5 posts tagged “music”

Do you tend to like music in particular genres, or are your tastes all over the place?  What are your most and least favorite musical genres?

I'm pretty open-minded when it comes to music now (working at a record store for four years -- on and off -- helped with broadening my horizons, for sure) but I do tend to gravitate towards the guitar-bass-drums end of the spectrum. I'm a sucker for a great bassline, in particular, which is why I love the Minutemen so.

I should also note that when it comes to music, I'm much more into labels than genres -- whether those labels comprise a bit of everything (like the glory days of SST) or are mostly genre-specific (metal labels like Relapse and Hydra Head, for instance). Independent record companies are far more curatorial than their major-label counterparts, so the quality quotient is that much higher.

Music-wise, what was the first 45, single or download you bought? 
Submitted by Paddy Melt Wagon.

'Animal' by Def Leppard. It's still not a bad song, so I don't feel very guilty about it.

The last few days I've been listening to Slayer's masterpiece Reign In Blood on rotation. I go hot and cold on metal, much like I do with every genre that's represented in my music collection, but this one album in particular has caught my ear in a new way since I pulled it out for a spin on the National Day of Slayer a few weeks ago.

Most metal from the 80s -- heck, most anything from the decade -- has dated badly, even if it was critically acclaimed or widely appreciated in its time. No matter how good certain canonical artists or records are, they're undeniably trapped in the time of their creation. But every time I listen to Reign In Blood I'm convinced it could have been recorded yesterday. It just sounds so fresh, so now, so robust and razor sharp, as if it's about to burst out of your speakers.

It really is the sound of four young men playing to save their lives, pulling out all the stops and making a great leap of faith, melding the speed and ferocity of hardcore with the technicality of metal without being 'crossover', and forging in the process a whole new style that inspired millions, but could not itself be truly duplicated. Even Slayer themselves couldn't repeat the magic, at least in my opinion -- I couldn't care less about any of their subsequent albums, however many great songs are dotted among them.

I was only six years old when Reign In Blood came out, and I didn't hear it until my mid to late teens, so I can't even fathom how much of a shock it must have been upon its release. It's simply light years ahead of its contemporaries (Metallica's groundbreaking Master of Puppets, released merely a year before, is weak and insipid in comparison).

And even now I'm sure there are kids who weren't even born when it was released who are just discovering Slayer's masterpiece for themselves, and being blown away at how well it stands up against even the most extreme metal being released today.

A week from tomorrow I will be popping over to London for a short three-day visit, ostensibly to see the Modernism exhibition at the V&A, and to hang out with my good buddy Dave R who's escaping from Redditch for a while.

But I do have another motive: I'm determined to visit the Rough Trade shop, at long last, after my two previous abortive attempts (in 2001, lost in Covent Garden; and 18 months ago, bewildered on the wrong section of Talbot Road). If I don't find it this time I'll cry, I really will.

Aside from that, I'm planning to fill up the rest of my time with some quirky sightseeing and gallery-hopping. My current list of attractions is as follows:

• The Tates, Modern and Britain
• Thomas Demand at the Serpentine Gallery
• Future City at the Barbican Art Gallery
• The City of London Festival
• Dan Holdsworth: At the Edge of Space, Parts 1–3 at the National Maritime Museum
  

I'd also like to take some interesting photos around the city, for which I'll do a bit more research on good architectural walking tours and the like before this weekend. My time in London may be limited, but I want to make the most of it. (Hell, I'm paying enough for the privilege.)

So I might as well use this Vox thing to turn this question to the audience: What should I see? What's good to photograph? What am I missing? Your contributions will be muchly appreciated -- bonus points for anything that's free.

Which songs would be on the soundtrack to the movie about your life?

If I could, I'd have an all-SST soundtrack -- given enough money, the right lawyers and the power to presuade Greg Ginn, I'd revive the label and re-release its entire back catalogue (even the crap stuff) -- but if I could only settle for one artist it would be the Minutemen, and if only one record then definitely The Punch Line, for it is the finest musical recording of any genre ever committed to magnetic tape.