Hard but rewarding music

The whole "Low C theory" had me thinking of bands / recordings that do not make sense, unlistenable, abrasive, minimal, what ever that take time to grasp & enjoy.

I find these bands/recording give the listener most bang for the buck, rather than disposable pop or more traditional music. I think these bands cause the listener to discover something and that to me is special.


Meshuggah - you guys got me into them. At first it was like, what is this noise & screaming / growling? But after several attempts and the right time of the day, I grasped and enjoy them now. Actually I find them almost prog rock like in their syncopated, odd time signatures and brute force. I identified with that aspect. Great band.

Captain Beefheart - Just plain weird, odd time signatures abstract lyrics and punishing songs. Later finding out the music was built from an "cult" like abuse from Beefheart that really screwed the bands minds up.

Melt Banana / Lightning Bolt / Locusts - noise rock-taught me to build songs with sound, not alway notes or traditional song writing.


Dir En Grey - I hated them at first-I am finally starting to like them. The sing pushes the boundaries of singing, screaming & noise-what should a singer be doing?

Jauquo- Low C Theory - When I first listened I could not grasp it, as to me, it sounded very free form and not a lot or any hooks, melodies, or repeating structure- but the ultra low bass soars. It is a very powerful & profound recording and exploration of the low C end.

Funny you should mention this topic, BD. I was waxing poetic the other day about how long it took for me to finally, really get into progressive. For many of my younger years as a listener and as a player, I simply didn't get "it" with regards to how brilliant that music was. But once I got a little older, it started to hook me, and I haven't looked back since. This is also true of much of the metal that I listen to now.

Emerson Lake & Palmer is one example of prog that, while I had always respected it, there wasn't that initial love of it until I really started picking apart just how complex and interesting the music was/is. Now, they are far and away my favorite prog band, and I can honestly say that Keith Emerson has had an enormous impact on my playing. Frank Zappa is another one. For many years, his music simply went right over my head. Now I consider his genius to be unmatched.

Then, there are bands like The Ramones, The Sex Pistols, The Clash, Iggy Pop and The Stooges, Henry Rollins, etc., that again, I had a lot of respect for, but not a lot of enjoyment of. And again, these are now some of my favorite punk bands.

Part of my problem was that I was such a giddy Van Halen fanatic for so many years (right on the heels of being such a die-hard KISS fan, which I still am to this day) that I couldn't see too much past them. But time proved to be the teacher, and my horizons are lights years from the narrow-mindedness I once had as a youth. I am now finally able to see the valuable contributions to music that each of the aforementioned artists have brought about, but I can also honestly say that I enjoy them from a purely listening standpoint.

Granted, these artists and bands have nothing to do with your original point of low-C artists, but I think there is a similarity in how liking a band can develop.

Tyou guys should listen to Voivod. Very weird stuff.

YoYou also might about half the music I write

eric, you make the statement like being a vh fan kept you from something or other things ... well, maybe ... but if you really think about it, eddie van halen's style was extremely progressive in its heyday and has had a tremendous impact on any and all rock music.

then everyone ripped off his tricks and it wasnt progressive at all.

then i guess its what you get down to considering what "progressive" is. is it a sound ... or approach to writing music?

elp, rush, yes?

or more like tool, meshugga, mudvayne?

or is the future and more like nin, kmfdm or god lives underwater?

i listen to all the bands i've stated above that i can catagorize as "progressive" in one way or another. i just look for music that challenges me when i listen to it ... makes me go "wow!". nickelback ... good musicians ... dont make me go wow in any kinda way = not progressive.

as these are some of the bands i listen to ... is it any wonder that 40wattsun has been catagorized as a "progressive" band? do you guys think so? cus i dont hear it. i just feel that we're a rock band.

the only progressive band i listen to a lot and didnt mention above is ozric tentacles. please, please, please chek out ozric tentacles as i feel this is the band fighting the battle against stoopid music. these guys are very talented and do more with their music than just entertain.

... and barkless dog ...

if your mentioning "low c theory" as a method of drop tuning, you dont need to describe it. i do drop d. anything lower just makes the strings too aldente and just sound too fretty for my taste. some do it well (down) and most do it horrible (korn).

if it is something different ... i'de never heard it before ... could you describe or post a link?

To clarify, MadMike, what I meant was that I was so overwhelmed by Eddie's guitar playing that few other things could catch my ear. This was back in the 80's when I was still a teenager, and still had a lot of growing to do. I became, for lack of a better term, a musical snob.

And you're right about defining what prog is. To my ear, it defines a style of music that falls outside the "normal" 4/4 beat built around 1-4-5 progressions. But I fully recognize that even this is an over-generalization. I can easily hear what can be thought of as prog elements in bands like Tool, but they do it with more of a metal edge. Then again, you have bands like Dream Theatre that are almost what you might consider to be a patented prog metal group. Rush can also fall into this category, but can seem to fall more into the hard rock arena. Of course, this depends on what particular tune one is listening to, since something like Red Sector A almost sounds like it has elements of, dare I say, disco in it with it's synth-pulse backbeat rhythm.

Again, I think it all goes back to personal opinion, and our feeble attempts at defining one type of music from another. It's as if you attempt to describe bands like ELP, Genesis, and Yes and being prog rock, and yet they all sound completely different.

You can apply the same thing to groups like Lacuna Coil, Within Temptation, and Evanescence, by calling them symphonic metal fronted by female vocalists, but again, they all sound different from one another.

I believe we all apply generic labels to bands in general as a way of providing some sort of descriptive point-of-reference.

ON low C theory, your right about drop tunes but low c is really on a new level. I too thought so another drop tuning, but here it takes on a life of its own, in my opinion. I agree, I thought little of it at first (another drop tuning) , as it was hard for me to understand why it was special.

http://www.jauqoiii-x.com/JK_pages/JK_music_lowc_review.html

I also agree about categories in music as far as they are meaningless if you are a true music lover. Secret Cheifs 3 & the Dregs are good examples of bands who go everywhere, well.

Funny about Van Halen how he was so experimental & broke through, but now style is common place.

Oh I have been listening to Ozeric Tentacles for a long time. David Gilmour's son was in the band recently I believe?

EricHaven wrote:

The Stooges

the Stooges Eric? yep they ALSO had a progressive song they did which was KILLER..here's a link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_Y6UKMp8Qw

Oh, Mike! You have NO idea how much watching that clip made my evening! My sister and I grew up watching re-runs of The Three Stooges! Absolutely some of the greatest classic comedy ever to grace the airwaves! Bravo!

i downloaded jaucqo III x's disc. i'll listen to it at work tomorrow.

i didnt hear anything about gilmour as an ozric ... but i haddent touched base with the band in a while. i'll chek in and see what they been up to.

I read about it in a David Gilmour article. They said His son was the drummer? and Gilmour was tagging along on some of the tour dates (watching). That was a year or so ago.


Several things helped me be an open minded listener. One was my older brother who was drafted and went away for two years during Vietnam war. He left his record collection of early Zappa, Fuggs, Electric Spinach. He has since been collecting records and his basement is filled with about 20,000 LPs. It's a full basement stuffed floor to ceiling like a warehouse.


I feel bad for him now as the music world of discovery has passed him by. The exciting stuff is from bands over seas, non label indie stuff, that he will never hear.

M y other biggest influence was going to an Art College. They deconstructed everything and retrained your mind. Is something so bad its' good?
A bad reaction is better than no reaction. What is art, what is music?

Oh yeah the internet & TalkBass. I have discovered so many cool bands from Talkbass. I will listen to anything.

I know there is a lot of bad there, but also a lot o good. I really like being connected to young people. I like to be current without being a "poser".

Why can't I like new bands?

Music is an extremely personal experience, so I think that people are free to listen to anything they wish. Heck, if hearing nails across a chalkboard floats your boat, more power to you!

I really don't believe that there is any "bad" music. It's all in what you like or dislike.

So BD, I fully support you in wanting to listen to new bands, old bands, red bands, triangular bands, rubber bands, big bands, waist bands, whatever it is that you enjoy!

It's totally cool to like new bands. You get this a lot with black metal--people who will only listen to Darkthrone, Mayhem, Immortal,etc. from the early 90s and NOTHING ELSE. But black metal is flourishing with new bands and old bands that are still as hungry and dynamic as they were 20 years ago.

Anyone have some new bands to suggest?

don't ask the kids BD, you'll be playing death speed metal till your fingertips blister

LOL!

I don't know if these are what you are looking for BD, or even if they can be considered "new", but both Linda and I really love bands like Slipknot, Dimmu Borgir, Lacuna Coil, and Kamelot. We think of them as "new" since we only got into all of them but a couple of years ago.

I don't have much to say...I mean, you guys make me look narrow-minded when it comes to the music I listen to.

here's a 2 minute quickie jam that is very hard and never rewarding enough...

well, at least to me