Sui generis

What do you listen to?

Sui generis

Postby cmsellers » Sun Sep 25, 2016 5:55 pm

Some artists I listen to when I want to listen to a particular genre, and some artists I listen to when I want to listen to that particular artist. Now some of those are just because I like their song selection and the songs that they cover (The Irish Rovers are a key example), some artists I like because I love what they do with their covers and they write a few good songs (Johnny Rivers, Ry Cooder, and The Byrds fall into this category), and some because I like their lyrics of the songs they write (Warren Zevon is my favorite artist for this reason).

The other day ABagOfYoghurt shared a video from The Pogues on one of these threads, and I was absolutely hooked. And I recalled a thought I'd had before with other artists: there are some artists who just have really distinctive sounds not quite like any other artist I know. Like in my mind, they're a whole different genre. Even if they've sometimes inspired a whole new genre, nobody else sounds like them, and I listen to their albums on repeat for long periods of time.

The Pogues (progenitors of folk punk and Celtic punk) therefore join this list. A list which I thought was relatively short until I tried to actually list it. Any rate, "USA" is pretty awesome.


Already on the list were another British band which combined folk music with more modern genres: Steeleye Span (progenitors of electric folk). Here's "Gone to America."


Also on the list is Leonard Cohen, whom I started a thread about. Since my three favorite Cohen songs are already on that thread, here's another one I like: "Democracy (is Coming to the USA)." (I was going to use both my parents' favorite Cohen song "Bird on a Wire," until I realized I had a theme going with my other song picks.)


As is Harry Chapin (whom I already posted about here). In keeping my theme going, here's "What Made America Famous."


Credence Clearwater Revival is unambiguously CCR; I don't know how else you'd describe them. They're also so American through-and-through that I don't need to find a song with an appropriate title to fit with the theme. "Born on the Bayou" vies with "Down on the Corner" and "Looking Out My Backdoor" for my favorite CCR song.


Richard Thompson is arguably just another folk rocker, but to my mind at least he sounds distinct, though I couldn't quite say how. "Yankee Go Home" is actually one of my favorite Thompson songs.


There's plenty of others whom I think might qualify. There's Jethro Tull, but when I realized I had a theme going with the song titles and couldn't find an appropriate one of theirs, I decided not to include them in this post. There's Paul Simon, The Moody Blues, and Neil Diamond, all of whom I listened to a lot in college, but I haven't listened to any of them nearly as much recently. The Grateful Dead also sound really distinctive, but while I often tuned into the Grateful Dead Hour on my radio station back in MA, I have never felt a need to listen to their albums. And of course Bob Dylan is often imitated but never equaled, however the only album of his I really enjoy is Blood on the Tracks, his other albums feel too samey-samey to me.

So yeah, which artists do you listen to whom you think sound distinctive enough to qualify as their own genre?
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Re: Sui generis

Postby ghijkmnop » Sun Sep 25, 2016 10:38 pm

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Last edited by ghijkmnop on Fri Mar 15, 2019 8:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Sui generis

Postby cmsellers » Mon Sep 26, 2016 1:18 am

ghijkmnop wrote:I don't have a qualifier-- but I didn't think ANYBODY knew about Steeleye Span.

One thing I'll say for my father is that he has excellent taste in music. It was through his records that I was introduced to Steeleye Span, Jethro Tull, Paul Simon, and Neil Diamond. And while I was introduced to Richard Thompson through my mother's collection, my father claims that she learned about Richard Thompson from him.

Coincidentally or not, he's also a Baby Boomer from Maine.
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Re: Sui generis

Postby Twistappel » Wed Oct 05, 2016 5:15 pm

My morris-dancing, medieval re-enactor friends got me into Steeleye Span.

I can think of a number of bands with distinctive sounds, but few that really qualify as their own genre. Even Pogues more or less spawned their own genre (Celtic Punk), although they were among the first of their kind, and Shane MacGowan's voice does give them a very distinctive sound.

I suppose you could call Dire Straits a genre unto themselves. They tend to get lumped into the fairly broad category of "Classic Rock" bands, but their music is quite different to what other artists were doing at the time, and you would never hear a Dire Straits song and mistake it for anything else.
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Re: Sui generis

Postby Tuli » Sat Nov 05, 2016 1:50 pm

Sigur Ros. You could say that post-rock bands are a dime a dozen but none of them sound like Sigur Ros. I daresay I don't even like post-rock as a genre much (not enough to really delve into it anyway, because most things sound too similar to me). But Agaetis Byrjun as an album is damn near transcendent.


Dead Can Dance is a band I find impossible to categorize. I guess it can be referred to as new age, gothic rock, "world music", depending of which song you are talking about. I've tried to find something similar before but it usually goes either too far in the new agey direction and becomes Enya, or too far in the gothic rock direction and becomes Clan of Xymox (not bad, but different). I'm gonna have to link several DCD songs to show what I mean.

The Host of Seraphim

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Enigma of the Absolute

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Son Lux is electronic music the likes of which I've never heard before.

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