Jump to content

Bands/artists you got into later in life


Recommended Posts

  • Members

I'm not a young man. I was born in the 60s. I'd heard of The Moody Blues (obviously) but had never really delved any deeper than the obligatory Nights in White Satin, Question etc.

 

Recently, however, I've been buying their albums. In chronological order. And I'm very impressed. I wish I'd done this decades ago.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

I didn't grow up with Pink Floyd exactly. They were always a group that friends' older brothers and sisters listened to, and I just didn't "get" them right away.

 

And somewhere in adulthood, I listened and BAM, started realizing how exquisite Gilmour's guitar playing was, and how amazing "Meddle" and "Ummagumma Live" were.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members
I didn't grow up with Pink Floyd exactly. They were always a group that friends' older brothers and sisters listened to, and I just didn't "get" them right away.

 

And somewhere in adulthood, I listened and BAM, started realizing how exquisite Gilmour's guitar playing was, and how amazing "Meddle" and "Ummagumma Live" were.

 

Funnily enough, Pink Floyd are another band that I've got into relatively recently. I don't think that individually they're particularly wonderful musicians, but by God as a unit they're immense!

 

Bands being the sum of their parts - now there's another thread entirely...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

Brian Wilson. I'd enjoyed the Beachboys in the mid-60s when I was in my early teens, but forgot about them. Then my wife and I went to see him when he was touring Pet Sounds with and orchestra. I remember sitting there thinking to myself, 'where the heck was I all these years? this guy is amazing.!'. Beyond his compositional skills, there was just something very life affirming seeing a man who fell into the abyss for so many years, back on stage, performing and enjoying it again. I've seen him 2 or 3 times since and revisted the Beachboys catalog with a new perspective.

 

Then there's John Renbourne, Tal Wilkenfeld, Tommy Emmanuel, Chet Atkins.....

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

Some older material I just never heard when in that magic music-bonding 14-24 age range. Like Nick Drake, whom I'm sure would have totally knocked me out around 1971 or so. I'm now a big fan, even 'tho he has a dated feel here and there, listening with new millennium ears.

 

I always had my Dylan favorites, but never caught true Dylan fever until the 2000s. Strange, but true. The movie I'm Not There was something of a catalyst, altho' the process had already begun a few years before that 2007 movie.

 

When I tired of rock when it felt jaded and going-to-seed in the late 70s/early 80s, I started poking around the jazz catalog, adding favorites from the 50s and 60s to my collection. So the Three Ms (Miles, Monk, Mingus) and similar bop-types got backhoed into my brain in a big way some 30-odd years after the event. And the big piano dudes - Evans, Garner, Tyner, Jones, Garland, other usual suspects.

 

Just lately I've visited a songwriter from the late 60s/early 70s who had just one song that I remembered, that always impressed me - Gilbert O' Sullivan. He had a hit in the early 70s with Alone Again (Naturally) which is quite a song. He's got some other impressive tracks I never heard until a week ago. Does the bittersweet thing easily as well as James Taylor.

 

Anyone remember this? Such long melodic lines in the verses is really unusual in pop/rock, and the short, bitter tag phrase "alone again, naturally" is just perfect.

 

[YOUTUBE]8ELnhjGw4Zs[/YOUTUBE]

 

And this one predated Alone Again, was a hit in the UK, didn't even chart in the USA -

 

[YOUTUBE]MtoefxZGR6U[/YOUTUBE]

 

It was the record company's idea to make him dress up in the Irish Boy outfit with the newsboy cap -

 

nat whilk ii

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Led Zeppelin. :0

 

 

Okay, I can hear people laughing, :lol: but... Seriously. :0

 

They were the biggest band in the world when I was in high school in the 70s, and everyone and their uncle said they loved them at the time - which for some reason totally turned me off on them with the exception of maybe Stairway and Black Dog. But when we were working on Mike Knott's Screaming Brittle Siren LP in the early 90s, the LZ boxed set had come out not too long before and Mike bought a copy and brought it into the studio and it became our "break" music.

, I think the Zep influences are fairly obvious, especially if you know we were listening to them a lot as we were working on the album. Anyway, because of that, I really started getting into Zep and started appreciating them in a way that I never really had prior to that.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

I discovered Los Lobos around 1994. At the time they were being produced and engineered by the Mitchell Froom/Tchad Black partnership which created my favorite LL recordings. I still like them and see them when I can.

 

An odd discovery around 1996 was Billy Strayhorn. Strayhorn worked for Duke Ellington beginning circa 1939. It was common back then (from what I've read) for band leaders and publishers to tack on their names as writers-composers. There was also a myth that Duke was a genius who created all of the music that was credited to him. Duke didn't try to dispel the myth. Strayhorn, mostly stayed in NYC arranging and composing according to Duke's needs. His fingerprints are all over the music. Duke payed Strayhorn well and loved him like a younger brother. Duke also received some of the composer's royalties that should have been Billy's. As far as I know, Strayhorn only did one album under his own name: "The Peaceful Side of Billy Strayhorn" in 1960. It sold about 2,000 copies at the time. When I listen to particular songs of Duke Ellington's, I often wonder if the creation of it was Billy's handiwork.

 

I just thought to add Otis Redding. It was both his singing and also the band. Steve Cropper, Duck Dunn and those horn guys. I was attracted to the horn arrangements in many of the songs. I read years later that Otis came up with many of them and would teach them to the guys and poke them in the shoulder to emphasize the rhythms.

 

I'm sure there are others, but these come to mind right now.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members
I didn't become aware of the band Genesis until after Phil Collins had taken over the lead vocal role. Only later did I become aware of the earlier incarnation of Genesis with Peter Gabriel on vocals.

 

I much prefer Genesis up to and including 'And Then There Were Three'. After that it all got a bit too silly.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...