Wednesday, November 4, 2020

Challenge: Favorite Songs or Bands

This is part of the weekly Blogging Challenge over at Long and Short Reviews. If you'd like to participate, you can find the prompts here. They also put up a post every Wednesday where you go and link your response -- and see everyone else's. Check out their homepage to find it.

The challenge for this week is "favorite songs or musicians". 

Y'all... my musical tastes are all over the place. If there's a consistent pattern to it, it's that I appreciate a well-turned lyric... but I have a huge collection of instrumental stuff that I use when I'm writing, so... yeah. 

So rather than trying to isolate actual favorites, let me give you a sampling: 

Concrete Blonde
Probably best known for their song Bloodletting (the Vampire Song), this 90s Goth band also has a number of less-well-know songs that I'm also quite fond of. One of the ones that I keep coming back to is simply called Probably Will:

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
I'm not sure I can really adequately describe their work, certainly not in a way that a music critic wouldn't pick apart, but the music is dark, the lyrics are poetic (and dark), and the effect is distinctive; Nick Cave isn't quite Leonard Cohen's evil twin, but he's somewhere off in that general direction. Probably best known for Red Right Hand or People Ain't No Good, but I keep coming back to The Ship Song:

Frank Turner
A brighter bit of my collection, Frank Turner is a British artist with an emphasis on optimism and encouragement. Some of his work is very classic Rock and Roll, like If I Ever Stray... but he did a very political album a while back called Be More Kind and lately I find myself coming back to the song Make America Great Again. Give it a listen; it's not what the title makes it sounds like:

Professor Elemental
Since I'm throwing up cheery bits, let me put in this bit of weird science/steampunk music from Professor Elemental. For samples, you might try Fighting Trousers or Everything Stops For Tea but my personal favorite is All In Together:

Truth is, though, I could keep this up for a very long time. So if you want to see more of of what I listen to, check out the Music tag here on the Blog o' Doom; the selections are all over the place, but I stand by every one of them.

19 comments:

  1. Wow! I enjoyed your list, Michael! Thanks for sharing. I think I found a couple favorites.

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  2. Great list I enjoy them all. Thanks for sharing. https://www.tenastetler.com/lsrs-wednesday-blogging-challenge-favorite-songs-or-musicians/Here's mine.

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  3. There's nothing wrong with being all over the place. You haven't seen my list yet. Lol!

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  4. Love Concrete Blonde! And it took me a minute with Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, but because of Peaky Blinders, I know who they are, too. And maybe I've had a little too much sugar this morning, oops!

    My post

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  5. Interesting choices. I rely on my kids to keep me current on new bands these days. They're more apt to have the time and the money to find them. One of my sons is into sea chanties. My other son turned us on to Will Woods and the Tapeworms. And husband still pursues heavy metal bands of all kinds.

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    1. I get some of this from my kids, but a lot of it just... listening to random stuff. Thanks for coming by!

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  6. Thanks for sharing, there were a few I had never heard before and it is always nice to learn new music.

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    1. It really is. I see I need to listen to some of your selections too!

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  7. My kids might recognize those bands, but they are new to me. Glad you enjoy them. Thanks for coming by.

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  8. I first learned about Nick Cave from the Peaky Blinders. Most to the others I wasn't familiar with, but I think I'll give them a try. Neat list.

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  9. Quite a few here I don't know, so I'll have to look into them.

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Feel free to leave comments; it lets me know that people are actually reading my blog. Interesting tangents and topic drift just add flavor. Linking to your own stuff is fine, as long as it's at least loosely relevant. Be civil, and have fun!