There is some music festival coming up here in California soon. Coachella. I’ve never heard of it until now but apparently it’s been going for like 12 years. There was a time, not so long ago, I was hugely into music. I would have considered it my #1 interest. I would have looked at a festival lineup like this and I feel like I would have known at least half the bands. If it was a festival I’ve heard of that was folky/jammy specific, it would have been closer to all the bands.
I went through the Coachella lineup and I was lost. I marked the ones I’d even heard of.
Out of 143 bands, I’d heard of 19 (13%). I could name a song from 9 of them. Pretty damn sorry. I gotta my musical shit together. I suspect that the fact that I’m writing a blog post about the percentage of bands I know is a big part of the problem.
1) I sympathize and am surprised to see that numbers are making their way back into band names. Bravo numbers “2” and “3”!
2) You might like New Order, OMD and Sparks. They’re all real cut-ups. But also the opposite of the Lumineers.
3) Your post made me realize that css3 specs are my new indie rock bands:
“You haven’t heard of box-sizing:border-box? Oh man – they are… so awesome.”
“Backface visibility? yeah they’re okay. But I’ve been digging display:table-cell lately… pretty dark shit.”
Both of you guys are hilarious…
Ha, a couple of them look like they could have been started by web devs, like “Diiv”, and “The Selecter”.
Not to mention Alt-J, only a web-dev would name a band after a keystroke reference (they are actually called ∆ ; that’s right the Delta symbol – which can be produced on an Apple with the keystroke alt-J )… Also, in 2011 a band called CSS played too. Lots of web-dev related goodness.
On another note, with a lineup that ranges from Wu-Tang Clan to Band of Horses, it’s not surprising you don’t know loads of the artists. I doubt many would have a musical genre appreciation spanning that wide. The best part about Coachella though is the atmosphere it delivers and the chance to discover bands you’ve never heard of in such an beautiful setting!
I’ve made the trip across to California from Australia twice for the festival and am very enviously looking on from the sidelines this year :(
Oh man. Descendents=legend.
Portugal. The man is good. You should check them out.