What genre of music is your bane?

[Docbop]

38 minutes ago, RABid said:

The first thing to realize is that everyone in country music is not Republican or even conservative. Same with Nashville. Same. With Kentucky or South Carolina. 

 

Same reason I'm SO SO thankful that my father convinced my mother to move from the state I was born in to California when I was a little kid.   I rarely tell people where I was born because of all the stereotypes about the state and the people in it.   Which my mom had twelve siblings who had big families so I've seen or heard about life back there and I'd say most the stereotypes are true.   So I understand about stereotypes even being basically a Californian I hear lots of stereotypes from when I was moving around the country a lot. 

[Anderton]

When it comes to listening, I've found that I like listening to a small percentage of any kind of music. The last to fall was opera, but I saw the Ring live and was blown away. After that, opera made sense.

 

49 minutes ago, RABid said:

The first thing to realize is that everyone in country music is not Republican or even conservative. Same with Nashville. Same. With Kentucky or South Carolina. 

 

Absolutely 100% true. I've always found the south welcoming, even when touring as a long-haired, acid-rock musician back in the 60s. In my general experience, people give you the benefit of the doubt initially ("southern hospitality"). As long as you don't screw that up, you're good. 

 

Country isn't my main thing, but there's some country music with a high level of musicianship, superb production, and lyrics that tell stories. I also like that a lot of country artists don't take themselves seriously. I saw Brad Paisley in concert, and as well as an extremely high level of musicianship, his show was entertaining and the humor was self-deprecating. One of the most technologically advanced concerts I saw was Shania Twain. Saw Martina McBride live, and when she sang "Wild Angels," she sounded exactly like the recording - no backing tracks, no pitch correction. And then you have singers like Kelsea Ballerini who's just fun escapism ("If You're Going Down, I'm Going Down Too"). Some country musicians have clear, obvious hip-hop influences in their music, and go outside country's traditional boundaries.

 

Like any genre of music, if you pick and choose carefully you'll find some real gems.  

[ProfD]

23 minutes ago, Anderton said:

When it comes to listening, I've found that I like listening to a small percentage of any kind of music.

 

Like any genre of music, if you pick and choose carefully you'll find some real gems.  

Absolutely.

 

With any genre, sometimes it requires digging beneath the surface of curated music.   Of course, that's predicated on having the time and interest to do so. 

 

IMO, the wave tops i.e. listening to radio or watching videos or following Billboard charts has never painted the whole picture as it relates to any genre/style of music. The gold and diamonds aren't always on the beaten path.

 

Again, some music is an acquired taste and not all of it was made for our consumption.  I still haven't developed an appreciation for Opera.😁 

 

However, I do recognize there could be diamonds in that yodeling, er, Opera singing worth sampling and converting into a useable audio waveform.🤣😎

[MathOfInsects]

Taste is entirely subjective and we have to be careful not to assume that people who like a certain thing just don't know any better. We're each the world's foremost expert on the stuff we like or don't like. Taste is completely within us, not in the things we apply it to or the people who like those things. We can forget that sometimes...

 

[timwat]

I'm going to put this out there, so that someday when I'm dead and gone, at least I'd have told you all this at least once.

 

I grew up listening and playing classical, pop, rock, and progressive rock. As a middle-class suburban Asian American in San Mateo, not a lot of exposure to black music like  funk, R&B, etc. Certainly no opportunities to gig it.

 

After my early band days, I spent 20 years leading worship ministry, along the way of helping start two church plants. Then got divorced. One of the things that happens in the American church when you get divorced, a lot of your friends don't know what to do with you. I lost a ton of friends and was at the lowest point of my life, when I started learning jazz at the State University, with an excellent director. 

 

I was growing as a musician, and at the lowest personal point in my life. 

 

I fell in with a bass player friend of mine, and that led to me being invited into a band of brothers playing light jazz, smooth jazz, R&B. All black dudes...and my yellow butt. And those guys welcomed me in with open arms. After a few weeks, dubbed me an "honorary black jazz musician", and had me into their homes. I was invited to eat in their backyards, make myself a plate lunch, hang out with their families. And when we weren't playing, they told me their stories what it's like to live in Oakland, to deal with OPD and the cops in Vallejo, what it was like for them as kids in rural Mississippi, and all sorts of stuff. How Herbie used to rehearse just a block from their house. How the guitar player toured with Funkadelic as Star Child. 

 

They taught me how to listen to funk and R&B, and they kind of saved my life. So it's a really precious genre of music because of the men who took me in as one of their own.

 

Now, it's like 80% of what I play, or something along those lines. And those years changed my thinking on so many other things we don't talk about much on the forum.

 

One of those things is the way I think about every other genre of music, including country music. For decades, I swore I loathed it, it was stupid, it was simple, it wasn't who I was. Now I have one of my radio presets on our local country station. I haven't spent any time working in the red dirt. Never spent much time working on cars, never worked a ranch. Never woke up on the wrong side of the truck bed with a bone-dry bottle of Jack.

 

But the best songs of that genre are just people singing about the best parts of real lives. Kenny Chesney telling his tale about "The Good Stuff" still makes me misty and beeline to kiss my wife. Sure there's a fair amount of drivel, and low-value lyrical content, and stuff that wasn't written for me. Just like most every other genre out there. But the best of it, well, it's the human story and the human music that I'm drawn to.

 

Just my 0.02.

 

 

[KuruPrionz]

54 minutes ago, timwat said:

I'm going to put this out there, so that someday when I'm dead and gone, at least I'd have told you all this at least once.

 

I grew up listening and playing classical, pop, rock, and progressive rock. As a middle-class suburban Asian American in San Mateo, not a lot of exposure to black music like  funk, R&B, etc. Certainly no opportunities to gig it.

 

After my early band days, I spent 20 years leading worship ministry, along the way of helping start two church plants. Then got divorced. One of the things that happens in the American church when you get divorced, a lot of your friends don't know what to do with you. I lost a ton of friends and was at the lowest point of my life, when I started learning jazz at the State University, with an excellent director. 

 

I was growing as a musician, and at the lowest personal point in my life. 

 

I fell in with a bass player friend of mine, and that led to me being invited into a band of brothers playing light jazz, smooth jazz, R&B. All black dudes...and my yellow butt. And those guys welcomed me in with open arms. After a few weeks, dubbed me an "honorary black jazz musician", and had me into their homes. I was invited to eat in their backyards, make myself a plate lunch, hang out with their families. And when we weren't playing, they told me their stories what it's like to live in Oakland, to deal with OPD and the cops in Vallejo, what it was like for them as kids in rural Mississippi, and all sorts of stuff. How Herbie used to rehearse just a block from their house. How the guitar player toured with Funkadelic as Star Child. 

 

They taught me how to listen to funk and R&B, and they kind of saved my life. So it's a really precious genre of music because of the men who took me in as one of their own.

 

Now, it's like 80% of what I play, or something along those lines. And those years changed my thinking on so many other things we don't talk about much on the forum.

 

One of those things is the way I think about every other genre of music, including country music. For decades, I swore I loathed it, it was stupid, it was simple, it wasn't who I was. Now I have one of my radio presets on our local country station. I haven't spent any time working in the red dirt. Never spent much time working on cars, never worked a ranch. Never woke up on the wrong side of the truck bed with a bone-dry bottle of Jack.

 

But the best songs of that genre are just people singing about the best parts of real lives. Kenny Chesney telling his tale about "The Good Stuff" still makes me misty and beeline to kiss my wife. Sure there's a fair amount of drivel, and low-value lyrical content, and stuff that wasn't written for me. Just like most every other genre out there. But the best of it, well, it's the human story and the human music that I'm drawn to.

 

Just my 0.02.

 

 

I've played in country bands. Some great songs, some not so great. 

That's common in all genres in my experience.

We never played one song from this record but it's one of my favorite albums and it is country. Emmylou Harris, Quarter Moon In A Ten Cent Town.

You might enjoy listening to it. 

[RABid]

I went through a similar experience. After playing with one of the top bands in the city until it imploded, I was looking for something different. A black band from Louisville's west side asked me to come by and see if we were musically compatible. I got their address and found the house in a section of Louisville that I had never been to. I was warmly greeted and they helped me carry a keyboard inside. That is when I started noticing things. All of the windows had heavy bars and the heavy front door had 4 deadbolts. I started wondering what I was getting into. Then the music started. The setup was 3 singers and 4 musicians; drums, bass, guitar and keys. We did Whitney, Prince, Luther Vandross, Sade. I played keys and used a synth to cover sax on Smooth Operator. At that point it was decided that we would be playing together. I was the token white in a black band from the west side and boy did they introduce me to some great music. While the singers were all really good the bass player was the best I had ever seen. He could slap and rap like a mad man. That hand moved so fast and with precision machine gun timing. I often wonder what became of him. That was the best first practice I've ever had and I was on stage with them a week later. I felt so at home with them from the beginning, but at the end of that first practice one of the singers said "Time for you to go. It's getting dark. Do NOT stop for gas or anything else until you get to the other side of the interstate." It was a reminder that while I was part of the music family, I was not part of the neighborhood. One thing I never understood, the bass player and I would have talks about music, talent, and sinking into the groove. He told me that I was the tightest keyboardist he had every played with and I told him that I was also a drummer and had natural rhythm. Then he would talk about how other bass players in the neighborhood would look down on him. They did not think he was all that good. I always wondered if they were just jealous, or if there could actually be a better bass player in the city. I could not imagine anyone better than him.

[jazzpiano88]

As a teenager, my Dad would play this album on the record player at least once a week to the bane of my existence.

I hated everything about it and we would get into shouting matches as to the value of such music.  

 

Now I know what an uncultured ignoramus I was

 

 

[Floyd Tatum]

I personally like country music very much.   I have my favs and not-so-favs, naturally.

 

[AROIOS]

On 12/22/2023 at 4:48 PM, jazzpiano88 said:

As a teenager, my Dad would play this album on the record player at least once a week to the bane of my existence.

I hated everything about it and we would get into shouting matches as to the value of such music.  

 

Now I know what an uncultured ignoramus I was

 

 

I stand firmly with your teenager self.

[AROIOS]

On 12/22/2023 at 10:48 AM, MathOfInsects said:

Taste is entirely subjective...

As is that statement itself.

[Anderton]

Context matters, too. As a jazz listener, a friend advised me to listen to John Coltrane's "Ascension" with its "sheets of sound." I didn't like it at all, it was too abrasive and noisy.

 

Later on I heard very early Coltrane, and loved it. So I bought the next album he made after that. Loved it too. I started going through his discography chronologically, and really enjoyed what I was hearing.

 

Then I reached the point when the next album was "Ascension." I remember how much I disliked it, but put it on anyway. This time, I totally got it. Those "sheets of sound" were the logical culmination of what I'd heard before. Coltrane's music had been "training" me to grow with his growth. 

 

About six months before he died, I read an interview where he was excited about coming up with what he said was an entirely new kind of musical expression. I couldn't wait!

 

I always wondered what it would have sounded like if he hadn't died, and he could have recorded what he was talking about...😢

[Docbop]

15 minutes ago, Anderton said:

Context matters, too. As a jazz listener, a friend advised me to listen to John Coltrane's "Ascension" with its "sheets of sound." I didn't like it at all, it was too abrasive and noisy.

 

Later on I heard very early Coltrane, and loved it. So I bought the next album he made after that. Loved it too. I started going through his discography chronologically, and really enjoyed what I was hearing.

 

Then I reached the point when the next album was "Ascension." I remember how much I disliked it, but put it on anyway. This time, I totally got it. Those "sheets of sound" were the logical culmination of what I'd heard before. Coltrane's music had been "training" me to grow with his growth. 

 

About six months before he died, I read an interview where he was excited about coming up with what he said was an entirely new kind of musical expression. I couldn't wait!

 

I always wondered what it would have sounded like if he hadn't died, and he could have recorded what he was talking about...😢

Yes, Coltrane especially his later years are not something to jump into you need to start early and get your ears to grow to understand his later years.   One of my favorite Coltrane albums is Ballads.   He was in his later years, but decided to do a couple albums that were simpler.  The Ballads album is a education in phrasing melodies.