Over a year later – favourite band(s)

Well the shame of starting a new blog and not updating it for over a year has washed over me sufficiently now.  Following this shower of disappointment, is a feeling of renewed freshness, that can only come from a vigorous self cleansing and exfoliation. Still the doubts remain but I’ll crack on…

Whilst the main emphasis of this blog started out as an exploration of new music discovery, a cursory reread of all my previous two posts revealed that I may have unwittingly reduced this blog to a Cheryl Cole bashing exercise. This stops now. Although I still don’t rate her in any way at all, apart from the positive benefits she brings to the worldwide hairspray market – which may or may not have an ozone layer downside…

I guess a good place to start (again) is the whole subject of favourite bands. My first favourite band were The Who. In the olden days of the Sony Walkman (cassette version) I had a friend who listened almost exclusively to The Who. As we both played for the school football team, our away games required a bus ride that invariably meant my exploration of Roger Daltry et all was enhanced by using  his double ended headphones with his Walkman. He was extremely passionate about the band which meant that I got to listen to a lot of their back catalogue, not just their hits. I had been interested in listening to music previously, but this was the start of “loving” music and the beginning of losing any hard earned coinage by spending it on the stuff!

About a year later, MTV was starting to gain prominence and the whole concept of the music video became a serious marketing tool for bands and their record labels. I remember vividly, being blown away by four Irish lads attempting to ride horses across a snow bound barren landscape, with great guitar riffage accompanying what I thought to be a pretty cool song. New Years Day was the start of my love affair with U2. That passion probably peaked circa Zooropa which meant that the band remained at the top of my musical affections for the best part of a decade. Still a personal best for favourite band status.

During this time other bands were gaining a foothold in my musical sphere. I recall hearing April Skies by the Jesus & Mary Chain one Sunday afternoon on the Radio 1 chart show in 1987 and wondering how I had never come across this band before. They still remain one of my favourite bands to this day and I note that they’re often name checked by reviewers describing new bands that have any degree of fuzziness to their guitar sound. I had a similar realisation with Social Distortion and have no idea why they are not a bigger band than they are.

Social Distortion

Something called the internet was starting to gain in popularity, which meant it became easier to access new bands and material. Along with written media and friend networks (real life social networks if you will), new or unfamiliar bands appeared on the rapidly approaching horizon a lot quicker. For me this was the start of a much more rapid turnover of favourite bands. Preceeding favourites were not discarded, but merely suffered slightly less frequency on my new music playlist rotation.

My previous post highlighted Dogs as my current favourite band. However it has been so long since my last post that regrettably Dogs have now finished and are no more. Whilst this is very sad, and I was gutted when I got the news, silver-lined-cloud directives dictate that a new band must be found to fill the void. In the relatively short time frame, bands such as The Bloody Hollies, Heartless Bastards, The National, The Black Keys, Wye Oak, The Black Angels, and Pink Mountaintops have all vied for that coveted top spot of my musical tree.

This week it all changed. Wow. Sometimes you hear the first 20 seconds of a new track and everything else fades into obscurity. If I hadn’t been checking out similar bands to Radio Moscow on Spotify, I would not have come across either of these two bands.

Please enter Left Lane Cruiser on Alive Records. 2 blokes, 3 albums, great sound. A sound that sits somewhere between the Black Keys and early raucous ZZ Top. Have a listen to Lost My Mind here

If you like that, have a listen to another band in the Alive Records quiver, Brimstone Howl with their song A Bad Seed

Until next time, which will hopefully be a lot shorter than the last gap.

Left Lane Cruiser

Oh year, Left Lane Cruiser are this weeks “favourite band”….

A week later

It’s been a week. Too long in the blogosphere? It’s not only bands that experience that “difficult” second album. Blogging noobs also suffer with what can only be described as a similar type “second blog” syndrome.

Bearing in mind the rules outlined below, I found myself thinking about how I discover new (to me) bands or artists. Obviously the internet makes it a lot easier these days, but a certain amount of leg work is still needed. Whilst there are still fewer feelings better than “finding” a new band yourself, one has to accept that having family and friends that understand your musical tastes can help greatly in this regard. To this day, my youngest brother (lets call him “Ben”) still calls me every afternoon to express undying gratitude for pointing him in the direction of The Black Angels (www.theblackangels.com). He would counter argue that if it wasn’t for him, I would be meandering aimlessly without any knowledge of Pearl Jam (www.pearljam.com). He would also still maintain that I lost his treasured “10″ album. He may or may not be correct.

It helps if these main suppliers of key information come from slightly different spheres of musical tastes, to give a more “rounded” range of recommendations. My hard rocking brother-in-law (lets call him “Mark”) was spot on with The Jackals (www.cdbaby.com/cd/jakal). Unfortunately the band have subsequently disbanded (purely coincidental I’m sure). Even my 80′s-electronica loving other brother (who may or may not be  called “Tim”) dishes out a decent bit of advice from time to time – The Big Pink being a recent prime example (www.musicfromthebigpink.com/).

Do people still read magazines? Apparently they do. Musically, I tried NME once. I do read Q magazine regularly though, and although I feel generally the magazine is not as good as it once was, the review section is still brilliant. It was there that I first read about my favourite band of last year – The Pink Mountaintops (www.pinkmountaintops.com). Another superb band highlighted in the magazine’s review section was The Band of Skulls (www.bandofskulls.com) that produced my best single of 2009 – “Fires”. My previously held faith in Q magazine was severely shaken this month though. My standard pick the magazine off the shop shelf without checking the contents manoeuver was suddenly halted, when I spotted that Cheryl Cole was on the cover! Cheryl *?/%”&g Cole. Not only that, but the magazine claimed in pretty large and unavoidable letters on the front cover that apparently – “Cheryl Cole Rocks”. No she doesn’t! I can’t explain how much will power it required to still buy the magazine. I felt dirty and full of shame as I still went ahead and paid for the magazine. I would have felt more comfortable on the front row of an X-Factor gig. . . .

Where does the internet come into play? It is relatively easy to find audio and video clips to sample pretty most bands, whether a new and unsigned group, or a more established well-known act. It is possible to hear 30 seconds of most songs on iTunes, but for me the best innovation has been Spotify (www.spotify.com). Spotify is legal software for streaming music for free (with ads), or for a monthly premium, it’s possible to listen without ads. Whilst it is possible to listen to all the bands above, the best feature of this software is that for each artist selected, a list of similar sounding bands appears. So for every Jesus & Mary Chain, there is a House of Love (criminally overlooked in my CD collection until recently). The shame of not knowing about such a classic band is somewhat tempered by experiencing a better-late-than-never euphoria.

Some methods of musical discovery have disappeared however. My favourite band – Dogs (www.dogsmusic.com) – were discovered 4 years ago, when a few spare minutes in a shopping centre music shop (HMV) enabled me to listen to the previously unheard  band on one of the shop’s CD listening posts. I purchased their debut album there and then, after listening to the start of the first 5 songs! These listening posts no longer exist. Virgin’s music shops used to be excellent for listening to CD’s before buying, but these shops are sadly no longer. Even Borders used to enable CD listening with headphones, but they stopped that practice several years ago, and now even Borders has disappeared. The whole issue of downloads vs CD’s is another discussion for another blog!

There is no substitute for going to live gigs! I’m not talking corporate hospitality in large stadiums. I’m talking about getting squashed down the front at one of the many great venues that exist around this country (and in other countries I’m sure – I still fondly remember watching a Japanese Beatles tribute band in Tokyo, and I don’t even really like The Beatles). Whereas 85% of support bands really suck are not to my taste, occasionally a very pleasant surprise greets an early gig arrival. One of the worst gigs that I have ever seen the aforementioned Dogs (www.dogsmusic.com) was in the basement of a record store in London (Fopp - which also disappeared, but has been saved by HMV apparently). The atmosphere/sound was surreal at best. But the first band on was The People’s Revolutionary Choir (www.myspace.com/thepeoplesrevolutionarychoir) whom I’d never heard of previously. Much Velvet Underground/Spacemen 3 influence, and I instantly loved them, purchased all of their CDs (only singles) and downloads, and saw them live 5 or 6 times subsequently. They are also no longer unfortunately! More recently an unsigned Scottish band opened for Dogs somewhere in Wimbledon. They are called The 10:04s (www.myspace.com/the1004s). They gave out free 4 song CDs at the gig, and 1 of the songs – “About Tonight” made it   my best of 2009 CD compilation.

Finally, I would like to finish by explaining that it is not just new bands that I love. I once heard/saw an interview with The Stones some 20/30 years ago where they were talking about playing a gig with an influence of theirs called Muddy Waters (www.muddywaters.com). As I liked early bluesy Stones (check out where they got their name from), I thought I would give Muddy Waters a listen (which involved buying vinyl records at that time). I loved his stuff, and subsequent research led me on to Son House and Robert Johnson, both of whom I still enjoy listening to as much today. Music discovery never stops. There is so much music out there that never makes it on to the radio, but is really good stuff. Take the time to look around a bit, and you’ll discover a wealth of lesser known artists that warrant your attention.

Ground rules

The day has come. After at least 3 years of procrastination, self-doubt, and general laziness, this blog is rising up from the miry clay (aka my desk).

I have many passions. I thought it best to start with one of said passions – Music!

I love music. My kind of music. Not everyone I know and love appreciates my kind of music. But that doesn’t stop me trying to share it.

A couple of ground rules (which are invariably there to be broken) about what I like and what I don’t like.

0. I am open-minded and will try most music at least once. For at least 30 seconds.

1. I don’t generally like bands/artists that are just someone’s name (theirs or someone else’s).  At first glance this looks a simple rule, but further delving reveals this is anything but the case.

- examples; Amy Winehouse, Damien Rice, Norah Jones, David Gray, (Cheryl Cole – Definitely NOT)

- exceptions include; Iggy Pop (mainly because I first knew him as Iggy Pop & The Stooges), any Blues singer (Robert Johnson, Son House, Muddy Waters etc), Johnny Cash

- variations generally ok; The Ben Folds Five, The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Van Halen (at least all of these recognise there is a band involved)

- someone who was/is in a band, but is “having a go” on their own is generally ok; Albert Hammond Jr (The Strokes), Mike Ness (Social Distortion)

2. There normally needs to be a guitar involved somewhere. Not necessarily electric.

3. Did I mention that I hate Cheryl Cole?

4. There definitely does not need to be a bass guitar involved

- examples: The White Stripes, The Kills, The Black Keys

5. Lyrics don’t make any difference to me. Whilst I appreciate words can be clever and intelligent, it is (nearly) always the tune that matters to me. It is the  tune that makes me stop what I’m doing and pay attention.

6. Whilst I enjoy a bit of confidence and even arrogance on occasion, artists that think they are more important and better than they actually are, really really really annoy me.

- example: Cheryl Cole

7. Is it just me, or does anyone else like 4 or 5 wannabee singers standing in a straightish line moving their feet in the same direction at the same time, calling themselves a “band”? Show me the instruments.

8. Manufactured/orchestrated pop makes me sick (physically). Don’t get me started on the X-Factor. . .

9. Why do people who only like music/artists from when they themselves were teenagers refuse to listen to anything that is less than 10 years old? Fleetwood Mac were a new band once (as it happens they were a pretty good blues band when they first started out, but that is another story).

10. There is a whole lotta joy in discovering a band for the first time. There is even more joy sharing that discovery with friends and family that you think will appreciate the find. Whilst the reverse also holds true (being given a new band recommendation from younger brothers for example) there is invariably a tinge of regret about not unearthing the band first! This is often combined with a hint of confusion about how such a good band could slip through my extensive new-band-discovery-system net.

Anyway, is it possible to identify that very fine line between music snobbery and sharing music that I find exciting? And do I care where the line is? And yes, I get accused of being a music snob every Saturday/Sunday at 8pm when X-Factor appears on TV, and I make my excuses as I retire to another room.