Mustache Minded Music Lover Thread!

[Penn42]

Music is my first love.  I used to lay in my parents bed when I was a little kid and play old Billy Joel or Elton John Cassettes on their 1986 JVC rack system.  Music was my sport in high school and my bachelor's is in Jazz Performance.  Today I don't play music anymore, but I listen incessantly.  As I write this I'm listening to Sleater-Kinney. 

I like imposing listening constraints on myself to force myself to check out new or different music.  The past month I've been only listening to music performed or written by women.  This has allowed me to delve further into some artists I already liked (Joni Mitchell) as well as check out completely new to me artists (Sleater-Kinney).

Here's what I'm currently listening to most:

• Joni Mitchell - The Hissing Of Summer Lawns
  Wow take about a absolutely devestating album.  A slightly deeper cut than Court and Spark or Blue and I cannot get enough.
• Joni Mitchell - Mingus
  This took a few listens, but it has grown on me vastly the past couple weeks
• Sleater-Kinney - No Cities No Love
  Their comeback record from 2015.  I have not loved an album upon first listen as much as I loved this one in a LONG time.  Rockin' powerpunk-ish anthems front to back.  So fun.
• Bjork - Post
  I have tried multiple times to get into Bjork with little success.  The catalog is so big and eclectic and daunting!  This album doesn't have me head over heels; there are a couple swings and misses on there.  However, when she hits, you better watch out.  Love Army of Me, Isobel, It's Oh So Quiet, and Enjoy
• St. Vincent - St. Vincent
  I loved the song Paris Is Burning from her debut record, but was otherwise pretty unfamiliar with her output.  Strange Mercy was good, but her eponymous album really has it all IMO.  Prince Johnny and Regret are my two favorites.  The whole thing is great.
• Jill Scott - Who is Jill Scott? Words and Sounds Vol. 1
  This woman has some pipes.  Holy shit.  Not to mention front to back the album is packed with the funkiest subdued grooves you'll ever hear.
• Mary Halvorson, Ron Miles, Greg Saunier - New American Songbook Vol. 1
  Somewhat avant-garde takes on classic tunes across all stretches of the American songbook.  Mary is quite the guitarist.  Always pushing boundaries.
• Esperanza Spalding - Radio Music Society
  Lastly, this current constraint I put on myself is a good excuse to listen this record to death again.  Breathtaking top to bottom.  That lady can play some bass and write some tunes.

What are ya'll listening to?

[Financial.Velociraptor]

I have a favorite Pandora station that is on basically all the time.  It started as an Iron Maiden station but then I decided to up thumb every single last thing it played.  Now I get Johnny Cash, Air Supply, and everything else that is clearly not Maiden. 

[Polaria]

I have a favorite Pandora station that is on basically all the time.  It started as an Iron Maiden station but then I decided to up thumb every single last thing it played.  Now I get Johnny Cash, Air Supply, and everything else that is clearly not Maiden.

I have a Spotify playlist which also contains a noticeable number of Iron Maiden-related songs (you should definitely check The Chemical Wedding btw):

https://open.spotify.com/user/polaria_be/playlist/1uuhfF2krql3161wmq1VbW

[meghan88]

What I listen to varies on any given day, but here's a list of my faves in no particular order:

David Bowie:  Man Who Sold the World, Hunky Dory, Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane.  The early stuff.
Green Day: Just about anything, but especially American Idiot.  I can listen to that whole CD all the way through, on repeat.
July Talk:  Great new-ish Toronto band.  Check 'em out.
Moby: Play
Def Leppard:  Vault
Radiohead:  OK Computer
Muse: Just about anything
Francis Cabrel:  Samedi Soir Sur la Terre
k.d. lang:  Shadowland, Ingenue
The National:  just about anything
Joni Mitchell:  Hits
Crosby Stills Nash and Young:  So Far
Led Zeppelin:  First four albums
Greta van Fleet:  Safari Song
Pink Floyd:  Dark Side of the Moon, The Wall, Umma Gumma
The Franklin Electric:  Great new-ish Montreal band - check 'em out
Walk Off the Earth: Most of their covers on youtube - check 'em out, esp. Gotye/Somebody That I used to Know; Lorde/Royals
Concrete Blonde:  Joey
Jaco Pastorius:  self-titled solo album
The Who:  just about anything
The Beatles:  just about anything
The Rembrandts:  self-titled studio album from 1990 - all of it
Prince:  most stuff
My Chemical Romance:  Teenagers
Nirvana: just about anything
Foo Fighters: just about anything
Red Hot Chili Peppers:  just about anything
Talking Heads:  just about anything
Live:  Throwing Copper
Queen:  first four albums plus some of the later classics
The Struts:  Could Have been Me (now, why didn't they get Luke Spiller to pay Freddie M.??)
Lyle Lovett:  absolutely anything ... he could sing the phone book for all I care
Spinal Tap:  soundtrack
Elvis Costello:  My Aim Is True


Oh, and Bruce Cockburn, Beau Dommage, and Harmonium, and The Tragically Hip, and Midnight Oil, and ...

[Poundwise]

I'm an old fart who needs new music.  Here's my modest offering,  @Penn42:  More women artists whom I'm sure you know already Laurie Anderson, Kate Bush, PJ Harvey

[fell-like-rain]

Really depends on mood, but here are a bunch that I've been listening to a lot of recently, in rough categories:

Swampy/rootsy rock- JJ Grey & Mofro, The Band, Creedence, Tea Leaf Green
Acoustic strings- Zoe Keating, The Wires, Kronos Quartet (first two are woman artists, for those interested)
Indie-esque stuff- Adult Mom, And the Kids, Ways and Means Committee
Other- Bombino, Ben Harper

[Bro-mero]

Definitely a Mustachian Music Nerd here

I try to listen to as much of my favorite artists' discographies as possible.

My favorite musical artists with my fave album from each...

Guns N' Roses (Appetite)
The Beatles (Abbey Road, with Revolver and Magical Mystery as close seconds)
Bowie (Ziggy Stardust)
Pearl Jam (Ten)
Pink Floyd (Dark Side)
Red Hot Chili Peppers (Blood Sugar Sex Magik)
Prince (Purple Rain)
Neil Young (On the Beach)
Rush (tie between Moving Pictures and Hemispheres)
Weezer (Pinkerton)
Radiohead (OK Computer)
The Smashing Pumpkins (Siamese Dream)
Led-Zeppelin (IV)
The Rolling Stones (Sticky Fingers)
System of a Down (Toxicity)
Tom Petty (Wildflowers)
Bob Dylan (Highway 61)

and plenty more.

[Dollar Slice]

You have good taste, OP! :-)  I only have a few Bjork albums but "Post" is my favorite, I think. And I've seen Mary Halvorson play many times. She's got incredible technique.

I'm not sure my love of music counts as mustachian... more like the #1 force pushing back my FIRE date ;-)  I'm much more into live music than albums - I budget $300/mo and try to squeeze as much life out of it as I can. So it's more "what's happening this week?" than "what are you listening to now?" I don't like to name names too much on MMM because I'm fairly identifiable as a fan of certain musicians/venues, but I'm mostly into the avant garde side of jazz and contemporary classical. I have very open-minded ears, though - in the past year I've seen everything from rap to bluegrass to noise. I find most kinds of music fascinating. (But jazz is the best.)

At home (as opposed to live shows) I tend to listen to less of the avant garde stuff and somewhat more conventional singer-songwriters - lately I'm most into Sean Rowe, Joe Henry, Jolie Holland, Jason Isbell, Glen Hansard...

[GuitarStv]

I tend to go through musical phases over time, where I'll focus on a few artists/types of music for a period.  After a couple years I'll want something fresh and redirect into a different genre.

Currently I'm listening to a lot of alt-rock.  Mother mother, Future Islands, Glass Animals, The National, Sorority Noise, Hollerado, Cage the Elephant, and some Muse.  A few years before it was funk/R&B (Curtis Mayfield, The Isley Brothers, George Clinton /Funkadelic / Parliament, Stevie Wonder, Tower of Power, Wild Cherry, Jackson 5, Prince, Marvin Gaye).  Before that reggae (Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, Burning Spear, UB40, the Skatelites).  Before that was some random jazz (Coltrane, Thelonius Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, Dave Brubeck, Billie Holliday, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Django Reinhardt), classic rock (Zeppelin, the Stones, Hendrix, Cream, Deep Purple, CCR), blues (Buddy Guy, Robben Ford, SRV, BB King, Albert King, Clapton, Robert Cray), folk music (Ani DiFranco, Barry McGuire, Bob Dylan, Simon & Garfunkle, James Taylor).

It just keeps going back further and further through the years.  Weird thing is that you can pick any point in my life and I can immediately bring up a soundtrack that went along with it.  :P

[Cromacster]

I have a favorite Pandora station that is on basically all the time.  It started as an Iron Maiden station but then I decided to up thumb every single last thing it played.  Now I get Johnny Cash, Air Supply, and everything else that is clearly not Maiden.

I have a Spotify playlist which also contains a noticeable number of Iron Maiden-related songs (you should definitely check The Chemical Wedding btw):

https://open.spotify.com/user/polaria_be/playlist/1uuhfF2krql3161wmq1VbW

Checking out the playlist!  Always nice to find other Maiden fans \m/

I've been listening to alot of Ghost lately.  They opened for Iron Maiden and I had never really listened to them.  Before the show a guy in the bar described them as a metal ABBA, haha.  They have worked their way into my regular listening.  They are playing in town this week, but I am way late to the party and scalped tickets are 200+, might try day of see if I can score a cheap last minute ticket.

I've been trying to listen to as much new (to me) metal as I can.  Wacken 2020 here I come!

[Penn42]

I'm an old fart who needs new music.  Here's my modest offering,  @Penn42:  More women artists whom I'm sure you know already Laurie Anderson, Kate Bush, PJ Harvey

I'll put Laurie Anderson on the list, I'm unfamiliar.  Bush and Harvey are great, though.  Without knowing much of anything about your taste I'm gonna recommend the Canadian band The War On Drugs.  You offerings were fairly 80's-centric and The War On Drugs are often compared to 80's Knopfler.  So there's my attempt to bring it back around, haha!

[Penn42]

You have good taste, OP! :-)  I only have a few Bjork albums but "Post" is my favorite, I think. And I've seen Mary Halvorson play many times. She's got incredible technique.

I'm not sure my love of music counts as mustachian... more like the #1 force pushing back my FIRE date ;-)  I'm much more into live music than albums - I budget $300/mo and try to squeeze as much life out of it as I can. So it's more "what's happening this week?" than "what are you listening to now?" I don't like to name names too much on MMM because I'm fairly identifiable as a fan of certain musicians/venues, but I'm mostly into the avant garde side of jazz and contemporary classical. I have very open-minded ears, though - in the past year I've seen everything from rap to bluegrass to noise. I find most kinds of music fascinating. (But jazz is the best.)

At home (as opposed to live shows) I tend to listen to less of the avant garde stuff and somewhat more conventional singer-songwriters - lately I'm most into Sean Rowe, Joe Henry, Jolie Holland, Jason Isbell, Glen Hansard...

How can you not go see live music when you live in the epicenter of the American art form?  The times I've been to New York, regardless of whatever else was planned, I went to a show each night.  My favorite was I saw Nate Smith, Fima Ephron, and Kurt Rosenwinkel just jamming at the 55 Bar.  That was otherworldly.     

I have a much broader and longer attention span for "out" music in a live environment than from a recording.  There was a drummer several years ahead of me in school who moved to NY after graduating and ended up becoming pretty involved in/around the Stone.  I've been fortunate enough to have got to see a couple of his projects there.  Don't remember the names of them, but they were killer.  However, I can't say I've ever had much of a stomach for contemporary classical.  All the tone rows I was forced to study in music school left me pretty ambivalent towards it!  Oh well. 

When I got back from work today the new Joshua Redman album Still Dreaming arrived and I'm listening to that right now.  Ron Miles, Scott Colley, and Brian Blade are on it.  It's pretty great so far. 

[Penn42]

I tend to go through musical phases over time, where I'll focus on a few artists/types of music for a period.  After a couple years I'll want something fresh and redirect into a different genre.

Currently I'm listening to a lot of alt-rock.  Mother mother, Future Islands, Glass Animals, The National, Sorority Noise, Hollerado, Cage the Elephant, and some Muse.  A few years before it was funk/R&B (Curtis Mayfield, The Isley Brothers, George Clinton /Funkadelic / Parliament, Stevie Wonder, Tower of Power, Wild Cherry, Jackson 5, Prince, Marvin Gaye).  Before that reggae (Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, Burning Spear, UB40, the Skatelites).  Before that was some random jazz (Coltrane, Thelonius Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, Dave Brubeck, Billie Holliday, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Django Reinhardt), classic rock (Zeppelin, the Stones, Hendrix, Cream, Deep Purple, CCR), blues (Buddy Guy, Robben Ford, SRV, BB King, Albert King, Clapton, Robert Cray), folk music (Ani DiFranco, Barry McGuire, Bob Dylan, Simon & Garfunkle, James Taylor).

It just keeps going back further and further through the years.  Weird thing is that you can pick any point in my life and I can immediately bring up a soundtrack that went along with it.  :P

I rotate around genres like that too if you zoom out far enough.  On any given week I'll probably throw on a whole slew of different stuff, but broadly speaking I travel around different center points.  P-FUNK has been one of absolute favorite artists since high school.  No other band is funkier.  And the best part is they know it and are cocky about it, which makes it better.  Most of the lyrics are simply telling you that they know you can't help but shake your butt to the music they're making.  And I, for one, will gladly let them make me shake my butt! 

While on the topic of old school R&B/funk: One band I discovered relatively recently that I cannot believe flew under my for so long is The Bar-Kays.  Criminally underrated.  That name deserves to be spoken in the same breath as all those you listed.  If you haven't heard of them give Flying High On Your Love a spin.  Do not pass go, do not collect $200.

[markbike528CBX]

I tend to go through musical phases over time, where I'll focus on a few artists/types of music for a period.  After a couple years I'll want something fresh and redirect into a different genre.

Currently I'm listening to a lot of alt-rock.  .....snip.........

It just keeps going back further and further through the years.  Weird thing is that you can pick any point in my life and I can immediately bring up a soundtrack that went along with it.  :P

Try Mudhoney 1988-present.  I'm going to see them in Zagreb for my birthday.
the single---Touch me I'm Sick
the EP. Superfuzz Bigmuff
 Full length
          -- Under a Billion Suns.   or
          -- The Lucky Ones

[Dollar Slice]

How can you not go see live music when you live in the epicenter of the American art form?  The times I've been to New York, regardless of whatever else was planned, I went to a show each night.

Yeah, before I moved here I did the same thing on visits. Now I live here and I have to stay in some nights for the sake of my health. Stupid bodies, requiring food and sleep all the time... such a drag!

I have a much broader and longer attention span for "out" music in a live environment than from a recording.  There was a drummer several years ahead of me in school who moved to NY after graduating and ended up becoming pretty involved in/around the Stone.  I've been fortunate enough to have got to see a couple of his projects there.  Don't remember the names of them, but they were killer.  However, I can't say I've ever had much of a stomach for contemporary classical.  All the tone rows I was forced to study in music school left me pretty ambivalent towards it!  Oh well. 

What's your friend's name? I'll keep an eye out if he's still playing in NYC.

Contemporary classical can be pretty dreadful (woo atonal minimalism!) but there's also some really fun and crazy stuff with a lot of humor/excitement/creativity. I saw Sxip Shirey premiere some classical pieces in January which were just mind-blowing, totally creative use of the space, innovative use of technology, fascinating and ethereal. He looped cell phones together for vocal effects, used a Morse code machine, homemade percussion instruments, etc. (I think the only one of those pieces you can find on YouTube is The Gauntlet, a choral piece... https://youtu.be/LDRGIP0HDik )

[GuitarStv]

I tend to go through musical phases over time, where I'll focus on a few artists/types of music for a period.  After a couple years I'll want something fresh and redirect into a different genre.

Currently I'm listening to a lot of alt-rock.  .....snip.........

It just keeps going back further and further through the years.  Weird thing is that you can pick any point in my life and I can immediately bring up a soundtrack that went along with it.  :P

Try Mudhoney 1988-present.  I'm going to see them in Zagreb for my birthday.
the single---Touch me I'm Sick
the EP. Superfuzz Bigmuff
 Full length
          -- Under a Billion Suns.   or
          -- The Lucky Ones

Mudhoney . . . that name takes me back to high school.  :P  I'd class Mudhoney as more along with the grunge and pre-grunge bands  . . . Nirvana, the Meat Puppets, the Pixies, the Breeders, Veruca Salt, the Melvins, et all, but haven't listened to anything new that they've done.

[lost_in_the_endless_aisle]

• Jill Scott - Who is Jill Scott? Words and Sounds Vol. 1
  This woman has some pipes.  Holy shit.  Not to mention front to back the album is packed with the funkiest subdued grooves you'll ever hear.

OMG, Jill Scott is so chill I nearly got frostbite!

[Penn42]

What's your friend's name? I'll keep an eye out if he's still playing in NYC.

His name was Justin, but he hasn't lived in NY for a few years now.  Off WWOOFing I think. 

[Serendip]

At home (as opposed to live shows) I tend to listen to less of the avant garde stuff and somewhat more conventional singer-songwriters - lately I'm most into Sean Rowe, Joe Henry, Jolie Holland, Jason Isbell, Glen Hansard...

Thanks for the recommendation of Jolie Holland @Dollar Slice , really digging her!
She reminds me of The Be Good Tanyas, I listened to them heaps in the 2000's :)

AND Sean Rowe...wow

[Dollar Slice]

At home (as opposed to live shows) I tend to listen to less of the avant garde stuff and somewhat more conventional singer-songwriters - lately I'm most into Sean Rowe, Joe Henry, Jolie Holland, Jason Isbell, Glen Hansard...

Thanks for the recommendation of Jolie Holland @Dollar Slice , really digging her!
She reminds me of The Be Good Tanyas, I listened to them heaps in the 2000's :)

AND Sean Rowe...wow

You're welcome! Jolie was actually one of the original members of the Be Good Tanyas, and just recorded a duo album with another one of them (Samantha Parton), so if you like their early stuff, her solo career is a sure bet... :-)

And Sean Rowe is way underappreciated. He's really good live, too.