GameBanshee Forums

Hello All:

I am getting tired with my music collection. I am looking at recommendations for some fresh music that I can listen to. I am interested in punk/rock, rap, and generally all politically-oriented music. I know SYM is made up of diverse people with diverse musical tastes, so I thought it would be a good idea to ask people here for ideas. Thanks.

Well you couldn't go past Pennywise for political punk, but you may already have that (I'm taking a stab in the dark here at what you have), or the Swedish band 'The Hives', fairly new and very cool- think Milencollin with a message.

I'll have a think on this...

1670s?

For a minute there...

Originally posted by fable
1670s?

... I thought that fable was spamming a (seemingly) serious(?) thread...

...but then again it dawned on me that fable MUST be really serious in recommending classical(?) music.

At any rate, @flyboy try instrumental music from different countries...

or

New Wave Music of the 80's

There's actually some damn good "politically-oriented" folk stuff that Scottish bards wrote during the Jacobite Rebellions. If you can find 'em these days (and I don't know that you can), look for an album by Ewan MacColl, the great Scottish balladeer and political activist (who was banned from visiting the US for several decades about 30 years ago). Some of the stuff is incredibly affecting--"This is Not Ma Ayn Hus," for example, is a wonderfully bitter ballad, while "Come Ye Ore Fra' France?" is an extremely funny and obscene satire directed at George I and his mistresses. Great stuff.

I have know begun to regularly raid my parents music collection. On the basis that not only do they have reasonable music taste but that its also cheaper in the long run, a lot cheaper

Dad has a huge collection of symphony pieces and I'm slowly making my way through it.

I don't want to pull the thread of Humanflyz' tastes (he started this discussion, after all), but there's a great deal of excellent classical music out there--easily 600 years' worth, or more, derived from dozens of different unique traditions, structures, and goals (not to mention thousands of composers). Well worth exploring.

Oh, gamelan music! Yes, investigate that. There's some wonderful head-clearing music from Bali, Java, and the Sundanese people well worth hearing. Look for the Seven Seas label, if you can find it--great stuff.

Would Rage Against the Machine be considered political oriented?

Originally posted by The Z
Would Rage Against the Machine be considered political oriented?

But they aren't anything anymore. . I hope Zack comes back.

The Hives are pretty good. I like the White Stripes and Strokes. Well a few songs of these bands.

Otherwise I'm a Metallica, Rage Against the Machine and Led Zeppelin fan.

Yeah, it's too bad Zack left ( .....personally I'm more into System of a Down, P.O.D., Papa Roach type music, but RAtM was hella good ......I can't really think of any punk-like politically oriented bands humanflyz...sorry

I already have Rage Against The Machine, and I love their music. About classical music, I am not really that big of a fan, but don't have anything against it either. I also prefer music with words, not just instrumental. I haven't really heard anything before the 80's, so I guess I could check out some older music. Here's some of the things I already have:

1)NoFX
2)Rage Against The Machine
3)Lagwagon
4)Bad Religion
5)Ten Foot Pole
6)Green Day
7)Barenaked Ladies
8)Dido
9)System Of A Down
10)Nirvana
11)Coldplay
12)Saves The Day
13)Tool
14)Radiohead
15)Eminem
16)Dr. Dre
17)2Pac
18)Metallica
19)Chemical Brothers

As you can see, these music are fairly recent, but I see no really outstanding music in the present that are in the same genre that I prefer. @Fable: Ewan MacColl sounds very intriguing. I'll look him up on the net.

BTW, this discussion is very helpful to me, so thanks for the suggestions and please keep them coming.

If you wanted some 70s punk, you could try the Clash, the Sex Pistols, the Buzzc0cks... Ysh could probably suggest more. More recent stuff... you could try Death In Vegas, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, the Vines, the Von Bondies (if you like the White Stripes), the Manic Street Preachers (a lot of their stuff is so-so, Everything Must Go is their best album, IMO). Jeff Buckley, maybe. The Cooper Temple Clause and Lost Prophets are fairly new British rock band types, not really my cup of tea, but you might like 'em.

AFI? I haven't listened too closely to their lyrics though...but that's a punk band....MxPx? A little too much like Blink182, and I doubt your too into them....I don't know many rappers besides the ones you have, and maybe Ice Cube, Swollen Members (More hip-hop/rap), and DMX.....how about Jimmy Eat World? Man, you've got a lot of different kinds of music (From Dido to Tool)....I think one of the best Classical songs is Mozart's Carmina Burana...reminds me of RPG's. Static-X? Nickelback? Hoobastank? If you understand German Rammstein? Dunno....just naming bands off the top of my head....The Offspring?

Dido does kind of stick out in that list...

If you're looking for more eclecticism (and maybe a bit political), you could get some funk... I'd recommend Sly & the Family Stone, and Parliament/Funkadelic...

If your are interesting in broadning your musical taste into classical and symphonic music, I have an endless list of suggestions. For policial classical music, I think none is better than my personal favorite composer Dimitri Shostakovitch, who wrote many symphonies, song cycles and operas about the political system in the former Soviet Union. Generally, the Russian (or Soviet) 20th century composers often have political messages more or less concealed in their works.

Another suggestion is to look into rock/pop music from the 60's and 70's. If you like punk, you should look into the British and American 70's bands, they held a similar status in music as the hiphop did during the 80's. Try bands like Dead Kennedy's, Iggy and the Stooges, New York Dolls, Sex pistols, The Damned, The Clash, 999, Generation X. Or from the 70's glamrock era that overlap with the punk and new wave, Venus in furs, Brian Eno, Velvet underground, Marc Bolan.

Late Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, The Who, Queen, David Bowie, Kraftverk is also interesting, it's rock classics that have had a major impact on all popular music.

If you like hiphop, you might like the old skool from the 80's, when the genre was new. Grandmaster Flash, Melle Mel, Africa Bambataa...I still think songs like "The message" and "World destruction" are absolutely great - and it's good dance music as well.

Just to name a few

For world music, I just adore the traditional Tibetan singing that sounds like contemporary composer Lygeti (he made the music for the movie 2001 - not the intro from the opera Also sprach Zarathustra and the An die schonen Vienna walz when the planets line up, of course )

My, with all these old bands being mentioned, I feel so young.

For some more recent music, I'd suggest Papa Roach, Korn, or Limp Bizkit. Not to much politics, but not that far away, either. Oh, and if you don't have both System of a Down albums, I'd get them, they're awesome.