For example, I first heard Suburban Legends - Polyester, so I went to check Suburban Legends and they were just a regular ska band.
What’s your “that song was great, I wish the band did more of that” song and band?
Hoobastank, The Reason
100%, can’t even name another song by them
they had other songs??
Lol. Actually I was thinking about it last night and crawling in the dark wasn’t that bad. But it didn’t sound like them.
Slash - Beautiful Dangerous (feat. Fergie)
I was shocked when I found it was Fergie singing. Apparently Slash thought she would make a good rock signer and wrote the specifically with her in mind. And he wasn’t wrong.
That whole album by Slash is great!
Gotye. Loved “Somebody That I Used to Know.” The rest of his music wasn’t for me.
Chumbawamba - Tub thumping. I had no idea they’ve always been an anarchist sea shanty band and that song was the outlier and a total piss take. I am here for it.
He drinks a whiskey drink, he drinks a vodka drink
They did a few songs that have a catchy repetitive chorus to be fair. Mouthful of Shit for example. Just not quite to the extent of Tubthumping.
have you tried “The Big Issue”? it’s from the same album and is kinda the same thing, except the vocals are far more female-dominated and the song extends the melancholy a bit
Sea shanties‽ I absolutely love Uneasy Listening and will blast English Rebel Songs, but they’re not sea shanties.
yeah, it’s called english folk or something
LOL!
Came to this comment section to say exactly that, just to discover it to be already the first comment!
But it’s kinda the reverse thing OP had in mind, I think…That whole album has the same vibe as Tubthumping
in fact the album is called Tubthumper
the follow-up album, WYSIWYG, also has the same vibe
Yeah, they went through a few different sounds and that was their party era.
I preferred Mary Mary and it had the same problem. No others like that that I heard.
Grateful Dead - Touch of Grey
The Dead never set out to record bangers; they were all about the vibe. Touch of Grey came out in the late 1980s, way past the band’s prime. A lot of old bands were putting out bangers around that time. But Fleetwood Mac, Pink Floyd, and the Moody Blues had a ton of bangers before, too.
So I love Pink Floyd, but (at least to me) the sound is very different from Touch of Grey.
Good call on Fleetwood Mac and Moody Blues though - also some greats!
Not sure what you’re saying here — that you think no Pink Floyd song sounds like the Grateful Dead song Touch of Grey? Or… are you saying the difference between Pink Floyd in the 1960s/1970s is not so different to Pink Floyd in the 1980s as Grateful Dead, Fleetwood Mac, and Moody Blues were from their latter work?
Because I can see it either way, but I don’t like Pink Floyd that much. I like some of their songs. I like the stuff on A Momentary Lapse of Reason — I feel like it’s a more mature sound. I also like that song off Ummagumma (I think) with the really long title. Something like “Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict.” Pretty sure that’s mostly it, without Googling it. Dark Side of the Moon is okay, but I feel it’s a bit overrated. Some clever word play. Annoying alarm clocks in Time. Maybe it’s better if you’re high? I don’t get high. And The Wall, also overrated, but I did like some of those songs as well. So, I like some of their songs, and I like some quite a bit. I listened to a more recent album from them, which was all/mostly instrumental, and that was cool, but I didn’t listen to it again. I guess I like them more than a lot of people but wouldn’t call myself a fan.
So the tone/mood/beat of most Pink Floyd songs is more chill, but Touch of Grey just sounds “peppier” (if that makes sense). I like both but for different reasons, and in different moods. Totally get why others don’t though - I’m far from a deadhead but I can see the appeal to folks. Contrary to a lot of my post history I am (or at least used to be) a live and let live guy - do what you like, I’ll do what I like, and where those intersect well have some fun!
Gotcha. It just threw me off that you were comparing a single Grateful Dead song to the entire catalogue of Pink Floyd. I assumed I misunderstood.
So I suppose the only other question I have for you is: do you consider A Momentary Lapse of Reason to be an exception to Pink Floyd’s catalogue (for better or worse) or more of the same? Or just part of the evolution of their sound over the decades? I think a lot of fans are fine with it, but I’ve also heard some fans of 60s/70s bands less accepting of the band’s latter catalogue.
Thanks for the new comic!
Oof that hits me right in the middle age
I never understood this bands popularity until I listened to this song
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7n7WRidwYo
Their other songs are okay but this ones possibly one of my favorite songs of all time
This should become the new rickroll.
As a teen I loved Family Reunion by them. Basically a pop-punk cover of George Carlin’s 7 words you can’t say on television
Hmmm
Something something username or whatever
Rockit by Herbie Hancock. It’s a great hip-hop/electronica track, but the rest of his work is mostly jazz.
He is a jazz legend, yeah…
It’s because ‘Rockit’ was made by Bill Laswell, Michael Beinhorn, GrandMixer DXT and three other guys on turntables. Hancock basically turned up at the end to play some synth lines.
Laswell and Beinhorn were in the band Material, and turned it into a production outfit, plus Laswell was a producer at the label Celluloid at the time, which label was a pioneer of hiphop. He also participated in the New York no-wave jazz scene as musician and composer.
Hancock was in his early forties, and his career was getting stale. His manager, twenty-five years old, pitched the idea of making a track to both him and Laswell. Hancock was taken by Laswell to hear some popular djs, but still required more coercing by the manager.
Material’s early stuff might be closer to ‘Rockit’, although it’s more disco-funk. Dunno about Celluloid’s output, as I’m not really into old hiphop. Laswell used scratching in some of his genre-clashing projects well into the 2000s, e.g. in the ‘Axiom Sound System’ concert with Tabla Beat Science and a bunch of other folks (including Grandmaster DXT). Laswell also co-produced and played bass on the rest of Hancock’s ‘Future Shock’ album and the next two albums ‘Sound-System’ and ‘Village Life’, and did other collaborations with him.
My favorite from a him was always Chameleon from exactly 10 years earlier. That’s the song I hear when Herbie is mentioned.
I had a jazz teacher say that Herbie Hancock would play straight up jazz until he ran out of money, and then release a funky track like chameleon to rake in the big bucks, and then go back to jazz
Seems like a good gig if you can get it.
Whoa, that’s some good insight. As a fan of that New York mutant disco/funk stuff I’ve always liked Material. Never knew they were involved with that song. Cool.
I’ve been a fan of Laswell for about twenty years, and it’s fascinating to dig through his catalog and see how easy production comes to him, how he always had his fingers in a lot of projects and how he gathered a whole bunch of other musicians in his orbit. ‘Future Shock’ also has Nicky Skopelitis, who did guitar on some of Material’s albums and was in The Golden Palominos with Laswell, and whom Laswell pretty much dragged from one project to another for decades.
Eraldo Bernocchi is another illustrative example. He had an ambient project with some dudes, released something like four records, and then did a collaboration with Laswell, inevitably falling into his gravitational sphere. After that all of Bernocchi’s later releases in the project and under his own name were clearly marked by Laswell’s methods and the library of sounds and effects, even without latter’s involvement.
…wow. This might be the most “stand on his lawn” comment I’ve ever seen.
Modern English - I Melt With You is a catchy new wave pop tune. The rest of their work is much, much darker
The subject matter is still pretty dark even if the tune isn’t.
Yeah, Fear Factory, Linchpin is a headbanging classic but the rest of their stuff just doesn’t do it for me. Maybe their Cars cover, but that’s it.
Sugar Ray.
They have their few pop songs… But every other song and their previous stuff is totally different. I remember as a kid, listening to “Big Black Woman” after listening to one of their hits and being shocked.
Basically how I feel about Poppy.
She’s done a few collabs that I really enjoy, like End of You with Courtney LaPlante of Spiritbox and Amy Lee of Evanescence or Suffocate with Knocked Loose.
I don’t think she’s bad or anything, but I just don’t really jibe with her work.
As a poopy fan, I get that.
I feel that way about Poppy and honestly about Knocked Loose. I think the first song I heard from them was Forget Your Name with Keith Buckley on it. And I was a huge ETID guy, so the song got me super excited, but I just never really got into them beyond that. And I wanted to, just never clicked.
I listened to one song and thought it was quite fun. Then I listened to another couple and discovered they were the same song in a different box.
Maybe Tomorrow by Stereophonics. That song causes a lot of frission when I hear it. Now I admit I haven’t heard their entire discography yet, but any other song of theirs I’ve listened to hasn’t given me the same effect.
Dakota by the Stereophonics is completely different from everything else they made, but gives me a similar reaction. They struck gold with a few for sure, but I think most of their catalogue is actually pretty mediocre.
Kris Delmhorst — “Short Work”
I Can’t Decide
… by The Scissor Sisters
But that song isn’t an outlier.
what songs sound like it?
Most of them? They’re an upbeat dancy modern disco band. Basically a modern ABBA. They make boppers.
which is very different from “I Can’t Decide”, a music hall track that’s somewhat baroque, even though disco also happens to be upbeat and the vocals are very similar
A nice classic tune to dominate humanity by.
Their other music is badass though.
give Mary a listen. It’s pretty enjoyable from most angles
Chris Isaac, Wicked Game
