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

Oh no I never suggested anybody in Mogwai should sing! I can't even listen to Tortoise, there is no place for instrumental post-rock in my heart :(

I looooove Art Bears but liiiiiike Henry Cow

The Fall. Normally an ILX poll makes me more enthusiastic about an artist but still the only Fall album I like is the Best of the Fall, mainly for the atypical pop moments that proper fans don't like.

― Deafening silence (DL), Friday, November 8, 2013 9:59 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This^ It's things like The Chiselers and Hit The North I like, but Mr Pharmacist? Noooo....

not sure there's such a thing as a "proper" Fall fan, and anyway so far as I'm concerned I like "pop" Fall as much as the "weird" stuff. Mt Pharmacist seems an odd choice for "weird Fall" anyway as it's a cover version.

Bach Chamber Choir
Badfinger
Ballin' Jack
Banco del Mutuo Soccorso
Bearfoot (Canadian band)
Beefy Red
Beggars Opera (band)
Betsy & Chris
Black Sabbath
Black Widow (band)
Blue Mink
Bones (band)
Brinsley Schwarz
Bronco (band)
Brother (Canadian band)
Brotherhood of Man
Brownsville Station (band)
Brutus (Canadian band)

not sure there's such a thing as a "proper" Fall fan, and anyway so far as I'm concerned I like "pop" Fall as much as the "weird" stuff. Mt Pharmacist seems an odd choice for "weird Fall" anyway as it's a cover version.

not sure there's such a thing as a "proper" Fall fan, and anyway so far as I'm concerned I like "pop"

Fall as much as the "weird" stuff. Mt Pharmacist seems an odd choice for "weird Fall" anyway as it's a cover version.

― I like to think I have learnt a thing or two about music (Neil S), Friday, November 8, 2013 12:14 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Uh, no it's not weird Fall, it's just the song I associate with them more than any other. Like DL, the only album I can bear to listen to is the best of really. Always amazed how many songs I know by them are covers - Ghost in My House, Why Are People Grudgeful etc...

I keep trying to get into Drexciya and losing interest midway through listening.

one of those bands where their biggest hits were covers - ghost in my house and victoria xp

xxp Ah okay gotcha. the covers are some of their best stuff IMO, no shame in only liking them if that's your bag! People who think they're a proper fan because they "prefer the early demos" are history's greatest monsters, pretty much.

http://www.thediamondauthority.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Diamond-Wedding-Bands.jpg

I really don't get why ppl wear these things on their fingers

Drexciya maybe benefit from a "best of" approach, a lot of tracky numbers in their catalogue, not that i don't love all of it

xp By "proper Fall fan" I mean people who voted in the poll and chose a lot of stuff from 1979-83. I prefer later songs like Hit the North, Bill Is Dead, High Tension Line, Telephone Thing and the cover versions, so I tend to feel like a part-timer.

I'm a big Fall fan but wouldn't claim to have deep knowledge of all of their records, for some bands I think it's okay to accept that you won't hear every note they ever played.

No! You must hear every note they have played and then poll them. Once a month. In a different order slightly.

okay boss

is that why they call them new order?

always different, always the same

peter hook and yr granny on bongos

I hear Hooky's looking for work these days

Boards of Canada. I love the idea of all this occult stuff lurking in their music, but when I actually listen to it all I hear is pleasant, drifty ambience.

They're definitely a magic-eye band.

Expanding head band

heeeey... I just 'got' the pun in that band name.

I've never gotten into Boards of Canada either. I liked that one tune on the first album with the crazy chopped human voices, but otherwise I don't get why their simplistic, quasi-nostalgic IDM-with-breakbeats is so different compared to other IDM-with-breakbeats acts who've done similar things, only with more innovation and originality.

tbf you don't get lots of things

/Henry Cow/

This would be my pick as well. Same goes for Art Bears actually.
--my father will guide me up the stairs to bed (anagram)

I love Art Beats, though.

Bears fuck

in the woods

Well yeah, but with BoC I at least tried. I even bought the album!

(x-post to NV)

i think there's a difference between "i don't dig this" and "i can't understand why it's popular" tho

Well, I bought the album because of the hype, but found it only mildly interesting (except for that one song, I think it's called "Telepathic Workshop" or something), because it didn't sound so special or unique as the reviews had made me think. So in this case "I don't dig this" and "I can't understand why it's popular" are interconnected.

Well yeah, but with BoC I at least tried. I even bought the album!

LOL, had visions of Tuomas sitting down to listen to a Blue Oyster Cult album

I really want to get into Afrobeat as I love the idea of it and it's nice to have on in the background, but every time I sit down and try and actively listen to a Fela Kuti track I get fidgety around the three minute mark.

well get up and dance then

Yeah I'm the same as chap about Fela. It didn't help that someone I know (who is, admittedly a terrific funspoiler when it comes to music) said it sounded like music for home improvement show segues and now i can't get that notion out of my head.

i'm the same with boards of canada. don't get it. so many cool krautrock/techno/ambient records i've never heard so i'm not really gonna spend too much time trying to understand why people think they are so special. maybe someday i'll hear something by them that will blow me away. i never say never.

Boards of Canada. I love the idea of all this occult stuff lurking in their music, but when I actually listen to it all I hear is pleasant, drifty ambience

Exactly - I like their first two albums a lot (and haven't heard the others) but both have patches where you kinda forget the music's even on. I dunno why they're so much bigger than say, The Black Dog (who are great IMO). I think it would be a lot spookier if people didn't talk about how spooky their music was all the time.

i asked mark richardson on facebook what he meant by this in his pitchfork review of BOC but he never answered me:

"The Scottish brothers Michael Sandison and Marcus Eoin didn’t invent a new sound, but they did take various strands of music floating around and pull them into one place and essentially perfect them."

because i really wanted to know what music they had "perfected".

i think sometimes artists hit upon a set of tunes or even extra-musical vibes that resonate hard with enough people to break out of the genre they inhabit. not sure it's analyzable much, it's the "X factor" of fable really, but it's usually recognizable when you see it.

Yeah that's the way I feel about some of the bands I really like. for example YMO is a band that people on here seem to "get" well enough but I read a lot of people think of them just as dudes who made video game music 10 years before video games. Or Gentle Giant (to name a band that I kept trying to get into, couldn't get into, then really got into) as just "overcomplex" or showy and nothing else. I'm not a part of the BoC fandom, but I'm glad it exists!

I looooove Art Bears but liiiiiike Henry Cow

― flamboyant goon tie included, Friday, November 8, 2013 11:43 AM (2 hours ago)

Yeah, count me in with the Art Bears fans who don't get Henry Cow tribe. With the notable exception of 'War'. I'm going to try again soon, though. Theoretically I *should* like at least a bit more of this stuff.

I like Mogwai's first record but they never improved, really.

Beefheart is a borderline case for me. I genuinely love Safe as Milk and Clear Spot, the rest is a bit beyond me much as I've tried.

if you like those you might like lick my decal off, baby and unconditionally guaranteed.

I'd like to think I'm a proper Fall fan, and I love their poppy stuff

But I guess I think of them as sort of a catchy poppy band in their own weird way

I prefer their 80's records like Bend Sinister or Frenz Experiment to poorly produced or more raw ones like Dragnet or Room to Live

Telephone Thing was the song that got me INRI them! I'm an Extricate defender.... Hillary off that is really catchy DL you should listen to that.

i am totally a brix-era fall fan. the only records i own by them.

LOL, had visions of Tuomas sitting down to listen to a Blue Oyster Cult album

I wouldn't be at all surprised if Blue Oyster Cult actually have a song somewhere called 'Telepathic Workshop'.

Television, Radiohead, and Steely Dan immediately come to mind. All of these are bands that maybe once a year I'll think, maybe I'll put something on and I'll suddenly 'get it.' And every time, I put something on and think, HOLY CHRIST THIS IS TOTAL CRAP.

I just deleted all my radiohead albums the other day! I had given them a number of chances, but they're just consistently sub-mediocre to me.