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No surprises

July 29th, 2009 · Posted by Skuds in Music · 3 Comments · Music

I was listening to Planet Rock while shaving the bonce and showering tonight and it struck me how complicit they are in perpetuating the syndrome whereby most of us only know a single song by fairly prolific artists.   I have recently been using Spotify to explore the hinterland of such bands: listening to Blue Oyster Cult songs that are not (Don’t Fear The) Reaper, Boston songs that are not More Than A Feeling and Golden Earring songs that are not Radar Love. Still on my list of bands to get round to are The Ozark Mountain Daredevils, Steppenwolf and Rennaissance.  Thanks to Planet Rock I can now add a few more.

They played, in a row, 20th Century Schizoid Man, Faith Healer and Rocky Mountain Way.  I hear them quite a lot, but never any other tracks by King Crimson, SAHB or Joe Walsh.  I can understand this sort of thing in a station like Radio One or Capital, where they have a playlist and the current chart songs are on heavy rotation, but at least that changes over time and slightly different tunes are on heavy rotation.

If Planet Rock is not going to play album tracks that were not ‘hits’ by Yes, Nazareth, Wishbone Ash, Metallica, and so on, then who is?   No wonder I spend more time on Spotify these days.

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3 Comments so far ↓

  • Rob Glover

    Renaissance I can give you plenty of steer on – I’ve got most of their stuff.

    Boston not so much – I have the eponymous first album, and Third Stage. There are some great tracks on Third Stage, Amanda, I Think I Like It and Hollyann are all worth seeking out.

    I still haven’t done Spotify, nor Twitter. I think I’m definitely a science nerd rather than a technology nerd.

  • skud's sister

    Rob also has a fine collection of King Crimson….

  • Skuds

    I did dip into a bit of Rennaissance a few months ago – and Heart. Quite good IIRC.

    Have a couple of King Crimson vinyl LPs but they were acquired/inherited rather than bought so I never really played them. To be honest I found it quite inaccessible at the time and gave up on them pretty quickly.