Favorite Band, page 4

It's hard to just choose one band, if I had, it would be Opeth, based on everything up to Damnation, but I don't really like the recent albums. If I listed ten of my top ten bands, it would probably be as follows...In no real order...

Opeth
Anathema
Jethro Tull
Summoning
Blind Guardian
Saor
Orphaned Land
Darkthrone
Insomnium
Genesis

However, lately, I've been listening to a lot of Jazz, I tend to go through periods of exclusively listening to one genre and as a clarinet player I love Anat Cohen and think her albums are brilliant. Dave Brubeck Quartet's Jazz Impressions of Japan is usually rolling daily. Ulf Wakenius, Pat Metheny, John Coltrane, Miles Davies, Keiko Matsui, all these people I have a lot of their work and really highly regard them.

Classical - I really love the Penderecki, Mozart, Prokofiev, Einaudi, Holst

Then I also listen a lot, to the old delta Blues stuff - Skip James, Bukka White, Howlin Wolf, Son House, these guys were incredible and as real music should be, timeless. Some of this work is near on 90 years old and still I can really feel it. I mean there is an old song written in 1914, not a blues song, but a beautiful song written to rival "its a long road to Tipperary", called "Keep the home fires burning" and there is a 1917 recording by John McCormack, it is an amazing song that he really brings to the surface the emotion of the topic, but I've discovered many songs similar from this period.

Even in Hip Hop, which I used to listen to as a kid until I really commanded more from the music that I listened to, I still now somewhat like Cypress Hill, Bone Thugz n Harmony, Wu Tang Clan, dark gritty kind of stuff that they did, I can't stand this polished stuff that's been appearing for a long time now, probably since I kind of drifted out of it 96/97 I suppose.

I could go on and on, to be honest!

So anyway, this is a long a$$ post, but music is massive to me, it's helped me greatly and I think the more open a person is to the world of music, the more open a person will be to life. I've always treated music as a treasure and nobody has ever handed me treasure, I've always had to go search for it, sometimes in the deepest darkest corners of mankind but it truly is something that I regard as man's finest discovery and I certainly would appeal to everyone to get out there and discover the ocean of music that there is and not just the dross on mainstream radio and/or TV.

So yeah, apologies for the long a$$ post, but can't help myself when it comes to music.