Thought Dump : Music Edition

shoegaze?

Culture feels completely stuck in this moment, absolutely zero urgency to move on and let it go. Its vision of a timeless and authentic whiteness spoke to people.

Released ten years ago this week. 100th biggest song of the decade in the US, although I think that undersells its legacy and what it meant as a proto-Trump, Instagram-ready design for life for craft beer-drinking megachurch millennials planning big families.

undo wrote:

shoegaze?

Interesting. Never thought of it that way but the opening especially has Chapterhouse/ Catherine Wheel/ Ride sensibilities in the guitar tones. It's really more cranked up distortion than tremelo gauze/ wash, though. I have usually thought of this as a sort of pop-alternative grunge along the lines of Radiohead's "Creep."

I probably first heard the Pixies decades ago and never thought much of them. But each year since I have slowly come to like them more. We’re talking extreme slowness so think total indifference for years that has built up over decades to where now Doolittle is one of my favorite albums.

I can’t think of another band where this happened to me. If I feel indifference for that sustained period of time I just never go back. But with Pixies, each year I’ve gone back to an album or series of songs and now I love all that shit.

Have you ever heard the ‘UK Surf’ version of Wave of Mutilation?



The first Pixies song I ever heard. It was from the Pump Up The Volume soundtrack, imagine my surprise when I heard the version on Doolittle

I was lookin around at Beverly Phono Mart when they brought out Donda. A triple vinyl all black gatefold with no texture or anything else. $60. Dude is a joke. Also he’s getting sued by Marshall Jefferson for using a sample of Move Your Body like it’s 2006…

Did this song ever have a "life" outside of the message board music dork/critic discourse?

I mean it didn't actually get radio play did it?

I wanna range life
If I could settle down
If I could settle down
Then I would settle down

Is "wanna" short for "want a" or "want to"? Does it matter?

settle down

phrasal verb

1: to become quiet, calm, or orderly
Settle down, children.
When things settle down here, I'll come for a visit.
2: to begin to live a quiet and steady life by getting a regular job, getting married, etc.
They swore they would never settle down and get married.

A range life might help you achieve #1 but if #2 is in the cards then having a range life is impossible.

undo wrote:

Did this song ever have a "life" outside of the message board music dork/critic discourse?

I mean it didn't actually get radio play did it?

I still remember hearing this for the first time. Had no idea they had new music out, the video came on a weekday night on MTV and it just immediately blew my damn mind. I think I've seen the video three time since.

I didn't mean to imply that it's "overrated" or that its lack of chart success means it "belongs" to [a demographic of people you don't want your music to "belong" to as a credible rap group]. I guess I was just surprised to see that it peaked on the rap/R&B singles chart at #69 and nothing else here in the US. As if that's even weird. They actually had tons of singles like that, not everything they put out there went top 40. Very far from it. Expecting that this one was going to do numbers or whatever was ridiculous.

now do Kraftwerk!

I just realized I've been singing the chorus to "When Doves Cry" all wrong my whole life

"Too old"?

undo wrote:I didn't mean to imply that it's "overrated" or that its lack of chart success means it "belongs" to [a demographic of people you don't want your music to "belong" to as a credible rap group]. I guess I was just surprised to see that it peaked on the rap/R&B singles chart at #69 and nothing else here in the US. As if that's even weird. They actually had tons of singles like that, not everything they put out there went top 40. Very far from it. Expecting that this one was going to do numbers or whatever was ridiculous.

Yeah, I know. The song was so huge in my life I forget that it was Ms. Jackson that was huge (not that it shouldn't have been but).

In my head canon the guy talking to Harry Dean Stanton in between songs on the Partly Fiction album (a no shit, top five all time record imhfo) is Adam Eget.

Autumn sweater and I Think I’m in Love share a similar groove from a similar time in indie rock. Was this groove a thing? Are there other songs from this era that rode the bass and drums and let the other instruments paint around the edges? As I was typing I thought of Natural One, although it’s groove seems more influenced by breakbeat hip hop.

My first thought was something like Bowery Electric but that's basically like saying "what about trip-hop?" and that's not what you're talking about at all.

My second thought was this, which is also probably outside of what you're looking for. (This was also a "hit," I have no idea what this group was about, if they were really going for it for if they just happened to get swept up in the last gasps of major labels gambling on "weird" alternative music.

Spoiler:

While I like that song it’s more like oversized breakbeat hip hop. Maybe these 2 songs just really sound like each other and this should have gone in the HOLY SHIT! Same song thread. Either way, I hope everyone enjoyed a little autumn sweater and a little think I’m in love, some dreamy good jams, imo

the Kevin Shields remix of "Autumn Sweater" is my most tantalizing road not taken for late 90s music as a whole. I know I've gushed about it here or in the deleted archives of JDFF but I haven't repeated it in a while: just a beautiful singular thing that even 25 years later has no peer

I forgot to say that yea, that remix is amazing. Sounds like Dots and Loops eta Stereolab to my ears, to each their own.

I also came here to say that it took me this long to realize that you could swipe your YouTube videos to the side and still do other things while your video plays in the background. This changes things

What if "Blinding Lights" is my favorite song of the last ten years?

Is it time for me to hang it up

What has the 21st century produced that is on the level with music of the 80s?

Everybody Wants To Rule the World
Melt With You
Running Up That Hill
Billie Jean / Thriller / Wanna Be Startin Something
Genius of Love
Fast Car
Purple Rain / When Doves Cry
Bizarre Love Triangle
West End Girls
Fascination Street
Head Like a Hole
Where the Streets Have No Name (or whatever U2 you want here, or none of their songs look I know they're not cool anymore but what do we have that fills this niche now? Coldplay? get out of here)
Total Eclipse of the Heart
Take On Me

^These were all "popular" songs back when they came out, not misunderstood indie deep cuts or whatever. What in the world from 2000-2022 that was similarly popular has a snowball's chance in hell of actually "getting better with age" (as I'm always assured by everyone that music will always be, yeah right).

Is this idea just a generational constant and there's already a huge canon of 2000s music that is AMAZING and I'll just never feel it or understand it? Not saying that every decade needs to have a Bob Dylan or that we're screwed if Kanye isn't literally The Beatles or something. I just don't see where the good songs were. Maybe if people bothered to make a few of them, the world would be just a little less fucked up right now? Just a theory!

Undo - That list of songs certainly contains some untouchable, all time favorites of mine. You can hear most of those every other hour on Sirius XM 1st Wave.

I have extreme nostalgia for 80s U2 and Songs from the Big Chair. Madonna’s 80s singles are extraordinary no matter what you think of her later releases.

I’d add Concrete Blond’s “Joey” to the list but I think it was released in 1990. I associate it with the 80s though.

Nick wrote:I’d add Concrete Blond’s “Joey” to the list but I think it was released in 1990. I associate it with the 80s though.

This is a song that I have come close to starting a thread about a few times.

I saw it on this list, which in itself tells one of the weirdest stories about the music businss/culture/ "the 90s" that you'll ever come across.

But really I found myself coming back to this song and wondering who the singer was.



And then hearing "Joey" and reading that it was a top 20 hit in the US, but then not even being sure that I had ever heard it before. I wanted to start a thread about that but I already did that kind of thing once and I don't know if it would be as well received a second time around.