Hip Genres & Musical Styles: Which Is The Worst??

whoops i fucked up, Japanese should not be there lol.

i shoulda put on so many other dumb things, sorry, please write in your personal dislikes.

Japanese was gonna be japanese psych but i dunno, i stopped half-way

so racist

is this about which music sounds worse or which attracts the most obnoxious hipsters because there might be a different answer depending

Voting private press singer-songwriter because every singer-songwriter on earth should be dropped down a well (can be all the same well, as long as it's deep enough). But West Coast psychedelic rock can go on the bonfire too.

Voted https://funnynamesblog.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/rrk.jpg

free jazz fandom can definitely has a bit of a stick up the arse quality especially when it gets into euro improv more avant than thou territory (which is where the music gets really boring)

I think country blues takes it though for being built up into such a tedious reductive racist masculine heterosexual mythology and industry that has essentially swallowed (and killed) the blues as a whole in the popular imagination, erasing all the genuinely cool things about it. some of which if more widely known would make blues more relevant to contemporary audiences and less of a museum piece but that's the last thing the blues bros seem to want. the music on its own is fine but if this is about reception it doesn't get more obnoxious than mr keep britain white's musty old reverence over mr johnson for example

leave rahsaan out of this

TS: Robert Johnson vs Boris Johnson

Drone in its various forms looms large the last 10 years-ish: drone rock, new age and minimalism,
"composers" working with open ended scores, etc. not necessarily the worst but glaring omissions.

automated "cybernetic" music is another one.

it's not robert's fault he became an icon for all the most boring men in rock it's just an unfortunate part of his legacy xp

the band that opened for stereolab in brooklyn in october was like the end of 'unobtrusive music'. they were idk a smooth jazz/disco-funk wedding band, overly self-conscious with that mac tonight look. def one of the most nauseating things i've ever seen.

as a fan of most things psychedelic apart from the b.o. rife san fransisco variety this is not real hard for me. los angeles is also west coast tho, maybe i just hate the jefferson airplane.

leave rahsaan out of this

― your original display name is still visible (Left), Wednesday, May 17, 2023 6:16 PM

fr i don't even think he falls into any of the styles mentioned. (maybe hard bop?)

i actually don't have much of a problem with any of these. ended up voting industrial/noise as a "least favorite."

Feeling torn between Private Press Singer-Songwriter (<0.01% strike rate?) & Musique Concrete...

I woulde probablye go with English folk if you asked me which I would leaste like to listen to.

These are all great except for private press stuff which let’s be honest is variable. But it feels like a soft target. So can I just nominate GAPDY?

Guessing “Garage” means the ‘60s rock and not the UK thing. That‘a not my answer though.

Noise/Industrial… I’ll take the Noise, you can have the Industrial

Private Press Singer-Songwriter sounds like something that would disappoint me 100% of the time

Dancehall but only cos it ain't the stuff from 10 years earlier I would prefer.
Garage cos it takes vital music and makes it an insular scene retrospectively.
Does classic indie rock last til 2000 or did it drop off way earlier.

Country blues was shaped heavily at the time by record company pressure and expectation. Possibly even moreso down to the people sent out to record artists. Shame cos it killed off more idiosyncratic approaches being recorded.

Surely it all also has some pretty vital music included.

gonna wait until imago weighs in on what a dying message board would choose

I Love Music

lol "Japanese" is almost a defensible option, the country's contributed a wide variety of genres all of which could apply here - psych, jazz, city pop, house all have pretty vocal tastemaker contingents.

the "private press" in front of singer-songwriter kinda makes it the only choice, I've heard some pretty terrible private press singer/songwriter stuff get hyped. but I'm sure there's plenty horrible private press stuff getting the same treatment in other genres.

is the garage referred to garage rock, UK garage or US disco garage?

"free jazz fandom can definitely has a bit of a stick up the arse quality especially when it gets into euro improv more avant than thou territory (which is where the music gets really boring)"

Obnoxious, you say?

Ok I bite, what is Boogaloo?

60's latin music with soul/r&b influences. a lot of the fania types were doing it before salsa hit big.

Ah ok I am going to check a comp.

"Classic Indie Rock (1980-2000???? argue w me here please)"

I think indie of the Siltbreeze probably has a place here. I would probably re-write it as the good stuff that would follow on the only tradition (classic Pere Ubu and The Fall, with drone stuff).

The UK equivalent would be Skullflower and 20 names I used to have at my fingertips. This is the stuff I listened to that was basically the road not taken. Instead we thought The Verve's Princess Diana anthems were psychedelic.

So: "Indie Rock from 1992-2000 (the road not taken)"

I guess shoegaze and post rock merit inclusion.

+ math rock!

Psychedelic/Acid Folk is hardly ever as good as you hope it's going to be but it's not the worst here. I don't know any Boogaloo.

I kinda wish Musique Concrete actually was beloved by critics & hipsters everywhere... or do I?

My wife and I have a running gag where we invent an indie band and an indie label and talk about them as if they exist, but I harbor a secret fear that we will accidentally name something that really does exist.

Oh, 8fux? Yeah they are great, I heard they were recently signed to the Algae label, after a brief flirtation with SpaceDrawer Records out of Seattle.

I recall that they had some members who were originally with SpleenGodz, but then SpleenGodz left Algae and signed with Faucet instead.

Most of their early stuff was Neo-Plywood but then they kinda moved on to be a little more TaintCore.

(I literally just made up almost all of those words, but I am preemptively apologizing just in case there are real Spleen / Algae fans out there.)

Add New Age and IDM /Ambient to the list and PC music I suppose. Though not being a hipster I guess they may look down at this stuff.

I laughed out loud at “japanese”

Not sure what Hard Bop is but sounds promising

Nathan, here you go. You're welcome.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RchygyAviYs

Sorry nashwan

I love all of this music btw.

Industrial/Noise has the highest number of tedious provocateurs associated with it, although English Folk might be running it second for right-wing affiliations (maybe not the hipster end of it though). Ditto Classic Indie Rock (1980-2000) if that includes you-know-who.

Voted Psychedelic/Acid Folk in the end due to the existence of Devendra Banhart.

English Folk certainly does not have right wing affiliations in, er, England!

Yeah, English Folk revival basically started with a bunch of communist party members jamming in Soho beatnick cafes aiui.

i love all of these inc English Folk which i don't associate with the right wing (Shirley Collins, surely not), except for the dreaded Classic Indie Rock (1980-2000???? argue w me here please) which is my eternal musical room 101, so an easy vote here.

Not sure what Hard Bop is but sounds promising

― nashwan, Thursday, May 18, 2023 8:46 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Hard Bop is a subgenre of "Japanese"

https://i.discogs.com/SjrozDnbzxU2csabOXsAZy3D4UOEpSTimAaQhGC54NM/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:586/w:600/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTQxNTc4/NDUtMTU4NzgxNTIw/MS02ODk1LmpwZWc.jpeg

Throw in dub techno and deep house and you've just got a list of the best genres

Almost put deep house tbh.

Almost put deep house tbh.

Some 'true European music' types tried to latch onto trad folk as 'pure' music a while ago, is what I meant. Guess there's not that many of them though. Although given the age of most folk fans you can bet that a lot of them are entering the Daily Mail phase of their existences, old socialists ending up railing against wokery/immigrants etc! Admittedly this isn't really the Alasdair Roberts end of things you might find at Supersonic festival etc.

Pvt press has a high swing and miss ratio, a lot of it loses its luster once some of the mystery about a rare grail being discovered is removed. But obv there is some gold in there. Some of the reissue labels are pretty reliable when it comes to finding the good stuff.

That's the one I would probably vote for just on overall merit, everything else is classic and pretty unassailable imo.

it would really suck to be the kind of person who can't even enjoy sleepy john estes or barbecue bob without having a brain aneurysm thinking about eric clapton's presentation of masculinity

think how nice all those impulse spines would look together......

I don't know how people have the patience, the time, or the will to organize records in anything but alphabetical order (and even that is a headache). I sorted alphabetically for years until I moved a few times, after which I started listing my collection on Discogs. Now everything is sorted somewhat randomly inside numbered crates and boxes so I can at least know the general location of something if I need to find it. I rarely need to find anything though, as I typically always have a stack of recently acquired records that get lots of play until they get demoted to the numbered boxes, rarely to be played or even thought about again. Yes, this is a bad habit

some of us are just autistic my dude

I like sorting things it’s fun

brimstead otm

Haha I think I have a reasonable handle on my twenty records overflow but I probably just have house clean out PTSD 😕

xp to paul ponzi

maybe if you organized yr records more often you would see the old ones more and then be reminded to play them. also reorganizing your records is an opportunity to move them around so they don’t get too dusty

those are two reasons i’m constantly reorganizing, anyway

Northern Soul 3

Three of yall are crazy.

maybe if you organized yr records more often you would see the old ones more and then be reminded to play them

This is absolutely true, and I will admit that during those rare times I do a cull or a major move of some sort, I rediscover things I'd long forgotten about

i took out some records for dusting today and it spurred me to listen to taj mahal travelers “august 1974”. i’ve decided to move it from the “experimental” crate (where it was next to “catch wave”) to the “krautrock” one.

i also gave steve lacy / yuji takahashi / takehisa kosugi “distant voices” a listen. prime ashtray rattling! it’s moving to the “free music” crate, where it will sit next to roscoe mitchell sextet and human arts ensemble

Industrial/Noise - is a wide spectrum of sounds ranging from amazing (Cabaret Voltaire are one of my favourite bands - surely this isn't what people were thinking of when they voted?) to terribly amazing (I saw Whitehouse once, the whole audience was screaming abuse at them, encouraged by Bennett; he dragged a particularly gobby audience member on stage, pulled his trousers down and spanked him like a naughty child. It was a spectacle) to amazingly terrible (there's an ocean of acts in this style littering discogs, RYM and Bandcamp that I have no desire to listen to or even know about).

Private Press Singer-Songwriter - I've never knowingly heard any private press Singer-Songwriters. As an aside: I find the phrase 'singer-songwriter' a bit confusing. Like, anyone who sings and writes songs in any style is a singer-songwriter. Sometimes if I Google someone I like, a soul singer or something, it'll declare them a 'singer-songwriter'. But I guess it tends to refer to solo artists who mainly play one instrument (probably a guitar, maybe a piano) to accompany their songs, which isn't something that particularly interests me. Get a band together ffs.

Free Jazz!!/Hard Bop - I got harrumphed at on the Maligned Genres thread for a throw away comment expressing my distate for free jazz, so let me elucidate: I like some jazz, I really like a lot of styles influenced by jazz (funk, afrobeat, latin). And I know people who think this means I should like Bop and Free Jazz, who think that these styles are objectively the best music due to complexity and technicality, who think my failure to like them is a personal failing on my part, that I've not tried hard enough, that I just haven't found the right 'in' to make me like it. I've been given books on Jan Garabek, I've been made to watch YouTube videos on the mathematical relationship of notes in 50s Jazz recordings. I've been recommended all kinds of things and I've tried. The history, the theory, the passion inspired is interesting, but whenever I hit play, the noise coming out of the speakers makes me cringe.

Garage - 60s garage rock = great. Music played by Larry Levan at the Paradise Garage = great. The early 90s Jersey Sound that gets called Garage in the UK = okay. UK Garage = great.

Country Blues - I know nothing about Country Blues.

Northern Soul - amazing.

Classic Indie Rock (1980-2000???? argue w me here please) - indie rock in 1980, 1990 and 2000 are so different, what counts as indie rock is so varied, that this category is almost meaningless. It ranges from excellent to awful.

Ska (original only) - is amazing.

Dancehall - I love a bit of dancehall.

Psychedelic/Acid Folk - not for me, but I've no problem with it.

Japanese - was this supposed to be Japanese psych-rock? What little I've heard is fine.

Dub - is one of the greatest creations in human history.

Salsa - I guess I count as a hipster Salsa fan. For years Salsa meant to me dance classes that the nice but boring woman in accounts went to on a Thursday evening. It didn't even register as a style of music worth investigating. It hadn't occurred to me that it could a vital, influential, political, force of nature every bit the equal of funk or reggae. Then I heard a Salsa comp on Strut records and it opened my eyes. I dived into Fania and Vampisoul reissues. So much amazing music.

West Coast Psychedelic Rock - is never psychedelic or rocking enough.

Musique Concrete - I like the idea of musique concrete. I never want to actually listen to it.

Tropicalia - I've never dug deeply into this, but the two Gal Costa albums Ive heard (her second one, Gal, and Índia) are both excellent.

Boogaloo - is great. Not as great as the similar Latin-Soul, but still great.

Krautrock - the best, well know stuff (Can, Neu!) is great. Beyond that is a world of variable quality. I know someone who's really into this and he loves loads of awful stuff.

English Folk - not for me, but i don't hate it if i hear it. My aunt and uncle were into folk festivals in the 60s, and still are in their retirement, so I've heard plenty. There was a bloke with a mandolin who used to sing sea shanties outside the library - he was amazing.

And since these got mentioned:

Italo disco - is, at its best, all kinds of fantastic.

Black metal - I was a metaller in the 80s. NWOBHM. Hair metal. The arrival of black metal is where I got off the metal train.

Disco rap - for all its musical limitations, if I get in the zone I can listen to this for hours.

Instrumental acoustic guitar music (here's a fun one to argue about) - I doubt I'd like it, so I've never listened to it. I may be wrong. I may be missing out. Maybe one day I'll discover it but there's too much music I know I'll like and so little time to listen to it all that it'll have to wait. Probably forever.

House music - all night long

Salsa - I guess I count as a hipster Salsa fan. For years Salsa meant to me dance classes that the nice but boring woman in accounts went to on a Thursday evening. It didn't even register as a style of music worth investigating. It hadn't occurred to me that it could a vital, influential, political, force of nature every bit the equal of funk or reggae. Then I heard a Salsa comp on Strut records and it opened my eyes. I dived into Fania and Vampisoul reissues. So much amazing music.

Which comp are you referring to? Do you mean this one?

https://www.discogs.com/release/2471818-Various-Salsa-Explosion-The-New-York-Salsa-Revolution-1968-1985

I don't think this one is strictly salsa but I remember a friend playing this one a lot and thinking I should investigate further. I am almost totally ignorant about Latin music

This is one of the best salsa compilations I've ever owned. Not a lot of instantly recognizable tracks but a bunch of amazing ones, especially the first, which has some incredible production from the fake "live audience" at the beginning on down.

https://www.discogs.com/release/3605291-Various-NYC-Salsa-The-Incendiary-Sound-Of-Latin-New-York

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXDRz1JXzYI

Which comp are you referring to? Do you mean this one?

https://www.discogs.com/release/2471818-Various-Salsa-Explosion-The-New-York-Salsa-Revolution-1968-1985

Yeah, that's the one. Like I say, I had zero interest in Salsa before I picked it up (for a pound in a sale as a random punt). It opened my eyes (or should that be ears) to a new world of music and I went from there.

i've definitely been in hoarder homes before -- it's a really grim scene. one guy had records in the bathrooms, under the sinks, everywhere.

― ian

this is one of the things that makes me grateful for technology, i absolutely would've been the person who had newspapers stacked to the ceiling and couldn't move in my apartment, instead i have a black box with unbelievable amounts of crap in it, and it's never going to run out of space. hoarder magic!

West Coast Psychedelic Rock - is never psychedelic or rocking enough

that’s because it’s made for psychedelic people, you are expected to bring your fair share of psychedelic vibe in order to complete the psychedelic experience

maybe you should get hi on the solstice at the beach, and then wade into the water just as the setting sun reaches the horizon, it might help you become a more psychedelic person

I utterly adore both Industrial and Noise music. I realise they’re not for everyone though 🤷🏻‍♂️.

that’s because it’s made for psychedelic people, you are expected to bring your fair share of psychedelic vibe in order to complete the psychedelic experience

That's a good insight, I like that thought

also if we’re talking abt easy rider era west coast psychefelic country rock like david crosby or buffalo springfield you have to remember these ppl were already on the 70s comedown bummer trip before the 60s had even peaked

if you’re talking abt strawberry alarm clock idk check yr ears

Can’t believe I left shoegaze off this poll

<i>that’s because it’s made for psychedelic people, you are expected to bring your fair share of psychedelic vibe in order to complete the psychedelic experience<i>

It was a glib comment in a very long post. For What It's Worth is obviously a 5 star classic that it's hard to understand anyone not liking. Strawberry Alarm Clock... less so.

But if you're expected to bring your fair share of psychedelic vibe in order to complete the psychedelic experience, then almost any music can be psychedelic. I've had acid moments to Swing Out Sister and Cyprus Hill. There's that Banco de Gaia album where Jerusalem rises out of the electronic soundscape. No-one describes Sir Hubert Parry as psychedelia.

I guess our understanding of what is psychedelic depends on time and place. My psychedelic era was the 90s, the place raves and festivals or hanging out around London, Sheffield and Manchester. In my personal conception of psychedelic music, compared with space rock, or Norman Whitfield in full flight, or rainbow trance, or shoegaze, David Crosby sounds as psychedelic as Frank Sinatra. If I'd been in San Francisco with flowers in my hair in 1968 I'm sure I'd feel differently.

But if you're expected to bring your fair share of psychedelic vibe in order to complete the psychedelic experience, then almost any music can be psychedelic. I've had acid moments to Swing Out Sister and Cyprus Hill.

this. I've had far more psychedelic acid and weed experiences listening to Freddie Hubbard than I ever did with Sleep

I’m shocking news weed and LSD can enhance enjoyment of all music, not just hippie shit.

xxp you sound pretty defensive! are you sure you’re actually a psychedelic person, or are you really just an uptight square?!?

my most psychedelic track ever:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bK3APtfqp5Q

I’m shocking news weed and LSD can enhance enjoyment of all music, not just hippie shit.

― ian, Tuesday, 30 May 2023 14:21 (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Not all music. Pick the wrong tunes for your trip and you can end up jittery, spinning out or rolling on the floor hyperventilating with laughter.

xxp you sound pretty defensive! are you sure you’re actually a psychedelic person, or are you really just an uptight square?!?

― the late great, Tuesday, 30 May 2023 14:26 (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Not defensive. Rambling on semi-incoherently = propah acidhead*

* who am I kidding? I haven't done acid for years /middle aged dad/

Not all music. Pick the wrong tunes for your trip and you can end up jittery, spinning out or rolling on the floor hyperventilating with laughter.

― Spandex, Tuesday, May 30, 2023 12:16 PM (twenty-one minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Sad but true. And it's rarely the albums you expect will give you a bad time. Music can be scarily unpredictable in these contexts

Spandyourmindex

xps I think i know what you mean about LP & Mary Ford, their recordings are full of ghosts. It's more paranormal activity music to me than psych and it's on the square side to modern ears. But i could see it as 'mom and dad unwittingly drank the acid-spiked tea'

Not a lot of instantly recognizable tracks but a bunch of amazing ones, especially the first, which has some incredible production from the fake "live audience" at the beginning on down.

this track is so good that it almost makes up for your awful takes on samba, tropicalia and AMM itt.

my most psychedelic track ever:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bK3APtfqp5Q

― il lavoro mi rovina la giornata (PBKR)

lmao WTF is this? this is about as psychedelic as the mf'ing BEACH BOYS!!!!

Imo something about it feels “hyperreal” (more real than reality) that gives it a psychedelic edge. Like it comes from somewhere else that is reality, but where we have been living just ain’t it. Also, there is some weird sound effect (maybe another guitar track) burbling underneath that reminds me of the electric jug in the 13th Floor Elevators.

Also, nothing is lamer than gatekeeping psychedelia.

fwiw all of my posts on psychedelia here are dry humor (maybe lame humor) but in general i agree, which is why i’m not posting seriously!

i do think “genre x does not appeal to me and here are my boring ass reasons why” is at least as lame and probably worse. at least if you’re gatekeeping it means you care about something. usually when ppl complain about entire genres being bad it just means they haven’t engaged with it (or in the right mindset, which is the kernel of truth behind my lame jokes)

also for whatever reason that “smoke rings” track reminds me a lot of beach boys’ “wind chimes”, which i consider to be their peak psychedelic moment, possibly because it reminds me of “at the watering hole” by louis and bebe barron, for the forbidden planet soundtrack (one of the all time great psychedelic films)

Not at all directed at PBKR but a lot of “gatekeepers” are just fans who don’t like noobs barging in “teaching” them things they already know and calling Oasis “Shoegaze” or whatever.

Surprised (or not I guess) that I'm not seeing Deconstructed Club, or any rap/hip hop like Cloud Rap, Mumble Rap, Backpack/Conscious Hip Hop, etc on the list

Guess they're not hip enough

lmao WTF is this? this is about as psychedelic as the mf'ing BEACH BOYS!!!!

― the late great

hahaha that's pretty funny because hendrix put down both "how high the moon" as being old hat and "heroes and villains" as being "psychedelic barbershop".

personally i think both are fucking great! but hendrix is good too. he was into roland kirk, who may or may not be psychedelic but who is fucking good!

the mary ford song reminds me of kay weaver's song-poem "junkies and monkeys" which is a fucking great song about getting high

a lot of those song-poems you know they're just phoning it in but the impression i get is that everybody involved in the recording of that song really did enjoy getting high

Song sounds hyppereal in the kind of way where you'd have to invent some kind of wacky new space-age technology like multitrack recording to achieve

Surprised (or not I guess) that I'm not seeing Deconstructed Club, or any rap/hip hop like Cloud Rap, Mumble Rap, Backpack/Conscious Hip Hop, etc on the list

I think this is the vinyl record collector/Discogs hipster poll, someone should do a digital era version. Should City Pop have been on this one though?

yeah i like a decent amount of rap but i barely listen to anything after the 70s much less 2010.

^^ only listens to disco rap

hahaha that's pretty funny because hendrix put down both "how high the moon" as being old hat

see, he just wasn't engaging with it in the right mindset. the operative word there is "high"

the mary ford song reminds me of kay weaver's song-poem "junkies and monkeys" which is a fucking great song about getting high

a lot of those song-poems you know they're just phoning it in but the impression i get is that everybody involved in the recording of that song really did enjoy getting high

always a little sad someone to see someone who's really talented but never really made it because they were also really fucked up, mind you. i relate to that kind of thing probably more than i should.

ian - are there private press singer/songwriter records of people singing to their cats?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykxZtuttogc