The Song that Best Represents a Band/Artist

[washing machine]

Yeah go to hell KD!

Its the old fruit that makes wine

wat

It's a fairly layered post that I constructed specifically for trag.

Ah, well never mind then.

Is that a layered post too?

[epilogue]

Yeah go to hell KD!

Its the old fruit that makes wine

wat

It's a fairly layered post that I constructed specifically for trag.

Ah, well never mind then.

Is that a layered post too?

I don't have layers, Reid.

[washing machine]

Yeah go to hell KD!

Its the old fruit that makes wine

wat

It's a fairly layered post that I constructed specifically for trag.

Ah, well never mind then.

Is that a layered post too?

I don't have layers, Reid.

Lady I know-know-know you don't

[epilogue]

Yeah go to hell KD!

Its the old fruit that makes wine

wat

It's a fairly layered post that I constructed specifically for trag.

Ah, well never mind then.

Is that a layered post too?

I don't have layers, Reid.

Lady I know-know-know you don't

Easily the song that best represents Melissa Etheridge

[tragabigzanda]

[washing machine]

Yeah go to hell KD!

Its the old fruit that makes wine

wat

It's a fairly layered post that I constructed specifically for trag.

Ah, well never mind then.

Is that a layered post too?

I don't have layers, Reid.

Lady I know-know-know you don't

Easily the song that best represents Melissa Etheridge

What a great quote pyramid...wasted.

[epilogue]

Yeah go to hell KD!

Its the old fruit that makes wine

wat

It's a fairly layered post that I constructed specifically for trag.

Ah, well never mind then.

Is that a layered post too?

I don't have layers, Reid.

Lady I know-know-know you don't

Easily the song that best represents Melissa Etheridge

What a great quote pyramid...wasted.

You knew the risks

[washing machine]

Yeah go to hell KD!

Its the old fruit that makes wine

wat

It's a fairly layered post that I constructed specifically for trag.

Ah, well never mind then.

Is that a layered post too?

I don't have layers, Reid.

Lady I know-know-know you don't

Easily the song that best represents Melissa Etheridge

What a great quote pyramid...wasted.

You knew the risks

High churn rate, enemy of risk

[E.H. Ruddock]

More like sonic oof amirite

[washing machine]

Chris

[E.H. Ruddock]

I'm just trying to get you to pay attention to me, Reid

[epilogue]

Yeah go to hell KD!

Its the old fruit that makes wine

wat

It's a fairly layered post that I constructed specifically for trag.

Ah, well never mind then.

Is that a layered post too?

I don't have layers, Reid.

Lady I know-know-know you don't

Easily the song that best represents Melissa Etheridge

What a great quote pyramid...wasted.

You knew the risks

High churn rate, enemy of risk

which sonic oof song is that from

[washing machine]

I'm just trying to get you to pay attention to me, Reid

[chewm]

Pavement - Silence Kid

This is probably true, even if I personally relate with Pavement through Wowee Zowee and beyond.

Wowee Zowee & BtC are my 2 favorite albums but I picked this one because it has the noisiness of early Pavement while being melodic like their latter stuff

[spike]

Okay, so... I've been thinking this through since my Bowie post...

The song that best represents a band/artist.

To me, that's one song that if you played it for someone it would tell them what they needed to know about that artist. It doesn't mean everything that artist does has to be represented. It's the song that represents the group's essence. One song that would tell a novice whether or not they needed to bother digging deeper into a body of work.

With that in mind, I think Life on Mars? is my pick for Bowie. It's lush. It's weird. It's lyrical. It's catchy. It's character driven. It's dramatic and cinematic. It transports. All things I associate with David Bowie.

nineteen pages in and you finally got there pal

[Birds in Hell]

Sonic Youth - Schizophrenia

Hmm

This is 100% true.

I agree.

[Kevin Davis]

I love KD and I love Washing Machine, but I just really don't think he's given pre-Geffen SY a fair enough shake on the board over the years for that to be a balanced take.

Hey, I like all eras of SY! I obviously haven't been listening as long as you have (you helped guide me through my initial discovery of the band, after all), but I'm pretty familiar with all the albums at this point. If I had to pick I might even say "Shadow of a Doubt" is my favorite SY song period.

But most importanly, and this is obviously subjective to no end, but Schizophrenia to me just sounds more like a SY song. It's slightly out of tune, it's unsettling but somehow ear candy too, it is full of texture, and when I close my eyes I can see dark NYC alleyways, clear as day.

I am not sure I really relate to this criteria with SY -- I don't think there are any SY songs where they don't sound completely and utterly like themselves. I would say this about my pick, though: I like "Schizophrenia," and Sister, a lot. But as someone who really enjoys longform instrumental music, that side of SY's musical personality has been super important to my experience with the band. And even though "Schizophrenia" gives an elemental taste of what that side of their personality is like (or would be like in a longer-form piece), and certainly does so in a way that is right for that song, it's not the same; to me, music that unfolds over a long period of time creates an experience that is not sufficiently conveyed or represented by being reduced to a "capsule" version. If someone were to tell me that the definitive, most representative Miles Davis track was, say, something off Birth of the Cool (where all the songs are 2-3 minutes long, limited by the 10-inch 78 rpm format), right off the bat I would be skeptical, because that experience of hearing his music unfold over a longer period of time, of following his musical trains of thought (and those of his sidemen) over the course of 9-10 minutes, is something definitive to my experience with his music that can't be conveyed simply by showing me something that adheres to a similar aesthetic value, only in a more consolidated format. That just isn't how it works for me.

For some bands, a mere representation of this type of element in a song that might be a contender for an exercise like this may be the best you're going to get, but for SY it isn't. Even if "Diamond Sea" ended after 5 minutes, it would still be a first-rate SY song, but it also presents an indulgent side of their personality (which, in my opinion, is a big part of what they were about) in a way that lets you actually indulge in it.

You could also argue that their pre-Geffen years comprised 9 years of their career, where the Geffen years and beyond comprised 21, so something that is from that later period and sounds like it is more "representative" of the band than something from their pre-Geffen period.

While fully accepting that I am a SY neophyte compared to Reid, Trag, Spenno, and probably most everyone else here (not many people got into SY for the first time in 2011), that's my argument and I'm sticking to it!

[Norah]

yeah, reid

[Kevin Davis]

YEAH!

[epilogue]

Okay, so... I've been thinking this through since my Bowie post...

The song that best represents a band/artist.

To me, that's one song that if you played it for someone it would tell them what they needed to know about that artist. It doesn't mean everything that artist does has to be represented. It's the song that represents the group's essence. One song that would tell a novice whether or not they needed to bother digging deeper into a body of work.

With that in mind, I think Life on Mars? is my pick for Bowie. It's lush. It's weird. It's lyrical. It's catchy. It's character driven. It's dramatic and cinematic. It transports. All things I associate with David Bowie.

nineteen pages in and you finally got there pal

Wat

This is where I've been the entire time. Go yell at the posters giving me shit this whole time.