who likes what music?

Though my favourite thing to listen to is a good eclectic radio program, something like "Late Junction" or "Mixing It" on R3.

Pete.

I'm a musical omnivore. My short list for today, off the top of my head, in no particular order, is:

Milton Nascimento
Ravel
Miles Davis
Beatles
Joni Mitchell
Brahms
Jimi Hendrix
Keith Jarrett
Bill Frisell
Aretha Franklin
James Taylor
Bach
Erik Satie
Balinese and Javanese gamelan
Weather Report/Joe Zawinul, Wayne Shorter, Jaco
Alison Krauss
Pat Metheny
Lyle Mays
Ray Charles
Bill Evans
Debussy
Stravinsky
Stevie Wonder
John Coltrane
Crosby, Stills, Nash, Young
Bulgarian Women's Chorus
Ivan Lins
Marvin Gaye
Tom Jobim
Shawn Colvin
Fred Hersch
Eberhard Weber
James Brown
Oregon/Ralph Towner, Paul McCandless
Laura Nyro
Chopin
Burt Bacharach
South Indian classical music, various
Hindemith
John Scofield
Jonatha Brooke
Herbie Hancock
Bob Dylan
Handel
Brian Wilson/Beach Boys
Charles Mingus
The Band
Charles Lloyd
Police/Sting
Earth, Wind, and Fire
Louis Armstrong
Peter Gabriel
Shostakovich
Led Zeppelin
Steely Dan
Janis Joplin
Dusty Springfield
Tower of Power
Mark Isham
Copland
Chick Corea
Simon & Garfunkel
Beethoven
Lyle Lovett
Bartok
Thelonius Monk
Arvo Part
Leonard Cohen
Alban Berg
Randy Newman
Prince
Steve Reich
Annie Lennox
Anton Webern
Pete Seeger
Brad Mehldau
Stevie Ray Vaughan
Ellington/Strayhorn
Jimmy Webb
Fred Simon

Fave Album? T-Bone Burnett's "Proof through the Night".

Andrew

Andrew Randle
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quote:

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and shows some intelligence

---

isn't that the same as 'up its own ass'

all the best music has no pretentions to being intelligent ... and as most of it seems to come from Manchester, that's probably just as well.

I always relate pretensiousness to "cheesey-ness". The kind of thing Oasis has in spades, along with a lack of song-writing/singing talent.... IMHO.

Andrew

Andrew Randle
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When people stop making music because its fun and exciting and concentrate on the technical aspects, virtuosity ... or other 'intellegent' parts of the music ... that's the point to stop listening.

'Cheesy' is a description thought up by boring old farts to make them feel better about their boring little lives.

Long live Oasis and the Spice Girls (although judging by their last single - they seem to be trying to go 'intelligent' ... so time to stop listening)

Cheesey also refers to something being a cliche.... whether it is flogging tired ideas or producing something music that makes you cringe.

Don't forget that you can also have "Intelligent Cheese" - as exemplified by Frank Zappa.

Conversely, Oasis are cheesey and take themselves seriously ("yeurgh, we're bigger than da beatles") and exemplify pretentiousness. The Beatles themselves were great writers and performers. As an aside, IMHO, Oasis don't even sound like the Beatles (even though some people are led to think so), they don't even harmonise like them.

Steve, don't tell me you play Oasis,the Spice Girls and Mr Blobby through your CDS2/52/135/DBLs... Please don't tell me that!!!

Andrew

Andrew Randle
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[This message was edited by Andrew Randle on FRIDAY 01 December 2000 at 19:46.]

[This message was edited by Andrew Randle on FRIDAY 01 December 2000 at 19:51.]

What--no Husker Du, no REM, no Minutemen, no TPOH, no They Might Be Giants, no Violent Femmes, no Replacements ?

Just checking !

Bob

Andrew

Andrew Randle
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Steely Dan
Barenaked Ladies
Possum Dixon
The Pixies
Fila Brazillia
Leggo Beast
The Verve
Peace Orchestra
They Might Be Giants
REM
Crowded House
Jimi Hendrix
Jeff Beck
Stevie Ray Vaughn
The Vulgar Boatmen
Camper Van Beethoven
T-Bone Burnett
Joni Mitchell
Weather Report
Texas
The Beatles
The Rolling Stones
Tosca
Frank Zappa
Luna
Ben Vaughn
Pink Floyd..... that "progressive" group
Caravan
Elliott Smith
Smog
Massive Attack
.... and tonnes of others that don't spring to mind at the moment.

Andrew

Andrew Randle
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A thought on intelligence in music: there is nothing wrong with, and nothing pretentious about true, native intelligence. Turgid, fussy complexity and contrivance that calls attention to itself is not true intelligence. And true intelligence does not preclude fun, passion, soul, excitement, or emotion. I believe all the musicians on my list above to exhibit high levels of true intelligence as well as these other qualities.

I got your point--just making a bit of fun. I would probably list a lot of the same music you did.

Also--just got Dreamhouse yesterday; listening to it now.

Cheers,

Bob

There is no inherent intelligence in music - that is something ascribed to it by the pseudo-intellectuals who often believe that one type of music is better than another when what they really mean is I like this better than that.

And if any musician said that they had made a conscious decision to write some intelligent music then they would be pretentious in the extreme. Which is why I do not like XTC because I always get the feeling that they spend ages writing and re-writing their oh-so-punny lyrics just to show how clever they think they are.

Above all beware jazz freaks.

cheers

Nigel

I'm also an omnivore. I listen to almost anything for some period of time. Some call this "bad taste", but I call it "varied". Catch you later!

-=> Mike Hanson <=-

Smilies do not a forum make.

the implication in what you say is that you do not listen to any music that is not the best in its genre? You don't mean that, surely, unless you are claimimg that your collection is indeed definitive?

cheers

Nigel

Of course, there's also the issue of deciding what is a "genre". If I like a general area of music (e.g. folk), then I'll probably recognize how not all folk is the same, and I'll subdivide that into further sub-genres. Within folk there's the "High Lonesome Sound", typified by the work of Roscoe Holcomb (on Folkways Records). I've got just one album, and I feel that that's enough for me to understand and enjoy that style. I don't love it, but it's an interesting listen.

Another example is Squarepusher. I really like both drum'n'bass and jazz, and Squarepusher likes to blend both to interesting effect. However, it sometimes grates on my sensibilities. Even so, it seems rather unique and well accomplished, so I chose not to return it to the store. There are numerous examples of this in my CD library.

I'm sometimes embarrassed if I don't have something that's considered to be "excellent". For example, I don't have a single album by Bob Dylan. This is a bit of a mystery to me, since I've got all of Joni Mitchell's, and she's often mentioned in the same breath as Bob Dylan.

I occasionally will keep a CD just because it represents the worst of something. I'm having a hard time thinking of an example of this at the moment, but I know that I've got some. (I checked my CD case, but only half of my CDs are here at home.) If I spot one, I'll post another message. However, even the "worst" represents an epitome.

Then there's my penchant for completeness. This explains why I would like a sampling of all types of music. It also explains why I have all of Joni Mitchell's albums. If I had unlimited resources and time, I would like to own every recording ever made. Of course, I don't live in that fantasy world, so I do my best with what I have.

So you see that it's not nearly so black-and-white as your wind-up suggested. Catch you later!

-=> Mike Hanson <=-

Smilies do not a forum make.

I've just looked up the word in the Concise Oxford and it defines epitome as a summary or abstract - so best or even highly representative does not come into it.

Given that definition, I suggest that most people have in their collection an epitome of a genre. The definition even of that is a personal thing of course.

Personally, I don't bother with categorisation by genre. My collection is filed alphabetically and my listening choice is not "Oh, I want to listen to some folk(sub-set Irish) now" but more "Oh, I want to listen to De Danann(effin' good band) now".

And finally, I seem to have a reputation as a wind up artist - to which you alluded. Whilst this might be the case most often on another forum, I am usually more restrained here. However, my last post was rather late on in the evening after a bottle of wine and a nightcap or two so the internal censor was probably not working 100%.

cheers

Nigel

BTW, I got my definition for "epitome" from www.dictionary.com, which has it as "A representative or an example of a class or type", which was the way in which I was using it. I must admit that I often misconstrue it to mean "the best", while it's really "the best example". (i.e. the adjective "best" modifies noun "example", and not the subject itself.)

My CD collection is very broadly categorized as Classical, Jazz, Dance, World, and "Everything Else". The only reason that everything is not in one big lump is that when I want something from one of those specific categories, I don't want to go hunting through the whole mess to find it. As I've collect more CDs (currently around 800-1000), I've tended to organize them a bit more.

Ultimately, music is a very personal thing. We'll each have our own way to interface with this thing, and we'll be naturally critical of those who don't feel passionate in the same way as we do. Essentially, music is religion; and when you look at it that way, our discussions make much more sense. (I actually feel more strongly about music than religion. Besides, religious people of ninnies. ) Catch you later!

-=> Mike Hanson <=-

Smilies do not a forum make.

[This message was edited by Mike Hanson on SUNDAY 03 December 2000 at 17:17.]

[This message was edited by Mike Hanson on SUNDAY 03 December 2000 at 17:18.]

yes - jimi hendrix is great - he played raw exciting music, without trying to be pretentious or 'Intelligent'. Sure he played intelligently, but he had no 'I'm so clever' pretentions

unlike that silly git Zappa - who produced purile twaddle under the guise of being 'Intelligent' - good example of 'Intellegent Rock' by the way, but its an insult to Cheese to call him cheesey.

You're right - Oasis are nothing like the Beatles. But if you can't see the excitment and fun in songs like Aquiesce, then you better get your slippers and pipe out.

No - I don't play Mr Blobby on my system - I try to avoid purile rubbish - like Frank Zappa.

I play Oasis and the Spice girls and the Smiths, and Abba, and God Speed You Black Emporer and Madonna, and the Slits and the Beatles and the Ramones ... etc etc etc.

Folk that are deriding "clever lyrics" probably just don't particularly like the specific style concerned: I don't see that punny lyrics like XTC's, snidey lyrics like Steely Dan's, wordplay lyrics like Adrian Belew's, metaphysical observations like Neil Peart's, and so on, easily fall into the same bracket just because they may all involve editing and dictionaries a bit more than a typical pop song or latin mass setting.

As to innate intelligence in music (that is, selecting what to do or where to go with the head rather than the heart), there's plenty about. Bach is an obvious case in point, with very deliberate constructions that are clearly based on abstract, extra-musical concepts (such as the B A C H name signatures, mathematical structurings and so on). Same sort of thing in Kind Of Blue, where very particular modal structures underly the pieces, though that hasn't prevented the musicians exercising freedom over the top. This doesn't necessarily make it either pretentious or good/bad, it's just an approach which may pay off or may not, just as is the case with a lyric with more input than a stream of consciousness and no editing, or completely free improvisation.

Harmelodics and Serial music are both good examples of instances where the level of underlying intelligence in the approach and construction is a clear barrier to understanding and enjoyment of many, but by no means all, listeners. Or perhaps Schoenberg and Ornette are just bluffing pseuds?

Furthermore, even in music approached from "the heart", there are instances of intelligence on the part of the composer/musician determining the direction to influence the outcome. Experience dictates some things will work better than others, certain keys and time signatures will be more appropriate in a given place, different tones and tunings will suit particular settings, and so on.

Pete.

However I can't aggree with your comments about Frank Zappa - only boring old crusties or Americans like silly songs like Flakes", "Valley Girls" and "Dancin' Fool"

He may think that they're funny (you may too), but you are mistaken. For proper humour in music see the works of Morrissey & Marr.

"There is nothinh wrong with intelligent music - just music by people who insist that they're making 'intelligent' music."

So why is intelligent music, made by someone who just happens to be precocious enough to realise the fact, necessarily any worse than intelligent music made by someone that doesn't proclaim the fact? You've just consigned Wagner's entire output to the waste bin! You seem a bit hung up on people rather than the music they're making.

Pete.

[This message was edited by Pete on WEDNESDAY 06 December 2000 at 09:58.]

[This message was edited by Pete on WEDNESDAY 06 December 2000 at 10:01.]

Its just the people who go on about 'intelligence' in music generally have a condescending attitude to what they consider unintelligent (Cheesey) music. I just don't like their 'better than you' attitude.

Doesn't do much for me either, but that doesn't make the music any worse! Wagner again comes as an obvious example: from accounts I've read he thought he was doing things greater than anyone else, almost certainly had a condescending attitude to most people given the extent he used them and also almost certainly felt his music was not merely underscored by intelligence, but genius. He comes across, in fact, as pretty unpleasant even without his rather unpleasant theories on race, but that's irrelevant to what goes on to the stave, much of which is sublime and magnificent, and reliant on considerably more intelligence in its creation and form than, for example, a 12 bar blues jam (and no, I'm not saying that necessarily makes it better).

Why is someone who considers their preferred music better because it has more elaborately designed structures any worse or more condescending than someone who considers certain music better because it has, say, a different approach to humour in the lyrics which they consider "proper"?

Pete.