Bands you should get but don't

[West End Zuma]

Bands you should get but don't

Ploughing thru the links on the Tracks of 2011 thread is an agonizing experience. Most of it leaves me cold, indifferent or simply bemused. One or two I could warm to. But I have to say most of it is drek. But then I'm an old duffer so I suppose I would say that.

[Bored Of Education]

Bands you should get but don't

Luckily, I am so old that I have hardly heard any

[Reed John]

Bands you should get but don't

I've been thinking about this lately because I listened to a ton of pandora on my drive to an from Boston this weekend.

Red Hot Chili Peppers - except for the cover of Higher Ground, I always hit skip.

Vampire Weekend - I have that one album downloaded. Need to delete it. It just grates on me now.

Black Keys - I like a few of their songs, but not all of it. I feel like they should be right up my street.

[KGR]

Bands you should get but don't

As a newbie that none of you 'know' nor care about, I am going to post a new name to this ace thread anyway.

Foo Fighters.

Led by a bloke who has drummed for Killing Joke and QOTSA, two great bands, and obv ex-Nirvana, FF are a band that I am always interested in hearing any new output, but then inevitably disappointed by. Just so ordinary where there is such potential.

[Renart]

Bands you should get but don't

Reed John wrote:

Vampire Weekend - I have that one album downloaded. Need to delete it. It just grates on me now.

They were recommended to me by several friends (because I listen to lots of ska and highlife, I suppose), and I was intrigued at first, but quickly arrived where you are. There's something very irritating about them.

[dalliance]

Bands you should get but don't

I'm another one in the Sonic Youth camp.

I don't mind them as such, they are decent enough, but there must be a hundred bands I prefer who would quote Sonic Youth as a key inspiration.

Afficionados would scoff at my favourite SY track too, Sunday from the generally unheralded A Thousand Leaves album.

I also did not get the big initial fuss around Glasvegas. Again, they were ok, it's just that they were only the fourth best band from west central Scotland making that sort of music at the time. The Twilight Sad, Meursault and Frightened Rabbit were all better than them. I actually liked the second Glasvegas album more, at a time when everyone else seemed to have moved on.

Not read all of the thread but I am sure that someone has said Bob Dylan. Not only do I not get him, I actively dislike everything about him.

[nmrfox]

Bands you should get but don't

Agree with all those who said Vampire Weekend. Irritating beyond words, as in my books, are Moby, Shania Twain and The Cure. Appreciate that two of these technically aren't bands, but still get on my nerves.

[The Red Max]

Bands you should get but don't

U2, I never got the big deal with them, even though several of my mates with similar music tastes love / loved them. Can't put my finger on it, just never took to them.

And it's not just because Bono is a pompous arse, and some geezer called Dave Evans has christened himself "The Edge". They deserve each other in my opinion.

[Bored Of Education]

Bands you should get but don't

You've come to the right place, RedMax

Foo Fighters.

Led by a bloke who has drummed for Killing Joke and QOTSA, two great bands, and obv ex-Nirvana, FF are a band that I am always interested in hearing any new output, but then inevitably disappointed by. Just so ordinary where there is such potential.

Foo Fighters exactly. I wasn't a fan of Nirvana but but love, L-U-V, QOTSA. More to the point, all the reference points of Foo Fighters are the same as mine but I just don't get it or they don't get me perhaps.

I even watched that documentary about their history which I found fascinating as it is rare that you get a film of a film from the moment they start pretty much. Having said that, whenever it got to the music, it was a bit ho-hum

[Spearmint Rhino]

Bands you should get but don't

There are ten pages of this to wade through, so can someone tell me: have we defined 'get'? Do we just mean 'enjoy', or is there a sense of 'comprehend' to it?

[beak]

Bands you should get but don't

I'd call Bjork a musician I don't "get" - I can have a totally pleasant time listening to her stuff if someone else sticks it on, and can hear loads of things going on I find exciting and interesting. But I'd never say I particularly like her music, or am a fan, nor do I ever feel any interest in going out and buying the albums.

Radiohead are a band I approach differently. I feel like I should get them, if only due to the weight of opinion I get from my peers etc., but whenever I hear their music there is nothing whatsoever that makes me think ooh more of that please.

Aren't a lot of the bands in this thread being mentioned similarly to the latter? That is, bands that one feels one should like on account of external influences, but it just doesn't happen, as opposed to have something that has all the elements in place, but fails to light a fire in you.

[Taylor]

Bands you should get but don't

Going back to "Live At Leeds", you can gauge how into it you're going to be by listening to the first twenty seconds:

http://depositfiles.com/files/e6h19ez70

If you think "oh my GOD, this is the most incredible rhythm section I've ever heard... they're doing things I never imagined possible, and all within the structure of a basic hard rock tune", then you'll love it. If you just think "yeah, yeah, rock bollocks" then it won't be for you. Because it all sounds like this.

[Bored Of Education]

Bands you should get but don't

There are ten pages of this to wade through, so can someone tell me: have we defined 'get'? Do we just mean 'enjoy', or is there a sense of 'comprehend' to it?

It is 'enjoy' obviously but it is more than that. I dislike The Smiths, the Cure, Nirvana and Radiohead but I can see why people like them. The artists on here are more that you can't see what other people see in them as well, I suppose

[Bored Of Education]

Bands you should get but don't

Actually, I think I defined it better in the opening post

[Lucia Lanigan]

Bands you should get but don't

Taylor wrote:

Going back to "Live At Leeds", you can gauge how into it you're going to be by listening to the first twenty seconds:

http://depositfiles.com/files/e6h19ez70

If you think "oh my GOD, this is the most incredible rhythm section I've ever heard... they're doing things I never imagined possible, and all within the structure of a basic hard rock tune", then you'll love it. If you just think "yeah, yeah, rock bollocks" then it won't be for you. Because it all sounds like this.

See, that's absolutely not true. Because I think it sounds incredible - I love The Who - but on Live at Leeds they stretch out at such tedious length that the dynamic goes out the window. They were the best band in the world for a 3-minute song or 20-minute set in the mid-60s (high praise indeed) but a 15-minute version of 'My Generation' is just pointless. You can't be explosive while admiring your own handiwork.

I do think they were one of rock's greatest wastes. I mean, you can hear how smoking they were on their Rock 'N' Roll Circus performance, and they were obviously doing things with the pop song that hadn't been done before. But all that oompah-loompah, 'Jim'll Fix It For You' bollocks in the middle - how much better would it have been if they'd written a decent middle-eight instead?

[Amor de Cosmos]

Bands you should get but don't

They generally managed forty minutes or so but, yeah you're right, three minute songs was what they were good at. They're what Townsend was good at writing. You can string them together and call it an opera, or stretch them out with wanky squawks and thumps but, in the end they're still just — pretty damn good — three minute songs.

[Reed John]

Bands you should get but don't

I forgot the most obvious example:

The Smiths - I like some of their songs, but not many. They're probably the most popular band in 80's college rock - or what the industry now calls "classic alternative" - right in my wheelhouse, but I often find myself hitting skip on Pandora when they come up.

[Sean of the Shed]

Bands you should get but don't

I'd say Radiohead are an odd case. Certainly up to the first three albums I "got" them, as did many others, though it was easy to see how others didn't get them or just didn't enjoy their stuff. From Kid A onwards though, I've come to the conclusion that all they now do is produce self-indulgent bollocks, and anyone who says they get them is probably wanting to like it and acting as though they like it because they think they should like it, probably because they liked the earlier stuff and want to stay associated with that earlier period, either that or there are some people who have a different sound filter and find something in it that I just can't see.
It's also possible that Radiohead have become my real-life Tween wave.

[Reed John]

Bands you should get but don't

I have the same feeling about Radiohead. I liked a lot of the first few albums but, sadly, the "self-indulgent bollocks" tag does seem appropriate for the more recent stuff.