"Record Collection Rock" - is there still a need for this? Does it still exist?

alternate title: dense rock music you will be mansplained to for not being into

― algorithm is a dancer (katherine), Monday, January 15, 2018 7:43 PM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

rock music it is trivially easy to adapt the "to be fair, you need a very high IQ to understand Rick and Morty" meme to

― algorithm is a dancer (katherine), Monday, January 15, 2018 7:44 PM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

so otm

What if the only records in your collection are record collection rock? What kind of records would you make?

do Dukes of Stratosphear fall into this category?

hah I don't know, I guess I don't really understand the topic. cuz the Dukes doing an intentional homage to fairly well-known 60's psych acts feels a bit different than say Field Music copping their early 80's sound

it's gotten to the point where even relatively "run of the mill" / MOR / not particularly "hip" rock acts ahve at least some sense of playing with rock history, like The Cribs recruiting Steve Albini to produce a song about Chicago and recording a song suite at Abbey Road studios on the same album.

people never got much hipper than the sufi choir. otis redding and lester young and lamonte young, dude! and a shout-out to chocolate. yum.

http://forums.ssrc.org/ndsp/wp-content/blogs.dir/23/files/2013/11/16_sufi_back.jpg

if you grew up listening to rap music then phil spector + feedback wasn't exactly a revelation when psychocandy came out. sounded awesome for sure though.i wouldn't really consider them record collection rock like simon does. with some bands you don't really need to go beyond the velvet underground to understand where they are coming from. public enemy were record collection rock. people, in general, were better at it in the 60s and 70s though because they could actually approximate lots of different styles/sounds competently or they had a record label who would find the people who could.

i tend to enjoy SHAMELESS ripoffs of styles/sounds/bands or bands who invoke/evoke other people without me sitting there thinking about who exactly they are ripping off. pavement and guided by voices don't really remind me of anyone in particular when i hear them other then themselves but they are obviously grabbing lots of stuff from everywhere.

the velvet underground kinda the premier record collection rock band really. its all their fault.

maybe they just like different kinds of music and just want to play what they like?

― sarahell, Monday, January 15, 2018 12:15 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i mean the two are not mutually exclusive

It might actually have been reissue culture rather than the internet that killed this as a thing. Like at one point a Neu! or Faust record would have been really quite difficult to get hold of so there was a certain cache in being able to show off that you owned these records. That disappeared well before the advent of streaming, there are so many interchangeable motorik bands out there now, which is fine if you like that sort of thing, but I doubt many of them expect a medal for doing what they do.

italian zombie movie soundtrack bands are an actual genre in the 21st century so i would say that record collection rock is alive and well.

so, a case of reissue culture making something exist.

*80s diy darkwave cassettes ripped off of mutant sounds 10 years ago* ALSO a genre now.

katherine and scott otm

I think the worst aspect of this is people making music that isn't very interesting but fans will justify the music's appeal by citing what bands/albums the work is in the vein of.

I was at a show a few weeks back that felt derivative enough that I kind of wished I'd gone to see a cover band instead

Foxygen is a good example of a current band that does this. They sound like a different psychedelic-era artist on every song

good example, not a good band

I understand the impulse to make music like this but when you're standing there thinking "oh, this is the song that sounds like <classic krautrock song>" it gets tiring

i bring this up over and over but i always think back to the time that i saw The Faint and the only time people went nuts was when they did "enola gay". the only great song they played that night.

i hardly ever go out anymore but i made a point of going to the local bar the other night to see J. Mascis's stooges tribute band because i love the stooges and just wanted to hear really loud stooges songs. and then i left. sorry, purling hiss!

i all for cover bands now that i am old.

*80s diy darkwave cassettes ripped off of mutant sounds 10 years ago* ALSO a genre now.

― scott seward, Tuesday, January 16, 2018 9:29 AM (two hours ago)

for the record, this made me laugh ... so true

this thread makes me question whether there is a need for sneery rock critics a hell of a lot more than it makes me question the need for record collector rock

controversial ilx poster and maker of record collection rock goes long on TOO MUCH MUSIC. someone give me a synopsis. too long for me.

https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2018/01/16/578216674/too-much-music-a-failed-experiment-in-dedicated-listening

This isn't about the music; this is about critics pointing snarky fingers and saying "Ah, you just wrote that song so you can prove you've heard cult album X." (In the process of course proving that they've heard cult album X, too, and they heard it two years before the artist, so there.)

― grawlix (unperson), Monday, January 15, 2018 10:01 AM

qft and thread could have been locked after this post

This isn't about the music; this is about critics pointing snarky fingers and saying "Ah, you just wrote that song so you can prove you've heard cult album X." (In the process of course proving that they've heard cult album X, too, and they heard it two years before the artist, so there.)

― grawlix (unperson), Monday, January 15, 2018 12:01 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

sounds about right to me

not sure why but i seem to recall this being used about a lot of elephant 6 bands. olivia tremor control, apples in stereo

I keep hearing "Record Collection Rock" as the name of one of those tv infomercial comps
"Hey, is that The Creation?"
"No, it's Dungen!"
"Dungen?! aren't they some band from the *mid 2000s*"
"Yeah! And now the mid 2000s are back!"
"IT'S RECORD COLLECTION ROCK FROM TIME LIFE MUSIC! 32 TRACKS BY ARTISTS THAT WILL CORNER YOU AT A PARTY AND RANT ABOUT HOW SUICIDE IS A MORE IMPORTANT BAND THAN THE ROLLING STONES"

synopsis: ME ME ME ME ME ME ME PAY ATTENTION TO ME

i.e. music made by and for dudes who looked like late 90s stereotypical record collector dudes xps

xxp to scott

lol man alive

what if that guy is a woman?
do women make music like this ever?

I feel like Sonic Youth are an example of this --though I'm still not entirely sure what "this" is ... but Kim Gordon is a woman and was in that band

i am not sure what "this" is either but i see a lot more men doing what i thought it was than women and it made me wonder

Sonic Youth were always going on about records they were into but they didn’t really sound much like those bands

LL, you might like that bandcamp-posted album by popologist Nicole Atkins I mentioned upthread: she's a song stylist w a good ear for drummers.

By "song stylist" I mean she's a stylized singer-songwriter, referring to her records as her friends and at one point mentions wearing out the grooves of her brain but she's into it, building a persona of sufficient realness, seemingly self-expressive and certainly appealing, what with the associations for collectors who like late night headphone music that won't put you to sleep (too quickly anyway)

maybe elastica but that might be an extreme case (uh if you know you know) depending on what definition of rcr we're talking about

you mean that song that starts with the riff from "I am the Fly" by Wire ?

haha ya but wire had huge beefs with them

so that can actually fit into this discussion of subtle nuances, melodies, etc.

subtle melodic similarities, sound nuances, etc.*

joanna newsom def seemed to be harking to a certain type of forgotten 70s folk songwriter like vashti bunyan, linda perhacs, jill st. john etc

My gut feeling is that bands were probably always doing this and what happened in the late 90s/early 00s was that the internet suddenly made so much music available to everyone everywhere that everyone knew every *obscure* band and both the ability of bands to copy them and the ability of everyone else to *know* what they were copying multiplied.

Sonic Youth would qualify if every album they made was a variation on the Whitey album

not sure why but i seem to recall this being used about a lot of elephant 6 bands. olivia tremor control, apples in stereo

― marcos, Tuesday, January 16, 2018 1:43 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

there are a few local dudes who were overly devoted fans of elephant 6 bands, and then recreated what was basically a knockoff elephant 6 band! I'd end up seeing them opening for other people and just wonder why

controversial ilx poster and maker of record collection rock goes long on TOO MUCH MUSIC. someone give me a synopsis. too long for me.

https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2018/01/16/578216674/too-much-music-a-failed-experiment-in-dedicated-listening

― scott seward, Tuesday, January 16, 2018 1:37 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I didn't initially recognize the name and figured there'd be a bio at the end of the piece that'd remind me of who it was, but I figured it out halfway through.

tl;dr version: Knowing everything about some music you're listening to, from who is in the band, what instrument everyone plays on every track, and the bio of every band member is somehow valuable to your experience of music. But what if there is too much music?

side theme running through the piece: Trying to listen to only one album, for one whole week.

the whole exercise, and the mindset as a whole, seems really joyless. confusing deep knowledge for personal connection

lol remember the time a veteran ilxor started a thread where we listened to one album 20-something times, and I listened to Kanye? It was actually a good thread/good exercise.

Idk - people listen to music for different reasons, and different things, sometimes many things, bring people pleasure. I'm often really lazy and end up listening to only a few albums for an extended period of time, because they are what's in the tape deck in the car/cd changer in my room.

i definitely developed a bond with that Kanye album -- apparently he's having a 3rd kid? ... i don't know that much about Kanye tbh

ha ha ha a friend of mine uses the pejorative "library rock" - there's a certain local band that are very good but very snobby in a really off-putting retrograde way, as if High Fidelity was something to aspire to.

but it seems like the idea and the majority of this thread is focused on "rock" - as opposed to non-rock music that has similar attributes - which is kinda falling into "that thing white ppl do when they disparage white ppl" territory

is which referring to rock or to non rock w similar attributes