Band's bands

I hope I put the apostrophe in the right spot.  Whatever.  There are some bands out there that it seems like are most appreciated by other bands.  And probably a subset of hipsters who enjoy knowing that a popular band actually gets a lot of inspiration from some obscure band from the seventies or something.

I think a lot of times, these bands push some boundary or other that most casual listeners aren't aware of, so what they hear are songs that sound a little strange, rather than songs that are doing something unique.  But then members of a band, being more aware of all the things that are easier and harder to do, musically, listen to these same songs and realize that something was happening there.  Inspired, they take these strange sounds and refine them in a way that is more listenable to more people.

One band that I was thinking about this morning that I think falls into this category, is Wire.  They've been making music since the late 70s.  Their first concert, apparently, was the first time some of the band members had played their instruments.  It didn't go well.  But they stuck together and learned to play music together as a band.  They've been through some crazy incarnations over the years, and are still producing music now.  Here's a selection of my favorites:

'Strange' from their first album Pink Flag, later covered by R.E.M.:

'The Other Window' from Chairs Missing:

'Ahead' from the Ideal Copy, their fourth studio album.  I love this song:

They just released a new album earlier this year, so I haven't had a chance to really listen to it yet, but don't let that stop you from tracking it down and giving it a shot.  It's self-titled.

Not my three favorite songs

Even if I'm not drawn to a piece of music personally, I start thinking about the kind of person that would be drawn to that music.  It's a fun way to develop characters, I've found.  Take three songs and think of the person who would have those as their top three songs.  It works really well whether you use three really similar songs or three totally different ones.  It's kind of like the restaurant game, where you look at strangers a few tables away and try to come up with their backstory.

So, for those of you who like a writing prompt, here are three songs to associate with a character. Name/Age/Sex?  What do they look like?  How old are they?  Where did they grow up?  What do they do for a living?  What do they want to accomplish?  What's stopping them?

Uriah Heep - The Wizard

The Cult - Big Neon Glitter

Mother Love Bone - Stargazer

fIREHOSE

In high school a bunch of my skater friends were really into Red Hot Chili Peppers.  This was about when Mothers Milk came out, but a lot of the guys had Uplift Mofo Party Plan in heavy rotation in their stereos, too.  I became particularly attached to Mothers Milk for a while.  It had a kind of punk/rap/funk thing going.  The first song on the album, "Good Time Boys" has a line in it that goes "...tell you 'bout the band called fIREHOSE!"

I figured that any band that RHCP sang about was probably good, and probably a lot like them.  While it's true that fIREHOSE is indeed good, they are not actually much like Red Hot Chili Peppers.  Since this was in the dark ages before the internet could tell me what a band sounded like before I bought the album, I just saved up my money and bought the fIREHOSE album fROMOHIO.
On cassette.

At first I was really disappointed.  But, I'd spent money on it, and I was always looking for something that could be my kind of music, differentiated from my brother and my cousin, who had some solid musical circles they were exploring.  My brother was particularly into Sonic Youth at this time, and my cousin was deeply into the Doors.  So I kept giving fIREHOSE a shot, and they started to grow on me.  My favorite song on the album ended up being two songs in a row - "What Get's Heard," a kind of funky spoken-word thing followed by "'Nuf that shit, George," a 2+ minute drum solo.

Going back, I think fIREHOSE has more appeal to me now than RHCP does.

the Jam

I was listening to the Jam today, surfing through their greatest hits and looking for gems.  I'm mostly familiar with their song "That's Entertainment," which is awesome.  They've got some great earlier punk tracks that I know I'll be going back to, but the song that really leapt out to me was English Rose, an amazing and lovely song that really broadened my view of the Jam.  I want more.

And in case you need a little refresher:

Let's go

I was looking on ebay for my two favorite Bauhaus albums on vinyl, "Burning from the Inside," and "The Sky's Gone Out."  These were key albums in my teen years, and through them I discovered Love and Rockets, Tones On Tail, and the solo work of Peter Murphy and Daniel Ash.  I also had a cassette of David J's called "Songs From Another Season," which I never really got into.  Having found music that I felt was uniquely mine amongst my friends, I wanted to be a completionist, so I worked on getting every Bauhaus album, every Love and Rockets album, and all the solo work and side projects.  Being very poor, and also this was before the internet was a place where you could at least listen to music if not download it easily, I did not succeed in my quest.

Now that I enjoy getting things on vinyl, I'm interested in gathering some of my favorite albums from that time of my life.

A side effect of shopping for one or two records is that many people on ebay are selling lots of records.  So naturally I take a look at what they've got for sale to see if there's anything else I could add to my potential purchase and save on shipping.

I spotted a copy of "The Sky's Gone Out" for sale, and checked the sellers other offerings, and located a couple albums by bands I'd never heard of, but which turned out to be pretty good.  One of those was "The Reducers," from the mid-80s and the other was "The Shocking Blue" from around 1969.

and

Black holes

I was all prepared to make an awesome list of songs and/or albums with "black holes," as the theme, but google failed me.  The band Muse has their song "Supermassive Black Hole" from the album "Black Holes and Revelations," and that pretty much fills up any google search that includes keywords like "songs about black holes."

I only really started this search because I came across this prog album by The Neutrons called "Black Hole Star," and was enjoying it's qualities.   And then I thought, "well, there's the Muse song, and there's "Black Hole Sun" by Soundgarden... surely there's a few more... But if there is, it'll take me a lot more time than I have right now to find them.

As a consolation, here's an album that couldn't quite make this non-list, but which is also good: