Re: music recs for a new person

Hi.

My short life has been composed mostly listening to classical music (this is what happens when you play violin for 10 years). While I still love classical, lately I've become interested in other types of music, but I'm still pretty much a novice. I came to this web site hoping to find some good stuff I could listen to, but it's all pretty overwhelming. There are just so many damn bands.

I was wondering if anyone could recommend some essential music. So far I’ve been having a huge interest in the Pixies and the Velvet Underground, but I want more! I’m embarrassed to admit that I don’t know much about music, especially being from New York City. I would greatly greatly greatly appreciate bands and albums that I should listen to. A thousand thank-yous if you can help me out. I would love any suggestions. Thanks again.

Scroll through this thread and you'll have a great starting point:

[trouserpress.com]

If all that is a little overwhelming, here's 20 or so albums I'd suggest beginning with - all are great albums which would still be pretty accessible for a newbie - then explore the rest of their catalogs (check their entries on this site for guidance):

Television - Marquee Moon
Patti Smith - Horses
Modern Lovers - Modern Lovers
Jesus and Mary Chain - Psychocandy
The Cure - The Head on the Door
Radiohead - OK Computer
Talking Heads - Fear of Music
Echo and the Bunnymen - Ocean Rain
Brain Eno - Here Come the Warm Jets
The Clash - London Calling
Joy Division - Closer
The Ramones - The Ramones
David Bowie - Scary Monsters
Kraftwerk - Trans-Europe Express
Guided By Voices - Bee Thousand
OMD (Orchestral Manouevres in the Dark) - Architecture & Morality
Can - Future Days
REM - Murmur
Sex Pistols - Never Mind the Bollocks
Gang of Four - Entertainment!
The Go-Betweens - 16 Lovers Lane
Kate Bush - The Dreaming
My Bloody Valentine - Loveless
Uncle Tupelo - No Depression

Also, you could check out these two boxed sets from Rhino Records: NO THANKS and LEFT OF THE DIAL for good overviews of punk and post-punk.

Oh - and if you're really, really new to all this:

The Beatles - Revolver



Post Edited (07-03-05 09:40)

I read the thread and copied down most of the albums and artists. I can already tell a lot of money is going to go into this new interest!

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll definitly be checking those out.

superceded elsewhere



Post Edited (04-09-07 16:51)

Basement Tapes ` Band/Dylan
Fun House Stooges
Anthology of American Music V/A
Double Nickels Minutemen
Let It Bleed Rolling Stones
Shazam The Move
Sex Machine James Brown
Four Scott Walker
Younger Than Yesterday The Byrds
Odessey & Oracle Zombies
Revolver Beatles
Pink Flag Wire
Sister/Lovers Big Star
Flip Your Wig Husker Du
Dub Housing Pere Ubu
Pet Sounds The Beach Boys
Black Monk Time The Monks
Teenage Head The Flamin’ Groovies
Ogden’s Nut Flake Small Faces
The Chess Box Chuck Berry
The 50’s Sessions Elvis Presley
Mr. Excitement Jackie Wilson
The Who Sell Out The Who
White Light/White Heat The Velvet Underground
Dusty in Memphis Dusty Springfield

Oops - can't forget the holy trinity of late 70s pissed off Englishmen:

Elvis Costello - This Year's Model (or Get Happy)
Graham Parker - Squeezing Out Sparks
Joe Jackson - Look Sharp!

and other pub inspired blighters:

Nick Lowe - Pure Pop for Now People
Ian Dury - New Boots and Panties
Squeeze - Argybargy
Wreckless Eric - Greatest Stiffs

All of the above are unassailable suggestions. Daydream Nation would also be at the top of my list. What is great about most of these albums will they will leave you itching for more by either that artist or others who drew inspiration from a particular album period.

In your mad rush don't leave behind the less esoteric, but morefundamental building blocks. I'm talking about the Beatles (everything), the Stones (1966-71), the Who (Who's Next and everything before), VU (where you say you're starting - good show), Dylan (start with Bringing It All Back Home or Hwy 61 and work forwards, then backwards), and Styx (to bast bold relief on the previously mentioned artists).

And finally - read Trouser Press reviews!

For a newbie, the Rhino comps (as mentioned earlier) are fantastic starting points "Left of the Dial" and "No Thanks!"......A few great records not mentioned yet that I think pretty much any rock and roll fan can enjoy : The Replacements "Tim" ; Richard & Linda Thompson "Shoot Out The Lights" ; Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers "L.A.M.F. - The Lost '77 Mixes".

The posts above have a lot of the good indie stuff covered. I'd also recommend Rhino's DIY power pop/punk collections and a fabulous collection of mostly '70s British punk, Burning Ambitions (that's if you have a turntable ... the CD version leaves off and awful lot of good stuff).

As for earlier stuff that's quite good:

--Jerry Lee Lewis - Live at the Star Club. Perhaps the best live album ever ...
--Any Rock 'n' Roll Trio collection. The Burnette brothers at their wildest.
--Bo Diddley Is a Gunslinger. Great cover, great record.
--The OKeh box set. Late '40s/early '50s wild jump blues, R&B and rock 'n' roll. Has great Big Mama Thornton and Screamin' Jay Hawkins sides.
--The first Stax box set. Expensive, but the 9 CDs are worth every penny. Mostly great. Even the lesser known stuff that pales a bit in comparison to, say, Otis Redding, is "merely" excellent. The second and third box sets are also good, but provide diminishing returns.
--One or two of the fabulous "Stompin'" series of jump blues collections. Does rock 'n' roll begin here? Aw, who knows. Wild, overlooked stuff. If you really love it, buy all 20+ volumes!
--The blues? You can't go wrong with collections of Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, the second Sonny Boy Williamson, Furry Lewis (Shake 'em on Down), John Lee Hooker, Robert Johnson ... that's plenty for now ...

If you have an interest in jazz, a few records not by the obvious Coltrane/Parker/Davis lads:

--Duke Ellington/Max Roach/Charles Mingus - Money Jungle
--Sonny Rollins - Way Out West
--Lou Donaldson - Alligator Boogaloo (and many other funky platters by him)
--Jimmy Smith - Cool Blues (*great* live jazz record). Also think about The Sermon for more serious Smith and Got My Mojo Workin 'for funky fun.
--Ornette Coleman - Change of the Century
--Andrew Hill - Point of Departure
--Yusef Lateef - Pretty much anything up to the early 70s (also applies to Coleman, Smith, Donaldson and Rollins; I know less about Hill)
--Hank Mobley - Soul Station
--Mongo Santamaria -- his funky '60s/'70s party records are lots of fun. His best-of is uniformly excellent and in print on CD (as are most of these records). His early '60s jazz/Latin records are also great, in a totally different vein, but I'm not sure if they're in print anymore. See also Willie Bobo.

Some more obscure indie rock-type stuff that I happen to enjoy:

--Sweet Baby - It's a Girl: Berkeley punk *before* Green Day. Unbelievably catchy
--Sockeye - Retards Hiss Past My Windows. Only for those with strong stomachs who aren't easily offended. You won't believe it, but you'll find yourself singing along to "Boy With the Breast Implants."
--Paw - Dragline. Not so obscure, since folks made a fuss over them when they first released this, but who ever mentions them now? Their second album kind of bites.
--Kent 3 - Any record except Screaming Youth Fantastic
--Exploding Hearts - Guitar Romantic. Derivative? Yes, but lots of fun.
--Boyracer - To Get a Better Hold You've Got to Loosen Yr. Grip
--United States Three - either Le Temps Du Tempo or She's the Word; I think they're available online. Their other albums aren't as good.

Newer bands I like include The Hold Steady and Electrelane ...

Overwhelming, I know, but let us know what you get and what you like ....

Holy mackerel, rivka is going to need a winning lottery ticket to follow through on all these recommendations!

I hope your local library system makes CDs available for checkout. (The library in my town does, and it has a decent selection -- not to mention a well-organized inter-library "loan" system. Believe me, if that's true in my town, it should be true almost anywhere.)

Come to think of it ... that's an idea for a new thread. Wait for it ...

Noticed on the breno list - No Depression by Uncle Tupelo. The Anthology 1989-1992 CD is also brilliant, but one you hear thet you will want to get all four albums anyway and then probably all the Son Volt, Wilco, solo Jay Farrar etc. Just a consistently good output.

Add to that

Richmond Fontaine - Post To Wire
Tuxedo Moon - Desire
Mescalito - One Path In A Million
Hammell on Trial - Tough Love

Good tip re: public libraries. Look up these albums on the NYC library website - it should tell you which library is stocking them. Then, run all over the city from library to library checking 'em out. You can record them, which would save you a lot of money. (Not that I would ever recommend doing such a thing to our beloved record companies!)


More must-haves:

rock:
"Nuggets" (various artists)
Brian Wilson - "Smile"
PiL (Public Image Ltd) - "Second Edition" aka "Metal Box"
Meat Puppets - "II"
DEVO "Q: Are We Not Men"
Black Flag "Damaged" or "Everything's Gone Black"

Funk & soul:
Any best-of/hits collection: James Brown, Sly & The Family Stone
Marvin Gaye "What's Going On"

Rap:
Any early ('80s/early 90s) Public Enemy, Run-DMC, De La Soul, Eric B & Rakim

(He he, no-one's mentioned Nirvana.)

I can't believe I forgot:

Talking Heads "Remain in Light"

Aw, what the heck - as long as we're burying the guy, here's five more by people that I think no one has mentioned yet but that no rational human being should be without:

Bob Marley - Legend
The Essential Johnny Cash
The Buzzcocks - Singles Going Steady
XTC - Black Sea
Neil Young - Rust Never Sleeps
Cheap Trick - In Color

Yeah, okay - that's six. If I knew how to count, I wouldn't have been an art major. I'll shut up now and let poor Rivka be, and if I think of any other albums (like, maybe Blondie - Parallel Lines, the Flaming Lips - The Soft Bulletin, the Soft Boys - Underwater Moonlight, or the first Specials album) I'll keep them to myself.

I suspect the reason no one has mentioned Nirvana may be that (from what I've seen) a lot of the recommendations are focusing on classics that are older and/or a bit more obscure. Nirvana's work is, IMO, both recent enough and well-known enough that its influence can still be spotted easily.

Of coruse, Nirvana's "influence" may mean nothing to someone who's grown up on classical music. On the other hand, I've heard at least one "String Quartet Tribute to Nirvana" CD. (It was pretty cool, too.)

The two Rhino boxes that Reno and mats mentioned (*No Thanks!* and *Left of the Dial*) will indeed provide an excellent sampler of many of the artists mentioned in this thread.

I didn't see Blur mentioned in the above posts (my apologies if I missed it), but *The Best of Blur* is a very good sampler, especially if you can find a copy with the bonus live CD.

Good hunting, rivka! Godspeed!

Thank you all! Yeah, I'm going to be going to all the libraries on this small island. Keep the recommendations coming!

Hugs and kisses for all,
-rivka