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Your Musical Opinions!


Iceheart
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I suppose you may be right... I guess I find it hard to comprehend not liking any music because music is so intrinsic to my existence. Everyone in my family is very musical, I play an instrument, sing in the shower, hum tunes when I walk, sometimes whistle, and I consciously listen to as much music every day as I can. So I can't fathom it not being a part of who I am. So far in my 34 years of life you're the first person I've "met" who claims to get no enjoyment from music.

 

As for dancing, well that's just as intrinsic to human nature. The only reason people don't like to dance is a social hang-up. They either think they can't dance, think its stupid (usually because they think they can't and are embarrassed), find social situations awkward enough anyway without trying to move their body to a rhythm. But again, like music, dance is a primal form of human expression ingrained in all of us. Any anthropologist will go on about both.

I agree with you. I mean does music hurt your ears if you do not like it? If not why does the Acedemy Awards have a category for music in movies if people didn't like it. Music enhances the movie experience.

 

Music makes me happy and expresses my moods. Cruddy day at work, I put on metal and grind on the way home. Want to be happy, I put on songs I can sing. Best part of going to church is when I sing hymns and do assisting minister so I can do the Psalm in chant.

 

But like all things music is subjective. While I like Mastadon's March of the Ants not everyone will. And Celine Dion makes me want to tear my hair out.

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Not if you buy quality speakers. Cheap ones aren't going to give good quality, but we have a couple of Bose speakers and they're quality.

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I've got a Bluetooth portable speaker called the Beloit 15 and it sounds amazing. It's better than any home hi fi system I've heard.... Short of something that costs thousands. I gotta say I was really surprised by the sound quality. I give it 6 stars out of 5.

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The Bose speakers(except the mini) are built speaker first. The Beloits are Bang & Olefsens so yeah, quality speaker first. Bluetooth headphones and the cheap speaker boxes were never meant to have high end sound considering more often than not your listening to highly compressed mp3s.

 

I mostly listen to my music through pretty good wired headphones. Still mp3s though, but my wife doesn't like my Metal music at high volumes so.......

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I think there's a pretty big difference between the bluetooth headphones you get a TJ Maxx for $15, and a really good bluetooth speaker.

 

And this is why I think it's absurd that certain phone companies are doing away with the headphone jack in favor of bluetooth.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I am now entirely convinced that these two idiots are who Arcade Fire are singing about in Rococo.

 

It's not even a joke. It would be a joke with a visual element, like a super fancy golden evil robot snake. But without that it's just "ha ha these words sound similar ha ha" without any real subverted meaning that would make it clever and like... I really hope they don't breed.

 

Anyway, if it isn't Baroque, don't fix it.

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I just found out that Archer voice actor, Jon Benjamin hired a bunch of jazz musicians to play back up for an album he was recording. He does not know how to play the piano. He played it for the album. It made it to #68 on Apple's charts (I think) I heard it on NPR. HAHAHAHAHAHA!

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Guest El Chalupacabra

Last month, while in Flagstaff, I caught a live band named MainMan, which has the dude who played McLovin in Superbad in it. They were actually pretty good.

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  • 3 weeks later...
Guest El Chalupacabra

Much truth there! I'm going through that right now with Send Me An Angel by Real Life. And when it comes to new wave/alternative, sure there are a lot of artists like Pretenders, b52s, Depeche, REM, Talking Heads, Culture Club,Tears for Fears, Duran Duran,The Cure, new Order, Pet Shop Boys, etc (that's just a few) that are well known, but there are so many bands that had 5 minutes of fame with 1 or 2 hits, that when I go back and listen to music from that era, I have to look them up! Like, for example, who really remembers When I'm With You by Sparks? Some may (certainly not me), but they have to be hard core new wave/alternative buffs. And I lived through the 80s!

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I have spent all my life saying I hate country music, but I finally realized I don't. What I hate is the 90s forward Top 40 version of country. Garth Brooks, Travis Tritt, and all those other jackholes in giant button up shirts and cowboy hats singing about pick-up trucks and line dancing ruined a legit cultural music genre.

 

Old school country was blues southern rock or some evolution of cowboy music.

 

I've been listening to a lot of alt country / southern gothic bands lately like Neko Case, Cat Power, Handsome Family, Jim White, and Brown Bird.

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Guest El Chalupacabra

Yeah I used to be the same way, Tank. I don't mind Garth Books or Alan Jackson or Dwight Yokam, so much (not a fan, but I can TOLERATE them), but most of the modern country is hard for me to stomach, and they are just singers who want to tap into the vast country audience, but they really want to be rock stars (Keith Urban is an KIWI!! What a Fraud). No kidding, either. Garth Brooks was the first of those guys to be on the record of literally saying as much. Indeed, in the 1990s he tried this alternate persona (the Chris Gaines nonsense) and tried to be a rock star, but flopped hard. But overall, I am not a fan of modern country (I HATE Toby Keith). But as I have become older, I have come to appreciate, indeed even LIKE, older country, like Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristopherson (Highwaymen kind of got me into them), plus Crystal Gayle, Hank Williams JR (NOT SR!), Rosanne Cash, Elvis (always liked his rockabilly, came to appreciate his country and gospel stuff when I got older)and a few others.

 

I can pretty much say the same thing about hip hop/rap, too. I love me some Digital Underground, Tone Loc, Cypress Hill, 2Live Crew, Easy E and rest of NWA, etc, but there are no modern rapsters or hip hop I even remotely tolerate.

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I think that the nineties were a volatile time for country music. Garth Brooks changed things a lot. I actually like Garth, he was one of my first concerts with my dad, but the stuff that followed him was awful. Kinda like how I love the Beastie Boys, but hate the rap-rock that came out after them.

 

The nineties had some really traditional country starting out - Alabama, Hank Jr., Willie, Waylon, Dolly and Kenny Rogers were all still fairly big. Dwight Yoakam was probably the best of the new guard in terms of keeping traditional country alive, but guys like George Strait, Mark Chesnut and Randy Travis also helped lead more traditional stuff. Lots of other acts, too.

 

Then Garth happened and the race to pop music started. Although Garth started out a lot more country than he ended. I think Shania Twain was the end of country music. Now mainstream country has no connection at all to the history or culture.

 

Hank III is worth a listen, if you haven't heard him. He does both country and metal, both very separate, but it helps show the similarities between the two that I always thought were there.

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I have spent all my life saying I hate country music, but I finally realized I don't. What I hate is the 90s forward Top 40 version of country. Garth Brooks, Travis Tritt, and all those other jackholes in giant button up shirts and cowboy hats singing about pick-up trucks and line dancing ruined a legit cultural music genre.

 

Old school country was blues southern rock or some evolution of cowboy music.

 

I've been listening to a lot of alt country / southern gothic bands lately like Neko Case, Cat Power, Handsome Family, Jim White, and Brown Bird.

If you don't already, you need Townes Van Zandt in your life. One of the greatest songwriters of all time.

 

For modern alt.country Justin Townes (named after Van Zandt) Earle, son of the great Steve Earle, is also pretty great. Not as good as his father, but that's a very high bar to beat.

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Guest El Chalupacabra

I think that the nineties were a volatile time for country music. Garth Brooks changed things a lot. I actually like Garth, he was one of my first concerts with my dad, but the stuff that followed him was awful. Kinda like how I love the Beastie Boys, but hate the rap-rock that came out after them.

 

The nineties had some really traditional country starting out - Alabama, Hank Jr., Willie, Waylon, Dolly and Kenny Rogers were all still fairly big. Dwight Yoakam was probably the best of the new guard in terms of keeping traditional country alive, but guys like George Strait, Mark Chesnut and Randy Travis also helped lead more traditional stuff. Lots of other acts, too.

 

Then Garth happened and the race to pop music started. Although Garth started out a lot more country than he ended. I think Shania Twain was the end of country music. Now mainstream country has no connection at all to the history or culture.

 

Hank III is worth a listen, if you haven't heard him. He does both country and metal, both very separate, but it helps show the similarities between the two that I always thought were there.

Totally agree. Like I said, I don't mind Garth Brooks. Most of his stuff I can listen to, if someone else has it on. I just don't actively seek out his music for personal listening. My first exposure to Garth Brooks where I discovered I actually thought his singing was good (back then I didn't even give country a chance) was when he covered the Kiss song Hard Luck Woman, on the Kiss My Ass tribute to Kiss CD. And I think he was one of the first modern country acts, if not the first, country singers to incorporate pyrotechnics in his shows and his concerts were run like rock concerts. I want to say he got that idea from Kiss. Totally valid to compare him to the Beastie Boys, too (fun fact, the Beastie Boys were originally a punk rock band). But great mentions for Dolly Parton, Alabama, and Kenny Rogers, and I'd add John Denver (I think most consider him folk or soft rock, but he had some country too) there, too.

 

Also, good point about the 1990s being volatile, and I'd add not just about country, either. The 1990s was the beginning of the end of *music in general for me. By sometime around 1999 to 2001ish, I started finding myself going back to listen to older music, rather than looking forward to new music coming out, unless it was by artists I was already a fan of. There were a few exceptions here and there, but as a whole, I started going back to music from previous eras by the early 2000s. During the 1980s, I mostly listened to classic rock or metal, with some top 40 or new wave stuff, but not a lot. I was mostly just about metal or rock back then. In the 1990s, I got into alternative, goth, synth/synth pop, punk, grunge, and industrial, but only stuff from 1990s. By the 2000s, I circled back to older stuff I missed out on and used to turn my nose up at, including country, classical, jazz, disco, motown, rockabilly, new wave, old blues (BB King, John Lee Hooker, Tbone Walker, Muddy Waters, etc), and other genres that I didn't really listen to all that much.

 

Bottom line is that for me, there is nothing wrong with listening to older music. I work around a lot of younger people who haven't reached that conclusion yet, though I am sure they will at some point. In fact, like reading a classic book, if you haven't heard an artist from a previous era, it's still new to you. I know the music industry is built on pushing the next new thing, and music is sort of disposable now, but (to paraphrase Bob Seger) most of the *newer music coming out these days just lacks the soul and uniqueness of earlier areas.

 

*talking about signed musicians that are mass marketed...there are tons of great artists you never heard of, and likely never will, that play local venues that are awesome!

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My mother was a huge country music fan so I grew up listening to Charlie Pride, Alabama, the Oak Ridge Boys, Crystal Gayle, etc. The turn from pre country to a more popish sound was inevitable of it was going to survive. It's a mostly devoted fan base that rolls with the times. Mostly. You still have those old coots who won't listen to anything other than bluegrass.

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