badly-phrased q bcs I am hungover and preoccupied, sorry!

[catsgomiaow.livejournal.com]

alexmacpherson says on his LJ that the Tori Amos album might make his top 5 albums of the year list, but "suspect[s] this is only because it's her". I thought this might be an interesting idea to bat about.

- have you ever bought a record by your favourite act KNOWING that it was going to be a bit crap, but "because it's them" had to have it? I guess this is a question really about dissecting yr loyalties - for example, I buy every album that Kristin Hersh makes. The last few haven't, if I'm honest, been all that good (though the most recent "Learn To Sing Like A Star" has some truly outstanding stuff on it) but I just sort of feel I OWE her for making some of the most important records in my life, and for being amazing generally. And because she has kids to support and is one of the few people around whose work quite literally IS their life, if you see what I mean, and I think she works hard and is dedicated in a way that, for example, Girls Aloud don't SEEM to (note I say SEEM to, I'm sure they work very hard etc etc). My Kristin-love does not extend to buying 50FootWave records though :(


- at what point do you STOP putting up with sub-par offerings? I bought every REM record up to "Monster" (haha I remember being off school that day and walking up to Woolworths to buy it on cassette even though I thought "What's The Frequency, Kenneth" was a bit sh1t). I tried and tried but really couldn't get into it (tho again, there were a few good tracks). The next time they released an album I didn't buy it and haven't bought one since - I don't know if they lost their magic, or if it was me that had changed, or what!

- who (if anyone) will you always ALWAYS buy every single record by, even if they release a Cliff Richard covers album?

Comments

[mooxyjoo.livejournal.com]

the two i would keep buying everything from, at the moment: sonic youth and smog.

i've quit buying lots of bands. but while poor quality might matter (more often in retrospect, with these kinds of bands - you're so committed that you try to like it and see the best in it, so you don't feel free to recognize its true quality until much later on), simple change may be more important to me as a reason to give up, now. maybe the last few low albums are good, but they've just changed too much to be of interest to me right now.

sonic youth and smog do seem to both try for changing-but-being-the-same, in large measures, over the courses of their careers, which probably makes them easier to commit to in this way. but i think for me it may be more important that i had to come to them very slowly - there were several albums by each where, despite liking one record, i didn't really warm to the next one i heard until quite a while later; and then this repeated with other records of theirs. being forced to adapt and appreciate more slowly made me more patient. i haven't especially liked bill callahan's new record (not as 'smog') yet, but i haven't tried too hard, and i figure its charms will be revealed eventually.

there's a good ilm thread about this kind of question in which sonic youth come up prominently. stereolab too? and bowie, and some others.