Mar 072021
In some cases because I do not sufficiently enjoy (which does not necessarily mean dislike) what little I’ve heard over the years, and in some because it just always seemed like the kind of music I would not like, I have chosen not to own any music made by the following artists. I have not listed any artists that you might easily guess that I would avoid.
- I do not own any music made by Van Morrison
- I do not own any music made by Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers
- I do not own any music made by the Flaming Groovies
- I do not own any music made by Roxy Music
- I do not own any music made by Mott the Hoople
- I do not own any music made by Sam Cooke
- I do not own any music made by Lou Reed
- I do not own any music made by Television
- I do not own any music made by Iggy Pop (solo)
- I do not own any music made by Nick Cave
- I do not own any music made by Husker Du (though I keep thinking about it)
- I do not own any music made by Dwight Twilley
- I do not own any music made by Tom Petty
- I do not own any music made by Joni Mitchell
- I do not own any music made by BB King
- I do not own any music made by the Residents
- I do not own any music made by Yes
- I do not own any music made by Pink Floyd
- I do not own any music made by Elliot Smith
- I do not own any music made by Zwol
How about you? Who do you not own any music made by… uh… whose is the music that you do not… er, what music don’t you… uhh… you get the idea.
I look forward to your responses.
HVB
Nirvana
Smokey Robinson
Jefferson Airplane
Michael Jackson, Jacksons or Jackson 5
Bob Marley and the Wailers
Bruce Springsteen
CSN/CSNY
The Band
Elvis Presley
Sky and the Family Stone
Curiously enough, I realised while prestidigitating, I do own records by Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison and even U2, while my other half owns a best of Queen CD.
I’m not going to count records that I owned but were stolen or never returned (best album to have been stolen is a separate thread).
Roxy Music
Eno
Nirvana
Pearl Jam
Really, pretty much any grunge
Michael Jackson
Black Sabbath (or any heavy metal for that matter)
Joni Mitchell, except for the track on the Last Waltz
Nick Cave (not sure why, though)
Yo La Tengo (are they good? I’ve yet to hear evidence)
Bon Iver
PJ Harvey (but I should, right?)
Almost any blues artist (a few exceptions – not into blues guitarists)
Allman Brothers, Skynyrd, pretty much any “southern rock”
Guns n Roses, Aerosmith, pretty much any metal or hard rock
Rush
ELO
Sleater Kinney
I don’t own:
Led Zeppelin
The Eagles
Nick Cave
Van Morrison
John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr post Beatles
Herman’s Hermits
Crosby Stills and Nash, even with Young
Boston
Bauhaus
New Order
The Smiths
Yes, Bruce Springsteen, U2, Can, Kiss, The Flaming Lips. Wham!
I also have no Springsteen, Yo La Tengo, Smiths, Bauhaus (actually any synth-art-rock), Sleater-Kinney, grunge.
I find Happiness Stan’s list interesting. No Smokey Robinson? Including his work with the Miracles? No Sly?
And while Cher eschews the Allmans *and* Skynyrd, I pretty much hate the former (jam band, ugh) and love the latter (concise songwriting with a high riff quotient). Is it the southern-ness of it that bugs you?
I do not own any music made by Led Zeppelin
I do not own any music made by Pearl Jam
I do not own any music made by AC/DC
I do not own any music made by the Eagles
I do not own any music made by Li’l Wayne
I do not own any music made by Missy Elliott
I do not own any music made by REO Speedwagon
I do not own any music made by Yes (I got rid of the Yes album shortly after purchasing it.)
I do not own any music made by the Damned
I do not own any music made by ZZ Top
I do not own any music made by Shellac
I do not own any music made by Jeff Beck
Oh, right.
I do not own any music made by The Starship
Hrrundi, I only listed artists which surprised me when I thought about it. Smokey, with and without Miracles, and Sly definitely ought to be there, I’ve simply no idea why they aren’t. Likewise, Stevie Wonder, who I thought of after I posted. And Terry Jacks, a glaring omission from my point of view, yet probably shared by few others of my acquaintance.
It felt pointless to list stuff that I don’t like, such as Genesis, Yes, UB40, Roy Harper, Grateful Dead, the Eagles, Bjork, Little Jimmy Osmond, the St Winifred’s School Choir, or anything to do with jazz, hip hop or rap, since nobody who knows me would come to my house and ask if I had a copy of Tales from Topographic Oceans they might listen to.
I loved the question, as it made me consider the concept of ownership. Apart from CDs which I buy to assignment my autograph collection, it’s probably ten years since I bought a physical product. If I can’t hold it, I funny think about ownership. If I want to hear Tears of a Clown, Everyday People or Superstition, I’ll go to YouTube. My collection in the sense I understand it is pretty well fossilised now.
This is a fascinating thought experiment and I am surprised by some Townspersons’ lists. In order to make this an extra-challenge, if at any point in my life I owned something by an artist, I will not be listing them.
I do not own any music by Michael Jackson/Jacksons/Jackson 5
I do not own any music by Guns ‘n’ Roses
I do not own any music by Emerson, Lake and Palmer
I do not own any music by Suede
I do not own any music by Frank Black*
I do not own any music by Phil Collins*
I do not own any music by Einstürzende Neubauten
I do not own any music by Earth, Wind and Fire
I do not own any music by The Minutemen
I do not own any music by Judas Priest
I do not own any music by Chick Corea*
I do not own any music by Motorhead
* Meaning, no solo records by these artists
“Freebird” is concise? I hate the chooglin’ guitars and machismo of those bands. And maybe I am unfairly stereotyping Southern Rock, but I can’t be bothered to parse it, especially with album titles like “God and Guns.” Doesn’t appeal, I have no desire.
I’ll defend Skynyrd. A tough, no-frills band with a complicated legacy but smarter than you think. Gotta think of them like Creedence, who also occasionally veered into long-jam territory (“I Heard It Through the Grapevine”). God and Guns is from post-plane crash Skynyrd, which doesn’t count. Just like Creedence Clearwater Revisited.
I’m surprised that HVB hates the Allmans, though. Yeah, I know they jam a lot. But the original lineup — you’re not down with Duane Allman’s guitar tone?
I’m apparently the anti-hvb. since I own and enjoy music by all of the artists he mentions, except for Zwol (come on, who owns any Zwol records?) and Bauhaus.
And Yes. I say no to Yes.
How do I go about listing what I don’t own? It would be too easy to list out things I have no interest in, like Metallica. I will abide by the rule someone set for themselves about not listing albums by bands they once owned. For instance, as much as I have always hated KISS, there was a time in the early ’80s when I owned one of the KISS live albums. I think I bought it in a dollar bin specifically so I could record bits of the stage patter and mix them in with bits of other live albums and an album of Mussolini speeches for inclusion in the background of the solos on the early Nixon’s Head song “Still.” (The demo version, if I still have it somewhere, had the crowd noises mixed louder. And yes, for anyone who cares and knows that Head song’s strong nods to Pere Ubu’s Modern Dance album, this was yet another references [“Chinese Radiation”]).
OK, so I won’t say “I do not own any music by KISS.” Likewise, I own a little bit of country music, but I won’t bore you with listing out country artists for whom I own no music, such as Willie Nelson, a country artist I actually enjoy hearing now and then.
I do not own any music by Siouxee and the Banshees.
I do not own any music by Husker Du.
I do not own any music by The Replacements.
I do not own any music by Dead Kennedys.
I do not own any music by The Cure, which is a shame, because over the years I’ve realized that I like about 10 songs by them. After so many years of thinking I couldn’t ever like them, it feels wrong to actually buy a Cure album. It’s like when I realized I should finally buy the Dead’s greatest hits album, but I couldn’t bring myself to buy it personally. I literally had a friend buy it for me, as if I was a teenager asking an adult to buy me liquor.
Mr Mod, are you certain you’ve never owned Husker Du? That seems like it crossed through your collection.
I think Oats is right about Lynyrd Skynyrd. I think I disliked their fans more than them, and those fans stuck with the shitty band they are now. The original band turns out to be pretty darn good, in spite of my preconceived notions.
I don’t have any Can and I don’t have any Kraftwerk. I had a Grateful Dead album and a Queen album and I got rid of them because they sucked. A few years ago I found The Moody Blues Days of Future Passed. I used to love it in Junior High and the one I found was a perfect early pressing. I put it on and I actually started to laugh at how utterly stupid most of it was. In my defense I smoked a lot of pot when I was a kid so maybe I was too high to notice. I sold it right away. I have a copy of Aqualung and put it on once and my wife stopped what she was doing to come in and make fun of whatever it was I was listening to.
Chickenfrank, I could be wrong about Husker Du. I know I once owned a Bob Mould solo album, Black Sheets of Rain (?), that I absolutely hated. I toyed with buying a Husker Du album once or twice, but any time I borrowed one from a friend I couldn’t enjoy more than 2 songs. Mould’s voice and their horrendous lack of attention to any dividing lines and points of emphasis, through the use or rhythm, Barre chords, and textures really turn me off.
Just thinking about them right now I want to go back in time and start fights with some of the perfectly great music scene friends of ours who thought they were great. I caused a lot of fights back then, but for some reason I usually kept my mouth shut when Husker Du came up. I regret being so polite. #huskerdont
I’m a little surprised at how much Skynyrd seems to need defending around these parts. To me, they’re just a hard-driving rock and roll band with an iron country music rod shoved down their spine — you can’t see it, but it’s what makes them walk funny. They’re what happens when you grow a J. Geils Band in southern dirt.
Seems like many of you like Skynyrd – more so than liking REM or Roxy Music. I find this fascinating! To me, LS’s stuff sounds like fairly obvious chord progressions with an uninteresting melody on top and and dumb lyrics. It’s big dumb rock, I don’t care for it. I might like Molly Hatchet better. Or neither.
For example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1b_CqeyKWYg&list=PLzg3NvFa_g4TrgIgVb15Q_m5BaitjkXJ6&index=7
A dumb riff leading into a dopey, lumbering groove, you can hear the musical vocabulary is limited in that it has many similarities to “Sweet Home Alabama.” So really, they’re a more homespun AC/DC. Checking out their songs, mostly I hear re-heated tropes, executed well, but not particularly interesting. I listened, I tried. Sticking with a hard pass.