So, basically all I've listened to in the last week has been my "will Oldham" genre on my iPod.
To spur discussion, let me point you to something Joe Posnanski wrote about Bruce Springsteen. No, not this one.
Rather, this one, about the first "Rock" song he "heard", meaning "felt and related to".
In Pos's case, it was "Born to Run" by the aforementioned Bruce.
I could think harder and deeper, but for me, the answer might be Temple of the Dog's "Hunger Strike" or "Would?" by Alice in Chains.
Do you have one?
Maybe first "Hip-hop" song? First "Country" song? First "Techno" song? First "Noise" song? First "____" song? (What genre is Coil, anyways?)
Here's a list of mine:
Hip-hop: Naughty By Nature "Ghetto Bastard (Everything's Gonna Be Alright)"
Country: Meat Puppets "Comin' Down" or Metallica "Mama Said"
Techno: Nine Inch Nails "March of the Pigs"
Noise: Ryuichi Sakamoto "Coro" (Maybe)
1. Sturgill Simpson “Living the Dream” Metamodern Sounds in Country Music
2. Lydia Loveless “Can't Change Me” Indestructible Machine
3. Robyn “In My Eyes” Body Talk Pt2
a. Tufted Titmouse “Song”* (Cornell Master Set)
4. DJ Dodger Stadium “Friend of Mine” Friend of Mine
5. Frozen Cast “Frozen Heart” Frozen
b. Connecticut Warbler “Song Type A2” (The Warbler Guide)
c. Dusky-capped Flycatcher “Calls” (Cornell Essential Set)
d. Black-throated Blue Warbler “Song”* (Cornell Master Set)
6. Massive Attack “Daydreaming” Blue Lines
7. Meat Puppets “Nail It Down” Forbidden Places
8. New Kingdom “Suspended in Air” Paradise Don't Come Cheap
9. Coil “Answers Come In Dreams I”* The Snow EP
T. DJ Dodger Stadium “By Your Side” Friend of Mine
11. Untold “Doubles” Black Light Spiral
12. Palace Brothers “All Is Grace” Days in the Wake*
*Notes:
a. "Peter, Peter"
d. "Beer beer beer beer beer beeeeeer"
9. “The Snow” remixed by Jack Dangers (of Meat Beat Manifesto)
12. I've got a lot of Oldham on my iPod. 17.5% of my actual-music tracks have Oldham on them. I was going to keep going until I got to one, though if it would have been much later, I wouldn't have recorded the songs in between.
* Far Out - Pete Swanson - Man With Potential**
* All Mine - Portishead - (self-titled)
* Sanctified - Nine Inch Nails - Pretty Hate Machine
* Homesick - The Vines - Highly Evolved
* So Alone - The Offspring - Smash
* Slumber Music - Jay Batzner
* Bloodhail - Have a Nice Life - Deathconsciousness
* Right Where it Belongs - Nine Inch Nails - With Teeth
* Halfsleeper - Chelsea Wolfe - The Grime and the Glow
* Our Oases - Yellow Swans - At All Ends***
**Half of Yellow Swans, one of the better noise groups out there. (the other half was Gabriel Saloman, who also puts out good stuff)
***Two halves of Yellow Swans, one of the better noise groups out there.
First songs?
Rock - Rage Against the Machine - Take the Power Back / Bullet in the Head
Techno - T++ - Anyi
Ambient - Leyland Kirby - And As I Sat Beside You I Felt the Great Sadness That Day
Country: Meat Puppets "Comin' Down" or Metallica "Mama Said"
We have very different definitions of "country".
This was my thought almost exactly.
Are you familiar with either song?
I was strictly against Country until I heard the Meat Puppets and they opened me up to more.
I was wrong to list Metallica... I forgot when that album was released.
I am only passingly familiar with Meat Puppets, and if you played this and asked "Who do you think plays this?" they never would have been my answer. But that is a country song if I've ever heard one, and a damn good one. Color me pleasantly surprised.
The advice in that song saved my life.
1. “Poor Places” Wilco Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
2. “Summersong” The Decemberists The Crane Wife
3. “Turtles All the Way Down” Sturgill Simpson Metamodern Sounds in Country Music
4. “Just the Same But Brand New” St. Vincent Actor *
5. “Adinat” Bombino Nomad
6. “Dallas” Caitlin Rose The Stand-In
7. “Circle Line” The Quavers Fell Asleep on a Train
8. “Delilah” Florence + the Machine How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful
9. “Steady” Cold Specks I Predict a Graceful Explosion
T. “Novacane” Beck Odelay*
B. “Can’t Change Me” Lydia Loveless Indestructible Machine
*Soooooo close to having all three of the performers from today's video turn up in my random 10. (Well, apart from the fact that I don't actually own any music by TS.**)
**Not meant as a diss. Just as a statement of fact.
Well, one track matches and another pair from the same album.
That may be a record.
Twinsies!
By the way, I don't mean to ignore the question you posed in the intro for this post; it's just that I have noooooooooo idea how to answer it.
1. “Start Me Up” – The Rolling Stones - Tattoo On You
2. “Swim” – Surfer Blood - Astro Coast
3. “Help Me Rhonda” – The Beach Boys - Today/Summer Days (And Summer Nights!)
4. “Fidelity” – Regina Spektor - Begin To Hope
5. “Heart It Races” – Dr. Dog - Heart It Races
6. “Electric Feel” – MGMT - Oracular Spectacular
7. “Where Is My Mind” – Pixies - Surfer Rosa
8. “Come Fly With Me” – Frank Sinatra
9. “All In Vain” – The Vaccines - Come Of Age
10. “Gimmie Sympathy” – Metric - Fantasies
B: “Shake It Out” – Florence + The Machine - Ceremonials
01. “I Want To Be Well” – Sufjan Stevens – The Age Of Adz
02. “Scuttle Buttin’” – Stevie Ray Vaughn – Couldn’t Stand The Weather
03. “I Got To Put The Hammer Down” – Ween – The Friends EP
04. “So Longer” – Saintseneca – Dark Arc
05. “Comin Up” – Caitlin Rose – Own Side Now
06. “The One With The Wurlitzer” – American Football – American Football
07. “Designer Jeans” – Van Hunt – What Were You Hoping For?
08. “Small” – Portishead – Third
09. “Light Of Day” – The Plastics Revolution – The Plastics Revolution
10. “I’m Waiting For The Day” – The Beach Boys – Pet Sounds
Hmm...
This is tricky. Hard to say with rock, since it was always kind of omnipresent for me...
Hip-Hop: "Free Or Dead" - Atmosphere
Country: Can't pick a song really. "Delia's Gone" maybe? My friend getting me into the Jayhawks really softened me up.
Hmm, this is harder than I thought
I'm with joe.
This pretty much stumped me; I don’t know if I can extract a "First." Closest I can come for "Rock" is probably Longview by Green Day or Heart-Shaped Box by Nirvana, but my thoughts quickly turned to Tangerine by Led Zeppelin, Light My Fire by The Doors, Fortunate Son by CCR, Burnin’ For You by Blue Oyster Cult … and on and on.
Country: Mr. Bojangles - The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band or Highwayman -Highwaymen (Nelson, Jennings, Cash, Kristofferson)
Hip-Hop/Rap: Hail Mary - 2Pac or All Night Long - Common (featuring Erykah Badu)
"Delia's Gone" was the other option for me, too. But I didn't pick it up until years later.
But which rock song really first spoke to you?
With which one were you in full agreement that you were "Born to Run" or on a "Hunger Strike" or something?
I'm generally less aware of what a song's lyrics actually are than I am of how it makes me feel. I'd say maybe Masters of War speaks to me both lyrically and sonically, but it's not really a Rock song.
I'm generally less aware of what a song's lyrics actually are than I am of how it makes me feel.
Agreed. Lyrics are the last thing that I notice about a song.
Since I actually prefer instrumentals, that's an obvious for me.
See, that's harder to come up with. If you want to go with, say, the very beginnings of mature thought in, say, junior high-ish, it was probably something like Nirvana or the Pumpkins.
This is a really hard thing to think of. Great topic AMR!
I grew up on Oldies and Radio Aahs kids' music, so for me I feel like this all happened so late in my life, relatively. Things that stick out for me:
I remember being in 10th grade, going to a party, and someone put Flood in the CD player, and I realized I actually knew, for the first time I was ever aware of, the music one of my peers had picked out (I had an uncle, just a year older than me, very in to alternative music, so he'd introduced me indirectly, when we had been hanging out). That was a huge moment for me musically. So that album has to get some sort of love from me on a topic like this, since that was a revelation in really hearing song.
Hip-Hop/Rap - "Stan" was the first I ever "heard." That one's easy for me.
Country - "Something Like That" - When I first heard this one, I thought it absolutely nailed country. I got what the whole genre was going for from this song. Obviously it's "newer" country, not Country-Western, classics, etc. That, I'd have to think on more... probably "Luchenbach, Texas" for that Country-Western.
Flood certainly had an impact early on.
Never heard this whole album ... remedial work to be done in the next hour.
"Minimum Wage! Hyah!"
At summer camp when I was maybe 14 (so 1992?), some of the older Scouts (so, I guess they were counselors) were enamored with the album.
I had been to camp for several years and had earned so many of the merit badges I could there, so I was on the ropes course "COPE" a lot.
That song was their favorite to sing at any time of day. With whip-crack.
I wouldn't hear the whole album until two years or more later.
"Minimum wage -- hyah!" has been my Windows Startup tune on my work laptop for at least a dozen years now.
1. Dr. Knockboot – Nas
2. My Old Friend – Tim McGraw
3. Back Against the Wall – Cage The Elephant
4. Cupid – Jack Johnson
5. Worried Life Blues – Jimmy Rogers All Stars Band
6. There’s a Light Out on the Horizon – Chromatics
7. Yes – Coldplay
8. Love Is a Good Thing – Sheryl Crow
9. Not Much – Snow Blind*
10. The Three Great Alabama Icons – Drive-By Truckers
B. Science – System Of a Down
*Although they’re no longer active, my cousin’s husband plays tenor sax with this band.
1. Memphis, Egypt -- Mekons -- The Mekons Rock 'n' Roll
2. Kick Your Door Down -- The Replacements -- Sorry Ma, Forgot To Take Out The Trash!
3. Girl, You'll Be A Woman Soon -- Neil Diamond -- The Greatest Hits 1966-1992
4. Frontwards -- Pavement -- Watery, Domestic
5. Reception -- Trip Shakespeare -- Are You Shakespearienced?
6. Cowboy Song -- Golden Smog -- On Golden Smog
7. Some Girls -- The Rolling Stones -- Some Girls
8. Pink Triangle -- Weezer -- Pinkerton
9. A Man Needs A Maid -- Neil Young -- Decade
10. Nothing Much To Lose -- My Bloody Valentine -- Isn't Anything
B1. Because The Night -- Patti Smith -- Horses
B2. Acorns & Orioles -- Guided By Voices -- Under The Bushes Under The Stars
Four weeks until the new Julia Holter record comes out. I don't know if I can wait that long. Thankfully, a second tune has leaked.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KK7saI1S8V8#t=45
Classical: Mahler's 1st Symphony (Seiji Ozawa on Deutsche Grammophon)
Jazz/Fusion: Return to Forever "Return to Forever"
Rock: Don McLean "American Pie"
Alternative: Brian Eno "Becalmed"
Prog: Yes "Close to the Edge"
More...
Ambient/Dub - The Orb "Slvg Dvb"
Reggae - Bob Marley "Exodus"
Trip Hop - Björk "Army of Me" (man did I play that song over and over, with the import single including the Skunk Anansie version)
I think I'm wrong with my noise pick above. Maybe it should be one of the songs off Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Volume II.
Late 70s to 1981 I was listening to what most over teenage boys were listening to: Van Halen, Foghat, J Geils Band, AC-DC. I bought The Clash London Calling because of the cool album cover but it didn't change my life.
Then I heard Bad Boys Get Spanked by The Pretenders and that was it for me.