Tell me about your favourite music experiences of 2017

seeing Acid Mothers Temple for my birthday (they come through every year around that week) was incredible. they played a really small club this year but it was still insanely rad. my friend Justin does video projections for them and has been touring w them for years so it was nice to see him too. pretty much the only time i get to see him is once a year for AMT. it's nice to visit and he asks me how my cat Five is doing. he gifted me Five from a litter when he lived in Alabama a few years ago...

seeing Andrew WK was also incredible. i was a fan of his since the first album, used to read his website and stuff, got "The Wolf", got "Close Walls", etc. for years i had heard accounts of his shows from friends and they sounded great. when he announced he was going on tour with a full band (made mostly of people from his band back in the day) i jumped on it and am so glad i did. it was insane.

* playing a Devo cover in my hometown of Akron for an audience that included my parents and my 2 best friends

woah LL this is amazing! my mom's side of the family used to live in Akron so i heard a lot about it and Devo growing up. hope this winter is mild and favorable for you (i know winters can get tough, that's why my folks moved down south).

were you drumming in it? that must have been fun to play. Devo has such cool drum parts.

i was!! we played "gates of steel"!! i still feel kinda emotionally high when i think about it
i am glad you appreciated the gravity of this moment <3

i don't live there anymore, but my parents do and directing my parents to and seeing my parents in a DIY space was a sub-highlight of that highlight for sure
they have already complained about shoveling snow :)

-discovering Girlpool
-hearing "O Superman" for the first time
-seeing Animal Collective in May (besides the first time i saw them in 2006, it was the best set i've ever seen them play, out of 9 shows)
-seeing Avey Tare & Panda Bear do Sung Tongs two weeks ago in a room full of superfans singing EVERY word. still only my 3rd favorite out of 9 shows
-becoming completely obsessed with Stereolab
-making cassette mixtapes for friends that only have tape decks in their cars
-seeing Xiu Xiu play to a packed room in April, and then play to maybe 30 people tops in the same room 5 months later. both great sets
-seeing Deerhoof play to 70 people tops in a 300 cap club, super depressing but they were killer as always. my first club show was Deerhoof in January 2006 at the same place. coming off The Runners Four, it was totally packed. people take them for granted
-seeing the Tony Conrad documentary followed by three seamless improv sets inspired by Conrad's work
-seeing Dan Deacon's Spiderman of the Rings 10 year anniversary show
-seeing Billy Corgan play in an opera house. played his (excellent) new album in its entirety followed by an hour long career spanning set full of deep cuts, obscurities, and unreleased songs
-discovering Richard Dawson
-discovering Raymond Scott
-seeing the 4 hour Grateful Dead documentary in a huge theater
-discovering Circuit des Yeux when she opened for AC at that May show
-"I Wanna Be Young" by Ariel Pink
-"Betty Dreams of Green Men" by Guerilla Toss
-becoming obsessed with There's a Riot Goin' On
-recording a new solo record at a leisurely pace
-making a 22 minute tape collage on a tascam 4-track over 6 months, was probably the most fun i ever had making something, and the most time i spent on something
-debuting that piece last month in a place that's very special to me and meeting a lot of new people that actually liked my insane tape collage
-seeing Wume and Horse Lords open for Hans-Joachim Roedelius
-emailing Jim O'Rourke about the pun in the title of "Not Sport, Marital Art" and if it was intentional and getting a really sweet response like an hour later
-finally figuring out how to play that song on guitar (it's in Open A)

-seeing Steely Dan less than 2 months after Walter Becker's death, and being surprised & relieved by how celebratory & free of sorrow it was

for me it has to be investing in a Serato controller and teaching myself how to beatmatch. It's led to all sorts of avenues of discovery, and even encouraged me to start making my own music again

-emailing Jim O'Rourke about the pun in the title of "Not Sport, Marital Art" and if it was intentional and getting a really sweet response like an hour later

(*^#)(832":*(749@^%#$8276^(*^*76ahhhhhhhhhhh^

DO TELL!

I posted earlier but I forgot one:

• hanging out with Melvin Gibbs and 3/4 of Khanate (no O'Malley) at a Matana Roberts/Supersilent show

xp it was intentional! he said he was walking in chicago one day and saw a martial art studio that had "NOT SPORT!! MARITTAL ART!!" painted on the window, he said he thought it was hilarious and named the song after that. it was bugging me for years because EVERYONE gets the title wrong

^ definitely did that.

LL i played Gates of Steel in a band once too! if you have one Devo song to play that is a good one to pick

- seeing Propagandhi, Converge, and The Clientele for the first time following many years of listening
- seeing Chris Murphy of Sloan lead a killer version of "Underwhelmed" at an Evaporators show (while already being an incredibly entertaining drummer to watch)
- crying at the Kevin Devine show
- seeing a very green but extremely promising Snail Mail get to play an encore in their opening slot because people were so into them
- Moon Tooth and Astronoid on the same magical night of metal

oh yeah! i forgot to say seeing Snail Mail open for Frankie Cosmos at a sold out show in May. small place & i was in the balcony- was very endearing and cool to see an artist still so un-jaded right as the buzz begins to mount. she seemed genuinely moved over the moon, jumped off her amp at the end. it was really cool to witness a rock n roll dream like that. and also to see an emerging artist not yet beaten down from a solid year or two of constant touring and press - i remember thinking about something Kurt Cobain said about popularity, paraphrasing: "the best and most exciting time in a band is right before your band gets big." she got signed to Matador after one EP and she can't even buy cigarettes yet. but she's very talented and very smart, feel confident the bends of sudden attention won't dull the enthusiasm of that set i saw.

Obsessed with the Chart Music podcast this year. Various MM journalists pick apart a random episode of TOTP. Insightful, irreverent and always insanely funny.

ooh that sounds good

https://chartmusiccouk.wordpress.com

oh yeah! i forgot to say seeing Snail Mail open for Frankie Cosmos at a sold out show in May. small place & i was in the balcony- was very endearing and cool to see an artist still so un-jaded

Yes! When I saw them they were opening for Priests, and were on stage left rocking out the entire time. It was so adorable!

Another memory from the same show, watching a local band play the funniest song I'd seen played live in years

https://baldbritney.bandcamp.com/releases

Seeing Slapp Happy & Faust at Cafe Oto was incredible. Also seeing Shirley Collins sing. Things I never even considered I'd be lucky enough to witness.

Also Wolfgang Voigt putting me into the most pleasurable in-between state imaginable for an hour and a half or whatever it was idk. NickB was at the same and I concur.

Also Decolonise Fest at DIY Space For London was incredibly well realised and made me feel things I've not felt at shows before. And Divide & Dissolve were immense.

xp it was intentional! he said he was walking in chicago one day and saw a martial art studio that had "NOT SPORT!! MARITTAL ART!!" painted on the window, he said he thought it was hilarious and named the song after that. it was bugging me for years because EVERYONE gets the title wrong

ha! i know exactly where that sign is! i see it all the time on the way to/from work.

oh shit i forgot that shirley was this year! christ that was good that xp

GAS

Andrew W.K. mosh pit was a life affirming experience

My highlight this year was the Counterflows Festival in Glasgow. Not so much for the music - tho Farmer's Manual at the Art School were especially awesome - but for the overall good vibes of the festival and its musicians, organisers and punters. Counterflows is spread over the whole of the city, in lots of different venues, so I got to see both new (to me) music and new parts of my adopted hometown, which is always good. Also, I'd just been prescribed a short course of valium by my doctor (to help me sleep with a dodgy shoulder) so was p much floating the entire weekend. On top of that, the friend I went with got v wasted before the Mark Ernestus’ Ndagga Rhythm Force performance and ended up twerking on the dance floor w/ their astounding dancer, something I won't forget seeing in a hurry.

Other than seeing Peter Hammill, which I mentioned upthread, my undoubted musical highlight of the year was seeing Richard Youngs live for the first time – an incredibly warm, intimate and funny evening.

ooh! i have heard you never know what you're getting with a richard youngs show -- what did you get?

I can't really remember any stand-out shows from this year, not sure if that's because of my own terrible memory or because I didn't go to any. I really need to start writing these down (like I do with books & records so I don't forget them). I went to see the Chris Speed Trio w/Dave King on drums a few nights ago and it was great to hear some masters at work.

Playing highlights
-Playing a second line funeral in New Orleans (both emotional and felt like the brass band final exam)

-My new thing was DJing, only played out about four times but one was a transcendent club night in Milwaukee that I'll be chasing for awhile. Also did a four hour ambient set at a library that was very chill (people coming in and out, only a few people in the room at any given time) but a cool exercise.

oh man that sounds totally great, I wanna do a 4-hour ambient set in a library!

2017 was the first year I got seriously back into production since 2010 (before that it was non stop). The therapeutic renewal I feel makes me wonder how I waited this long but life finds a way

Reading this thread has made me realise just how far I've fallen in terms of musical experiences - i.e., I've barely had any this year. I could write about the tickets I've turned down (GAS, Shirley, Necks, Aine O'Dwyer, Pharoah), or how Spotify has trapped me in its comfy oxbow lake of ever-decreasing circles, but that woukd be self indulgent. Like this post. Anyway, it's all down to a career change that has meant no spare cash, no spare time and less than no spare headspace and all this is part of the ruminations as to whether it's been worth it.

- fwiw, seeing Shawn Smith in a tiny pub up the road was gently life-affirming, even if he did fuck up a cover of Purple Rain.

Meant to ask - to counter the Spotify shrinkage, which radio shows would people recommend?

busker in tourist-thronged Canterbury jamming like a dervish on a homemade one-stringed electric guitar

damn y'all get out & about!! i don't think i saw any live music at all in 2017 apart from ****sunshine daydream**** our local grateful dead cover band but let me tell you they are killer and they did a version of "black peter" in october that blew me away

others:

-getting my art studio set up in our attic and listening to music while i paint. i work on my art late at night and have been playing a lot of very mellow late night music - mazzy star, cowboy junkies, those two famous talk talk albums. everyone in the house is asleep except for me, it feels so quiet & intimate to be working up there so late
-staining our attic floor in july while blasting fun house. it was such a shitty job to do and the polyurethane fumes made me feel sick but fun house helped me work briskly and made it somewhat fun. i had to a few coats over several days so CCR helped a lot too
-hearing t rex "life's a gas" on college radio, first time i ever heard the song and while i knew it was t rex i had never really listened to him much but that tune leveled me and i ended up listening to a ton of t rex this year
-getting beyond a lot of the typical children's music w/ my two sons - we started listening instead to a lot of classic country because the songs are so good and easily learned, they have good stories, lots of fun novelty songs that they love - little jimmy dickens "country boy", "take an old cold tater and wait" "a-sleepin at the foot of the bed" lefty frizzell "saginaw michigan", "if you've got the money i've got the time". they also have caught on to the dead stuff we play and ask for "uncle john's band", "dire wolf" a whole lot. it is is neat to see what they take to & what they don't

- seeing the Mayhem DMDS show in Brooklyn, and chatting metal with old Bay Area pals
- banging the shit out of my head at the Aura Noir show
- figuring out some crucial stuff about EQ and compression
- falling for Popol Vuh, goreshit and Germaine Tailleferre in major ways
- making a xmas song with my wife and little girl

- figuring out some crucial stuff about EQ and compression

curious what your revelations were but maybe that's better suited to IMM

^^ yes please!

I want to hear the Xmas song!

lol nothing too mysterious. just coming to the realization that less is almost always more, and for EQ, learning how to filter out frequencies that aren't necessary to the sound. I also learned various things that are particular to certain instruments or voices, but probably nothing actual recording engineers wouldn't have figured out very early on.

imago, it's on my bandcamp page in the Misc. album folder -- we did a version of the Chestnuts xmas song :)

oh cool, couldn't find it otherwise!

Writing a track with 100% field recorded binaural samples from the machine shop at work and then performing it for a bewildered audience a week later.

ooh! i have heard you never know what you're getting with a richard youngs show -- what did you get?

It was like this 3 hour journey of shaggy dog stories, audience participation, the odd shouted (by me) request and achingly sad ballads. Quite an evening.

<3 richard youngs

thanks to your contributions to this thread everyone, it's been nice reading them

marcos, are any of your paintings online?

This is a great thread and the sort of thing that doesn't get talked about enough here.

I was at that GAS thing and it was wonderful, but my personal highlight was watching Philip Glass and Laurie Anderson play at the RFH, midway through the performance they were playing this swirling piano and synth thing and when Laurie started speaking you realised it was coalescing into a cover of Leonard Cohen's 'Democracy'. I nearly lost it right there and then.

This is a great thread and the sort of thing that doesn't get talked about enough here.

^^^^this
thread makes me really happy

me too

marcos, are any of your paintings online?

not yet! i'm hoping to create a website in the new year though

when Laurie started speaking you realised it was coalescing into a cover of Leonard Cohen's 'Democracy'

<3

This reminds me of another great moment: Susanne Sundfor covering "After the Gold Rush"

another awesome thing that just happened a couple of days ago is that I got my wife a Yamaha keyboard for the Solstice and we jammed for the first time a couple of nights ago in the key of D, it sounded good! I think I was talking on IMM about how we have a PA and a digital recorder set up in the basement now along with my electric guitar and the new keyboard. she was trying to work with a melodica and an accordion but they are physically demanding! I never knew.

next step is obviously a flood of self-released microlabel CDR releases :)

this year i also discovered the music of r stevie moore. at first i went through his numerous albums cherry-picking the "pop hits" but each album is its own thing and you got surrender to his weirdness. hes amazing! one of a kind

One of the best things for me was the ILM 80s R&B Top 250 poll. I've shuffled through this playlist many times, a mix of the familiar and new, and it played like an alternate history of the decade — I grew up in Vermont and probably wasn't exposed to a lot of this stuff as a kid; later, I had the idea that R&B was moribund after the disco era. But this playlist was as consistently fun as any listening experience I had in 2017. So thanks, ILM!

on Xmas night i did some drunken record shopping for the first time in my life and spent ~$500 on 80s vinyl from Japan. there was so much ILM introduced me to across several threads YMO related and otherwise and I had some Xmas money and i was fuck, threw down on Miharu Koshi, Haruomi Hosono, Yukihiro Takahashi, etc. i even ended up getting a Trattoria picture disc. the first week of 2018 has been all these amazing records showing up in the mail (and me being afraid of playing them lol)

In 2017 I got more into hosting music trivia nights at a bar, and writing questions, which forced me to keep looking at music from different perspectives and focusing on different areas/genres. At home I enjoyed seeing my 7-year-old pull my old cassettes from the basement at random, so I might come in his room and find him listening to random things - Dinosaur Jr, Desmond Dekker, The Outfield, Yoko Ono, all sorts of things. My favorite live-music experiences this year were hiphop arena shows - Kendrick Lamar, Future/Migos. Oh and two smaller shows I learned about at the last minute and just barely made it to - Joan Shelley/Jake Xerxes Fussell was one, the other was Robyn Hitchcock in somebody's loft apartment. I had a bad case of writer's block this year, which was frustrating but also a bit freeing.

Oh man irt the first posts i this thread - i saw grouper play a snobby art party i 2017 behind a huge bowl of shrimp cocktail and no one even paid attention to her. it was still awesome, but just goes to show ya live music in context.

It was really amazing seeing Sparks with an actual amazing ROCK band finally after years of duo, orchestra and dull ass Franz Ferdinand shows. Also I stood behind Ned the whole time which made it rock more.

Undisputed musical highlight was the MRI scan I had in May. An hour shut in a minimalist techno/drone chamber. Incredible stuff.

Runner up was taking my eldest to see Nick Cave, something she's wanted to do for years but has never fallen into place.

The rest:

Eating Ethiopian before seeing SWANS while the restaurant played CDs of Begena recordings, then hanging out with Norman Westberg for a bit because I think I'm the only guy in Britain that buys his CD-Rs.

The opening night party of a Mexican microbrewery, soundtracked by a guy doing alt-country versions of Narcocorrido.

Breakfast in the hotel next to said microbrewery accompanied by a toothless guy with a two string guitar throttling the life out of Cielito Lindo.

Mohammad doing a full-on *performance* of a doom/drone band to a completely indifferent audience and people actively walking out.

Oxbow just fucking killing it live and on record.

Ex-Easter Island Head carrying the torch of NYC minimalism and setting fire to venues with it.

Finally telling John Doran to his face what a great writer he is.

Speaking to people (actual real musicians) who were so inspired by the lecture I gave a couple of years ago on no-input mixing to incorporate bits of it into their work, and vague collaboration plans.

Not learning to play banjo for another year.

Idly pulling Come And Get It off the shelf and instantly proclaiming it the great lost pop album of the 2000s to anyone who'll listen.

Sitting in the bar of a Berlin microbrewery while they were having a staff party round me and staying far longer than I intended because of their bangin' glam rock mixtape. Then having to explain to one of their staff why Gary Glitter doesn't get played in Britain any more after a particularly raucous singalong to Rock 'n' Roll Part 1.

Seeing Slayer finish their Primavera set with Raining Blood and Angel of Death and moshing like fuck. Also hearing lots of Spanish lads shouting 'Slyyyer!!'

Seeing Skepta at Primavera and getting super sweaty.

Wandering around Primavera on my own for two days because my friends only wanted to see stuff on the final day and I wanted to see the whole thing. Solo festival going is definitely something I'd be up for in future

Seeing Stormzy and moshing like fuck to Know Me From with a bunch of teenagers (moshpit of the year)

Seeing Dizzee Rascal live and him doing tracks from Boy In Da Corner

Optimo 20 (especially Nurse With Wound)

Optimo 20 afterparty (one of my best Sub Club experiences)

Yves Tumor live

Seeing Spencer from Numbers play 'Watching Trees' by Eleven Pond as the last track of the night and losing my shit

Feeling like I'm getting better at making my on music. I made a new year's resolution last year to finish a track a month and I just about stuck to it

Playing UK drill music to my dad when home for Christmas. I thought he'd hate it but he thought it was amazing

I bought quite a lot of music this year but I'm aware that none of my best musical memories are of buying music or listening to it at home. I love those things but they're just not as intense as good live music experiences and therefore less memorable I guess

• I haven't been going out to see too many shows, my wife got very ill about 18 months back and she's still recovering but taking her to see Kraftwerk at the Royal Albert Hall was a bit of a milestone for her wellness in some way, and even though we had kinda shitty seats it was still great.

• Reading a book on music and seeing my name and an old band get briefly mentioned gave me a thrill.

• A new and weirdly brilliant record from Nits and booking a little trip to see them next year.

lol at MRI concert; i had a similar thought while dealing with claustrophobia in there

i had Wipers-fever for a lot of 2017. but near the beginning of the year, i was pretty unfamiliar with their non-Youth of America albums.

on some fateful night, though, i had the house to myself and got waaaaaay too alone-drunk. i decided to listen to Wipers at top volume, with Over the Edge as my starting point. it turns out that the first song, the title track, is one of the greatest songs of all time, and it only gets better the louder its played. then it turned out the two tracks that follow it are nearly as good and also sound good at deafening volumes. i air-guitared and air-gripped the mic and air-drummed the living daylights out of myself, and my dog got really interested and thought i was playing. we ended up play wrestling and moshing for a good 20 minutes. it's a weird moment to take headphones off and be covered in sweat and sudden silence. but really, that was my top 2017 musical moment, getting way the fuck into Wipers on some random night by myself.

sorry to humble air-drum brag but it's really fun to air-drum when you actually know how to play drums. it's easy to imagine actually BEING the drummer, the heat and momentum building up, the frenzied fills and growing exhaustion by the third song, the relentless pace, reaching up to his the crash. there's really nothing like it. except, er, playing real drums with a band, i guess

^^^ it's fun both when you know how to play the drums and when you don't i think, but i'll say i enjoy air drumming a lot more since learning

1) Having my friend Rob Pursey over for our monthly club night at Paul’s Boutique in Oslo.
2) Listening to Robbo Ranx’ dancehall show on Mixcloud on the way home from work every friday.