Trollheart

It's not. I think that has been proven multiple times here, by different people, and now you're just struggling to try to justify the unjustifiable really.
Unbelievable. No wait, not in your case, as I'm coming to expect these things from you. What a waste: one of Rainbow's classic rockers and "you don't like Dio's style". I assume you mean singing style, as Ritchie, who formed the band and creates it style more than anyone through his amazing guitar work, is still with them?
Oh my god you do talk some rubbish don't you? How do you know how popular they are? And it's present tense: their new album is due out this year. What's your definition of popular? Chart success? If so, then you can consider 80-90% of bands on this planet unpopular. I suppose Threshold bought every copy of their, to date, eight albums, not to mention four live ones, themselves? Their concerts were played to empty arenas, were they? Their music is absent from every ipod in the world? Jesus! Sometimes I wonder, I really do...

So all you listen to is downbeat. Oh excuse me, all that resonates with you is downbeat music? Seems odd but if so why talk so much about the songs we have been, and dissect and refute them. Why not just say "I prefer downbeat songs" and save us all the trouble of trying to convince you? Though I find it hard to believe that someone couldn't be moved to a smile by the likes of the Pretenders' "Don't get me wrong", Huey Lewis's "If this is it" or even Simple Minds' "Alive and kicking". What's that you say? They're all short songs? But we weren't discussing short uptempo songs, you said "upbeat rock songs", didn't you? (Sorry, just anticipating your rebuttal...)

Unbelievable arrogant. How can you possibly know if you don't listen to the song? There are so many songs I know that have started off one way and ended totally different. That's what's so great about music: like football, often anything can happen over the course of a song.
So you'd listen to "hold on my heart" but not "Fading lights" (10:16), "Driving the last spike" (10:08) or even "Dreaming while you sleep" (7:16)? How about "No son of mine"? That just scrape in at 6:39? Does not all this sound ludicrous to you, to limit yourself in such a draconian way?

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

sopsych

Yeah, the problem is mostly with Dio, singing and writing. Note that Rainbow circa Joe Lynn Turner was about shorter songs. By the way, I heard Blackmore doesn't play rock music anymore.

Mainstream exposure, at least. But if they're current and good, eventually I'll probably see the band mentioned somewhere else. Psst, that principle also applies to the Rainbow song.

I like "Alive and Kicking" and "Don't Get Me Wrong." (I've tired of "If This is It.") I didn't say I never like uptempo songs, but something long probably has to be emotionally complex yet still scrutable to work for me. (I'm changing my argument slightly as I have new insights.)

The team that leads after the first quarter usually wins But this isn't football. Something cohesive enough to be a song probably won't vary much in quality as it runs its course. I base my observation on having listened to at least 5000 songs in my life. I grant you that maybe a longer song demands a slightly longer sample.

I don't know what "Fading Lights" is. I'm a big fan of "No Son of Mine" - but it would and could have been better had the repetitive chorus been cut by 30 to 60 seconds. Despite having "We Can't Dance" on CD, I've never listened to the other two. I know they weren't singles and probably didn't get much airplay anywhere, and the album on the whole isn't great - that combination tells me they likely aren't anything special.

Realistically, everyone needs limits. There is plenty of good music in this world - leaving out categories one tends not to like allows more enjoyment for the proven stuff.

Trollheart

Dio is acknowledged as one of the most important heavy metal singers ever, and writers, and generally seen as the real "voice" of Rainbow, though of course there are those who don't like him. Not sure what your problem is with him, whether it fits in with your points here or not, ie whether it's because he tends to write longer songs on the whole, but okay that's your choice. Nevertheless, to stop listening to any song after 1 minute just seems weird to me.
Not in any way necessarily. Do you think you've heard every band considered "good" or even "popular"? I hadn't even heard of Sigur Ros until recently, checked them out and really liked them. But you won't find them on the radio or in the charts. Does not in any way invalidate their music though. A band does not have to be popular, or known to you, to be good. Threshold do very well without you, thanks.

But before I move on, can't you see that in listening to the Threshold track you have actually disproved your own premise? You said that if a song starts off one way you don't listen any further as it's unlikely to change (your football --- I stress, I assume American football, I was talking about soccer, the real football --- reference below) and yet having listened to this track you admit it changed significantly halfway through. You even gave it grudging acceptance. But on the basis of the length of that track, and on only that one criterion, you've already said you would not have listened to it. So now that you have, is it not obvious that there's a reason, even a need, to give longer songs a chance?

No, I know, that's why I qualified my own response to reflect what you said. You said you don't get any emotional resonance out of them, which is what I said.


Perhaps in American football, I don't know. But in English and other football, it can go right down to the wire. A team leading 3-0 at half time can very easily be beaten 4-3 or drawn if the right circumstances, luck (dodgy penalty, offside goal given, man sent off etc) occur, or if the halftime team talk is good enough, so no, in football there is no foregone conclusion up to maybe the 80th minute, and there's always extra time. Last year, one team were being beaten 4-0 at half time and came back to draw 4-4 by the end. Yeah, some fans of the losing team left early, but they regretted it and now wish they had stayed for a historic comeback by their boys.

5000 songs? In your life? If I may be indelicate, what age are you? Even a 30-year old, listening to one song a day for 20 years (assuming the first ten years are not spent deliberately listening to music) will listen to more than that. I'd imagine over my lifetime (50 next year) I would have listened to, let me see, on a very conservative estimate, at least three times that amount. Probably more like ten times, really, and I don't listen to music ALL the time. Now admittedly I may be much older than you, and I probably listen to more music, (or maybe not), but even at that, 5000 songs in your life doesn't seem a sufficient amount to be in a position to be making the rigid demarcations you're laying down for yourself. Don't you feel like you should experience more?



If you have WCD and have not listened to those tracks you're missing out, and without giving them the chance you will never know and can never truly make that claim. As I said before, you can't base your perception of quality on whether or not songs were singles: there are probably better tracks on most albums that were never released as singles than there are single tracks.
No they don't. Why? Why limit yourself? If you want to explore, say African tribal music and never have before, why not do so? Or Italian disco? Or dubstep? Or death metal? Or grindcore? Why would you limit yourself to not trying these avenues, unless you're actually not interested in them? There are genres I am not interested in, but that doesn't mean I might not be at some point in the future. I don't place a limit on myself, saying you can never explore those genres. What would be the point of that?
A narrow view if ever there was one.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

sopsych

Dio was a lousy singer, and his songs are lyrically vapid and repetitive; length magnifies all those flaws. He wasn't exalted by many until he was old.

A good artist in a modern style is likely to at least get a little music television exposure eventually. Not that I think Sigur Ros is good, but I think I saw a video at least once.

In fact, I used the qualifier "rarely."

Because I can tell those things suck. I have been exposed to bit and pieces of that (except for Italian disco, which I assume isn't far from regular disco).


People are making too big of a deal out of my 5000 songs comment. It was a conservative estimate. Maybe the actual number is 10,000. Also, I mean unique songs (it could be a few millions listens). It hardly matters. The point is the sample size is big, and therefore my observations have a solid basis.

Janszoon

I don't think that's particularly true. There are boatloads of talented people out there making fantastic music. Very few of them are are going to end up on a music television channel.

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A Night in the Life of the Invisible Man

Time & Place

25 Albums You Should Hear Before the Moon Crashes into the Earth and We All Die

last.fm

Trollheart

If I had any respect for you at all, it rapidy diminished with each new confused and unfounded comment. But this, sorry to be rude, but this crap above: that's it. I'm out of here. You have nothing to say to me and you have no place in an argument like this if you think you can make a comment like that. You don't even say in my opinion (though it is only yours). Dio has been univerally hailed as one of the strongest, most talented and most influential voices in metal, and for you to put him down with a pithy comment like that with no basis whatsoever just takes your arrogance to levels I can't even deal with anymore.

I'm done with this so-called debate. You're welcome to it.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Neapolitan

If you average that out to four minutes a song that comes to 1 week 6 days 13 hours and 20 minutes of music. That's how much music Howard the Duck listens to in two weeks.

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Howard the Duck

erm, make that 4-5 days, i sometimes skip between songs

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Malaise is THE dominant human predilection.

Neapolitan

That's how long it would take to list to 5000 songs on average of four minutes a peice, but I still believe you could listen to 5000 songs in five days.

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Trollheart

So you're saying .... we're conversing with someone who's five days old, at best? Not much time to build up all that wisdom, huh?

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018