppelin and those K-Tel hits compilations with shorted songs were on the play lists, but I also slipped in stuff like Autobahn which was good for 15 miles and something totally different for the band. They enjoyed it and I thought that was how synths were supposed to sound. Then one day someone put

[Rabid]

I