Red Mosquito

the recent activity in the Wilco thread prompted me to listen to a few Wilco albums i hadn't given much time to before--Schmilco, The Whole Love, A.M., as well as Loose Fur's self-titled album.

trag said the new Wilco song sounds like something from Neil Young's "ditch period." i had no idea what that even was, so i decided i'd check out his "ditch period," or "ditch trilogy," as wikipedia calls it. i'd listened to Tonight's the Night and On the Beach...pretty sure i have both on a hard drive somewhere. i hadn't ever listened to Time Fades Away. since NY took his music off spotify, i settled for listening on youtube, and i loved it. i plan to listen to the trilogy sometime this week in succession.

blah, blah, blah...what's this all about, dad? well, once in a while i'll go down a rabbit hole on an artist, which often leads me to other artists. a more recent example is listening to The Fall after some talk in the Pavement thread re: Slanted & Enchanted reissues. I'd listened to a bit of The Fall before, but have nowhere near the background of them as some others here.

the purpose of this thread will be to discuss rabbit holes you've taken to get from one artist to another (maybe more), and what lead you there in the first place. i wanted to see what rabbit holes others go down. do you do a straight deep dive on a band/artist? do you check out their side projects, their influences, or studio collaborators? do you see who produced the album, and check out their work? I do.

what rabbit holes have you gone down? what connections have you made?

NOTE: everyone has opinions on what's cool and what's not. ideally, i'd like to just let people talk about whomever in here without negative commentary, ie. that band sucks, or their music is shit. you can not comment at all. i'm not here to make anyone feel bad about what brings them joy. so if a band/artist isn't to your liking...cool. leave that to yourself.

my hope is we'll end up with a place where people can share and potentially inspire someone else to check out an artist.

thanks to trag for inspiring the idea for this. let's have some fun.

Biggest one I fell down was the Grateful Dead. Always admired them from afar, but watching the 6 part documentary on Amazon had me really intrigued. I followed with the journey which started in April 2020 through October 2020 - live shows, Jerry Garcia Band, studio albums. Every time I thought I had a handle, this group had numerous more suggestions, which resulted in me loving this stuff more and more.

interesting, i too got much more into neil young recently (especially tonight's the night, which i am completely in love with) due to a current wilco obsession (and i feel like my newfound love for wilco was itself fueled by getting super into the replacements before that, i hear a lot of influence from them in the early records, especially the more upbeat tracks, could definitely hear westerberg in something like "monday"), been listening to a lot of big star lately which ofc fits right with the rest, their influence on the mats is well documented lol but sometimes third and especially "kanga roo" sounds like summerteeth/yankee hotel foxtrot three decades before it

wilco has easily been my most listened to band these days, and i guess they have been influencing a lot of my other rabbit holes lately, on one side all the jim o rourke drag city stuff, which also led me to gastr del sol, and on the other i have been getting into more alt country(?) shit, which i mostly knew very little about (uncle tupelo ofcourse, but also old 97s, lucinda williams etc)

Great thread idea. This is my primary form of music discovery. It usually starts with a band member or producer and spirals out from there.

Recently I've been digging into the work of legendary salsa musician Larry Harlow thanks to his incredible salsa/Latin jazz album Live at Birdland. This led to digging into his work with Fania All-Stars, a "supergroup" / musical collective formed in the 1960s to showcase the work of the musicians on the Fania Records salsa label, which over the years has included people like Willie Colón, Rubén Blades, Celia Cruz, Héctor Lavoe, and a bunch more.

It's like those "iceberg" memes, an impossibly deep catalogue of excellent music and it just keeps getting deeper

i love it, you guys. keep 'em coming.

well Pearl Jam and Ed pointed to a lot of new music for me, specially back in the day.

Not counting side bands, i paid more attention to Cat Power because of Ed´s involvement on You Are Free, listened Mudhoney a lot, Black Francis solo albums, The Who, Ramones and specially Neil Young.

Weirdly enough, i couldnt get into Tom Petty or Bruce for some reason.

Every list Jeff makes of his best of the year is full of good stuff.

Also Tom Waits pointed me to a lot of stuff too...not sure why, but Bill Frisell came afterwards. And of course, PJ covered Waits and played with Frisell, so that was funny.

2005 i think? It was some sort of charity thing and i think he opened and then played Rocking...with them

Also on the bill, Presidents of the usa and maybe Heart? not sure

I have rabbit holes in my yard. Never went down one though.

verb_to_trust wrote:I have rabbit holes in my yard. Never went down one though.

have you tried?

dad wrote:

verb_to_trust wrote:I have rabbit holes in my yard. Never went down one though.

have you tried?

I'm intrigued. I always picture a bunny down in this cool underground lounge just hanging out.

verb_to_trust wrote:

dad wrote:

verb_to_trust wrote:I have rabbit holes in my yard. Never went down one though.

have you tried?

I'm intrigued. I always picture a bunny down in this cool underground lounge just hanging out.

i bet there is. take a look and report back.

dad wrote:

verb_to_trust wrote:

dad wrote:

verb_to_trust wrote:I have rabbit holes in my yard. Never went down one though.

have you tried?

I'm intrigued. I always picture a bunny down in this cool underground lounge just hanging out.

i bet there is. take a look and report back.

What music do you think he’s listening to down there?

tree_ wrote:

dad wrote:

verb_to_trust wrote:

dad wrote:

verb_to_trust wrote:I have rabbit holes in my yard. Never went down one though.

have you tried?

I'm intrigued. I always picture a bunny down in this cool underground lounge just hanging out.

i bet there is. take a look and report back.

What music do you think he’s listening to down there?

verb or the rabbit?

dad wrote:

tree_ wrote:

dad wrote:

verb_to_trust wrote:

dad wrote:

verb_to_trust wrote:I have rabbit holes in my yard. Never went down one though.

have you tried?

I'm intrigued. I always picture a bunny down in this cool underground lounge just hanging out.

i bet there is. take a look and report back.

What music do you think he’s listening to down there?

verb or the rabbit?

the rabbit.. probably down in a hole by AIC

Plug them holes till you see
Straight through to the mind's eye

tree_ wrote:

dad wrote:

tree_ wrote:

dad wrote:

verb_to_trust wrote:

dad wrote:

verb_to_trust wrote:I have rabbit holes in my yard. Never went down one though.

have you tried?

I'm intrigued. I always picture a bunny down in this cool underground lounge just hanging out.

i bet there is. take a look and report back.

What music do you think he’s listening to down there?

verb or the rabbit?

the rabbit.. probably down in a hole by AIC

Frightened Rabbit seems like an obvious answer