cLOUDDEAD

Flipper - Name me another band that sounded like Flipper before Flipper came around. You can't.

This Heat - if you want an influence on Slint (the drumming) and Shellac (the guitar tone), you got it. I assume most of you have heard Deceit, but if you haven't, get it. Now. It is one of the most unique and terrifying albums ever made. In a studio that used to be a meat locker, no less.

The Stooges - Well, no one had ever gotten that primitive and that catchy in quite that way before.

Beefheart - Um...yeah. Do we really need to talk more about him in this regard?

John Fahey - Fahey essentially birthed an entire style of solo acoustic guitar, and while he may have been technically unremarkable (at least in comparison to players like Leo Kottke/Michael Hedges), none of them played with remotely the kind of feeling and soul that Fahey did, which to me far outstrips any kind of flashy chops (though I will admit that Kottke absolutely lays waste to Fahey as a slide player).

and, as much as I hate to say it...

Frank Zappa - No one sounded like him before he came on the scene - and no one has since. I personally think much of his hideously bloated oeuvre is actively awful, but those first Mothers of Invention albums and Hot Rats are great.

clocker bob wrote:

newberry wrote:James Brown
Sly and the Family Stone

Definitely. Add Led Zeppelin to that list. Originality comes from the last 2% that you add to the other 98% that everyone already knows how to do.

I see your Zeppelin and raise you the Yardbirds. Zeppelin would have never come about if it hadn't been for the Yardbirds, and their music was shockingly innovative in the mid-'60's.

a few i'll add:

henry cow / art bears
cheer accident
sleepytime gorilla museum
zs

i think in a way it's a matter of just putting in the thought and effort into melding things you heard in a combination you haven't heard and hopefully other people won't have heard it either. and hopefully it's also something that has value beyond its exoticism.

The statement that there "are no original artists" has always bugged the living hell out of me. It is NOT true that everything has been done before. Music has so many variables (which musicians playing what, instrumentation, instruments used, lack or instruments, etc.) which can be thrown into the mix while forming a band and/or making a record. There will continue to be original music for a long time... fuck all who don't believe so.

I bought an album by a black metal band called Furze today... it was like no other metal album I've heard. It was original. There... I heard original music today.

I'll also site:
Gigantic Brain
Earth
Bjork (I can't think of many other pop artists who sound like Bjork)
Zeni Geva
Today is The Day
John Coltrane
Frank Zappa
The Electric Flag, An American Music Band
Fantomas
Minutemen

There are contless others.

Puff Daddy

It seems to me like there are bands that just make something akin to evolutionary leaps that make them original. Black Sabbath, Minor Threat, Black Flag, and My Bloody Valentine seem like examples of this.

A second type of original artist is a band that takes elements that came before and crafts something new out of them. The Ramones seem to be the most obvious example of this. I'd say Superchunk, The Grifters, and Dinosaur Jr. would all seem to fit this bill as well.

R Kelly
This Heat
Can.
blah blah

numberthirty wrote:It seems to me like there are bands that just make something akin to evolutionary leaps that make them original. Black Sabbath, Minor Threat, Black Flag, and My Bloody Valentine seem like examples of this.

A second type of original artist is a band that takes elements that came before and crafts something new out of them. The Ramones seem to be the most obvious example of this. I'd say Superchunk, The Grifters, and Dinosaur Jr. would all seem to fit this bill as well.

I would probably describe all of the above as original but the distinction between the first list of bands and the second is really very subtle at best. You can break all of those bands down to their contituent influence.

How about... Harry Partch, Albert Ayler, Derek Bailey

I agree with Wire, This Heat, Neubauten.
Let's add Keiji Haino and Noxagt, Jandek, The Dead C...