What A Fan Boy!!
This is from a conversation I had with one of the moderators of shoutmouth.com about two years ago. This was before that brilliant and endlessly engaging site was impaled by — what else — ads for ringtones and content about ringtones. A lot of this still stands up. I guess it will be changing less and less as I continue to get older.
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All-time favorites:
1. Modest Mouse (The Moon and Antarctica is a violent, cold and totally tragic way of showing how People and Earth and probably absent God are all connected - blood, salt water, dust, bitter cold, corporate failure, death, dirt, etc.)
2. Dismemberment Plan (Best most fun show I have ever seen. Amazing and thrilling songs.)
3. Ben Lee/Noise Addict (When I was 16, and Ben Lee was 17, he wrote perfect songs for me personally.)
4. Cex (When I was 20 and Rjyan Kidwell was 20, he wrote perfect songs for me personally, plus he threw in that m/f hardness/softness blend I like where he’s a bragging rap star one second, and singing an acoustic ballad the next)
5. The Microphones (They did the distorted explosion better than anyone, because it feels real, with real dynamics. Most records have the dynamics mastered out of them these days. Songs about the beauty and terror of the natural world.)
6. Bjork (Made me realize the textural and emotional possibilities of electronic music.)
7. Smashing Pumpkins (First rock album and first rock show. I bought Siamese Dream for the first half, but the second half exploded my brain.)
8. Sonic Youth (With such creative use of their guitars, they make other bands seem really unimaginative.)
9. Fugazi (see: Instrument on DVD)
10. Yo La Tengo (perfect melodies and brilliant subtle chemistry between band members. They also do the hardness/softness thing by mixing ballads with fuzzed out rock jams.)
Some others that have passed through my favorites are Belle and Sebastian, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Weezer, DJ Shadow, Prefuse 73, Brian Eno, Joanna Newsom, Liam and Me, Wolf Parade, Afghan Whigs, Spoon, Mogwai, The Streets, Q and not U, Nirvana, Trail of Dead. There’s a lot here that I currently prefer to the names in the all-time list. And this unfortunately doesn’t account for all the individual songs I like by performers who I typically don’t like. I like some of those songs better than any song by some of my very favorites.
“Ambulance vs Ambulance” by Blood Brothers is a perfect example of how I look for feminine characteristics (the bell section in the middle) to balance the masculine and vice versa. That song is amazing. I agree with you on the Rolling Stones, and pretty much all Classic Rock. I don’t really care about “attitude rock.” I like Lightning Bolt ok - I saw them play once with the Liars :)
