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

I’ve never been able to get into them, but most ‘80s “college rock” leaves me cold (Hüsker Dü, Minutemen, etc.). R.E.M. are the big exception.

I don’t get most 80s ‘college rock’ either but I do like both R.E.M. and The Replacements. The latter I only discovered last year because I’d wrongly assumed I wouldn’t care for them at all.

The Replacements have that intimidating fan-related zealotry thing going on - an initiate's reverence and ardour that means the music can only really be disappointing at first reception. For suggestible me, anyway. I got into Let it Be a little over lockdown but I still have a residual 'why don't I feel like that?' response to them.

little 2.5g doses of THC. personally i don't even detect a difference

Not to sound like a lightweight but I suspect that should be mg :-)

The fact that the Replacements have an oral history book AND a documentary full of people talking about how they changed their life....yes, way to go in putting people off this band for life

The most “just listen to the albums and forget all the other bullshit” band ever

I would love for this topic to have its own thread, so I made one:

Hate The Drug / Love The Music

I’ve never been able to get into them, but most ‘80s “college rock” leaves me cold (Hüsker Dü, Minutemen, etc.). R.E.M. are the big exception.

― I Hate the Aedes (morrisp), Wednesday, 7 October 2020 bookmarkflaglink

I separate SST to other US "college rock" in my head. Has its own (for better or worse) sound.

Chinaski, the reason you don’t feel *that way* now when listening to LIB is likely down to context. In a sense the ‘Mats were an antidote to a situation that was specific to alienated, disaffected youth of the mid-80’s, namely Reaganism. Hyper-success orientation, “cofee generation” propaganda and a lot of super-shiny, perfect music such as Madonna, “Material Girl” being imposed on you by corporate radio of the day. So in this way, it makes sense that the youth (or adults) of 2020 are not relating to LIB in the same way as the youth of the 80’s did.

The Replacements have that intimidating fan-related zealotry thing going on

All I know about them is that p4k included a couple of Mats albums in their best of the 80s lists and that they were lushes. My ignorance shields me.

OTM. I read this one Replacements book by one blowhard flannel-flying fanboy and couldn’t listen to them for a while after that. Then again after I read the excellent Trouble Boys I also ended up having, um, trouble listening to them for a bit.

little 2.5g doses of THC. personally i don't even detect a difference

Not to sound like a lightweight but I suspect that should be mg :-)

lol, whoops! right you are. please don't take 2.5g doses - you will turn into cheech or chong about 5 minutes before you turn into a plant

I separate SST to other US "college rock" in my head. Has its own (for better or worse) sound.

That's fair... I feel like the Minutemen tend to be grouped in with those others, as the decade's "big guns," but I agree they're stylistically different.

(When I think of the actual music listened to by college students I knew, when I was a kid in the '80s - camp counselors and such - it was the Dead Milkmen, Camper Van, Violent Femmes, the Cure... plus R.E.M., of course.)

I used to think of "college rock" as idk Violent Femmes or 10,000 Maniacs (REM def fits) and mentally categorized Husker Du and Sonic Youth as American "indie rock" or "postpunk", although all those terms have been defined so many ways that who really knows. xp yes exactly!

I distinctly remember hearing CVB's "Where the Hell Is Bill?" in summer camp, and being all..."??" I knew about punk, but had no context for this new kind of straight-faced / sarcastic music. (Sorry for the digression; but to the point of the thread, I never got into most of those bands, either.)

thanks everybody for your thoughts re: replacements. i guess i'm a semi-disaffected 80s kid, but i think maybe i was just a tad too young to truly "get it" (born in '81). funny that bands like husker du, minutemen, etc. were mentioned as i've never really been able to get into that stuff either. still like r.e.m. tho, so idk what my problem is.

2.5g of thc sounds awesome right about now. "i wanna be sedated" and whathaveyou.

2.5g is the next door you find after successfully completing a 2.5 mg 420 unlock

a thick plume of weed smoke seeps out from under the bedroom door

the neighborhood understands he keeps trying to like bands that he can't get into

I'm 1980 and grew up on 90s grunge and alt-rock, but there are tons of indie/alt bands from the eighties and early nineties, many aforementioned, who just don't sound appealing to my ears at all.

things like Dino Jr, Husker Du, most Sonic Youth and others just sound ugly in a not-a-good-way

Can you name names? I'm not sure if people are classifying "college rock" as leaning more post-punk or more so poor man's REM

I like a few random '80s postpunky bands, like Das Damen - but I almost think of them as a '90s indie-rock band avant la lettre (and not just b/c Lyle Hysen later worked at Matador).

I think this whole discussion leads to the bigger idea of: does music requires context to appreciate? I mean, the answer is 'sometimes' and 'sometimes context enhances the experience'. I was in college when I got into the Replacements and therefore love them, they certainly reflected a specific set of feelings from the era. But does their whole shtick really require that? I would think their perspective in "16 Blue", "Answering Machine" and "Here Comes A Regular" are still quite relevant.

On one level, it's not a surprise that people tend to be into music that comes out when they're teens / young adults. On the other hand, I have thought a lot about how just because you like a particular band, artist, genre, etc. doesn't necessarily mean you'll like a "similar" or "related" band/artist, even if all the right elements seem to be in place. Art obviously isn't reducible to a set of stylistic elements!

Gerald McBB otm. I was in college then too, which certainly, um, colors my experience. I was also in college when a certain other colorful person from Minneapolis was quite big, which also is part of my relationship to that artist and so...sorry, ma, lost my train of thought.

Black Flag and skateboard videos exposed me to the other SST stuff of the late 80s era like Sonic Youth and Dino Jr. and firehose. Anything other than this and hip hop was terrible, especially "college rock" which to me meant the stuff on pre-Nirvana 120 minutes - the Cure, Smiths, New Order, which were all too british or gothy or quirky or effete or new-wavey. REM was cool for some reason though.

I think I expected more out of it and it didn't fit my loud fast rules vibe - I remember thinking the Smiths were going to be AWESOME based on the cover of Meat is Murder and I was so pissed when I first heard them. The Dinosaur Jr cover of "Just Like Heaven" was kind of a chink in the armor, and I really got into a lot of that stuff when I was older and less narrow minded and doctrinaire.

https://youtu.be/CUPalblwNq4

Huh?

Just an instance of SST rocker Thurston's attitude about effete British college rockers JAMC.

There were a couple of digs at gothy British bands in the Confusion Is Next book.

Autechre. My fling with these guys is firmly in the past! I forever respect their pace of production and their originality-quotient, but the problem for me is in that imo they are lacking in both the physical and spiritual/emotional departments. That’s the 3 departments of a human that music can (or not) address: the physical, the mental, and the spiritual-emotional. Maybe that’s four but whatever, I have made my point.

The mental is the physical is the spiritual, maaaan.

Oh I've never liked Autechre. I liked Dael (the first track on Tri Repetae) on first listen as a teenager, but I never subsequently enjoyed them. I always chalked it up to "the sound of FM synthesis" and "the sound of Max/MSP"-- there's nothing compositionally uninteresting about it, I just don't get immersed, it has the sonic world of a hospital hallway. (Similarly, I adore "Rifts" by Oneohtrix Point Never but haven't fallen in love with anything since.)

Funny, the only Oneohtrix I like is Replica, but I like that one a lot

Incredible String Band - read so many rapturous takes on these guys (eg Rob Young, Joe Boyd bio) and every time I put the music on I last a couple of minutes at best

Incredible String Band is def for this thread. I like them but their sound is you either get it or don't. They are so doing their own thing.

so true, I have really tried with them and LOVE some isolated tracks but have never clicked with a whole album

Same tbh. I do want to try again, though, to their credit.

exactly! there's a great bootleg series (6 volumes) called "God's Holiday" that has some really cool stuff, Wee Tam and Bug Huge are the ones I usually go back to

"Big Huge"

I like the guy with the high pitched voice’s songs better

My favourite ISB related things are the two COB albums that Clive Palmer made after leaving them early on - those records really knock me sideways emotionally (especially Spirit Of Love). Deep hippy folk stuff that's every bit as pure and joyful as Vashti Bunyan. Never quite made the same connection with ISB though

My horrified revulsion towards ISB is documented

‘Bands lj should like but doesn’t for some strange reason he will expound on at length itt’ should be a thread.

I mean I did that and everyone hated it

:(

If you’re referring to the ‘thread to diss hyped releases’, I’m an obvious fan.

LJ likes Blur and landfill indie he should not be liking ISB.

My favourite ISB related things are the two COB albums that Clive Palmer made after leaving them early on - those records really knock me sideways emotionally (especially Spirit Of Love)

I'll check that out.

Nah I got into it on an ISB thread! Not really the done thing

I think context is a huge thing with the Replacements. There's a whole vocabulary and mythos that surrounds them, and any discussion/thread about them. I usually find that helps me to get into something but it's a barrier here.

I can still remember the day I clicked with ISB after several abortive attempts; it was like a whole new vista opening up. It's cliched but 'A Very Cellular Song' was what done it.

bit of a soppy post: my dad used to sing ISB songs to us as lullabies so hearing the originals of eg the minotaur song or cellular don't sound at all right