REALLY kind of LONG POST about MUSIC like lofi, punk, noise, minimalism, drones, whatever

read posts by my friends joe and niki about music got me to thinking........(they are both linked on the left)

so there is a big scene in los angeles it all is about a place called "the smell"

i have never been there but ive read about it

some of the bands that have come from there are no age, health, abe vigoda, and mika miko

no age is maybe my favorite band, they are kind of a mix of noise and punk and lofi

health is kind of too weird for me, they are a big time noise band, here is one of their more accessible songs

check out the song "die slow"........it is really gooooood

abe vigoda is called a "tropical" punk band. i think the label "tropical" is kind of bullshit maybe here is a pic of them performing at my school:

one of the singers in mika miko is hot, i want to see/know her, they are a punk band

wavves is also from that area but they suck. i used to think he was a good band but then i watched live videos of him and realized he had less talent and humility than me at music, and i just cant deal with that


now maybe it is possible that the middle age punks in l.a. are pissed about this shit. they think that these bands are ripping off their old scene. back in the day bands were lofi because they were poor, now bands do it because they want to sound cool. whatever

i guess there were some good bands back in the day in california

the germs were legit

black flag was also a good bad. i like black flag i think. i've always had a soft spot for the songs "nervous breakdown" and "wasted" and "depression" and "gimme gimme gimme". i hate henry rollins though, i think he ruined the band.


the dead kennedys were also from cali; though they were from the bay area. i used to love that band. same thing as black flag though: their most famous member and singer (jello biafara) sucks.

their best song is "kill the poor" or maybe "holiday in cambodia" or "too drunk to fuck" or "viva las vegas"

the cramps were also from somewhere in california. one of their songs was featured in pulp fiction i think. they came a couple years after these other bands.

the minutemen were good too. crazy bass lines. kind of post-punk. more on that term later maybe.

also from california (l.a. for sure) was a band called X. ray manzarek from the doors produced their first record. they kind of suck.

the angry samoans were also from california. they were definitely from l.a. here is a great song by them:

check out the song "gas chamber" by the angry samoans

and while all these fucking bands were rocking out in l.a. there were others scenes of hardcore punk as well such as good ones (detroit-negative approach; nevada-7 seconds) and bad ones (nyc-agnostic front)

there was also a scene going strong in washington d.c.

minor threat was the main band in that scene. they were into "straight edge"::::::FUCK THAT SHIT.......but they were a good band

bad brains was the best band from that scene. except when they played fucking reggae. they should have left that stuff to bob marley or scratch perry or whoever. but they were black, so whatever.





after a while these bands declined or broke up, and then d.c. was the birthplace of post-hardcore with bands such as rites of spring, dag nasty, and fugazi.

other good post-hardcore bands came later. some of these are at the drive-in, sunny day real estate, jawbreaker, and some people like a band called the blood brothers as well.

there is a band called Les Savy Fav

they mix post-hardcore with post-punk in an almost perfect way, in my opinion.


which brings us to post-punk. les savy fav would be part of the new post punk revival. but first we need to go through the original post-punk movement.


i will just split post-punk between u.k. and u.s.a

u.k. was a bit darker, i would say....it brought about goth rock and shit like that, while the u.s.a. was more artsy fartsy and brought about shit like "new wave" but also very cool stuff like noise rock

for the u.s.a.

the ramones were the first punk band for all intents and purposes. they were big at the cbgb bar, along with other tight shit like patti smith and television and the talking heads and suicide and richard hell. aside from the ramones and maybe richard hell, all of these bands from that nyc scene can be considered "post-punk" in that they were expanding and experimenting with punk. i think patti smith and television and suicide came before the ramones though. who cares about labels anyway?

patti smith was like a poet and shit

talking heads were badass...david bryne is kind of too weird an ass maybe though. hes funny i guess.





suicide werent even really a punk "sounding" band...they were like avant-garde electronic music...i guess thats how they were punk

glenn branca might be my favorite "band" from that scene...he was a post-minimalist guitar pioneer, i would say

he was part of the "no wave" scene which was a reaction to the pop tendencies of punk bands such as the ramones and blondie and which is featured on the seminal album NO NEW YORK (download it) it featured teenage jesus and the jerks (lydia lunch) and the contorions (james chance)



outside of nyc there were bands in my homestate of ohio, including devo and the dead boys and pere ubu






that band is from my hometown and went to my old college FUCK YEAH


mission of burma is also a really good post punk band...they were from new england or some shit

husker du...where the fuck were they from?....they were hardcore or college rock or whatever...pretty good band...lots of people love them


MEANWHILE, in britain the few first big punk bands were the sex pistols, the clash, the damned, and the buzzcocks




but the main strength in britain's alternative scene was the "post-punk" bands

they produced joy division (up there with no age as one of my favorite bands), the fall, young marble giants, piL (johnny rottens 2nd band), gang of four, the psychedelic furs, wire, orange juice (used to like them a ton), and the raincoats.........

joy division was the greatest. but then their lead singer killed himself. he was depressed.


so the rest of the band started a new band called new order, that made crazy amazing songs like this that were even more groundbreaking.

young marble giants were very minimal and raw and experimental. they did their style better than the band "the xx" is doing it now.

so was gang of four, but gang of four did it a bit heavier

the raincoats were a girl band, but they were very influential. here is my favorite song by them: "the void"

a few years later there came another more conventional band that totally ripped off the raincoats. they were good though, their name is The Vaselines. kurt cobain liked both of those bands a lot.


and then there were other bands that carried post-punk into a much more commercially accessible path, such as the smiths and the cure and echo & the bunnymen

my favorite album by the smiths is "meat is murder"

my favorite song by the cure is "killing an arab"


back in america, following punk a lot of bands followed the more new wave bath that talking heads and devo and blondie were heading down, while other bands decided to stay close to punk with their hardcore sound, but others diverged down the more noise-based sound explorations of the "no wave" movement

some of these were big black, sonic youth, maybe dinosaur jr. especially their earlier albums, and maybe some of the pixies music even

big black was led by steve albini, he has produced lots of famous records including by bands such as nirvan (in utero) and the pixies

sonic youth is the shit. you cant hate them.

my favorite sonic youth records are "sister" and "murray street"

also around this time some bands in britain were making music that was a reaction to the commercial accessibility that many postpunk bands were striving for. it was called "shoegaze", which was their interpretation of the punk ethos/aesthetic. some of these were my bloody valentine, slowdive, jesus and mary chain, and cocteau twins.

here is an interview that explains it:




in the 1990s nirvana got big and all that shit. whatever. that helped bands like green day and the offspring and rancid achieve lots of success. which was maybe okay. weezer was kind of doing some lofi shit. dont believe me niki? check out the album "pinkerton"....its great. ( i think)

also in the 1990s a lot of bands were making much more experimental music that was very lofi. (i still need to talk in depth about lofi)

some of these were pavement (whatever), guided by voices ( kind of lame), lightning bolt (noise rock), neutral milk hotel and olivia tremor control (freak folk, both part of elephant 6), and the microphones/mount eerie (really soft folk)

the glow pt2 is the microphones best album

i saw mount eerie live last year, it was very good

elliott smith is called lofi on wikipedia. i think that might be suspect. but he was chill.
he wrote his senior thesis on kierkegaard.


hold on a second....we gotta take it way back. like to the beats or even before the beats and the 60s shit.

there was john cage. from him comes noise music and maybe minimalism to some extent as well.

then there was lamonte young who was miminalist (see well-tuned piano). then there was philip glass and steve reich and terry riley and arvo part. also there is a drone band called stars of the lid.

check out terry riley's "a rainbow in curved air"


and all these dudes influenced the velvet underground, the greatest band ever


they brought drones and noise and lofi and everything to the forefront, or whatever

they are my favorite band ever, followed by joy division followed by my bloody valentine followed by no age

lou reed was fucking insane. he was the velvets lead singer




also a big band in that era was the stooges. i liked the stooges. iggy pop was their lead singer.

brian eno was a big deal too, he was great in roxy music and solo

same with the new york dolls, but i dont really care for them too much

so then there was punk and postpunk and new wave and no wave and hardcore and college rock and jangle pop and dream pop and shoegaze and grunge and popunk and then there was
THE POST PUNK REVIVAL

some of the important bands in this were the strokes, the libertines, le tigre, yeah yeah yeahs, arcade fire, franz ferdinand, the fratellis, and those other bands

notice how this scene developed into bullshit

here is the cover of the strokes first album when it contained the song "NYC cops"


and here is the cover of the album after 9/11 and without that song:




the current trend that i have been noticing in my own tastes and in my friends whom tastes i respect has been to reject the commericialized attitudes of such bands and the polished production aesthetics of such bands (hi-fi) in favor of bands that dont as clearly rip off older bands and which have better ethos towards money and shit and who dont make music that sounds like it is fake and much too polished

all of these are problems with bands i used to like which are part of the indie/alt scene, or whatever, but they are symptomatic of much larger problems in the music world as a whole

bands which i like that are reacting against this bullshit and making lofi punk, kind of shoegazing and raw music are

a place to bury strangers-a heavy noise-rock or shoegaze band from brooklyn

black lips-a band of hippie punks from the south

crystal castles-electronic/mashup/noise/punk

fuck buttons-an electronic drone band

japandroids-lofif noisey shoegaze

m83-a spacey atmospheric shoegazing band

ringo deathstarr-pretty heavy shoegaze music

thee oh sees-a good band

times new viking-very good. from columbus, ohio. one of the best bands around today.

videohippos-electropop that is very lofi and sparse and raw. signed to dan deacon's label

vivian girls- a bunch of hot chicks who play great songs.

the xx-the try to sound like an up to date version of young marble giants

plus all the smell bands and a bunch of other bands that technically dont meet the standards ive talked about here



THATS ALL FOLKS

SORRY IF THIS POST TAKES FOREVER TO LOAD