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Musicians who got you into other musicians

Started by Sin Agog, April 12, 2019, 02:45:54 PM

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Sin Agog

I wish Kurt Cobain had a twitter account so I could thank him for turning me onto The Raincoats at just the right age.

Sin Agog

Also This Heat citing a couple of gamelan comps as influences (Golden Rain specifically) certainly helped me in my quest towards becoming too good for the World Music section at HMV.

Sin Agog

Fuck, forgot about the Nurse With Wound list.  God, must have blown so many fucking brains wide open and filled them with parasitic bacteria that ensured they'd never be themselves again back in 1979.  Such a noble way of utilising the buzz from getting signed and putting out your first album.  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nurse_with_Wound_list

Dr Syntax Head

Dandy Warhols got me into Brian Jonestown Massacre who in turn got me into endless new psychedelic/garage bands.

Verve A storm In Heaven got me into all the shoegaze.

holyzombiejesus

Thanks for the shitty fucking Bradford singles and Jobriath tapes, Morrissey.

On a positive note, even though I have fallen out with him because of his shitty uninformed tweets regarding Jeremy Corbyn, Stephen Pastel has been alerting me (not personally) to great bands from across the world for about 30 years.

Sin Agog

Quote from: holyzombiejesus on April 12, 2019, 03:51:06 PM
Thanks for the shitty fucking Bradford singles and Jobriath tapes, Morrissey.

On a positive note, even though I have fallen out with him because of his shitty uninformed tweets regarding Jeremy Corbyn, Stephen Pastel has been alerting me (not personally) to great bands from across the world for about 30 years.

Wassamatter with Jobriath?  Maybe a whole album's a bit much, but he had a couple of nice glam stompers.

grassbath

The YouTube-fame of white college nerd funk band Vulfpeck led me to a Reddit 'ask me anything' session with bandleader Jack Stratton, where he was asked his fave Steely Dan album.

QuoteROYAL SCAM

years later i realized that it's PURDIE and RAINEY -- that's the reason I dug it so much.

Having written messrs Becker and Fagen off, with prejudice borne from only the chorus of 'Reelin' in the Years', as middle-of-the-road 70s FM dad-rock, I investigated further. Which led to a full-blown two-year obsession with those extended-chord high-polish snarkmeisters, the embers of which are still glowing in my playlists today; some embarrassingly purple posts on the subject in this sub-forum; a considerable improvement in my own piano playing ability; and the dawning realisation that Jazz Is Actually Very Fucking Good.

I'd listened to the most canonical releases by Dolphy, Evans, Coltrane, Brubeck, Mingus, Davis and the like before, and 'appreciated' them, in the begrudging sense of not being smart enough to 'enjoy' them. But SD had snuck the delights of jazz harmony into my brain under the guise of pop, parcelled it up as a more palatable language. Hardly realising it, I'd been drip-fed the holiday-camp phrases and the grade-school grammar, and now I found myself confidently ordering a taxi at the airport. Soon I was at a bar, asking for all the right drinks and getting admiring glances from women. 'Jazz,' I told my captive audience, 'is conversation; the raw data of existence, ordered and organised by subjective takes on a common object. This holds with a high-modernist sensibility. Yet an intensely social music.' Eventually on the strength of observations and truisms such as these I got my willy sucked. Later, when the alcoholism had started to take hold, a friend asked if I wanted to go see Vulfpeck at the Shepherds Bush Empire and I spat in his face. Like actual phlegm.

Sin Agog

Recently sat through an interminably long Marc Maron intro to an episode of WTF.  He has really important news, says Maron.  It may not rock your foundation, but it is still pretty seismic stuff, says Maron.  Sit tight, listeners.  And so he kept on going for several minutes.  The news was that he now likes Steely Dan.

This vid from motormouthed antipunker Jeffrey Lewis turned me onto a few of my fave New Yoik acts from the '60s after pausing and replaying some of the names a few times: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fnmrAthgi8g

Poobum

I subscribe to Zola Jesus'patreon and she mentioned an upcoming collab with Ionnalee, checked her out, loved her, booked my first trip ever abroad to see her in concert in Amsterdam last week, first music concert as well actually cause I was one of those mental shut ins days gone by. She puts on a good show and just comes across as a lovely human. Great that there's space for all these artist to exist outside the mainstream connecting direct with fans.

sardines

I'm sure I'm not the only one whose formative music tastes were built around Radiohead interviews and increased Internet access at the turn of the century.
It is all established now but Can, This Heat, Talk Talk all that stuff still felt like a discovery at the time.

My favourite was finding John Fahey via Drag City then asking a local store to order me a No Neck Blues Band album as it was on Fahey's label. It took 8 weeks to arrive and came encased in a block of wood, much to everyone's confusion. Still one of my favourite albums.

Dr Syntax Head

Quote from: sardines on April 13, 2019, 10:04:42 AM
I'm sure I'm not the only one whose formative music tastes were built around Radiohead interviews and increased Internet access at the turn of the century.


I feel lucky to have enjoyed my formative years well before the internet (80s and early 90s). It took a fuck load of effort (borrowing hard copy music, spending time listening to the radio, endless reading of magazines etc) and it just felt like I was more invested, I kind of got deeper into music. Maybe it's cos I'm old now and my taste is well established but (boring cliche statement coming up) music seems more disposable, even the good stuff. It's just thrown on the net and it's just there, it's too easy. That's just my perspective anyway.

BRMC got me into JAMC. I know many will cringe at that but there it is.

NoSleep

"I think all the musicians in jazz should get together on one certain day and get down on their knees to thank Duke." - Miles Davis. Charles Mingus had also sung his praises.

I finally got around to checking Duke Ellington out and was gobsmacked (mostly on account of the period from 1924-1949; before the album era); he's essentially the granddaddy of popular music (even Robert Johnson is influenced by him). Biggest shocker, early on, is hearing Duke's trumpeter, Bubber Miley (I say "Duke's" but they were equal partners from the outset, it was the biz that necessitated Duke being pushed to the fore), on the earliest stuff, basically doing what Hendrix would do years later with a wah wah pedal; Bubber is the original Voodoo Chile and Hendrix had told people, before the invention of the wah wah pedal, that he wanted to sound like Bubber).

Have some 1942 Duke (featuring Joe "Tricky Sam" Nanton playing some amazing wah-wah trombone, who had been in the band since the Bubber period, learning some of his tricks from him, although greatly developing the technique): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uu7G9Q9VLM

Have some 1926 Bubber & Duke: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaBIAh3RrT0

Elvis Costello got me into Mingus and Ellington. He nominated Ellington as Artist of the 20th Century on Channel 4. He also championed Chet Baker of course.

'Mississippi Moan" (1929) is an amazing work of art:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JR7H5rknvvU

Of course in jazz you get these organic chains due to collaborations, so Coltrane led me to Eric Dolphy; Billie Holiday to Lester Young; Louis Armstrong to Ella Fitzgerald (they did three albums together). The closest examples in rock might be John Cale, who is everywhere, and of course Bowie, who connects just about the whole of the 70s.

NoSleep

Quote from: Satchmo Distel on April 13, 2019, 11:59:54 AM
Elvis Costello got me into Mingus and Ellington. He nominated Ellington as Artist of the 20th Century on Channel 4.

This is the exact truth; Duke is a musical giant who contributed more to the development of popular music than anyone else can get near to. Just in terms of musical theory he advanced music in a way that can only be compared to the innovations of classical composers like Stravinsky, Schoenberg or Ives. He was one of the major figures that emancipated the dissonance in music. That's aside from being a great musician, composer, arranger & bandleader. I believe he had an ability that is the musical equivalent of a photographic memory that allowed him to draw from other musicians performances that they could not have achieved alone; he is like a jeweller, placing them in a perfect setting to sound the best they could ever be. The same sharp ear could translate the sounds of his surroundings into music (e.g. Daylight Express).

Another artist who led me to some good Ellington is Joni Mitchell. The version of Jeep's Blues on the compilation album she made up, of some of her favourite music, comes from one of my now-favourite Duke albums - Hot Summer Dance (1960). Her other selected Duke track is the amazing Subtle Lament from 1939.

Dirty Boy

Mike Patton.

Mr Bungles Disco Volante album got me listening to loads of 'out there' music and afforded me a path away from the mostly straight ahead metal i spent my early teens into. Went from Bungle to Zappa, Beefheart, Prog etc on to The Residents, Melvins, Foetus and Naked City and then proper weirdo stuff like Nurse With Wound, basically whoever he mentioned in interviews and/or worked with.

If i met mr Patton i'd tell him he probably saved me from listening to Megadeth all my life, but i'd also kick him for making me buy Adult Themes For Voice.


NoSleep

Chris Cutler from Henry Cow got me into loads of stuff via his mail order catalogue and shop, Recommended Records, including Sun Ra, This Heat, The Homosexuals, R. Stevie Moore, Fred Lane, Plastic People Of The Universe, Art Zoyd, Univers Zero & Harry Partch. I owe him.