I hinted at this project a little bit in a post asking you all for input on various genres. I didn’t want to reveal all of the details because I’m pretty excited about it, but now I’ve finished my first genre, so this is my big reveal!
My project is basically a means for me to listen to music, become more versed in various genre, and learn more artists and songs that I like. I think that being well-rounded is important, and although I like a wide variety of music, I often can’t name artists or songs I like in a specific genre. Cue you guys! I got a lot of feedback that I’m very thankful for.
What I’ve asked for is a list of 10 artists that you think represents its genre as a whole. I know this is a tall order, but I obviously can’t listen to everything. From there, I’ve selected a number of songs from each artist to listen to.
For punk rock, thanks to @Thebraziliandude and @sweetsavageblood, I listened to the following 10 artists:
The Ramones
The Sex Pistols
The Clash
Patti Smith
The Plasmatics
Dead Kennedys
Blondie
Minor Threat
Black Flag
Rancid
I have to say that I appreciate what pioneer bands are and what they do. Without them, we wouldn’t have the collection of music we have today. All of these artists brought something to the table, and I enjoyed at least one of their songs. Personally, I really enjoyed The Ramones, Dead Kennedys, Black Flag, Rancid, and Blondie. I think overall they had good music and decent to great lyrics. I was especially amazed by Blondie, as I was unaware how many of her songs I actually know and love! She wasn’t really what I always think of when I think of punk rock, though. The Ramones, Rancid, and Black Flag are very much what I think of punk rock, and although Blondie did have a few songs in there that were similar, it wasn’t what I was expecting.
Any problems that I had with any of the artists were really based in their lyrics. All of these musicians had great music behind their vocals, but personally I enjoy singing with songs, so lyrics have a lot of weight. Thats not to say that their lyrics aren’t meaningful as I find punk rock to have some of the best lyrics around, but they were often very repetitive, which I find unappealing. Patti Smith, although I liked her music, was on average about 5 minutes too long. I would get to minute 6 and all I could think was OH MY GOD, ARE YOU DONE YET!?
So…about my song picking. What I did for punk rock was took the number of albums each artist had and added them all together. Then, I divided that number by ten to get 7 songs each. I can’t decide if I should keep 7 songs per artist from here on out, if I should use the same method with a different end result, or if I should calculate a percentage of songs per artist based on how many albums they have. Any suggestions are very welcome! If you are interested in knowing what songs I listened to for punk rock or would like to venture on this journey with me, you can find my playlists (sorted by artist)here. I make a complete playlist for each artist before I begin listening to them, so you can listen with me [almost] in real time.
As a final note on my selection, I used the-top-tens.com to select my songs. I don’t necessarily consider it useful, but it was the best tool I could find. If you have any other suggestions, please, please, please let me know!
Do you like punk rock? What do you think of my selection? Are you going to be joining me on my musical roadtrip?
A Ship Called Life 