hmpf

A lot of music seems to be made by truly weird people, people who don't seem like they would fit in easily anywhere - yet their music, if successful, typically ends up getting embraced by a "cooler than thou" kind of audience.

How does that happen?

Or maybe this is a misperception - and perhaps even doubly so, as neither the first part nor the second part of it may be in accordance with reality. The artists may be less strange, and the audience less conformist, than they appear/have appeared to me.

This may be an artifact of my particular history - loving music, yet always feeling like it was "inappropriate" for me to care about it because music - the music I cared about anyway - really "belonged" to "cooler" people (and I didn't even *want* to be cool like that, it struck me as silly - I wanted to be allowed to love the music, but I did not want to be part of the in-group that it belonged to).

As a science fiction fan (though I didn't consciously identify as one yet at the time I'm talking about here) I'm struck by how different these two subcultures are, or seem to me. Science fiction (etc.) fan culture, though often fiercely cliqueish in parts, generally seems more about accepting people into the fold (hence the "geek social fallacy"), whereas music-based fan cultures have always appeared to me more about establishing a sharply defined in-group and *keeping other people out*. Where in sf fan cultures it mostly seemed enough to love the same things as other fen, with music fans it always seemed to me as if loving the music was insufficient; in fact, loving the music could be socially inappropriate if you didn't also wear the right clothes, listen to *all* the right bands (and none of the 'wrong' ones), have the right kind of hairstyle, etc.

Hm.

probably exposes my astounding ignorance about all things musical. Which I will readily admit to (and which, let's face it, is probably obvious from everything music-related I've ever posted here. *g*)

I've lived under a rock, for most of my life. So, chances are I just didn't notice great bands and so on before because of that, and not because they weren't around.

... and a live version of something more recent.

( I just need to share my love for b-sides and live versions. )

My, the dawn is beautiful. I see that so rarely...

Also, this is awesome beyond words. I suspect that that, rather than the caffeine, is what's keeping me fueled at the moment.

ETA: Same performance, better image quality.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8byXSML4bY

Hard to believe that's live. (Or is it? Maybe they do... digital stuff to the recording, afterwards?)

If I have something like a top three longterm favourite bands/musicians, I think it's probably these (in no particular order, except maybe chronological):

Midnight Oil
Radiohead
Phideaux

Which makes for a frelling weird "top three", even in my own opinion.

("Longterm favourite" defined as "artists of whom I'd actually like to own pretty much every album they've recorded". There aren't many of those for me. Mostly I just pick a couple of favourite albums by any given band or solo artist.)

PJ Harvey and Kate Bush might be candidates for that list, too, come to think of it. I just don't have as many of their albums yet - but I love all that I do have, and love practically everything I've seen and heard on youtube and elsewhere.

Kind of. :-( (At 5,568 words.)

And can somebody please tell me what Thom Yorke is doing on the Twilight soundtrack? Because that bit of information, courtesy of youtube, was my WTF moment of the day. o.O

This is kind of funny: for Christmas, I had a book called "Number Five" on my wishlist, and an album called "Number Seven".

Now, for my birthday, I'd like three albums named "Berry White", "High Violet" and "Seven Star Green".

I swear I'm not doing this intentionally.

In the last couple of weeks there was precious little time to listen to the radio, so I didn't. But today, while doing the dishes, I went to byte.fm's website again and clicked on the player... Baaad mistake. I now have to add another band and album to my interminable wishlist. *sigh*

http://www.myspace.com/wwwkomkomnet

ETA: Heh. The label's website also recommends: "The Dale Cooper Quartet & The Dictaphones"

This is good news, because since yesterday evening I've already found about half a dozen new bands I *need* to hear more from.

This is bad news, because I have neither the money to buy music, nor the space to store it, nor even a working CD player, really.

Arrgh.

Why is there so much frelling awesome music out there?

Why am I so frelling poor?

**

The station (it's a webradio station): http://www.byte.fm/

The greatest programme I listened to yesterday: http://www.byte.fm/index.php?cont=sendungen_detail&sendung=138

My favourite three tracks from yesterday's listening session:

Phantogram: Bloody Palms
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsZ0LV-FPJg

Phantogram: Mouthful of Diamonds
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvSgLHWR16o

Oh No Ono: Swim
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukxu8FgrW10

**

Anybody know where I can buy single mp3 tracks without having a credit card? Buying favourite tracks instead of entire albums seems like a good idea at the moment. There are some songs I simply *need*.