Bands you keep trying to like but can't get into

The live albums can be cool, depending on the local musicians he picks up to play with him.

Essentially he's outsider music's answer to Chuck Berry.

I fucking love Jandek and own all 22 original LPs, but he def belongs here

the lyrics were actually my gateway into his world, fwiw

Genesis are turning out to be one of these. 'And the word was' and 'invisible touch' were the ones i taped from the library as a little kid and to this day, the Silent Sun is my favorite song of theirs.

I've recently read that Jim O Rourke interview where he talks about taping the lamb lies down on broadway from the library as a little kid, except the last song got cut off. there's an embed of 'Anyway' and i really liked it on first listen, so i promptly took to soulseek and. I HATED IT. Though not 'It' which i have not heard because the user logged off just before the download finished, so I ended up with the same album as Jim O funnily enough.

I have a similar story about Nursery Cryme from 10 years ago, etc, ABACAB a couple of years ago etc etc. just cant get into Genesis.

I taped Lamb off my 2LP set onto a C90 as a kid and yup, "It" didn't fit.

On prerecorded cassette it was often sold as two tapes. I saw the second half in an otherwise pretty well "curated" used bin by itself today. Seems an album that often has orphaned elements.

I've gotten into Genesis over a really long span, first enjoying the s/t and Invisible Touch around age 10, then getting into the Gabriel years (though Lamb took longer for some reason, maybe due to sheer length); for a long time the '76-82 period was opaque to me, but it really opened up in my late 20s when issued as a box set (even as the remixes in that set later came to seem over-the-top in-your face). This process seems to be ongoing: while it didn't exactly become my favorite, ...And Then There Were Three only revealed itself to me last year, in the sense that now I can look at the tracklisting and remember what the songs sound like.

I've also probably bought more different copies/releases of each Genesis albums than those of anyone else (at least three times each up through Duke). Probably discovering them while quite young led to them seeming like a mystery ever to be discovered, even when the material is sort of banal. "Origin is the goal," natch!

I like to pretend that Genesis were a little known band that recorded 2 lps in 1971-72 Trespass and Nursery Cryme.
Don't like what they settled on after taht. But those 2 just about work, band in major transition between the school line up and the commercial one I guess. Do have a bit of a soft spot for thsoe 2 and the live material from immediately around then.
NOt really sat down and listened to Lamb though.

of all the classic prog bands Genesis took the longest to get into. I bought Selling England by the Pound and listened to it over and over like "what am I supposed to be hearing here?" I think the guitar solo on "Dancing With the Moonlit Night" and the long keyboard outro to "Cinema Show" finally got me.

I like PG-era Genesis a lot but their forays into British whimsy have always been lost on me.

I'll take PG's British whimsy (the Willow Farm part of Supper's Ready) any day over Phil's hamminess (robbery assault and battery, like china, and um, illegal alien)

Time after time, my Discover Weekly comes running at me, eyes brimming with confidence, arms wide saying 'you'll definitely like this - it works with so many other things you love! Come on!' but no matter, I have to shruggingly turn it away, again and again, telling it I've tried, spurned friends away for years. Why do I keep having an ongoing blank reaction to Broadcast? Do I need a doctor?

I saw them live and it was so loud and frightening and beautiful that I was instantly converted.

I enjoyed their records for sure but that first show was a brain melter.

I'm cool on them, generally, except for the collab album with Focus Group (I adore it)

“America’s boy” is a jam

i think a lot of Broadcast songs are not emotionally revelatory but every record has at least one or two tracks that are and the breakthru is finding them and the rest of what they do opening up as a result

on the other hand, sometimes you just don't like stuff

i would suggest maybe "The Book Lovers", "Look Outside" and "Corporeal" as entries but everyone to their own goat etc

their overall sound is really pleasing to me, I was definitely “naturally” predisposed to their thing when they first came out

i like them more for "overall sound" than "band with songs", deffo

I'm still finding my way into them, but that "Motorway Mix" tape was pretty big for me in terms of connecting some dots when it came out, I listened to that before I ever listened to the band

so yes they fit this thread perfectly, I still can't recall a single recorded moment but I like it when it's on

I love her interviews and her posts on social media, where she displays real sensibility and nuance on the working life of a musician. Her influences and her general genre are right up my alley and many people I respect love her... and yet, I cannot ever hear anything of interest in Colleen's music. Leaves me with the feeling that I'm really missing something.

I don’t dislike it per se but it just feels too slight for comfort.

start with the older stuff. the golden morning breaks is moving

i think a lot of Broadcast songs are not emotionally revelatory but every record has at least one or two tracks that are and the breakthru is finding them and the rest of what they do opening up as a result

so yes they fit this thread perfectly, I still can't recall a single recorded moment but I like it when it's on

Agree re: Colleen, felt insane for a while because I couldn't hear what I was reading, then just gave up...and that was the early stuff :/

Sleep -- this seems so up my alley, and SO many people whose tastes I respect like them. But I always find their riffs kind of boring and clunky? I almost like it, I almost get into it, but it never really does it for me.

just listen to Dopesmoker, don't try anything else

Sleep are better in theory than reality. That goes quadruple for Dopesmoker.

Talk Talk - just so goddamm sparse

see, I struggle with Dopesmoker but I really like the first few songs on Holy Mountain, which I find have more groove and are more, uh, digestible

Sleep's Dopesmoker is my #1 favorite music for grading papers. It's slow, it's loud, it encourages focus. I find it functional.

Earthless >>> Sleep

Earthless is distracting for grading papers but I have enjoyed their live show a lot more than I would enjoy Sleep.

oh yeah I have a lot of music that is "work music" and I can totally see Dopesmoker in that vein

Muslimgauze too, music for the zone

I def can't get into any Earth-related releases other than Earth 2, it just barely misses my sweet spots

("it" = everything else they've done)

Sleep's Holy Mountain is my favorite too, for much the same reasons that Paul Ponzi noted

Earth is fun to watch live because of how slowly the drums are played. I have never seen anyone play drums that slowly in my life!

xp Holy Mountain is, for me, a classic "keep trying but I can't find a way in" release. whereas the very first time I heard Dopesmoker faintly through a closed door in 2007 I was like "omg what is this I must know"

n.b. I am a fan of very-long-attention-span releases of all genres

I am a fan of very-long-attention-span releases of all genres

Yeah, I'm pretty much the opposite. I listened to the Bad Brains' yellow tape so much in high school that by the time you hit the 90-second mark I'm looking at my watch.

lol, fair. Depending on how it hits me, at 90 seconds sometimes I'm thinking "wow it'd be awesome if it just kept doing this for a long time"

notice that Pere Ubu has been mentioned a few times. I remember being artificially blown away on the first couple of listens, and from then on... everything ungainly & irritating about them suddenly became the focal point, and I never cared to listen again.

i bought dopesmoker, smoked some dope, tried to zone in, and it just wasn't for me. that's ok! i can very much see how they work and why they are beloved.

they're too loud to be my work music, and i like that about them and would love to see them play sometime.

Seefeel - I keep trying since they tick all my boxes but I always get bored.

x-post - yeah seeing them live is key I feel. I have and occasionally play some of their stuff, but it doesn't come close to the full body/mind experiences I've experienced each time (n=2) I've seen them live. So don't sleep on it when they're playing in your area!

Even as a Pere Ubu fan, I have to admit that "ungainly and irritating" is more-or-less their raison d'etre.

Yeah, but it's like the Fall or Captain Beefheart, right? What starts off as annoying slowly becomes exciting, given enough time and an open mind. I hated all those bands the first few times I heard them - Pere Ubu, jeez, David's voice is nails on a chalkboard! But wait, something keeps making me revisit their stuff, and then as other music is integrated into my world view, what once was repellant becomes beloved. I have no idea how that process works but I love it when it does.

The Fall & Captain Beefheart, yes there is so much there to reward repeat listens even when certain tracks continue to grate. But Pere Ubu... just too opaque to my ears, abrasive as a starting point, so that even when they do tone things down a bit & attempt to shift dynamics, there's still a petulant hardiness at the core. mind you, this is probably precisely why a lot of people like them. it's just very hard work for me.

David Thomas's solo box set was the entry point for me, I was instantly obsessed with Monster Walks the Winter Lake and Meadville. It was a cheap box set, 5 cd's for the price of a double album.

why do these arty rock acts always inspire the most "listen to it until you like it", which could apply to almost any unfamiliar sort of music? i used to get the sense that it was almost a duty to be into these artists, they separated real music fans from poseurs, and if you didn't like it you just didn't get it (whereas music disliked by these fans is just bad, no question of not getting it, of course they do). in fact i remember some vocal fall/beefheart fans totally writing off jazz (they wouldn't be so eager to do so now i hope) and i'd be accused of snobbery/pretension/"just pretending to like" (the same stuff they'd been accused of) if i parroted their own lines back to them in that case

the artist i probably put most effort into trying to like without success was tom waits, i came away with an appreciation of the songwriting and a handful of songs i really like while actually disliking his whole deal a lot more than i did before. these days i'd never go to the same effort for something i don't like, if i'm trying at all it's trying to love something i already quite like or am intrigued by

Imo there are a lot of acts people may be prone to gong for really obvious, mundane reasons. Waits, for example, or Rush, for that matter, the vocals alone might be enough to turn people off, with the music a distant second. Same could be said for, maybe, Pere Ubu, or Beefheart, or the like. Then there's music that's aggressive and designed as a sonic assault endurance test, like metal or whatever, with fast tempos and distorted guitars. Or, I dunno, some of the more aggressive Aphex Twin or Naked City. Doesn't exactly fade into the background, so if you're not into it you're just not into it. The tougher stuff, in a sense, may be the music you *must* pay attention to, which can mean the aforementioned but often means slower, or quieter, or very dynamic, which can pose its own listening challenges. Like (as mentioned) Seefeel, or Talk Talk, or "Music for Airports." Last, and most fitting perhaps with the thread, is stuff that's outright designed to challenge, stuff like the last couple of Low albums, which are objectively beautiful *and* ugly/noisy/distorted/disorienting, but whose beauty is often most obvious only in contrast to the noise, or after you've acclimated to the noise to the point where it's just part of the beauty. I'm trying to think of more stuff like that, but I'm coming up blank for the moment.