For There Is Life Beyond MOFO!

Bernard sent me this link to a music survey and although I don’t consider myself to be much of a “musician”, thought it would be fun to post my responses here anyway. Without further ado:

Give us an example or two of an especially good or interesting:

1. Movie score:
   • Garden State
   • The Royal Tenenbaums
   • The Life Aquatic
   • Eraserhead
   • Turks Fruit
   • Monster Road (Bickford docu)
2. TV theme:
   • Six Feet Under
   • Twin Peaks
3. Melody:
   • Sufjan Stevens‘ “They Also Mourn Who Do Not Wear Black”, from “Michigan”
   • Elliott Smith‘s “Everything Means Nothing To Me”, from “Figure 8”
4. Harmonic language: Rufus Wainwright and Sufjan Stevens, again — one of the most original composers of recent years
5. Rhythmic feel: Doh: The Black Page!
6. Hip-hop track:
   • De La Soul‘s “Me Myself & I”
   • Grandmaster Flash‘s “The Message” (is that hip hop at all? I’m getting old)
7. Classical piece:
   • Mattheus Passion, J.S. Bach — nothing else comes close
   • Dmitri Shostakovich – String Quartet #8 in c Op. 110; Allegro Molto (just one of many)
8. Smash hit:
   • Eurythmics, “Sweet Dreams”
   • The Stranglers, “Golden Brown”
   • Nirvana, “Smells Like Teen Spirit” (eat that Whitney Houston, Phil Collins et all)
   • Madonna, Ray of Light
9. Jazz album:
   • Miles Davis – Kind of Blue (or Bitches Brew)
   • Enrique “Mono” Villegas, “Antologia”
   • Bill Evans’ “Finest Hour“
   • Cheap Suit Serenaders (ft. Robert Crumb!)
   • Herbie Hancock, The Complete WB Recordings
   • Grant Green, pretty much everything
10. Non-American folkloric group:
    • Laïs
    • Astor Piazolla
    • Buena Vista Social Club
11. Book on music: David Walley‘s Teenage Nervous Breakdown

Bonus questions:

1. Name a surprising album (or albums) you loved when you were developing as a musician: something that really informs your sound but that we would never guess in a million years: Neil Young – After the Goldrush, Harvest, Zuma
2. Name a practitioner (or a few) who play your instrument that you think is underrated:
   • Kurt Cobain,
   • Elliott Smith
   • Frank Vanderlinden (De Mens)
   • Hugo Matthysen
   • Mauro Pawlowski
   • David Brent
3. Name a rock or pop album that you wish had been a smash commercial hit (but wasn’t, not really):
   • Ween, “12 Golden Country Greats“
4. Name a favorite drummer, and an album to hear why you love that drummer: doh: Terry Bozzio, ZINY.

That’s all I have time for now — I may be adding stuff later…