u/Wolfpack48

When Devo first arrived on the scene in high school, a friend of mine had Are We Not Men? and most of my friends listening to it were pretty much WTAF? I mean, what the hell kind of version of (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction was this??? Some (mostly Zep fans) expressed outright hate.

A couple years later people were dancing to Whip It and listening to Gates of Steel, and then we had Once In A Lifetime, The Cars, Flock of Seagulls, The Motels, The Waitresses, Siouxsie and the Banshees and we were off to New Wave heaven. It was truly a "new wave" of music, and so much changed after that.

I would say The Sex Pistols started all this, but after the infamous arrival of Devo and The Talking Heads, it really did seem like people were ready for a change in music at that time, which ultimately lead all the way up to Radiohead in the 90s/00s. I'll put a stake in the ground and say that Devo marked the start of New Wave as we know it.

Just a bit about their style -- Devo had these quirky robotic sounds which became something of a hallmark in new wave. But never so robotic as to miss out on a groove or a riff. Uncontrollable Urge, as weird as it sounds, was pretty damn catchy. The movie Revenge of the Nerds kinda made it a point of it that robotic stuff could have a groove. Talking Heads took that to new heights, and nailed down that danceable aspect -- just listen to The Great Curve. Was it because rock needed to be more danceable after disco, I dunno. All I know is that new wave pretty much took over in high school after that arrival of Devo.

What do you think? Is there some other band that should mark the start of new wave? How did the alternative scene arrive in your town?

EDIT: Meant to say Live vs Studio!

So The Replacements were a band I never got to see live, but I've heard stories that performances were drinking fests that sometimes got out of hand. I've also heard lots of stories that the band sabotaged themselves a lot of the time. I've heard at least one YouTube commenter say he saw them live, and said they were terrible and low energy.

I was listening to For Sale: Live at Maxwell's today, and they sound fantastic -- very tight and energetic performance, but the audience sounds kinda muted, maybe just cause it was a fairly small venue? Small audience?

I always thought the band had this great mix of punk flair and melodic tunefulness, and some truly catchy "hit" songs on their recorded albums, especially Pleased To Meet Me. Was the success of the band (or lack of) related in any way to their live shows? Was it a photogenic thing in the age of MTV? Did they even want success? I'm perfectly happy with the status they got to, and love their music -- I Will Dare, Left of the Dial, Bastards of Young, Alex Chilton, Shooting Dirty Pool are all trashy bits of genius. But this is a band that seemed to thrive in the underground.

I'm happy with where they stand, but are they considered underrated, or just about right? Was the studio output where they shined, or were they actually infamous for their live shows?

I really enjoyed the Love album, and thought The Cult had a very interesting take on hard-edged gothic rock that was quite evocative and mysterious. I heard Love Removal Machine and Fire Woman on the radio from Electric and Sonic Temple and thought it was an interesting progression, but only recently listened to all of Electric and had a pretty negative reaction. The mix of gothic style with AC/DC style riffing just rubbed me the wrong way. I know there's a lot to be said for bands reinventing themselves, but I feel pretty strongly that was a wrong move for them. As in a loss of identity.

I do need to go back and listen to Dreamtime and compare, but that switch from Love to Electric is one of the strangest left turns I have come across in music.

One to five stars. It's been a fun exercise, but one of the things I am running up against is my personal like of an album vs the wider critical acclaim (or criticism) for an album. Most of the time, the two are one and the same for me, and my rating will match the wider critical circles.

But the ones I run into are where I diverge a bit -- albums that according to most critics, are 4 or 5 stars, but for me personally are 3 or even 2-star albums. I typically go ahead and just put in my own rating because I know by now that I am never gonna rate it higher, knowing my personal tastes. And especially old albums that I've heard enough times to know what I think of them.

That said, when I do on newer albums, I sometimes hear that voice saying, "well you need to just listen to it a few more times" or "others are hearing stuff you aren't and you need to give it a chance." Typically what I'll do is give it a 3 and then try it a couple more times. I actually have started to feel more comfortable with 3 as a "just fine" rating too, that just means the albums is ok, not terrible, not great.

The other part is albums I've heard so many times that I'm just worn out on. Those can get relegated to a 3 as well, simply because they need to rest a good long while before I hear them again, if ever. So here's how it breaks down:

1 star = terrible, target for deletion

2 stars = pretty bad, this goes on a shelf that may get very dusty, and will seldom be checked

3 stars = ok, or just fine, sometimes good for background music. Old albums that need a break.

4 stars = definitely something interesting on this album, and deserves more listens, could potentially become a 5. Good stuff.

5 stars = perfect album, will never get tired of it.

All this is to say these ratings could always change over time and repeated listens. But what do you do for things like The Beatles? These are objectively fantastic albums, but sometimes hearing The White album or Revolver for the millionth time, I think, man that album needs a break. Should something other than rating determine if it goes dormant for awhile. Or do those go to a 3 for you?

Just curious what others do about this sorta stuff -- it's a an interesting dilemma.

So you can argue their 3 best albums (In Color, Heaven Tonight and Dream Police) were produced by Tom and established their identity on the world stage. He captured the band's power pop edge and snarl better than anyone while also balancing mainstream success. Their debut counts as well. I actually argue that Bun E. Carlos plus Tom Werman locked in what Cheap Trick were better than any other time, and I kinda wish they had stuck with Werman longer. The 1997 album and Rockford recaptured the magic to some extent, but I think that's due to Bun even without Tom. When Bun left, they lost another key piece.

When I picture Cheap Trick, I basically count the first 4 albums, plus the Heavy Metal Soundtrack, while so much of their later stuff just doesn't capture both the underground feel with the polish and sneer that I think of when I talk Cheap Trick. Curious to know what others think.

EDIT: feel free to comment on the loss of Bun. Personally, I think it’s a tragedy and they are a lesser band without him.

On iOS 26.5 on an iphone 13 mini.

So for a brief while I was seeing the large scale album cover on the lock screen with the play control segment down below with the small cover. It was very cool.

But now I am only seeing the play controls without the large cover. Not sure if I did something to suppress it or if it is just intermittent. Not a huge deal but i am curious if anyone has noticed a pattern.

I started with Kate on The Sensual World (Love and Anger got me) and rapidly picked up Hounds of Love (title track hooked me) and have been branching out with her ever since. Wuthering Heights is an odd little song, but somehow very catchy to me, and I have come to love The Dreaming as the strangest masterpiece in my collection.

I've heard folks say they don't "get" Kate Bush or have a hard time with her music and am curious to see what they bounce off of. To me, Sensual World is the easiest entry point with Love and Anger and This Woman's Work being the easiest entry points. Is the music just too strange? Is it the female perspective? Her odd vocals? I know it's probably an acquired taste, but for whatever reason, I have never had trouble with Kate's oddness, for me it's more a charm. Curious to know!

So currently artists are paid very little per steam, with some platforms better than others, but then I wondered if artists got paid much if anything back when radio was king. Was there any monetary compensation if you were on heavy rotation on many stations across the country? I ask because in essence radio was often promotion or marketing of the artist (along with playing local venues and touring) and might even have been considered a cost of being heard. Would income really come from album sales and concert tickets exclusively back in the day? Did artists benefit at all from radio play, or was this simply a promotion cost of the label?

In today's world, album sales are not completely out of the equation but are greatly reduced and so artists get paid per stream. Many say streaming replaced radio, but I think it actually "replaced" both radio AND album sales, hence the streaming payments. Could the streaming model be adjusted to more accurately reflect an album sale?

Others have posted about it but just wanted to call attention to it again;

On iiOS (only), if you click the text of, for example, “Disc 2” AM will play only Disc 2. This is great for boxed sets with, say, 6 discs.

It’s limited in that you can’t control the queue with Play Next or Play Last - it will always prompt to clear the queue.

Ideally discs should get a "… menu" on iOS, Android, PC/Mac and tvOS. Hopefully Apple will expand on this great hidden feature.

So noticing some of my old tracks originally ripped to mp3 and showing match status as "Uploaded" that have this old iTunes/Quicktime encoding. I am guessing the quality of these tracks could be better and should be re-added as Lossless files. Surprised that some of them aren't matched as the albums are pretty mainstream (e.g. Genesis' Abacab). Thoughts? Could it be that older CD prints haven't been mapped in AMs library? Is upgrading these files to lossless worthwhile even if Apple can't find a match?

https://preview.redd.it/njmoti3aii2h1.png?width=484&format=png&auto=webp&s=99482d65c23b600c8949306345e93d8f50d0ef16

So this has been on my wishlist for a while now, but I wanted to talk a little more about it.

A little history. One of the exciting things about getting a new vinyl album back in the day was opening the shrink wrap, checking out the full album gatefold, admiring the 12x12 art, reading liner notes, lyrics or other notes on the record sleeve. On a boxed set, sometimes there was a full-sized booklet with multiple pages. There was always some cool little tidbit or interesting art associated with the album, and you would read all that stuff while you played the album for the first time.

This was all miniaturized with CDs, but there was still some creativity with those booklets as well, some thicker with lots of pages for lyrics, art, photos, and so on. A boxed set could still come with larger pamphlets.

Digital Booklets in iTunes were an admirable attempt to reproduce that experience digitally. You'd get a downloadable Adobe Acrobat file (pdf) in iTunes that would open to some really nice full-screen art, lyrics and liner notes on the desktop monitor. You can still get these booklets with purchases from the iTunes store.

The pros of the format:

• The art produced is high quality, high resolution, nicely reflecting the experience of the paper notes and booklets of old.
• It preserves the liner notes in the original state nicely replicating and preserving the original layout.
• For things like classical music it often details key information and history of each movement in the piece.
• The format of the booklet is pretty much up to the artist, it's very flexible. and can produce many booklet pages
• The booklet is printable for those who want to handle a hard copy

The cons of the format:

• It comes with all that Adobe Acrobat application "cruft" that frames the booklet -- it's annoying and distracting. No, we don't want to subscribe to Adobe.
• The Adobe controls for zooming and flipping pages are arcane, tailored to a mouse and keyboard.
• There is no way to change metadata on a digital booklet, making it extremely hard to organize alongside the music in the library.
• It only is available on Mac/PC, limiting its portability and basically chaining us to an old mouse and keyboard model.
• All of above make the booklets feel clunky and ultimately add up to a powerful disincentive to use them.

The initial idea of the booklets was great. My proposal for bringing them back would be to make them more accessible and manageable.

1. Find a way to remove the Adobe "wrapper" and display simply the content on screen without all the app nonsense
2. Bring the booklets to iOS, Android, tvOS and make it easy to access alongside the album. You should be able to play the album while the booklet is open for view. I can imagine a toggle between the album cover art and the full screen booklet.
3. On iOS and Android, enable touch screen controls like pinch-zoom and swipe to flip pages. Booklets should still be printable on Mac/PC. On tvOS, add simple controls to the remote for zoom and flipping pages.
4. On Mac/PC, allow booklet metadata to be edited similar to the way music file metadata is edited, though it could be a subset of fields (album name, genre, year). Digital Booklets need to be organized just like any other music track. This metadata should sync to all devices same as any other music file.

It'd be great to see these booklets back. They really are an essential aspect of an album, and a way for artists to reach out to their listeners in parallel to the music itself. There was a whole artistic statement packaged along with the music, and I would love to see these booklets come back as value added to the album. Not to mention preserving musical history.

One thing I did not note was whether the booklets should only come with an album purchase, but my feeling is that these should come along anytime an album is added to the library, whether or not the album was purchased in the iTunes store or added as part of an Apple Music sub. Love to hear thoughts on all this and thanks for reading this long post! :)

Was thinking about songs that were absolute smashes in olden times, and remembering how a real hook could just jump the charts and go crazy. Sweet Emotion by Aerosmith, Smoke on the Water by Deep Purple, Firestarter by The Prodigy, New Years Day by U2, Ballroom Blitz by Sweet, Dreams by Fleetwood Mac, even Karma Police by Radiohead, Maps by Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Newer songs are maybe more complex and intricate, but I haven't heard an irresistible hook in ages. These songs were perhaps 'simple' but damn they could capture you.

What's the most recent irresistible hook recent you've heard? Do we need more hooky melodies?

EDIT: I think i should differentiate brash/risky hooks with “standard” songwriting craft hooks.All songs have some sort of hook. It’s just that some stand out as memorable, and others blend in with the wallpaper. I’m looking for more personality.

So I've come across a few albums recently where old tracks I had as mp3s were matched to m4a/aac but still sound pretty bad (e.g. ELO's Time). I've since re-added them as lossless ALAC to my library and they are sounding better over streaming. I'm wondering if some of those older matched/upgraded to aac files might have been matched to an old master that is lower quality? Maybe the CD master was not as good, or it hasn't been converted by the label yet? Just curious.

Just saw Rick Beato’s YouTube on musicians mostly coming from wealthy families these days and wondering what folks think. I do remember music seeming to come from more lower and middle class kids in the 60s up thru 2010 but I’m less in tune with that these days. Do musicians practice in garages and try to get local gigs any more? I think traditional route was to play a lot of smaller local bars, get noticed by an agent and then get a record deal. Does everyone just record at home now and go straight to the internet? I’d think a more organic route would be to play live as much as possible but maybe that’s old school these days. Could there be a revival of that and music coming from any demographic?

So, I loved these guys when I was pretty young for Reaper and Godzilla but sorta passed on them until I was a bit older, then fell out with them until my 30s when I finally saw a show. It was at a pretty small venue but they completely blew me away, and I went back and picked up everything by them. I've seen them 6 times now (which is I know pretty low by some BOC fan standards) and they put on a great show every time.

I love their deep tracks, and they have so many of them. Burnin' for You, Veteran of the Psychic Wars more known more as hits during the Heavy Metal film days, but Astronomy, Dominance & Submission, Subhuman, Flaming Telepaths, The Great Sun Jester, Teen Archer, After Dark, and on and on.

What is it about the band? I think the different songwriters are a big part of it, but I guess I like that they fly under the radar while at the same time do these great performances. Buck is a wizard on the guitar, but the whole band rocks. They deserve to be in the RRHOF, but maybe the under the radar aspect hurts them here. Curious to hear other thoughts!