MorphineCharley wrote:Man, I'd take almost anyone over Frank Zappa.....
...and I'd take Zappa over just about everyone.
Here's the difficulty I have, and I would in some cases describe it as an affliction: I've listened to all these groups extensively throughout my high-school years. At some point what they were doing became reduced by my changing listening mindset so that all I was hearing were the notes of the chords and progression. The energy the band was projecting, the aesthetic of their style and sum of their statement, the timbre and unique characteristic of their sound became irrelavent to how I was listening to the music. The only thing I was hearing were the same damn two to four chords pounded on in the same order again and again and again....
I can't help it. If something repeats sucessively like that more than a few times I'm bored and irritated. It just strikes me as lazy. I know that's not really the case, but that's how it makes me FEEL.
So now I'm in this mindset where most of what I listen to DEMANDS to be listened to - attentively. Everything else is background music and should only function in the background. I am engaged by things that surprise me. Geniunely unique timbres, wide ranging and sudden dynamic changes, complex harmonies and melodic phrasing, and little repetition.
Part of this is my desire for music that holds up to repeated listenings. I can't listen to a Stooges or Ramones album more than once in a great while (like...a few years). In one listening, neigh one song, I feel I've grasped all that is to be had and experienced from what they've done. On the other hand I could take the Zappa catalog and never run out of complex, broadly styled, and diverse music that provides in one sitting interpretations of rock, doo-wop, jazz, fusion, classical, dance, ethnic, avant garde, etc.... The same thing works for me with Debussy, or Bartok. I could listen to La Mer or the Quartet, or Miraculous Mandarin thousands of times without ever being bored by it.
Now of course, there are some exceptions to this...