Yet Another Cycling Forum
Off Topic => The Pub => Arts and Entertainment => Topic started by: Redlight on 25 January, 2018, 09:58:05 am
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Spinning off from Ian's comment on the thread about Mark E Smith...
"The Fall were one of those bands that it was cool to like without actually having to listen to"
What artists / bands / albums / songs etc would fit into our personal lists of cool but unlikeable? The criteria is that whatever you nominate has to be "critically acclaimed", "classic" etc., but, to you, either unfathomable or just plain crap.
I'll start by taunting the prog-rockers and nominating Yes. I loved a lot of prog and still play imaginary drums to early Genesis records (yes, I know :facepalm: :facepalm: :facepalm: ) but I could never get Yes. It always sounded to me as though five people had all turned up in the recording studio on different days, had a noodle for a couple of hours, and then gone home again without ever listening to what the others had done.
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can I nominate the Beatles, with a range from the sublimely excellent to the absolutely tedious and sublimely awful.
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can I nominate the Beatles, with a range from the sublimely excellent to the absolutely tedious and sublimely awful.
+1
They had their moments, but I've always preferred the Rolling Stones.
I'm mostly on the same page as Redlight regarding Yes, though I do have the 90125 and Big Generator albums, which were somewhat more commercial/accessible.
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The Greatfull Dead.
Rather cool, but actually rather tedious.
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The Smiths - winey adolescent rubbish. Johnny Marr is a pretty good guitarist though.
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The Smiths - winey adolescent rubbish. Johnny Marr is a pretty good guitarist though.
He was awesome when with The The.
Yeah the Smiths were for self-interest but awkward teenagers.
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Let’s just summarise this as "Pretty much anything that was promoted by the late great John Peel".
I’ll slip in my suggestions of:
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. I can probably deliver a poor recollection of Red Right Hand and that one he did with Kylie on Murder Ballads. Anything else, not so much.
PJ Harvey. I can belt out Sheena an Gig's chorus, but the rest of her ouvre I probably couldn’t even bring to mind.
The Pogues. Led by Mark O’Smith (aka a drunk with fucked up features and a surly attitude, real name Shane McGowan) I’m impressed by anyone who can recall more than Fairytale in New York and maybe the chorus of Dirty Old Town.
I rebut the Smiths. Great band. People who don’t like them probably think Boner of U2 is a genius.
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I'm rubbish at album/track-listings, but will quite happily stick on an album by PJ Harvey or Nick Cave.
Surely the obvious one is The Ramones - Cool to like (judging by the T-shirts), but I've never listened to an album. :o
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Was about to start a similar thread a few weeks back prompted by hearing the Fall on the radio. In no particular order:
The Fall
Morrissey
The Smiths after about the second or third album
The Beatles
The Verve
I'm sure more will come to mind later
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The Greatfull Dead.
Rather cool, but actually rather tedious.
I've always thought that the Dead ought to be my kind of band (freaky, psychedelic stuff), but every time I try to listen to them I have to turn them off because I can't stand that country shit.
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The Greatfull Dead.
Rather cool, but actually rather tedious.
I've always thought that the Dead ought to be my kind of band (freaky, psychedelic stuff), but every time I try to listen to them I have to turn them off because I can't stand that country shit.
I like country but The Dead were not very good at it. Give me Gram Parsons or Johnny Cash any day.
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Frank Zappa / Mothers Of Invention ::-)
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I'm surprised no-one has mentioned Pink Floyd yet, so I will.
On the positive side, for prog-rock stuff, I still enjoy the Moody Blues - 50 years since Days of Future Past - arguably the first concept album.
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erm, I've listened to whole Floyd albums, more than once.
Can't make it through more than one Rolling Stones song though.
Frank Zappa - cool to claim you really dig the music (but how much did you actually listen to)?
Jazz. Especially free jazz. All of it.
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FFS, when has any prog rock been "cool"?!
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Can't make it through more than one Rolling Stones song though.
Burn the heretic! Any fool knows Exile is the best rock album ever.
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I'm rubbish at album/track-listings, but will quite happily stick on an album by PJ Harvey or Nick Cave.
Surely the obvious one is The Ramones - Cool to like (judging by the T-shirts), but I've never listened to an album. :o
The great thing about the Ramones is that if you don't like the track currently playing you only have to wait about two minutes for the next one to come along.
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Captain Beefheart, Can, any krautrock, a lot of grunge (it wasn't all as tuneful as Nevermind), about 90% of 4AD bands, anything by Nick Cave.
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I'm surprised no-one has mentioned Pink Floyd yet, so I will.
I was actually thinking of Pink Floyd in relation to this thread. I'm not quite old enough to have been into them when they were cool but I did listen to one of their albums the other day (the one with the Bicycle song). Alternately lovely and excruciating. But they don't really count because they haven't been cool for 40 years and I don't like them.
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The thing about Pink Floyd is that the Syd era was so radically different from the disgruntled outpourings of Roger Waters that they might just as well have been two different bands. But anyway:
- The Smiths
- Radiohead
- The Beautiful South
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Frank Zappa / Mothers Of Invention ::-)
Best understood as a live band. They were well rehearsed and had a repertoire of covers, admittedly always with one of Frank's solos in the middle. Whipping Post was one such.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufb6vuYhpKw
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I like Pink Floyd from Atom Heart Mother to Animals, a lot. The Wall is hit and miss. I like all The Smiths albums although the first album is badly produced. So there.
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Frank Zappa / Mothers Of Invention ::-)
Best understood as a live band. They were well rehearsed and had a repertoire of covers, admittedly always with one of Frank's solos in the middle. Whipping Post was one such.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufb6vuYhpKw
I didn't know Whipping Post was one of theirs, I've heard a Plant/Page version of that
How about Oasis and Blur ? Never liked either of them
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Whipping Post was an Allman Brothers tune. It became a ritual to request it from any band. So Zappa obliged. Has anyone mentioned the Velvet Underground, or Henry Cow?
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Glad the Ramones have been mentioned. I can’t stand them but I thought I was the only one. Is it just their punk pioneer status that people like them for or do they actually listen to those terrible songs?
I never really got Nirvana. I kind of understood why they were cool but the music did nothing for me. I had a friend who was very into them from the early days. She tried to drag me along to a gig at a tiny venue, just a few months before Teen Spirit catapulted them to megastardom. I turned it down. One of those gigs that would earn you much cred for being able to say ‘I was there’ but... meh.
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Whipping Post was an Allman Brothers tune. It became a ritual to request it from any band. So Zappa obliged. Has anyone mentioned the Velvet Underground, or Henry Cow?
I take back my previous - of course it's on my Allman Brothers Disc, not to be confused with Gallows Pole
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The thing about Pink Floyd is that the Syd era was so radically different from the disgruntled outpourings of Roger Waters that they might just as well have been two different bands.
My first exposure to Floyd was seeing Another Brick In The Wall on TOTP. They were definitely not ‘cool’ by then.
The Barrett era stuff was probably cool if you liked it in 1967 but I only discovered it later, as a teen in the 80s, at a time when my genuinely cool peers were into stuff like The Smiths, Echo & The Bunnymen, The Cocteau Twins and The Jesus & Mary Chain. This probably disqualifies me from having any opinion on what is or isn’t cool. Although to be fair, I was still five years off being born in 1967.
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Hey all you hepcats, check out the cool new sounds of yacf...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sv3R8wgN2wY
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Whipping Post was an Allman Brothers tune. It became a ritual to request it from any band. So Zappa obliged. Has anyone mentioned the Velvet Underground, or Henry Cow?
I fuckin' love the Velvet Underground, me. Only yesterday DJ Random played me a live version of "Sister Ray" clocking in at > 35'. This made me happy.
Don't understand the attraction of the Jibbly Wibbly Jesus And Mary Chain, though, and Nirvana were vastly inferior to the Pixies.
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Can't make it through more than one Rolling Stones song though.
Burn the heretic! Any fool knows Exile is the best rock album ever.
Ladles & jellyspoons! Allow me to present the only band in history to have a leadsinger who has made a 50+ year career out of not being able to sing!
And, in the red corner, their lead guitarist - who actually mostly plays rhythm - a man so fucking lazy that fans mistake his ICBA for 'laid back' & 'minimalist'.
With added Jack Daniels. And out of date marshmallows.
No thanks...
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In the 1990s - Primal Scream.
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The Smiths - winey adolescent rubbish. Johnny Marr is a pretty good guitarist though.
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. I can probably deliver a poor recollection of Red Right Hand and that one he did with Kylie on Murder Ballads. Anything else, not so much.
Frank Zappa / Mothers Of Invention ::-)
Radiohead
I never really got Nirvana.
You've all been watching my Tune Association feed, haven't you? All we need now is for someone to mention Nine Inch Nails.
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Nine Inch Nails ;D
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Can't make it through more than one Rolling Stones song though.
Burn the heretic! Any fool knows Exile is the best rock album ever.
Ladles & jellyspoons! Allow me to present the only band in history to have a leadsinger who has made a 50+ year career out of not being able to sing!
And, in the red corner, their lead guitarist - who actually mostly plays rhythm - a man so fucking lazy that fans mistake his ICBA for 'laid back' & 'minimalist'.
With added Jack Daniels. And out of date marshmallows.
No thanks...
Yebbut the Stones wanted to spend the night with you while the poxy Beatles only wanted to hold your hand :demon:
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Glad the Ramones have been mentioned. I can’t stand them but I thought I was the only one. Is it just their punk pioneer status that people like them for or do they actually listen to those terrible songs?
I never really got Nirvana. I kind of understood why they were cool but the music did nothing for me. I had a friend who was very into them from the early days. She tried to drag me along to a gig at a tiny venue, just a few months before Teen Spirit catapulted them to megastardom. I turned it down. One of those gigs that would earn you much cred for being able to say ‘I was there’ but... meh.
Indeed, the Ramones are dull as dishwater and I've never met anyone who actually listens to them.
I actually liked Nirvana though but they weren't half as clever as they thought they were. The Smiths did a couple of catchy songs, but like the Morrissey stuff, it pretty much soon overwhelmed your whimsy threshold. I like Radiohead though, so there. I'm not sure Pink Floyd can be cool as my dad forever fucking goes on about them.
I have no idea with the Rolling Stones are popular or why people still think it's cool to spend their annual salary to see them. I never got it, they did a couple of a moderately OK songs, even after several decades not enough to fill a greatest hits album, mostly anodyne pub rock.
In a similar vein, Oasis and anything those tedious Gallagher brothers do. Utterly mediocre pub music, the sort that makes you leave the pub and go find somewhere better.
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Let’s just summarise this as "Pretty much anything that was promoted by the late great John Peel".
;D Thread over.
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not bands, but 2 cd's that were cool to own (but were shite IMHO)
Trout Mask Replica .... Captain Beefheart
WTF is that about .... I imported the cd and paid a lot for it after reading a review
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The Beatles .... White Albumn
same as above .... good money wasted
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I still have both cd's and I doubt that I will ever listen to them again
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Trout Mask Replica .... Captain Beefheart
Still one of my favourite albums that gets listened to pretty regularly.
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Trout Mask Replica .... Captain Beefheart
Still one of my favourite albums that gets listened to pretty regularly.
And I could say the same about the White Album.
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not bands, but 2 cd's that were cool to own (but were shite IMHO)
Trout Mask Replica .... Captain Beefheart
WTF is that about .... I imported the cd and paid a lot for it after reading a review
..........................................................
The Beatles .... White Albumn
same as above .... good money wasted
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I still have both cd's and I doubt that I will ever listen to them again
Ah, and i'd heard your version of Orange Claw Hammer killed at the open mic night down the Dog and Duck ;D
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Trout Mask Replica .... Captain Beefheart
Still one of my favourite albums that gets listened to pretty regularly.
I still regularly listen to Strictly Personal. Seems Beefheart wasn't happy with it.
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Can't make it through more than one Rolling Stones song though.
Burn the heretic! Any fool knows Exile is the best rock album ever.
I fell asleep during a Moaning Groans gig. Trufax.
The only other time I got near this was in a Tangerine Dream gig.
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I have no idea with the Rolling Stones are popular or why people still think it's cool to spend their annual salary to see them. I never got it, they did a couple of a moderately OK songs, even after several decades not enough to fill a greatest hits album, mostly anodyne pub rock.
This.
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Ramones are awesome. Just don't take them serious.
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Can't make it through more than one Rolling Stones song though.
Burn the heretic! Any fool knows Exile is the best rock album ever.
I fell asleep during a Moaning Groans gig. Trufax.
The only other time I got near this was in a Tangerine Dream gig.
Miss von Brandenburg fell asleep at the Hawkwind 30th Anniversary gig, during the bit with Lemmy in it. Although it was an all-nighter.
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I rebut the Smiths. Great band. People who don’t like them probably think Boner of U2 is a genius.
I dislike the Smiths and I think Bongo is a twat.
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Nine Inch Nails ;D
I like Nine Inch Nails, as in, actually listen to the albums. Used to (pre-spotify) have 3 NiN albums loaded on my phone.
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I dislike the Smiths and I think Bongo is a twat.
I'm inclined to agree about Bongo. One of my few "before they were famous" stories recounts how I saw U2 supporting Echo & The Bunnymen at The Lyceum in the early '80s and he was being such a pratt that he was on the receiving end of a large number of plastic 'glasses'. Off stage, he is clearly committed to the various causes that he promotes and I have no issue with them, but I can see how he can irritate people.
Conversely, I saw the band's bass player, Adam Clayton, being interviewed on another TV programme recently (having never heard him get a word in edgeways before) and he came across as articulate, thoughtful and very down to earth. As they say, it's the quiet ones you have to watch.
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I stood behind Bonio in the queue in a record store (in Madison, Wisconsin; nope I couldn't see what he was buying). He wore sunglasses indoors and everyone, me included, was way too cool to acknowledge him. I like to think this annoyed him more than a little.
To be honest, he's no worse than many others. It's probably better that he has a cause than doesn't, but equally you've got to expect to be judged on the standards you set for others. And wearing sunglasses indoors is always twattish.
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Nine Inch Nails ;D
I like Nine Inch Nails, as in, actually listen to the albums. Used to (pre-spotify) have 3 NiN albums loaded on my phone.
NIN (and related projects) fan for 27 years now. Think I have every single official NIN release in at least one if not more versions. Have met Trent. Definitely not a twat.
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On my wall at university I used to have a large dayglo poster advertising the Enid. It was for a gig which got cancelled. I was given it during freshers week and I for a while it was the only poster I had. Disguised the pinky-grey walls a bit. I had that poster for at least ten years (it was large and served to protect all my other ones when rolled up).
I have never hear anything by the Enid.
Does that count?
Should I search on Youtube?
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I saw The Enid once, at the Astoria (RIP) in Charing Cross Road. They were the support act for whichever band John Wetton was in that week.
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I saw the Enid. It was a four hour gig IIRC, since they played a regular set, then went on to play the whole of their new triple album.
Meanwhile, I nominate Hawkwind. An interesting bunch of folks, but musically....
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Bjork
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I saw the Enid. It was a four hour gig IIRC, since they played a regular set, then went on to play the whole of their new triple album.
Oh god yes dull dull dull. I saw them live in about 1983. Not sure they were ever cool though.
Meanwhile, I nominate Hawkwind. An interesting bunch of folks, but musically....
I disagree on this one. Hawkwind were really good, fantastic driving beat and influential on other bands. Great live as well. Stonehenge dawn 1984 sticks in my memory.
I do admit there records went downhill starting with Choose Your Masques (1982) and I really haven't bothered with anything they have done at all since about 1985.
I still listen to the CDs from the 70s and early 80s though, especially the Bob Calvert stuff.
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I don't think it was ever cool to like The Enid whether you listened to them or not.
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Trout Mask Replica .... Captain Beefheart
Still one of my favourite albums that gets listened to pretty regularly.
Ditto
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Can't make it through more than one Rolling Stones song though.
Burn the heretic! Any fool knows Exile is the best rock album ever.
I fell asleep during a Moaning Groans gig. Trufax.
The only other time I got near this was in a Tangerine Dream gig.
I fell asleep at a Black Sabbath gig (I also fell asleep at Knebworth when Zep were playing - only a few minutes though)
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No-one's mentioned Tom Waits yet - but then he gets regular play in the Windy house
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I saw the Enid. It was a four hour gig IIRC, since they played a regular set, then went on to play the whole of their new triple album.
Oh god yes dull dull dull. I saw them live in about 1983. Not sure they were ever cool though.
Meanwhile, I nominate Hawkwind. An interesting bunch of folks, but musically....
I disagree on this one. Hawkwind were really good, fantastic driving beat and influential on other bands. Great live as well. Stonehenge dawn 1984 sticks in my memory.
I do admit there records went downhill starting with Choose Your Masques (1982) and I really haven't bothered with anything they have done at all since about 1985.
I still listen to the CDs from the 70s and early 80s though, especially the Bob Calvert stuff.
Another +1 for Hawkwind - great band - selling out for the'new 'orchestral' tour
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Hawkwind have had a lot of different sounds over the years - take your pick :-)
I saw them at the Capitol in FurryBootToon in the early 80's and thought they were great :thumbsup:
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No-one's mentioned Tom Waits yet - but then he gets regular play in the Windy house
I guess when the ferry is stuck in harbour there’s nowhere else to go.
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Bjork
is easily one of the best modern singer/composers. I regret never seeing her live whilst living in Europe.
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Can't make it through more than one Rolling Stones song though.
Burn the heretic! Any fool knows Exile is the best rock album ever.
I fell asleep during a Moaning Groans gig. Trufax.
The only other time I got near this was in a Tangerine Dream gig.
I fell asleep at a Black Sabbath gig (I also fell asleep at Knebworth when Zep were playing - only a few minutes though)
I fell asleep at a Who gig.
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Can't make it through more than one Rolling Stones song though.
Burn the heretic! Any fool knows Exile is the best rock album ever.
I fell asleep during a Moaning Groans gig. Trufax.
The only other time I got near this was in a Tangerine Dream gig.
I fell asleep at a Black Sabbath gig (I also fell asleep at Knebworth when Zep were playing - only a few minutes though)
I fell asleep at a Who gig.
I fell asleep during several AC/DC gigs.
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Think we need a 'gigs you've fallen asleep at' thread
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I'll say it then: Tom Waits. Dreadful, dreary, self-important pish.
Also Tangerine Dream.
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Bjork
Heh. I once included 'Declare Independence' in a mix for the office stereo...
https://youtu.be/4z7NN4n8CTY
Suffice to say it didn't stay on for the full duration of the track.