Aug. 20th, 2010 09:30 am
"The truth is, I thought music mattered."
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muckefuckI always knew if I waited around long enough New Wave would finally become cool:
Stumbling across this caused me to reflect on how much my music-discovery habits have changed. When I was young, there were basically two ways that I discovered new artists: (a) from radio and MTV or (b) from my friends. I remember once getting a list of groups in a letter from Alge (the "Tears" friend) and basically handing it off intact to my Mom when she asked what I wanted for my birthday. That's what brought Siouxsie Sioux and the Jesus and Mary Chain into my consciousness. (And to this day I wonder what the effects would've been on my music taste had Mom been able to track down Controlled Bleeding.)
Today, it's all about the social media. I never listen to the radio and, when I do get together with my friends, we hardly talk about music any more. Instead, we post the occasional YouTube clip to our LJ and FB accounts. And then there's the media media. In high school, my cooler friends bought zines and rags to read music reviews. Though I borrowed these sometimes, I can't recall ever buying anything on the strength of a review I read; it was just too much of a risk. (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cpratt's post about sinking a chunk of change into Einstein on the Beach only to find he hated it really resonated with me, since I remember acutely the pain of blowing your spending money for the month on a recording only to find it sucked.)
Enter the Internet. Now I have the world's largest listening station at my fingertips and the cost of trying out a new artist can be measured solely in the time it takes to listen to a track. It's become second nature to me to have YouTube always up, so whenever I come across a name in the Onion, in Wikipedia--hell, on the bloody Buzzcocks--I plop it in and see what comes up. So it is with the Courteeners; never heard of them before visiting rathergood.com's misheard lyrics page (where the chorus of this song is rendered "You own a tank top").
The other incredible innovation to me is that whereas band trivia used to belong essentially to the realm of folklore and urban legend, now a simple Google search tells you most anything you want to know. So I can state with confidence that Liam Fray's mumbly northern accent is pure Manchester. And the whole process reinforces itself when you come across tidbits like:
Stumbling across this caused me to reflect on how much my music-discovery habits have changed. When I was young, there were basically two ways that I discovered new artists: (a) from radio and MTV or (b) from my friends. I remember once getting a list of groups in a letter from Alge (the "Tears" friend) and basically handing it off intact to my Mom when she asked what I wanted for my birthday. That's what brought Siouxsie Sioux and the Jesus and Mary Chain into my consciousness. (And to this day I wonder what the effects would've been on my music taste had Mom been able to track down Controlled Bleeding.)
Today, it's all about the social media. I never listen to the radio and, when I do get together with my friends, we hardly talk about music any more. Instead, we post the occasional YouTube clip to our LJ and FB accounts. And then there's the media media. In high school, my cooler friends bought zines and rags to read music reviews. Though I borrowed these sometimes, I can't recall ever buying anything on the strength of a review I read; it was just too much of a risk. (
cpratt's post about sinking a chunk of change into Einstein on the Beach only to find he hated it really resonated with me, since I remember acutely the pain of blowing your spending money for the month on a recording only to find it sucked.)Enter the Internet. Now I have the world's largest listening station at my fingertips and the cost of trying out a new artist can be measured solely in the time it takes to listen to a track. It's become second nature to me to have YouTube always up, so whenever I come across a name in the Onion, in Wikipedia--hell, on the bloody Buzzcocks--I plop it in and see what comes up. So it is with the Courteeners; never heard of them before visiting rathergood.com's misheard lyrics page (where the chorus of this song is rendered "You own a tank top").
The other incredible innovation to me is that whereas band trivia used to belong essentially to the realm of folklore and urban legend, now a simple Google search tells you most anything you want to know. So I can state with confidence that Liam Fray's mumbly northern accent is pure Manchester. And the whole process reinforces itself when you come across tidbits like:
The Courteeners were approached by producer Stephen Street of Smiths, Blur and Morrissey fame[.]Wait, what's that? Two of my absolute favourite English bands shared a producer? But there's more:
Street produced the 1990 Danielle Dax album Blast the Human Flower, released on Sire Records, along with a subsequent remix EP....Street worked with The Darling Buds' on their third...album Crawdaddy [.]Two albums that I have easily listened to all the way through a least three dozen times each. And he also worked with the Cranberries and Kaiser Chiefs? Looks like I owe it to myself to find out what I think of The Ordinary Boys, Ooberman, The Caretaker Race, Feeder, and White Lies. After all, one dynamite single will be all it takes to render the whole undertaking worthwhile.
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Ooberman- there's a reason they've been forgotten
Feeder- beige grunge by numbers
White Lies- melodramatic electro- hyped then forgotten
No idea about the Caretaker race
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You are a one-person wrecking crew! Did the NME send you?
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Feeder are the British equivalent of the Foo Fighters essentially. Except without having the bonus points of once having been in Nirvana.
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