Big Four Bands Thread Round 19: Gothic Rock

[Ol’ Qwerty Bastard]

OJ Simpson?

[JGuy Grungeman]

If OJ's labelled freak folk or avant-folk on one of the websites, sure.

[Ol’ Qwerty Bastard]

Originally Posted by JGuy Grungeman

OJ, let's just go with anyone tagged as freak folk or avant-folk on Discogs, Allmusic, RYM, and Last.fm.

.

[JGuy Grungeman]

Ah.

[Neapolitan]

Originally Posted by JGuy Grungeman

OJ, let's just go with anyone tagged as freak folk or avant-folk on Discogs, Allmusic, RYM, and Last.fm.

Those sites tags things by users, there no rhyme or reason to it. I'm not sure when "Freak Folk" came about. I doubt any of those band or artist self-describe themselves as "Freak Folk." e.g. Vashti Bunyan, Comus or Exuma. I'm like 99.9% sure on that. Another thing the term isn't universally or consistently applied e.g. On Wikipedia, The Decemberist are describled as "Indie rock, indie folk, folk rock, progressive rock, baroque pop" but NOT Freak Folk, Comus is "Acid folk, progressive rock" but NOT Freak Folk. Even though they are on a wiki list of Freak Folk bands.

Why couldn't you go with Psychedelic Folk, or Indie Folk? In some cases you would probably find the same bands.

[Tristan_Geoff]

Discogs and Wikipedia are usually innacurate. RYM is a little better (best of the options) although the users are kinda stingy sometimes with genre voting (NoFX has no ska punk secondaries for reasons unknown, among other examples).

Why don't we just wrap up Freak Folk, Avant-Folk, and Psych Folk in one neat package and call it a day, huh? It'd make this a whole lot easier because I see no real (or otherwise significant) distinction between any of these.

[JGuy Grungeman]

Would you rather go with Wikipedia? No way. Wikipedia is extremely disorganized and quite innacurate when it comes to genres. Users have a much better idea of genre tags than anything that claims something as "official." Besides, I don't think the term came out until way later, so it's a little unfair to say they aren't freak folk based on that.

There's too much discussion about what's elligible, and nothing's getting resolved. Music users have more rhyme and reason than Wikipedia.

Freak Folk was the voted genre. I had already stated it would be a hard genre to deal with, but this was what was decided on. So, since nobody knows what to vote for (Beatles? Really?) this is how I'll decide elligible bands.

[Tristan_Geoff]

Eligible? Why does it matter so much if Comus is in a list along with AnCo, Vashti Bunyan, and Mij? Will that nullify it?

All I'm saying is have some breathing room and don't take this thing too seriously.

[Tristan_Geoff]

Also whatev here's mine:

The Microphones
Vashti Bunyan
Animal Collective
Mij

[Neapolitan]

Originally Posted by Tristan Geoff

Discogs and Wikipedia are usually innacurate. RYM is a little better (best of the options) although the users are kinda stingy sometimes with genre voting (NoFX has no ska punk secondaries for reasons unknown, among other examples).

Why don't we just wrap up Freak Folk, Avant-Folk, and Psych Folk in one neat package and call it a day, huh? It'd make this a whole lot easier because I see no real (or otherwise significant) distinction between any of these.

According to one source Freak Folk = avant garde music + Psychedelic Folk. So Freak Folk doesn't equal Psychedelic Folk, more like a sub-genre of it. "Avant-Garde" (again just like "Freak Folk") probably only exist on community music databases like RYM or last.fm etc. etc. They (Are "Freak Folk" & "Avant-Garde") seem to be made-up sub-genres.