Other music... *gasp*

I know that many of us spend considerable amounts of time listening to JoCo's brilliant songs, but I'm curious about what everyone is listening to the rest of the time.

I personally listen to a lot of music, from within most genres. The musicians I am most into (although this changes all the time) are: Badly Drawn Boy, Rilo Kiley, Regina Spektor, Tori Amos, Scissor Sisters, Neko Case, David Bowie, Rufus Wainwright, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, Neutral Milk Hotel, The Decemberists, Elliott Smith, Neil Young, The Dresden Dolls, Bjork. There are many more than that... I listen to A LOT of music.

What about you? What other musicians/genres do you enjoy?
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Comments

  • I don't really listen to music because I haven't really found anyone that I really like. Because I'm extraordinarily picky, I guess. I mean, I tolerate almost all music, but there's not much I'll actively seek out and listen to.

    I like the Capitol Steps, but I don't know if they count as real music.
  • edited March 2007
    Arcade Fire has been beating my eardrums for a spell now. A-a-a-a-mazing.
  • I LOVE Arcade Fire. How's the new album? I haven't heard it yet.

    And I would call the Capitol Steps music. I love them too.
  • You said it Bass - "Eclectic" is a perfect description for my tastes.

    I like most things outside of these three Genre's

    Country
    Rap
    'Love Ballads'

    And even then there are some from those genre's I can get into - just 90% of them are like poison to my ears :D
  • My all time favorite band is still Oingo Boingo. A band that formed from the theatrical group Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo. Always musically interesting, mostly lyrically interesting. Not outright funny but quirky fun, even about dark subjects. Their cover of "You Really Got Me" is the ultimate cover song. They definately made it their own but it's still recognizable.
    Todd Rundgren (always way ahead of the rest), Devo, Blancmange, Jellyfish, Cocteau Twins, Agent Orange, Smithereens, Dream academy, Level 42, Bryn Terfel. Pretty much anything but country music, unless it's from another country.
  • I have been told that my taste in music might be referred to as "Eclectic." I really, really love a wide variety of music. If I'm not listening to podcasts, I have music on.

    My favorite artists include: The Beatles, Chuck Berry, Black Sabbath, mc chris, They Might Be Giants, Judy Garland, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Queen, Corinne Bailey Rae, Dean Martin, Harry Connick Jr., and The Jimi Hendrix Experience.
  • I've been told that my taste is eclectic too, although I can see the common threads in most of what I listen to. I like much of the music that has been mentioned here so far.
  • One of the odd common threads connecting Oingo Boingo, Devo and Todd Rundgren is that they all did music for Pee Wee Herman. Well Danny Elfman and Mark Mothersbaugh and Todd.
  • I love Mark Mothersbaugh! His film music is incredible. And Devo = brilliant. Oingo Boingo, also fabulous. I was not aware of that connection though.

    Isn't Todd Rundgren fronting the Cars now?
  • Pee Wee's Playhouse. LOVED. It.
  • I tolerate most music. I like quite a bit. Random listing of bands I like:

    They Might Be Giants, The Monkees, The Mountain Goats, The Pixies, Darkest of the Hillside Thickets, Love, The Bags, The Zombies, Army of the Pharoahs, The Beta Band, Oingo Boingo, Faith No More, Mr. Bungle, Chimaria, The Dead Milkmen, Dire Straits, Flaming Lips, Flogging Molly, Hawkwind, Hendrix, Lightning Bolt, moe., Motorhead, Pink Floyd, Supersister (old prog band from the 70s), Talking Heads, Tom Waits.

    That barely scratches the surface, but it'll do.
  • I've just been getting into The Mountain Goats. Any recommendations, Sindex?
  • As far as albums you mean?

    First off, I'd do a little research on John Darnielle himself until you learn a little bit about the Alpha Couple. The songs with "Alpha" in them are all about this couple and their bittersweet, addictive, unhealthy, obsessive, beautiful malicious relationship. Or accept what I've just said, and get the album "Tallahassee," which despite only having one "Alpha-"entitled song is in fact entirely about them and is absolutely gorgeous. The greatest breakup song of all time, "No Children" is from this album.

    "We Shall All Be Healed" is another solid effort and is worth looking into, also themed, this time around Meth addiction. "The Sunset Tree" is a very different sound for Darnielle/The Mountain Goats to go for and is largely autobiographical, but I personally thought it really worked well.

    Those are the easily accessible albums, and usually the only ones you'll find online/in stores. I've heard other stuff from friends back when he was still just recording into a tape recorder, and some of that is great, although I couldn't tell you what albums they were.

    All of the "Going to...." songs are interesting bits of dark Americana about, well, going to (or needing to get out of) some place.

    Darnielle is a brilliant musician and lyricist, and his dark themes are often contrasted by hauntingly beautiful melodies and spritely rhythms. I think you'll enjoy them, if you're into that kind of thing.
  • I just realized how annoyingly analytical I sound above. Sorry. lol....
  • edited March 2007
    Arcade Fire, Bobby Bare Jr., Loudon Wainwright III, The Clash, Old 97's
    In addition to Sindex's superb list above, which could have been cut/pasted from my iTunes, these are a few I would include. Although, as is the case with Sindex, this only scratches the surface.
    And Pink Floyd...no offense to David Gilmore... but anything after Roger Waters left just isn't Floyd to me. Someone probably said the same thing when Syd Barrett went nuts, but in my humble opinion, any self respecting former keg party attendee would agree.
    Regardless, Mountain Goats CDs ordered and on the way as I type. Thanks for the knowledge.
  • edited March 2007
    Oh, and by all means, Wilco
    Nothing could be more unpredictable than listening to a new Wilco record.
    And live? Simply the best.
    By the way, this is my favorite topic in the forums. Adding fuel to the obsessive fire that some day I will hear every note of music ever recorded. With the help of my yet to be invented Time-Stopper, of course.
    Job? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
  • Grateful Dead, the Clash, Neil Young, Lou Reed, Talking Heads, pre-1983 Billy Joel, Steely Dan, the Pogues, Tom Petty, Pink Floyd, Tanya Savory, Robert Earl Keen, John Hiatt, John Prine, Elvis Costello, Jethro Tull, Black Sabbath, Supertramp, Rolling Stones, REM, Camper Van Beethoven, Richard Thompson, Todd Snider, Nickel Creek, Little Feat, the Ramones, the Beatles, Greg Brown, Southern Culture on the Skids, CSN, String Cheese Incident, Sleater Kinney, the Breeders, Jawbox, Skankin' Pickle, Primus, Violent Femmes, the Gun Club, Habib Koite, the B-52s, Van Morrison, Captain Beefheart, Keith Jarrett, Poi Dog Pondering, Joan Armatrading, Joni Mitchell, Louis Prima, Louis Jordan, Billy Bragg, Lynyrd Skynyrd, the Who, the Police, Parliament Funkadelic, and so forth.
  • Other music? It's too much to list here. Luckily, I don't have to list it all here... I use last.fm, which tracks damn near every song I listen to (I don't have it on my MP3 player) and when it gets played and how many times I listen to it, etc. And then it makes charts like songs of the week and favorite songs of all time and favorite artists, etc.

    If you're interested, go check it out at http://www.last.fm/user/C4bl3Fl4m3/ Oh, and sign up for it too. It's all Open Source (the code equivalent of Creative Commons) and there's no spyware or anything involved.

    Oh, and, uh, join the JoCo group on there. And I'm not just saying that 'cause I'm the founder of it. Nope. Nosiree.

    Or, just look below for my top tracks and top artists:
    image

    image

    (oh, and uh, note that the emphasis on TMBG was because at one point, I had almost the entire discography of TMBG on the computer that I listen to music the most on, but I had little other tracks. Therefore I listened to almost all TMBG at that point. Yeah.)
  • http://www.last.fm/user/sinisterdexter/ will give you an idea of the music I'm currently listening to, although much of my music isn't on my computer anymore due to a crappy hard drive. I'm working on fixing that now.

    And dude... I totally have you beat on the TMBG. Probably most other people too, because apparently I'm insane. lol.
  • Oh, the TMBG thing wasn't intentional. I had just started a new job and brought some CDs with MP3s into work with me and copied all the data over. And one of those CDs had almost their entire discography. At that point in time, the amount of TMBG on my computer was more than the amount of everything else combined. (It was actually a little annoying.)

    It took me a while, but now my collection is more balanced. Well, sorta. Now I have WAY too much Christmas music on here.
  • Sindex: Wow... your tastes apparently are extremely similar to mine. In fact, we share quite a few of the same neighbors.

    BTW, you should join our JoCo group. I mean, all the cool kids are doing it. And by cool, I mean geeky. ;-)

    The funny thing is about the top songs is that it doesn't really reflect my overall tastes. The songs on the top are there from when I get obsessed with a song and listen to it like 30 or 40 times in a day or 3. Like the Josh Groban song Lullaby just got up there after going to his concert on Tuesday night (that's right, last Tuesday) and becoming completely enamored with the song and listening to it 41 times over 3 days. (However, I still wish I could get the live version of it. Instead of having other singers do the harmony with him on it, he uses a vocoder and replicates his voice like 4 or 5 times and it's just the tiniest bit electronic sounding, which I think makes it so much more haunting and beautiful.)
  • c4bl3fl4m3 - I actually tried to friend you on last.fm a couple weeks ago. I found your page from the JoCo group.
  • Probably should have linked to that...

    My last.fm Page!
  • About the friending thing... I only add people as my friends on Last.fm that I know personally. This way, it more accurately reflects the music of the friends in my life (who happen to have divergent musical tastes than mine) instead of being a bunch of the same because I friended people who have similar musical tastes. I'd rather have the accuracy and diversity.
  • edited March 2007
    I do the same thing.. get all obsessive on a song and then it's in my top played. Or if I'm trying to figure out how to play something, it looks like I'm listening to something 30 times a day, but really I'm not. lol... oh well. It's not a perfect technology, but it's good and fun. Also, my roommate plays music on my computer, so it reflects a little bit of his tastes (although we largely listen to the same stuff).

    I'll be joining the JoCo group and attempting to friend you, c4bl3flam3.
  • c4bl3fl4m3 - I completely understand that. I only friend people that I've spoken with off and on (on Live Journal, other message boards, or in person). I don't friend neighbors and I don't go looking through random journals friending people with similar artists as a general rule. I totally understand.
  • Sindex: Please don't take offense at this, but please don't try to friend me on Last.FM. See the post I made above about friending people that I don't know personally.

    But totally join the JoCo group! :-D
  • Yeah, I joined the JoCo group, and didn't actually bother to try and friend you. I only read that post after saying I'd look you up, so I learned a little late.

    np.. no offense taken.
  • I'm bumping this very very old thread mainly because... We have newer members who haven't seen it and I'm always interested in knowing what folks are listening to. I'm constantly searching for new (or new to me) music and talking about music.

    So... Beyond JoCo, what do you listen to?
    What are you listening to (if anything) at this moment? (It's JoCo, isn't it...)

    I'm listening to The Apples In Stereo, myself.
  • I'm a fan of The Divine Comedy, Tom Lehrer and then I find dribs and drabs somehow.
  • edited November 2007
    Hmm, since last posting I have fallen in love with musical theater. Sweeney Todd (the broadway revival; I haven't heard the original) is way, way up there, as is Sondheim's Assassins (again, broadway revival), and, I mean, everyone loves Avenue Q, and rightfully so. Spamalot and Thoroughly Modern Millie are fun, though perhaps not quite as good as the first three, but I'm biased towards Millie because I was in the pit for our high school production.

    Also, someone recently pointed out The Veils to me on YouTube, and I keep going back and listening to their songs, I don't even know why ... they're just bizarrely compelling or mesmerizing or something. His voice is kind of annoying but I still just keep relistening. It's weird.

    I will listen to a little Stephin Merritt on occasion ... I have The Tragic Treasury (songs from A Series of Unfortunate Events) because those are the greatest books ever and I'm obsessed, and it's pretty great, but I've only listened to a little of his other music, and I'm not sure if I really like it or not. I think I like "I don't believe you" and "all the umbrellas in London" the best so far, but, I don't know, he has kind of a weird sound that I'm not sure I like.

    The song Hotel California is, of course, without parallel.

    Except perhaps American Pie or Vincent.

    Haha, or "We're off to see the world" from the Chipmunk adventure movie, which I seriously do like.
  • i am quite a fan of the killers. i also like classic rock like tom petty or the who. i tend to be kind of cold on techno, but i like the prodigy because their tracks are short and have musical progression, the absence of which are my major complaints with the rest of the genre. used to be i couldn't really stand rap, but as i went through and beat GTA: SA recently, i can at least tolerate it now. cake has always been a favorite of mine. foo fighters and weezer i like so far, though i haven't heard much of their stuff, mostly just big hits. never had much interest in tmbg,though. i liked pink floyd a lot when i was younger, but owing to what a mopy, whiny little twit i was at the time, i don't really dig it so much anymore.

    smile like you mean it is my favorite song evar.
  • oh, and i hate incubus. sorry for the double post, but consider it indicative of strength of sentiment.
  • These guys (http://myspace.com/meetgoodwin) emailed me to ask me to make a music video for them. I doubt I'll be able to make the video, but I've had a hard time keeping the song that plays when their MySpace page loads out of my head. Good stuff.
  • Let's see, I'm hopelessly stuck in the 80's. Depeche Mode, New Order, The Cure, Bjork, The Smiths, Information Society, Jesus and Mary Chain

    Some techno/hip hop stuff like The Orb, Orbital, The Gorillaz, Cibo Matto, Portishead, Jamiroquai, Luscious Jackson, Underworld. David Guetta is pretty good.

    I like some stuff by Cake, Weezer, TMBG, Barenaked Ladies. Ben Harper's "Live from Mars". Some old school rock and 70's ballads. James Taylor and Elton John. Pretty eclectic, I guess.

    Don't like country, probably never will.

    Did anyone hear about Stephin Merritt's project with NPR to write a song in two days? Sounds like the perfect thing for our boy, JoCo!
  • I just went and listened to Goodwin. Good stuff. Anyone who claims Jellyfish and Jason Falkner as influences is worth a listen.
  • Just discovered Steve Burns (and the Struggle) of Blue's Clues fame. Between him and JoCo, that's all I'm listening to lately. Listen to almost any kind of music though. Eclectic I think was mentioned somewhere earlier. Some of my favorites are :

    Genesis, Joan Jett, Dave Matthews Band, "Weird" Al Yankovic, BNL, Beastie Boys, The Beatles, Benny Goodman (40's), Billy Joel, Dylan (as in Bob), Boston, Springsteen, Coldplay, Crystal Method, Dead Milkmen, Dean Martin, Dixie Chicks, Duke Ellington (40's), Duran Duran, Edie Brickell, Elvis (Presley not Costello), Enya, Fleetwood Mac, Zappa, Glen Miller (40's), Third Eye Blind, Green Day, John Lennon, Johnny Cash, Mozart, Justin Timberlake (yeah, I said it), Led Zepplin, Madonna, Metallica, Missy Elliot, Negativeland, The Outfield, Outkast, Patsy Cline, Peter Gabriel, Pink Floyd, Prince, Run DMC, Tom Jones, Tom T. Hall, Frank Sinatra, U2, Van Halen, Yes.

    Got into the 40's and classical because my dad was born in 1916 and he listened to the classical artists and older music. And yes, I'm older but not THAT old. He was almost 60 when I was born.

    Child of the 70'/80's - have tons of it but too many one song artists to list here.
  • As a parent of young children, I probably listen to Laurie Berkner, The Backyardigans, Dan Zanes, and Raffi more than anything else, but when I do get 'me' time and I'm not spinning the JoCo, this is what I'd listen to:

    The Beach Boys (esp. Pet Sounds or Smile), Mike Doughty, Buju Banton, Cake, The Mountain Goats, Ween, The Dave Brubeck Quartet, Django Reinhardt, The Who.

    I'm probably 5 to 10 years behind on the newer artists, so I'm thankful for this thread to give me listening suggestions. I also like NPR's All Songs Considered podcast to hear some things I'd never hear otherwise.
  • Other than JC: Weird Al, Tom Smith, the Brobdingnagian Bards, the Four Postmen, Paul & Storm, The Frantics, Bowser & Blue, ... (these can be found through www.thefump.com & www.funnymusicians.com; see also www.dmdb.org), ... , Evanescence, Flyleaf, Avril Lavigne, Green Day, Coldplay, ... (see www.mp3raid.com), ... , Dana Lyons (www.cowswithguns.com), ... , stuff from www.garageband.com, ... ,etc.
  • has anyone mentioned the kimberly trip? i feel like someone has but it doesn't show up when i do a find on page. their second album, "catastrophic behavior", is fantastic, and there are a couple of good hits on the first one too. if you wanna check out their website (i feel confident you can google it up yourselves) i recommend "not quite right in the head", "suck knob", "freaky things", and then for a change of pace, "paperboy".
  • I've been listening to the music from Guitar Hero II and various mixes of the Doctor Who theme from http://whomix.trilete.net/ myself. (Yes, I'm a dork that has no life.)
  • edited November 2007
    Hi all, I'm kinda new here on the board and I will share my favorite music artists.

    *Deep Breath* I like Jeremy Soule (Guildwars, Neverwinternights etc.), Weird Al (umm duh?), Nobuo Uematsu (Final Fantasy Series.), Koji Kondo (Ocarina Of Time.), 403 (You don't know them.), Martin ODonnell (Halo Series.), Matti Paalanen (Again you don't know him), Frank Sinatra (His music might be oldies but totaly keen.), Almost anything classical, Run DMC (Walk This way, It's Tricky, etc.), and finally Jonathan Coulton (You wouldn't know him, but he is WAY better than the guy on this website.)
  • "and finally Jonathan Coulton (You wouldn't know him, but he is WAY better than the guy on this website.)"

    Overrated.
  • Hey c4bl3fl4m3, have you heard the Orbital remix of the Doctor Who theme. I think it is called Doctor? and I believe they only do it live, as an encore. It's really good if you like electronic/techno music.

    Oh, and what about The Time Lords (KLF) version of the theme song. Good stuff. I'll have to listen to some of those remixes you recommended.

    According to my ipod, Jonathan Coulton has over 50% market share on music sales. Hardly overrated in my household. We got a rental car recently and my husband put a CD of selected JoCo favorites in before I drove it. When I turned on the stereo, my 5 year old said "Oh, they have our music!"
  • Just caught this video on YouTube. Curious if anybody else here would like it -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qo_VXWO5SKo&NR=1
  • Jinx, I just watched the video and then I went down to read the comments on it. What a lot of rancorous sexism and hatred. Strange that a song called "It's a Woman Thang" with not much more lyrical content than that would cause such an uproar.
  • Yeah! That was my feeling too! It's like the Hillary Clinton backlash/whiplash reaction. "Who the FUCK do you people fucking think you ARE, anyway? Think you're better than men? Why don't you go back to the fucking country you women CAME from anyway!" Back in my nouvelle feminist days, I used to think that the culprit was the tendency of public feminists to act like the problem was inside the ranks of men. Male chauvinism was the problem, it wasn't US sabotaging ourselves, no sirreebob.

    Now I don't know. It's intense, isn't it?
  • Wha...what is that song even about? I can't really figure it out.

    And jinx ... what exactly were you saying in that last paragraph you wrote?

    I'm somewhat confused.
  • edited December 2007
    Well, the song is just a strange funky YouTube-style art video, but I thought it was funny. As Jesss said, it was light hearted and the lyrics were pretty much just "It's a woman thang," but it sparked off some kinda wave of vitriol among commenters. Not saying how they didn't like the song, but just a whole long spiel about feminists.

    And I know that these days, in the 00s, with so many advances for women, there are a lot of people whose reaction to feminism is kind of "so what? What's the big deal?" And I can understand folks reacting like that if they didn't really remember what things were like before.

    When I was much younger, and there were marches in the streets & a very new, active movement, there was a lot of backlash. A fair number of women at the time felt the whole movement was kind of unladylike and inappropriate, and a larger number of men made fun of it and put the whole thing down, but after several years, there was a similar kind of hostility that I felt coming from men in particular. By then, it embodied a lot of resentment against the frequent talk about 'male chauvinist this' and 'sexist pig that' -- the "me victim, you oppressor" dichotomy that a lot of my sister feminists were kind of harping on.

    These days, though, it makes no real sense to me where that level of backlash would be coming from. I need one of you younger folks to sort of interpret it to me.
  • I'm not really sure. I was kind of offended because a lot of people who claimed to be feminists are just using their sex to justify their failure, if that makes sense. Because I wholeheartedly believed that in America today there is not a noticeable discrepancy between, you know, the opportunities for men and women. And so to use that as an excuse seemed petty and pathetic and was not how I thought women needed to portray themselves. (Well, all of that's still basically true, actually.) But/and with Hillary Clinton, I was so bemused by how much talk there was about - like how much she seemed to *focus* on her gender. Because I didn't see why that should be an issue at all.

    And then I realized there actually were people who didn't think a woman would be capable of being president, and that totally confused me. Because these people were all female too. And intelligent, and clever, and so on. And...I just don't understand how they could ever think that. And then the whole women-are-more-sentimental crap they tried to use? I just don't get it. Because I don't understand how that could possibly be a characteristic of an entire ... well, genderful of people. It just seemed like an incredibly stupid generalization that could clearly be disproven in a moment; I mean, that's a fucking personality trait, not a characteristic that half the population is mysteriously born with.

    I think there's an idea of "feminism" being equated with "sexism," probably justifiably in a number of cases - but then it again is expressed through a sort of blanket-statement anti-feminist anti-women way. And I think it's just more socially acceptable to bring that up, especially now that the feminist movement is sort of a thing of the past, than to say, point out that, you know, a number of non-whites are pretty damn racist too. (Last I heard, they were still referring to that sort of thing as "reverse discrimination," which just seems absurd.) There's, I think, this thing about minorities/un-empowered groups being able to do no wrong, except with regards to women, that's largely disappeared, and so...maybe it's a cycle of some sort? Discrimination -> Activism/Backlash -> Less Discrimination (state intervention) -> Hypersensitivity -> People being fed up with hypersensitivity -> Discrimination? If so, that's bizarre.
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