what a new band would have to do to get you (or anyone else) really excited about music again?

probably a live band that has all of the feel of the live band, with all of the close real time interaction, but a lot of focus on repetition run through the idea of a DJ who chops it up and filters it and controls it digitally.

this band is the boredoms. and they're perfect.

I'd like to hear a band like the Jesus Lizard fronted by a singer like Whitney Houston.

at the risk of sounding pedantic or joykilling, I don't want to know what this band would sound like until I hear them. excitement usually comes as a result of surprise, at least for me.

Matos on a jackpot.

I usually have a new band come along and get me really excited about music again at least a couple times a month, if not more than that, so I don't really worry about these things.

I'd like to hear a band like the Jesus Lizard fronted by a singer like Whitney Houston.

I have a persistent feeling that the Gossip could turn into on of the all-time greats, tho' they're aren't there yet. Their work last year, especially on the RXM ep , showed that by taking the noise out our their sound they were capable of making pure pop that was very satisfying. I like their politics, but I wish they could express them more with wit than righteousness. The video for "Listen Up" showed the wit was there. If they can put all that together: the r'n'b belting, the disco basslines, the sly politics, and then drop the noise back in? Shit.

If we're interpreting "band" narrowly, for a long time I've wanted to hear a band that sounded like it was inspired by Sticky's "Boo" first and foremost.

A band that manages to combine strong emphasis on melody and harmony with more modern use of technology (80s synthpop-like) in a way that appeals to the kids so that they become the most popular band in the world and make everything without a tune sound hopelessly unfashionable.

To excite me, they'd have to be hopelessly unfashionable, for starters.

any conveyor belt r&b babydiva will do to be honest

lol lex otm

http://static.flickr.com/45/148129315_bc6fb7bb67.jpg

“Most people see the Summer of Love in very happy terms,” said Brad Abramson, vice president of production and programming for VH1 and an executive producer of the channel’s “Monterey 40,” a documentary about the 1967 pop festival that will be broadcast beginning June 16. “One thing that struck me was finding out what a mess it turns out to be. By the end of the summer speed freaks were catching and eating cats.”

Seconding the "matos otm". Plus, why does it have to be a new band? An existing or long-defunct band (that one has never heard or noticed before) can also be a source of surprise/excitement.

well i think in these scenarios the subtext, for better or worse, is people wanting to think this is me living in a good time

i dont really subscribe to this view myself (obv as i listen to a lot of music from the 1920s and 1930s), but i think maybe its something to do with a certain....connectedness that people sometimes like to feel

the lead singer is a white, sallow, fifty-something salesclerk from some East-European hellhole. he's sickeningly fat, an inveterate misanthrope, and he's proud of it. his indefinable Elvis-meets-Aretha-like voice makes an excellent pairing with band-member deuce, a Cairo-based recovering Mujahideen with a god-like knack for writing a catchy tune. they are more popular than the Beatles, not only because they cunningly manage to appeal to Arab and Western sensibilities alike, but because they have found a truly post-pop approach to song-writing. avoiding the restrictive dogmas of the late pop-industry, their songs are equal parts subliminal messages, political pamphlets, suicidal notes, odes to hedonism, and zany pranks. to describe the music as bookish is to do it great injustice, though. in fact, because of their working closely with the science community they have abandoned the traditional, restrictive confines of rhythm and created something new and infinitely more captivating. each song contains a mathematical model which calculates which specific rhythmical twists and jerks the individual listening to the song requires and vary the rhythm accordingly. thus each song is rhythmically optimized.

for a new artist to get me excited about music again (like the very first time, when i was a child, you know), they'd have to sound exactly like my first musical loves, but better.

I want something brash and stupid with a seriously excessive guitar sound.

probably just the poor wording of the thread title but it does imply that all of you are unexcited about music right now! which would be a bad thing really.

Actually, things do seem a bit meh at the moment. Mostly buying old stuff or well established favorites.

maybe you should all join a board called "i used to love music"

it maybe depends if you are heavily invested in certain genres, that your interest will rise and fall along with the genres rises and peaks (which all genres have - just at different times). i cant really think of any 'bad' periods of music, but i can certainly think of bad periods for various genres i like

but this isnt really to do with fallow periods or weak years is it? lack of excitement/enthusiasm/interest...for anything* is usually to do with yourself, rather than the thing.

to run out of exciting music now just seems...impossible. the ridiculuous amount of great music is just phenomenal. i wouldnt say i 'actively' seek out anything and yet new and 'new to me' great music is pretty endless.

its obviously down to the internet a huge amount, and not necessarily downloading specifically, but finally being able to read and hear about music that im interested in (which is something ive always had something of a problem with previously). that huge overload may well be the cause of others ennui/anomie about music, overload can also kill excitement, though it hasnt for me. i just turn the tap off. i wont die if i dont hear everything in the world ever

*my proviso here is actually football

i can understand people feeling divorced from and alienated from football (please, lex, no amusing comments), because of its corporatization over the last 15 years or so, and the way it has become divorced from ordinary people

and if people had similar feelings about music, from that perspective, maybe i could see and understand where you might be coming from

this is when you play and write music yourself. theres no reason you cant generate the excitement yourself

anyway, to answer the actual question, instead of rambling, i dont really need anything to come along and get me 'excited again', theres already plenty to be going on with (and thats just 1936)

lex,
yeah, the wording of the thread title, and this all does seem a little jaded.
real music lovers never become jaded about music, though. and, i know i'm certainly not jaded about music. . .
a lot of music really is just bleh at the moment, for me. i know and trust that things will pick up, though.

maybe you would like some elgar andi. or dj deeon?

or a glass of beer

i like a glass of beer. actually, dont tell the others, but sometimes i like lots of glasses of beer, one after the other!

tell me about elgar. i don't like dj deeon or beer, though. sorrs.

I think this new band called The View from Dundee, Scotland are pretty good. If you're going to do rock and roll in this day and age, you better be hella talented, because rock and roll itself has become a bit of a relic. The View pass the test with me. A lot of new bands have forgotten the art of subtlety. It's not necessary to beat people over the head to get them to like your art. Just relax, be mellow and make some music. You aren't god's gift to mankind. You just have a producer that is trying too hard to make you sound like you are.

I also think they do the Kinks proud, though that may be because they have one singer that sounds like Dave Davies.

I seem to recall Bobby Gillespie liking them a lot as well (though I can't stand him, frankly) and whoever the guy was that produced Oasis in the early days said he liked them, too.

^^

i think i just went off music a little

http://www.theviewareonfire.com/

It also helps that the singer's voice sounds like the guy out of the La's, you know, Lee Mavers.

Stop it.

Is a great song by Pylon!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9OuD6xagLE

sorry, i dont mean to sound jaded with the title and all, i still like music nowadays. i just feel like alot of the focus right now is on context rather than content, how excited were all getting about laptops and "fusing" and a super fragmented mess of genres and genre-ists. also alot of artists (in the indie/rock spectrum) are just kinda doing the "weird" thing, which feels like (for me) it comes from a lack of creativity. the icons back in the day that were larger than life (and now very much past their prime) just kinda seem to have sprang from the ground, not out of a need to "have an original sound, at any cost". maybe some of them would sound at first a little like dylan or someother person that people looked up to but then they came up with a new way of saying stuff that nobody was capable of thinking of, simply because they werent them. these days it just kind of seems like alot of artists are saying the same stuff, but in a "wacky" or "out there!" or even better: "angular" sense. not saying theres a lack of sincerity or authenticity or musicianship or any of that stuff today , just a lack of charisma. that would be my jaded rant, and i apologize if that didnt make sense, im rather tired.

Quality-wise, genres don't have rises and peaks. Some genres are always good, others are always bad. Commercially they do have their rises and peaks though.

i disagree

and i have hair on my head

No, actually that sounds fine to me. I was thinking about how Deerhoof bugged me because they wanted to just be weird at any cost, with these uber helium vocals and stuff...and there was another band who did that, and it was like "what exactly is the point here?" Helium vocals...just because that was the only way they could think of to sound different. I don't get it.

And I remember what someone said on the Stone Roses thread about being amazed that they were good despite not doing anything innovative...the poster had said that he realized all of a sudden that things didn't HAVE to be innovative, that talent was all that was required.

Sorry guys, gotta do it: are you suggesting there's no such thing as a bad Beatles ripoff, bad synthpop, or bad Britpop?

xposts

That was a multiple cross post to davedestroybox

nah, i agree for the most part, dave.

and i have hair on my head

Hairist.

no-holds-barred progressive mind-melty record which incorporates the best possible sounds from a palette as near to infinite as manageable. lots of guitar effects, a strong sense of rhythm (w/surprising shifts) and harmony, synths going crazy, ebb and flow, complicated but satisfying tunes. nobody to my mind has ever released this perfect record, although I plan to do so one day.

the poppage of lot 49

I'm amazed that nobody else with the power to do so has reached for this upper bound, this attempt on perfection, incorporating quarter-tones, modulation experiments, digitally-altered noise, wide-ranging instrumentation, twists, turns, and moment after moment of sheer exhilaration. There isn't enough divergency in musical theory at the moment.

*divergence?

thnks, me thinks maybe i just missed the boat on beck and bjork in the mid 90s because that seems to be the general direction everything went.
but i have to admit, after seeing arcade fire in indio a month or so ago and watching win butler, i was convinced that people like that still exist. you just kinda have to look at the faces they make, the way they walk around, and the way they look at things, and all of a sudden it feels like your looking at neil young or joe strummer or i dont know, one of those super musicians.
for the record, not saying win butler is greater than or equal joe strummer or neil young.

oh yeah and its my birthday today

and whats a cross post?

The Doobie Brothers, but black.

A goth doobie brothers...oh my god. Only on ILM.

Happy Birthday, Dave.

Also I love Rockist Scientist for mentioning THE VERY HAIRIST comments observable on this thread.

it maybe depends if you are heavily invested in certain genres

how difft is this to the adolescent over-investment in certain artists? "i must acquire everything Artist X has ever produced because only (s)he understands me" vs "i must acquire everything this scene produces because it is attuned to me".

to run out of exciting music now just seems...impossible. the ridiculuous amount of great music is just phenomenal. i wouldnt say i 'actively' seek out anything and yet new and 'new to me' great music is pretty endless.

otmfm. really really really. read & learn.

listen to 'umbrella' by rihanna. or if you're gareth, the new kerri chandler single. or whatever appeals to you. if you bother to be even slightly proactive about finding new music, i guarantee you can find at least one song each week, released this year, which will blow you away. you don't have to find a scene or an artist or an album. just a song. they're out there. go find!

:D

actually i would say kind of the opposite, that perhaps people who are not finding something (whether it be music or something else) particularly exciting...would probably be better off being LESS proactive for a while. id imagine that people here that are having this kind of feeling about music....probably due to overindulgence and then ennui

if youve had 7 pints of cheap cider tonite, maybe its not the best time to judge fine ales

ok i think i already said it upthread

i wont die if i dont hear everything in the world ever

-- 696, Sunday, May 20, 2007

i overindulge and never suffer ennui :D

didn't overindulge in cider tonight though, yuck, just...i think it was whisky

For me these days all a band really has to do is hit the right chord in me, in the right circumstances. I fall in love with music when I fall in love, that sort of thing.

65dos, Engineers, and Home Video have all done so in a big way recently and all in different ways.

What I really want is for any of the bands that I kind of enjoy now to take an unexpected experimental step forward. I want Girls Aloud to get together and record an album with insane acid production. I want The Arcade Fire to fall into a Scott Walker depressive jag. I want TV on the Radio to get all excited about feedback. I want Orange Goblin to turn to R&B. I want R. Kelly to both get political and to do so well, without resorting to triteness, turning out a topical slowjamz opera. I want Timbaland to find Merzbow and vice versa. I want Out Hud to play with Ken Vandermark. I want a wave of Animals and Stones and Funkadelic fetishism that's interlaced with self-destructive heroin themes. I want caustic, swirling noise and transcendant diva vocals. And I want the freedom to declare upon hearing any one of these things that it sucks and that the artist should try something else. I'd love to hear Radiohead implode (again, ideally with needless panning and phasers).

I'd add two things— one, I generally find myself pretty happy with the new music I hear, though rock/"indie" has become so fucking boring that I've shifted over to almost entirely "urban" radio for my new music (once I learned to stop worrying and love modern urban pop, I became much happier). I mean, Pavement and Yo La Tengo were big news when I was in high school, and I still don't hear people doing significantly different stuff, and it's fucking stale, but I don't really know where it'll go next (surprise me). Two, one of my favorite periods in music (lately) has been the early '70s, when a lot of pop artists suddenly got really weird. I'd like a lot more weirdness in my music, and I think that there are a lot of bands out there who have, to tread on dead analogy, managed to get the Meet the Beatles part down without figuring out how to move on to the White Album (though I was always more of a psych-Zappa fan than a psych-Beatles fan). It's just, like, folks like Clap Your Hands Say Yeah are fun for a moment, but there's so much of my enjoyment (no one else's fault) tied up in the fun of hearing them the first time that I don't feel like they reward second listens, but I feel like there's a potential there. I want to hear a band that really does grow and grows well and does something unexpected. But hey, that might not be how music works anymore. The bands doing unexpected or weird or odd bits might just do that as their niche, and either put out one great album or never really coalesce. And as such, I can't really answer the question except to say that I'll know it when I hear it, and that someone will do so soon. But I doubt I'll ever be the teenage looking to spend all night waiting for a record release or trying to get band autographs again, and I don't think that a) I should try to be, or b) that's necessary for me to feel excited about music.

I'm not exactly sure what I'm looking for exactly, but Electrelane came really fucking close to nailing all of them when they opened for Arcade Fire Saturday night. I'd not heard a single note, but that performance made me a fan. I can't remember the last time a band made me feel this energized and excited about music.