Currently Listening to

[BiscuityBoyle]

Never knew until now there was a video made for one of the tracks off Nico's classic Marble Index, but they sure chose a good one. Probably the weirdest thing about it is that Iggy Pop is wearing a shirt!

[BiscuityBoyle]

Revisiting the classics under quar... 

[BiscuityBoyle]

Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth recalls, "I found Ege Bamyası in the 49-cent bin at Woolworth's. I didn't see anything written about Can, I didn't know anything about them except this okra can on the cover, which seemed completely bizarre. I finally picked that record up, and I completely wore it out. It was so alluring. Something about it made Can seem to be playing outside of rock 'n' roll. It was unlike anything else I was hearing at the time."

The emphasized bit is why I think Can was SO important for countless New Wave bands, from The Fall to Throbbing Gristle to Sonic Youth. "f*ck Robert Palmer and f*ck rock 'n' roll" etc.

[SueC]

The other day it was the letter K, the highlights of which were short:

[Ulrich]

...the highlights of which were short:

Thank heavens, I hadn't listened to half of the examples for the other letter... 

[BiscuityBoyle]

Easily the most obscure and undervalued of all the Soviet piano masters

[SueC]

...the highlights of which were short:

Thank heavens, I hadn't listened to half of the examples for the other letter... 

Bwahahaha!   

I'm sorry to be the bearer of these news, but "L" turned out to be a total treasure trove.      I'll get around to it soon.      

Here's a preview:

[BiscuityBoyle]

[piggymirror]

[BiscuityBoyle]

The beauty of this album is something else. Had Debut been the only thing she's ever done, she'd still be among the all time greats.

[SueC]

Bwahahahahaha!     

This is what @Ulrich has been waiting for - and perhaps a few others as well:  The extra-luscious extra-long highlights of the luxuriant letter "L"... 

...which I will have to do in instalments... as there is so much to enjoy... 

More Waterboys, love love love this song:

Once I got over U2 doing a dance track, I really took to this - because it's several levels above the common monotonous boom-boom dance music that's never attracted me:

Lament doesn't make it to the highlights for me, sorry - but I will give an honourable mention to its guitar component, which I do really like (just nothing else about it...  )

Here's an excellent bit of comedy from a favourite, and very obscure, comedian:

Suzanne Vega has a lovely habit of giving some back story to her songs - although this one is a bit short! 

And we all know this one...

More Suzanne Vega:

My all-time favourite Pink Floyd track:

One of my all-time favourite bands; they just make me soar:

A song which Mike Scott described as stripping paint off the walls - and a huge favourite with Brett and me... excellent lyrics, exhilarating stop-starts etc...

...and one of my favourite Cure songs; another "chamber orchestra" type moment...

...we both prefer this song live.

That's 10 - and I'm not doing any more than that per instalment.  Who knows how many instalments "L" will bring... 

[SueC]

The beauty of this album is something else. Had Debut been the only thing she's ever done, she'd still be among the all time greats.

This is such a nasty thing to say...     

It's really uncool to go around making statements like that about someone's career, person etc, as if you were some kind of universal oracle of all truth.   

[BiscuityBoyle]

Hmmm. Who the alleged nastiness is directed toward in this obvious counterfactual?

[Ulrich]

Can't see anything "nasty" there, I just see "praise" for one specific album.

Keep the discussions about taste or universal truth down to a minimum, please. This topic is about "currently listening" & not about "all time greats".

[BiscuityBoyle]

Ulrich,

the last thing I want is to challenge your authority as moderator. You're very good at it. However, it seems to me that this rigid demarcation of what can be said in which thread can reach a point where it's not particularly conducive to interesting discussions being conducted. A conversation worth having typically involves not only the kind of digressions and off-topics you would rule as permissible; but it can end up in wholly unexpected places. Maybe the supposed topic of discussion is only the pretext, and the real topic is something else entirely etc. IMHO the impositions of a priori restrictions on the range of discussion is a significant reason (obviously, not the only one and not the main one) why message boards have grown obsolete.

If this forum had hundreds of active users, all gung-ho and argumentative, then this kind of mod activity would have been necessary. As it is, there's a small group of users who are all adults, and are not prone to spamming, flooding, ad hominems and all the other cardinal sins of message boards. Thus, sometimes when rules are breached, it's worth to let the discussion flow - as I see it, there's more to lose by restricting it than by allowing it.

All of this is to say that I am genuinely curious why Sue felt that my apparently "innocent" (in reality nothing is innocent!) remark about Bjork was nasty. There are many possible interpretations and they're all interesting. For example, there's a view (which I take seriously) that to praise is to patronize: who am I to say that Dante is a great poet etc! Not saying this is it, just one random possible interpretation. Or maybe Sue has some general grievance with my posts here - this is also interesting and should, imho, be opened up. Does it really matter that it's in the "currently listening" thread?

Thanks for the understanding.

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What I'm currently listening to is this piece by Stravinsky as conducted by Bernstein. Now Stravinsky - that's a great composer! And don't get me started on Bernstein as an interpreter of Russian modernism.