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Growers and making an effort

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Someone commented in another thread to the effect that streaming is better because how many times have you bought something then never listened to it. Of course we all know that one, but many of the albums I have loved for ever didn’t immediately grab me, but the investment of £££ meant I ploughed on then the penny dropped. Had we had streaming back in 1975 I probably would not have discovered The Mighty Tull, Little Feat, John Coltrane/jazz, Dylan, country music, folk music… – in fact other than shiny pop music which rehashes very familiar ideas, most requires a bit of an investment.

Streaming goes the other way. 10 seconds of 3 tracks and an album written off. A mate recently said he didn’t like Nerina Pallot’s “Fires” and on examination it emerged he had “sampled” three tracks. managing to miss “Idaho”. Hmm.

So who might you have missed had you not persevered? Or who never clicked? The Dead still escape me despite making an effort.

The Hep would be rolling his eyes? Isn’t one of his tropes that you shouldn’t make an effrot?

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  1. Joni Mitchell is the immediate one that springs to mind. Having invested in the CDs I have persevered and each time I listen new ideas and moments are revealed. Not sure I would have done the same with streaming. The Fall are another very different proposition that streaming does not perhaps favour: commit to the object, and strap in. No best of playlists, just 40 plus minutes of MES and friends.

  2. Bob Dylan … owned a copy of Greatest Hits and Blood On The Tracks.
    Greatest Hits as a “way in” and Blood On The Tracks cos the 16 year old me read in a book it was his best.
    Several years passed in unconvinced mood – dipping back in with Blonds On Blonds probably didn’t help move things along – and then one day, it hit like a train … I’m not a Bob uber-fan, but now understand his place in the pantheon of greats.

    Streaming serves a purpose – delivering what you want, when you want it.
    But does remove the “punty purchase” throwing a couple of quid on something in HMV, Fopp, Chazza, etc because it might be interesting.
    Yes I know there is a Spotify Discover algorithm (or whatever it’s called), but it doesn’t call for cold hard cash outlay (and an expected return on investment)

  3. The ultimate grower for me was Exile On Main Street. I guess I was familiar with Rolled Gold and (maybe) Sticky Fingers when I bought it. I picked it up from WH Smiths in Liverpool in a bargain bin on cassette with no cover for about 2 quid. Played it a couple of times and thought “What is this shit?”. In those days I didn’t have an awful lot more to play so I kept at it and one day maybe a year or so later it clicked. I now consider it their best album (not a controversial view) and probably in my top 5 albums by anybody.

  4. The Grateful Dead written of by many as boring including me for nigh on 30 years

    Every time I went to a friends house I’d say “who’s that playing” “the Dead” would be his reply I’d say “play something else”

    Then one day in the 90’s I asked him to play that album again it was all downhill after that

    I now have not counting bootlegs well over 100 albums by them although many Dead fans would consider me a part-time fan

    • I’ve tried for almost 50 years. Yes, on various “refreshments”, too. Still didn’t get it. Still sounds like a tedious Americana bar band to me. Whereas the day i heard Little Feat, they were for me, likewise Todd Rundgren – and in every form Todd was experimenting, too. It took me 20 years to get Captain Beefheart.

  5. My longest term non-grower is Jeff Buckley. Bought Grace alongside not many other CDs as a skint student when it came out. So listened way beyond the 6 listens. Didn’t like it. Tried again when he died, still didn’t like it. Went and bought Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk when it came out, don’t really know why. Didn’t like it. Tried again several times over the years when anniversaries came around. Nope, not growing on me.

    Recently, 30 years on, my 21 year old daughter, who must have discovered him on TikTok, tried to convince me again. Nope, definitely not, and that’s me done.

  6. FWIW I love streaming, despite the obvious caveats. For a long time it made me lazy and I basically just listened to stuff I already owned but it saved me putting on a CD or a record. But a few years ago I decided to change chip and since then it’s opened up whole worlds of contemporary pop, African, European and classical music which I would never have heard buying physical copies.

    So while it’s true I probably don’t listen as deeply any more, I listen *much* more widely.

  7. It’s John Coltrane in my case.

    Ballads and Giant Steps, etc – no problems.

    Ascension and Interstellar Space – took waaay more than six listens, and I’m still not sure they are really for me. But I persevere – every so often, I put them in the pile for the charity shop – then I put them back on the shelf. Work resumes on the tower…

    • I feel that about Meshuggah (quite like the music, its the vocals), “Metal Music Machine”, and Pat metheny’s “Zero Tolerance for Silence”. I really don’t get on with skronk or up-itself self-consciously avant-garde. Yers, i know some people will think that’s ironic given Zappa. But I don’t like his “Civilization part III”, either.

  8. I think setting is always the 4th wall to music; this can mean the mood you are in, or, more often where you hear it. And the difference of live over listening to recorded. I have always struggled with the voice of John Boden, dismissing Bellowhead on the strength of that prejudice. Then, last spring I was at the Band on the Wall, seeing if I could bear the singer, this time with his Remnant Kings. And I could, and did, to the extent of loving it; suddenly his gruelly voice was perfect. And I could now, at home, enjoy my neglected pair of Bellowhead discs.
    Horses for courses, @thecheshirecat was at same gig, walking out in exasperation. And he nominally rates His singing.

    • I can’t be doing with John Borden’s voice. Dreadful. I feel the same about Martin Carthy’s nasally voice – drives me up the wall. Yet I lived his stuff with Norma and Eliza – need the softness of a female to take away the pain

  9. Here’s an alphabetical list of artists who I have witnessed being eulogized on this site, who I have gamefully tried to get with – to no avail. Listening to them is too much like hard work.

    Arctic Monkeys, The Beta Band, The Blue Nile, Crowded House, Dexys Midnight Runners, Elliott Smith, Elvis Costello, Eric Clapton, The Fall, The Flaming Lips, Fleet Foxes, Fleetwood Mac, Foo Fighters, Franz Ferdinand, Fugazi, Gang of Four, Genesis, The Incredible String Band, The Jam, Jeff Buckley, Jimi Hendrix, Joni Mitchell, John Martyn, Kate Bush, Mike Oldfield, The National, Nick Cave, Nick Lowe, Nirvana, The Police, The Rolling Stones, The Smiths, Sonic Youth, The Sundays, Talk Talk, Teenage Fanclub, The White Stripes, XTC.

    About a decade ago, I bought a boxset of 5 albums each by Joni MItchell and Little Feat. Whilst neither found a place in my heart, I could get with the groove of Little Feat a bit. Joni still leaves me cold, though I can appreciate her in the abstract.

    I love the freedom that listening to music in the cloud gives. Random play lets acts (who I would have turned away from because of their image and their most familiar songs) subversively seep into my ears, unlocking the door to a deeper level of appreciation. I haven’t given up hope that some day one of those 30+ acts above might do the same, but it hasn’t happened yet.

    And there are so many more fantastic acts out there who aren’t in what feels like a canon of required listening.

    • Blue Nile…. Jings, I’ve tried, I’ve tried, as everyone and their dog eulogises them. But. They. Are. As. Dull. As. Ditchwater. How can anyone find a hummable tune in their monotony.
      And Arctic Monkeys? Silly regional nonsense nursery rhymes.
      The Fall = bloody rubbish, a madman muttering over library kosmische music.
      I can tolerate most else in that list, even liking quite a few, and some a lot. OK, not ISB, of course, as that is folk music through a lens of drivel and dribble.

        • I don’t know about Rigid, but I recognize I didn’t put any growers in my original response, so I’ll try to remedy that. For me, there’s a category of discordant noise merchants who are my growers. Initially they sound like a lot of instruments being dropped down a flight of stairs, But repeated listening reveals the beauty of the found sound. Examples are Third Ear Band, Ornette Coleman, Lounge Lizards, Gallon Drunk, Marc Ribot, Tom Waits, Alice Coltrane, Zoviet France, Swans. All outside my initial comfort zone, but like a good chilli, it feels good to have experienced it.

            • I’ve just given it a second listen, and it sounds much better than before. First impressions are not so reliable. The bass stands out more and I could hear the interplay between the instruments more clearly. I don’t think I could ever be a fan, but I’m glad to have a better idea of what they sound like – so thanks for that. Could this be a grower? I suppose it depends how much I water it! I’m quite sparse with the sprinkler – there is a lot of dry land to cover.

              From their name I would have thought they were a synth/keyboard-led band with echoes of Floyd/ Tangerine Dream washes of endless sustained chords going nowhere forever. It’s good to be proven wrong!

          • Excellent stuff Sal, I love a bit of out there jazz. When Ornette Coleman made “The shape of jazz to come” the cogniscenti opined that he couldn’t play. Now we realise he was fortelling the future. It wasn’t a grower for me, I loved it the moment I heard it. I saw a great documentary about cool jazz and they raved about it. IIRC the others they covered were Kind of Blue (of course), “Time out” by Dave Brubeck and “Mingus ah um” by Mingus. I bought the lot and they’re all brilliant. Not all immediately accessible but growers.

            EDIT: And of course it’s on YouTube…

    • You say ‘I love the freedom that listening to music in the cloud gives’ and I wholeheartedly agree.

      I routinely listen to music just like this; it gets broadcast on FIP (from France) and on Radio Tres (from Spain).

      • It’s a far cry from a crystal set under the bedclothes late at night, tuning into Radio Luxembourg. These days, the guard rails are off, and seemingly everything is available. Cacti in the rainforest, we have to learn to quickly evolve.

  10. Growers of a sort… this year my CD player broke down, so it was ‘Alexa play the Yardbirds Live at the BBC’ for ages. .. it played over and over again.

    The point is that in five years (ten years max.) Alexa ain’t gonna be giving that gift, no way, ain’t happening, so I bought it.
    Same with the Davy Graham 60s box set.

  11. Twang, your OP is virtually word for word the conversation I was having with someone at work this week.

    My ‘discovery’ days were the 80s and early 90s, where the music I wanted was often hard to get. This effort was then reflected back into listening to the music to make it work. Many of my favourite albums passed me by on first listen: Astral Weeks, Marque Moon, In a Silent Way.

    It doesn’t always work: Joni, Zappa, Trout Mask, The Dead, and Prefab Sprout still leave me cold.

    Conversely, I often find that if an album grabs me immediately, it’s a short fling and I soon lose interest, usually because the thing that grabbed me was a smokescreen for something pretty dull.

    Since Spotify, I can only think of one album where I’ve bothered to put the effort in. I had loved The Avalanches’ Wildflower, and my first listen to We Will Always Live You was really disappointing. I played it three times in a row and by the end of the third play it was my favourite album in years. It’s a great feeling when that happens.

  12. I got to like Van the Man in the early 70s – the lightbulb moment was the BBC showing the concert in 1973 and the ITLTSN album, in particular Listen to the Lion, which still sends shivers down my spine to this day. However, Astral Weeks was a closed book…God, I tried and tried with it. Eventually it clicked…I have no idea why it suddenly made sense, but there yer go.

  13. I think with some records it’s just the right moment in your life and they suddenly make sense to you. Had it only recently with Roxy Music.

    Streaming has definitely made the experience more disposable, but then there’s also a flip side where you wake up one day, decide you’re going to listen to, say, all the George Michael albums to see if anything clicks, chuck them all in a playlist and have at it.

    There have been quite a few artists I’ve given a second chance to visit that sort of immersion therapy, whereas if I’d been buying the records I’d maybe have stopped at one and not gone back.

  14. Pink Floyd were sort of just OK for me for ages. A friend had Ummagumma in the late 60s, then I bought Relics when it came out, then DSOTM, but that was it I think until the Echoes 2CD compilation in the early 2000s. Still one of my favourite compilations, it is a brilliant way in and I have since hoovered up everything. I do much prefer the period up to DSOTM, find Animals hard going and The Wall totally overblown, but der Floyd are now regular visitors to the CD player.

    • Same experience here as regards ‘The Wall’ – I bought it when it first came out – I played it once. It has not been on my turntable since. I have everything they had done up to that point, almost all of which I enjoy, and most of what they released afterwards, with moments of great appreciation scattered across the albums. However, for me ‘The Wall’ is an unfortunate lacuna within the canon.

      • I felt the same way about The Wall and it sat unloved on the shelf for years, then I acquired the dvd of the film in a chazza and really enjoyed it. I now have the remastered cd and a new vinyl copy. After decades of thinking otherwise I think it’s brilliant though I do think it’s best heard end to end. It’s completely different to everything else they did of course. DG particularly excellent throughout.

        • It’s my favourite album of all time, though I appreciate it’s not to everybody’s taste and I understand the argument that it could have done a better job if cut down to a single album.

          I love the sheer size and bravura scope of it, ranging from the disco stomp of Another Brick… to the Gilbert’n’Sullivan-esque The Trial. No, they didn’t do anything else like it, but I sort of wish they did, a bit.

          The film is no unforgettable classic, let’s face it, but it does make the concepts behind the album easier to understand. I’m glad that it includes What Shall We Do Now?, which was cut from the album for length but is a storming piece of music.

          • Yes, I’d say so. I’m still waiting for a surround-sound version, which has been talked about for years, but until that glorious day, I’m happy with the 2011 discs. (I got the Immersion box version, which came out in early 2012, but I suppose the remastering was done in 2011).

              • A remastered Is There Anybody Out There?, the ace recording of the original Wall live show, plus a few CDs of demos that show the evolution of many of the songs. Not CDs you’d listen to a lot, but it’s nice to hear how such well-known songs developed, bit by bit. Well, *I* like that sort of thing.

                Also, some videos, nice books, and the usual coasters, scarf, and other gubbins you got with the Immersion sets.

  15. Getting away from Floyd, I wonder whether anyone, like me, enjoys looking into the nooks and crannies of the long developing career of many of our more senior artists. Take Bobby Valentino, the Clark Gable lookee likee who enlivened the appearances of the Bluebells on TOTP for the various chart entries of Young At Heart. I knew he was also a member of Los Pistoleros, the ad hoc country outlett for he and kindred spirits, like Martin Belmont and BJ Cole. I even bought his solo album, “You’re In the Groove, Jackson.” Anyhoo, that was long ago, altho’ the Pistoleros still play the occasional gig.
    I had also noted he was often an add-on to The Men They Couldn’t Hang, a band I already enjoyed, with my enjoyment rising further as and whenever he plays. Long story short, at the Cropredy boot fair I came across an Electric Bluebirds compilation, a band he was in much earlier on. Cajun in the style of the Balham Alligators, and it is superb stuff. Alan Dunn on squeezebox to Valentino’s fiddle, the former explaining how Richard Thompson came to be a guest on several their recordings. I am now stuck down a rabbit hole of unravelling all the connections, and sounds of the 80s and 90s, as musicians distanced them selves from the prevailing styles then prevalent. Far more fun than tilting at the dinosaurs.

    • So: more of a “rabbit hole” situation than anything to do with “growers”?
      Perhaps these “underground map” situations need a separate thread – I’m sure there are loads of ‘em, consider the Rock Family Tree books!

      • You miscomprehend; these rabbit holes represent unexpected growth in artists who began more peripherally, and through association. (Yet to risk the Fabulous Poodles, mind, where Mr V began.)
        I get the drive of your point, in that I never disliked him per se. That is reserved for the likes of Tom Waits, even, in a surprise, as I discover I quite like his early stuff, before the frog in his throat became a crocodile. So, never say never, as he is a simple dislike, rather than a prejudice. They are denied growth on principle.

  16. I don’t believe in persevering with music I don’t like or find uninteresting on a first listen.
    The results I’ve had over the years from persevering at the insistence of someone else are few and far between and I no longer play along.

    I will add though that dismissing something completely after a single listen and then avoiding it is a mistake. In my ignorant rockist youth I thought classical and jazz music had far too much piano in it for my taste. Classical and jazz singing didn’t appeal much either.
    I have at times been surprised to find that something that I didn’t like on first hearing has started to appeal to me, but it’s not from any effort on my part, it’s something that just happens.
    I prefer to let my musical taste broaden itself and just follow along.

    • Ok…. So it’s a mistake that you subscribe to?
      Actually, you are right in both your statements. Like you, I can take an instant first listen dislike. Actually, it can be a relief that I don’t/can’t like everything. But then there is the accidental realisation that the rejected is actually quite good. But I defend the right to have made that earlier wrong decision.

      • It’s the actual avoiding of music that you didn’t initially like that’s a mistake. Being indifferent to it is perfectly fine. Becoming indifferent to music that you once liked is fine too.
        I did make a conscious effort in the early ’00s to broaden my musical taste, with the aid of music mag cover CDs*. The results were pretty mixed.
        I became more appreciative of trad folk, old-school country, electronica, the avant-garde, jazz and classical. I found my indifference to hiphop, heavy rock and metal was unaltered.
        Initially I was attracted to Americana but eventually I got bored with it and I remain indifferent to it. With prog, I’m of the opinion that the music itself is pretty much stuck in the ’70s, though the modern music technology has made it sound better than back then.

        *This is how I discovered Word magazine. The rabbit hole that led eventually to here.

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