Slow to catch on... too slow

in

Why is it that I'm always realizing so late that I've been ignoring/misappreciating/willfully missing out on an amazing band for years and years? Or that sometimes an artist I know I should enjoy/understand/gain enlightenment from but never had before suddenly starts to make sense?

I was 19 before I finally grokked XTC. I didn't get Joni Mitchell until I was about 25. I ignored Radiohead until 2002. Bob Dylan didn't really click for me until I was 32. Two years ago I finally listened to Spoon and I haven't stopped yet. Last year it was Matthew Herbert, I guess. Now I don't get what it was that I was missing all that time for all those acts, beyond maybe some fuzzy sense of "maturity", whatever the heck that means. And I still don't get Pavement.

In any case, I'm beginning to suspect that 2007 will be the year that I realize that HOLY WOW SLEATER-KINNEY WHY HAVE I IGNORED YOU? And, of course, just this past year they went on indefinite hiatus.

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yup

I felt the same way when I saw them in VT a few years ago. I had sort of written them off since Seattle days but they did a great show.

Retrospective

At some point I realized that I was hopelessly out of step with new music, so I've actually been doing a lot of retrospective digging around in the musical archives of my life. As a teenager in Berlin in the early 80s, I was simply overwhelmed by Nina Hagen's screeching lyrics and her wicked, wicked German puns. Lately I've actually been listening to her now nearly forgotten music and I finally get it. A couple of years ago I discovered Renft, an early 70s counterculture band in East Germany. How I missed that for all these years still escapes me. And a colleague here recently handed me a DVD of Can, and again, I have to wonder how I never found it earlier.

S-K is so 1998. S-K is so

S-K is so 1998.
S-K is so 1999.
S-K is so 2000.
S-K is so 2001.
S-K is so 2002.
S-K is so 2003.
S-K is so 2004.
S-K is so 2005.
S-K is so 2006.
S-K is ....

Can => Spoon

dsa: Can is rapidly moving up the list of other bands I've been needing to check out but haven't yet. Maybe next year. :) Btw, I dunno if you like Spoon, but apparently they took their name from Can.

thyry: yeah yeah yeah. :)

That's great. Its never

That's great. Its never really too late to love a band. S-K is great. I suspect they'll be back. I miss them a lot. Plus now you have like 6 albums to listen too!! Dig Me Out is probably the best all around but I like parts of every one of them.

Still can't REALLY say I get Radiohead though. I know, I know.

oh, and Can reminds me of 1989. Get Cannibalism or Tago Mago first. they are so great.

what's my band like this? I don't know right now...hmmm.

Those old emotions... oh wait...

Not "The Spoons"! Geez, I thought you were really slow on the uptake there.

As far as Can goes, they had

As far as Can goes, they had a run of three magnificent albums in the early 70s: Tago Mago (1971), Ege Bamyasi (1972), and Future Days (1973). Pick up those three and you won't be disappointed.

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