Re: Most beloved band I've never heard a single note by...

The Mountain Goats

No real reason I've never checked them out, beyond the fact that they seem to be most beloved by the sort of people who irritate me. But mostly, I just never have gotten around to it.

I've heard a few tracks from the Mountain Goats. You aren't missing much, IMO.

For the longest time this was true of me with American Music Club - like 5th or 6th album into their career - which made no sense as they were right in the middle of the period where I should have heard them a lot.

The Mountain Goats to me are that catch 22 where John Darnielle is witty and clever sometimes but often in such an insular way it often plays as annoying instead.



Post Edited (10-03-17 13:28)

I quite like the Mountain Goats. Darnielle can be overly clever, for sure - I've totally ignore the band's most recent album based on professional wrestling for that very reason. (Though I tend to ignore sports-based music as a general rule - cf. the Baseball Project, which I should love due to the people involved, but find dull and difficult to get next to, because I can't relate to the subject matter. Anyway.) But he can also be incisive and moving.

The band's early work can be tough going - badly recorded, as insular as Mats mentions, not particularly well sung - but the addition of regular bandmates and a touring regimen has improved Darnielle's performances quite a bit.

Update: corrected to give credit to "insular" to Mats, not Delvin, as originally posted.



Post Edited (10-03-17 12:06)

I love Getz/Gilberto, and bossa nova. it's a wondrous music, somehow so rhythmic, yet mellow and low-key. The usual thing is to have pounding rhythms for upbeat songs, then the drums all but disappear in the ballads. How did they do it?!

How do I know this? I spent the '90s investigating stuff like bossa nova. I figured rock was creatively exhausted and I'd heard everything you could do with four white guys on electric guitars. Hence, not only do I not know Mountain Goats, I don't know Slint, Pavement, Sugar (and I loved Husker Du) etc etc. Like the man said, you can't listen to everything.

(Heff: Listen to GBV's "Gold Star for Robot Boy." It's only like a minute and a half, and you'll be ever so happy.)

From time to time, I think, "I really need to explore this music." Then something else comes up, usually a major assignment, and back to the backburner it goes. Though I do have some albums by Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso, Tom Ze and Os Mutantes. I did do a little exploration of tropicalia. I also have the comp album David Byrne put together. But I've never explored the stuff from before, and I haven't kept up with what's going on now outside of the psych band Boogarins.

It was because I didn't like Mould's 1st 2 solo albums so I had written him off at that point.

I wonder if I've heard any songs by Justin Bieber? Maybe i'd know em if I heard em...

Never heard GBV, Mountain Goats, Slint, Pavement, Sugar, Husker Du?

Wow, I dont even know y'all anymore



Post Edited (10-04-17 14:22)

"Hence, not only do I not know Mountain Goats, I don't know Slint, Pavement, Sugar (and I loved Husker Du) etc etc. Like the man said, you can't listen to everything."

Wow! You have never heard Sugar??!! I thought I was a contrary curmudgeon [and I try], but Sugar's first album, "Copper Blue" was a stunning piece of rock music. My definite favorite of 1992 and I have to say I never heard a note of Hüsker Dü.



Former TP subscriber [81, 82, 83, 84]

[postpunkmonk.com]
For further rumination on the Fresh New Sound of Yesterday®

Actually, Mats used that term. (Hmm, odd juxtaposition ... mountain goats being insular.)

I'm sure there is a beloved band out there I've never heard, but due to my job(s), I do tend to hear at least a little bit of most things, even if it's something I don't seek out or never want to hear. I'm trying to think of something, but can't. I suppose whatever electronica band Pitchfork is championing right now would be a good fit.

I've never consciously listened to Kanye West. I have to have heard his music around somewhere, just because of his popularity, but I've never been aware of it.

Edit: Wait! I think I've got one. I don't believe I've ever heard a single not by Hiss Golden Messenger.



Post Edited (10-03-17 12:15)

I love the Mountain Goats. Here's a nice gentle "love song" to start with:
[www.youtube.com]

Your appreciation of this song probably depends on whether or not you think a verse like the following is clever (I do):

"Our love is like the border between Greece and Albania
Our love is like the border between Greece and Albania
Trucks loaded down with weapons
Crossing over every night
Moon yellow and bright"

I was listening to this band called the Island Goats. Not bad, but, I dunno ... they seemed kind of above-it-all ...

I saw John Darnielle open for Beulah(I think) back in the `90s so I guess I've heard some of the Mountain Goats - don't remember much from the show, however.

I've missed out on all of the current bands to love because I'm old and not interested in trying to keep up. If I hear, I'll hear it.

The one that I haven't heard (maybe unintentionally) is Guided By Voices. Please don't hate me.

One thing I've realized after years in the music business: it's impossible to keep up with everything. So I stopped trying. Not in the sense that I'm not keeping my ears open, but in the sense that I don't feel guilty for not being up on everything, because if I did that, I wouldn't get to listen to the things I love, or be able to spend time with my family and friends, or, y'know, eat.

I was just having a discussion with my dad this morning where he asked me about bossa nova because of the Getz/Gilberto album. I've never heard it and barely know anything about bossa nova. Not out of lack of desire (though 50 million plays of "Girl From Ipanema" have ensured it's not at the top of my list) but because there's just SO MUCH.

So you not having heard GBV is not a surprise, nor anything to be ashamed of.

Spacemen 3

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Spacemen 3

I've heard them, but I think it was too late when I did. I think maybe had I heard them at the time in their proper context, my mind might've been blown, but since I didn't hear them until long after I'd heard all the shoegazers, I was kind of "Well, that was pretty good, I guess" when I finally listened to Spacemen 3.

Agree with Monk on Copper Blue. Bob Mould definitely brought everything he'd learned from his Hüsker Dü experience (not to mention his first two post-Dü solo albums) to Sugar, in the best possible way. With grunge coming and going during the early '90s, Copper Blue remains timeless.

Sugar's other two releases, the Beaster EP and File Under Easy Listening, swing the pendulum a bit further toward rage and melody, respectively. Both are well worth hearing, though. Look for the reissues on Merge, to get the works, including some great B-sides.

I've heard that same sort of incredulity from people who learn I've never heard Adele, Katy Perry, Rihanna, Demi Lovato, and suchlike. I simply tell them I severed diplomatic relations with the top 40, a long time ago.

During our vacation last month, we mostly listened to UK radio stations, and enjoyed the heck out of what we heard. At one point, though, our friend who was driving cued up a playlist on her phone that she was in the mood for. We didn't complain; after all, she was putting up with driving on the left side of the road, so she deserved some leeway.

The playlist was Demi Lovato, Meghan Trainor, Nicki Minaj and other artists in that vein. Later, my wife and I talked about it, and we agreed, mainstream American pop has not improved at all since the last time we had anything to do with it.

These days it seems much easier to be completely unaware of anything in the Top 40 than it used to be. Maybe it's just because I'm old, but it seems like it used to be impossible to completely ignore the top 40, and you'd pick up the latest hits through cultural osmosis.

Nowadays, though? I can honestly say that I have no clue if I have ever heard anything by Ed Sheeran, Fifth Harmony, twentyone pilots, Charlie Puth (who appears to have the number one song in the country right at the moment), etc. etc.

I heard Imagine Dragons for the first time today riding to an out of office lunch with my boss.

I think I've heard one Chainsmokers song, but from what I've read, if you've heard one you've heard them all.

I know I have heard Bieber, Meghan Trainor, etc, and could have happily done without hearing them. On the other hand, I actually think Carly Rae Jepsen and Selena Gomez make some kind of interesting pop records.

But otherwise, looking at the Top 40 is a strange experience - how can people get so popular and be so completely easy to ignore? That doesn't seem to have been the case in the past.

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how can people get so popular and be so completely easy to ignore?

By selling in much smaller numbers. The charts are relative, after all. You can get a "hit" selling 30k copies. In the '80s bands like The Minutemen could sell 30k copies and not even scrape the bottom of the charts

Now's my turn to be surprised: never heard Husker Du? Before the internet, college radio was about the only place to hear alterna-sounds, and they were doin' the Du all the time, it seemed like.

(btw, Can someone please make me a cool-lookin bumper sticker or T shirt that says "What Would Husker Du"?)

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By selling in much smaller numbers. The charts are relative, after all. You can get a "hit" selling 30k copies.

That's true to an extent, but it's not like one heard songs from Thriller everywhere back in the 80s because they were walking past the homes of the millions of people who had it and heard them blasting it out their windows. You heard it because the number one song in the country back then used to mean something and would saturate the media in nearly every way, to an extent to which the current stuff doesn't.

And of course, I know the reason is the death of the monoculture, so that every retail chain now has its own curated soundtrack and there are 500 channels on tv and you now have to actually work hard to watch anything that you don't really care to watch, and obscurity is as valued as popularity so something like Better Call Saul would be more likely to feature Henry Badowski on its soundtrack than Justin Bieber. (It hasn't, but one can dream.)

But it really is surprising (to me, at least) the extent to which it's easy to ignore the #1 song on the Billboard charts these days, given how impossible it is to escape some pop culture figures. Fewer people watch Keeping Up With the Kardashians than probably watched the lowest rated episode of The Facts of Life, but that hell clan has still managed to permeate the cultural conversation to an extent that Lisa Whelchel and Nancy McKeon never did (though come to think of it, the fact that 30 years later I remember that Nancy dated Michael J. Fox and was stalked by a lunatic for breaking up with him might damage my point slightly.)

Anyhow, if it was simply a numbers thing, Kim Kardashian ought to be as unknown to me as Ed Sheeran. (Also, if it was a perfect world thing...)

So the monoculture is dead, but it still inflicts some unwanted detritus on the public at large. But it doesn't manage it for music anymore.

Maybe Taylor Swift still does - I've never willingly listened to her, but I do know several of her songs. And i am aware that her newest song sucks, despite never having heard it - I've heard the conversation around it, anyhow. And Lady Gaga managed to be inescapable for a while during her "La la la oh na na, ba ba oo Gaga" phase. But those sorts of songs have increasingly become anomalies in the last decade.

Anyhow, it's 99% possible nowadays to only consume the pop culture one wants to consume, and it's hard for anything to be forced on people like it used to be.

"During our vacation last month, we mostly listened to UK radio stations, and enjoyed the heck out of what we heard."

Top 40 in the UK is way cooler than it is in the U.S. At time of this note, Wolf Alice and Shania Twain are battling for the #1 spot across the pond. Wolf Freakin' Alice...why are they practically unknown in the U.S.?... and a country artist... in England. When's the last time a country artist hit #1 in the U.S.? Then, there's the perennial campaigning for "Fairytale of New York" -- which inexplicably is never programmed into any Christmas-music stations in the U.S. (some of which flipped to Christmas format this past week.)

I would imagine Casey Kasem probably begged his boss to let him do UKT40 because UK's Top 40 was way cooler in the 80's, too. We got "We Built This City," and they got The Style Council, XTC and Ultravox. So not fair.

"I would imagine Casey Kasem probably begged his boss to let him do UKT40..."

"They're from England and who gives a f**k!"

-Casey Kasem from U2 by Negitvland

Sweet! I want a shirt/sticker like that too!

> Then, there's the perennial campaigning for "Fairytale of New York" -- which inexplicably
> is never programmed into any Christmas-music stations in the U.S.

"You scumbag, you maggot/You cheap lousy faggot"

Actually, I'd say it's quite explicable. Most U.S. radio programmers would balk at those lyrics any time of year. Unless Toby Keith was singing them to a protester or something.