Let’s discuss any and all music here. Got a new artist who’s rocking your boat that you want to talk about? Post a video! Found out about that unearthed Coltrane album that has the jazz freak in you losing your mind? Lay it out for us! Have a theory about what your favorite band might do for their next album? Let’s hear it! Anything and everything music-related goes here.
This week’s discussion prompt comes from the Avocado’s very own PachyWormyBIGBOI, with an assist from Nate the Lesser:
Which artists look or sound nothing like you initially thought they would?
In the spring of ’93, one of friends got Doolittle and Trompe Le Monde.
Now I had only just gotten into Nirvana the previous year, and while I had read about the Pixies I had yet to hear them at the time. I’d never seen any of their videos on Much Music, and living in small town Nova Scotia we were pretty much stuck with the limited selection at Zellers, K-Mart and the one shitty record store in town. And since we were still in junior high school, it’s not like we were able to just pop up to “the city” to check out the bigger and better record stores either, so this was HUGE.
My friend was nice enough to lend me his cherished tapes (one at a time, for one night only) which I taped off onto a 90-minute cassette. I also painstakingly typed out all the lyrics on our family computer: a Tandy 1000 HX. There were some cool pictures in the liner notes, but neither one contained a photo of the band.
I’m not sure how the picture evolved in my mind, but for whatever reason I pictured Black Francis as a skinny guy with dark hair, bangs hanging in his face. Probably wearing a fashionably cut white dress shirt, untucked with the sleeves rolled up. And I pictured myself as that guy as I screamed along to “Debaser” and “U-Mass” in my bedroom.
It was probably about a year later that I finally saw this video:
I have to admit I was surprised by how normal they all looked, though in the end I think it made me love them even more. In fact, of all the music I listened to way back then, Pixies are probably the only band I have never gotten tired of at one point or another.
As for the opposite situation (seeing what an artist looks like first and then being surprised by how they sound) here’s Colter Wall, the artist that Nate the Lesser was talking about in the header:
Good stuff – though I have to admit that even though I was prepared for it, I was still a bit taken aback.
As always, any and all music-related topics are welcome. Have fun, and rock out with yr guac out!