Tell me about your favourite music experiences of 2017

-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

I've been fortunate enough to play live more often than I ever before this year. Performing music became a much more regular part of my life in 2017 and for that I'm grateful.

Thanks to Spotify (and at least partially thanks to ILX), I listened to more new music than ever before this year, even though I didn't go to as many concerts.

In terms of live music experiences, I loved seeing Susanne Sundfor at LPR, Jay-Z at Barclays, Sturgill Simpson at Radio City, and Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever in the Bowery Ballroom. I guess a New Year's Resolution of mine is to keep better track of when artists I like come into town--I swear I used to be pretty good at that...

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

― marcos
You might check out Johnny Horton's Greatest Hits, with lots of my own childhood faves: he was smart about doing theme songs from movies with kid appeal--not Disney so much, but big screen Westerns---also covered some by Jimmie (sometimes Jimmy) Driftwood, who started as a schoolteacher, writing historical (or sometimes dime novel) yarn-songs for his students.

-Errorsmith in Berlin playing bangers for hours
-Laurel Halo playing Ability II's "Pressure Dub" at The Art School
-Kyla La Grange at King Tut's, being a truly great popstar
-getting the aux cable at a house party where I knew one other person and playing Oni Ayhun's "OAR-003B" and watching everyone get dreamy
-the Definite Party Material radio show on Noods and accompanying Youtube channel
-the bounce remix of Adele's "Hello" that somehow felt like a private meme and yet everywhere I went to dance in Spring
-being signed off work in the summer with stress, and using the hot afternoons to sit in the park and listen to the Gaussian Curve album and feeling calmer for it
-friends trying to lift my mood by taking me out for drinks to a deserted pub, and being the last three in the place, making the DJ play "The Boy Is Mine" and making it into a three-part duet somehow
-having the courage to let other people hear my own music
-a very intense, strung-out hour-long conversation late after a night of excess, talking about the mix of low culture and high art in Shakespeare's Sister "Stay" because a music channel played the video
-a club that played nothing but Madonna singles all night
-three blogs: Test Pressing, Listen To This! and Ban Ban Ton Ton
-a drunken Chromatics-inspired cover of Shania Twain to take a pal's mind off a break-up
-sitting in an outdoor hot tub in the Scottish borders with my brother, drinking and blasting Job Jobse's XLR8R mix into the adjacent farmland
-discovering the YouTube account "Mixsensei" which hosts 80s groove and 90s street soul, none of the uploads I had ever heard of but so many gems
-the Young Marco Italian dream house compilation and wormholes on Discogs and Youtube it sent me down
-every time I heard Jax Jones "You Don't Know Me" in the wild and getting excited, every time, thinking how nice if unexpected to hear "Body Language" played in a shopping centre or out a car window

-the bounce remix of Adele's "Hello"

Love this, also love that there are people in New Orleans who are not really aware of non-bounce versions of Adele songs.

just found that bounce hello,it's great!

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.