I basicly took against Floyd and Zep and Quo that all my schoolmates raved on about and have never bothered to change my mind.
I should probably have used this as my anecdote on reflection but I was once at a party that had the Undertones (except Fergal) in attendance, who at the time were my utter favourite band. John o Neil was producing my mates bands album, and he spent the evening unsuccesfully trying to convert me to the genius of Syd Barret
I reluctantly came around to liking The Tragedians. They were like dad-rock royalty in Canada growing up, which meant that I, as an obnoxious teen, wasn’t allowed to like them. Meh. Fine. They’re great.
Me! I still have the flyer from that show, and the set list from the N.Y. show a week later.
Also: the night Gord Downie played his last show with the band, I was at a lake on a beautiful summer night late into a Saskatchewan summer. Nights like that are a rare and beautiful thing for folks who spend half the year in a frozen hellscape, but I’ll be damned: damn near everyone was inside watching old Gord give us and his band an incredible send off. It was like SuperBowl Sunday if everyone watching was rooting for the same team.
In sixth place with five points
Against Me! - “Those Anarcho Punks Are Mysterious…”
In 2012 a close family member came out as trans and transitioned shortly thereafter. Not proud of this, but I was slightly uncomfortable about this. Not that I thought there was anything wrong with it, but it made me sad or uncomfortable or something to lose (or feel like I was losing) the person he was earlier in life. Laura Jane Grace (lead of Against Me!) came out as trans around the same time, and I had the reverse reaction that many do: instead of a family member coming out as trans paving the way for my wider acceptance of (celebration of!) people in the wider world, I instead found Laura’s transition and public discussions of what it meant to her to help me understand my family member’s transition.
Anyway, not exactly a rippin’ tale for strangers at a party, but it is an anecdote I’ve told a couple times in the right company.
That’s lovely, and you don’t need me to say that it’s completely normal to feel as you did and that the only measure is how you deal with it and act subsequently. But I said it anyway.
We’re now entering the part of the reveal where it’s all songs I just liked. In fact, from now until second place was very very close and occasionally felt somewhat arbitrary to separate them, you’re all near winners in my mind1. Just forget about the points.
I liked this for the almost ramshackle nature of the sound, the shouty vocal performance, the clapping and the variety it gets in such a short song. It’s fun. And it’s another US ‘punk’ band that didn’t sound rubbish, can I have been wrong all these years?2
1 Though not actual winners, first place is definitely a cut above.
2 No.
I was taken aback when I first found out how many punk rock bands were really into psychedelia.
In fifth place with six points
Captain Beefheart - Ella Guru
Couldn’t think of any anecdotes relating to songs, but I do remember the first time I heard this record with a friend and we were just silent for a while, eyes agog and gobsmacked at the apparent chaos (whose deceptively orchestrated genius would only unfold over the following weeks after many listens). I think the phrase “fucking hell” was then uttered several times.
Don’t do yourself down, that’s an anecdote and an entriely understandable one on encoutering the good Captain for the first time. Sadly for you this song drifted lower from being one that I know very well, but also from, perhaps heretically, TMR not being my favourite era of his work, so mostly I’d think about other songs of his whilst it played.
This is still great, but over the years I’ve definitely found myself listening to either Safe As Milk or, mostly, the last three albums he did—Ice Cream For Crow is my favourite. I can’t really describe it but the arrangements on those late albums are extra mindblowing and a step forwards even from the ludicrous stuff that’s on evidence here. The guitars are often cleaner too, which seems to suit. Though, as I say, I cannot explain.
On Ella Guru it’s the dueling guitars from about a minute in that’s the real shit. Along with Beefheart’s vocals, obviously, gleefully shouting his amusing nonsense as he always does with a mildly terrifying edge to his voice. Fast and bulbous.
That one’s me.
Ella Guru was me obviously
+1 for Gary Lucas, a great musician. I heard he still plays Beefheart songs live.
I’m confident of my traditional 4th place
In fourth place with seven points
Tweaker - Ruby
So I’m sittin at my computer looking at pictures of Walren when I hear a knock on the door. I go open the door and I am met by some goofy lookin bastid with shades on. And he says to me “I got a song for you to use in the Pyatnitski Walrus”. Needless to say, I was a little shocked that they even knew of my participation in this game, but truth be told I was a little stuck on what to submit for the anecdote category, so I figured this might be my lucky day. I asked him what category it was for and he replied “Category 4, good sir. And might I just add that you are a strapping looking fellow.” Well, needless to say I was flattered, but I managed to keep my wits about me and get some particulars. He goes on to tell me it’s a tune called “Ruby” and he thinks it might be of interest to Pyatnitski. Well, now I’m intrigued, but I gotta know the song is going to fit the parameters of a Walrus submission, so I ask how long it is. “Ohhh, about 3:50” he says. Well it was about this time I noticed that this goofy lookin bastid at my door was about 8 stories tall and was crustacean from the protozoic era. The Loch Ness Monster. I said “DAMMIT monster!!! Stop tryin to get me to submit songs you like to the Walrus game!!!”.
Well after I slammed the door and got back to my business I got curious and checked out the song. Turns out its pretty damn good so I submitted it anyway. Damned if I’ll tell the Loch Ness Monster that though…
Bloody hell, that’s amazing! The only way I can explain it is that I have been to Loch Ness, so perhaps the monster spotted me on the shore and took an interest. That was years back and I haven’t seen evidence of it until now, but, as you say, how could it know?
Anyway, on to the song. I used to be a big Will Oldham fan, but he put out an album in 2004 called “Sings Greatest Palace Music” where he utterly murdered earlier songs of his in a cheesy country style, and since then I’ve largely ignored what he’s been up to.
This also came out in 2004 and, in his vocals, certainly seems to channel the stuff I liked so much, all dark, miserable and obscure. Tweaker is a band that just got him in to sing, so they deserve the credit for the music which is very atmospheric and appropriate, as well as all satisfying and big when the guitars really kick in. It’s great stuff and I’m sad it’s taken till now for me to know it exists.
That you, Swanky? 
Nope. Podium baby!
Podium time. Well done!
In third place with eight points
Minor Threat - Look Back And Laugh
In about grade 10, Tum Yeto (skateboard company) was doing a Canada tour stopping off in cities for skateboarding demos. Me and my friends went to one in a city near us. After the demos they always have product tosses where they throw gear/shirts into the crowds and people wrestle for them. Leaving the arena after the demo, we saw a fat kid with a brand new deck that was from the product toss. My friend went over to him and ripped it from his hands and ran away. The Tum Yeto tour was featured in an episode of 411 VM (skateboarding video magazine) and it featured this song.
Oh dear, what’s this? Never having been a skateboard person I have no idea what ‘a deck’ is in this context. Also, your friend did a bad thing, I think. This seems especially problematic twined with Minor Threat, famously a band of stringent morality. Still, I suppose it was a long time ago.
Onward. I must thank you for reminding me of the existence of Minor Threat. I bought their Complete Discography (one CD long) years ago and enjoyed it, but when this started I realised I’d just not listened to them in a really really long time for no particularly good reason, and this sounds great.
There’s a direct and righteous agression to prime era hardcore, a refinement of an element of a lot of punk music into something that feels like a pure, elemental form. Minor Threat never let the control slip for a second on this one, and the catharsis is as great as the tension in the song itself. Really great stuff.
In second place with nine points
Pat Metheny Group - First Circle (live in japan)
Boring af, and I’ve already shared this song with host pyat previously, but I had the handle First_Circle at a couple poker sites back in the day because of my
steady placement at final tablesthis song.
Rivaldo, dude, you can’t say that. If we’re fixing this it has to be ‘anonymous’, yeah? Anyway, ignore that everyone.
So, who knows how these things happen, but I’ve just been discovering Pat Metheny these last few months, so this song fell very happily into my current tastes. This sort of stadium jazz, obviously coming out of fusion but by this point surfing far and wide beyond it, was never somewhere I went looking but it’s just excellent. It has all the variety and exploration of the noisier, less melodic stuff I am used to, but isn’t afraid to mine a nice tune as well.
The vocals on this one are particularly good. Wordless, somewhat percussive chanting that reminded me slightly of the way Steve Reich uses singers in some of his stuff. It also has 4 or 5 or more different sections, all great and all interesting but all cohering into an always lifting whole. I am a little disappointed Pat himself mostly sticks to strumming the acoustic, but you can’t have everything.
cassette was very close in his prediction of 8 points! This was me.
In first place with ten points
Arrow - Hot Hot Hot
If no-one else is my kids are sick of this anecdote. 1986 Notting Hill Carnival in West London. The song being pumped out by all the sound systems was Hot Hot Hot by Arrow. I was wandering about pleasantly stoned, swigging Red Stripe by the can, when I became transfixed by this beautiful creature dancing and lost in the rhythm of the song.
Yadda Yadda Yadda, 35 years later we are still together.
I mean, disgusting. I knew one of you would tell some unacceptable story, but did it have to be the winner?
Lol, jokes, etc. Don’t tell anyone, but I’m a sucker for “we first met” stories. That’s despite having first met my wife in a service station, an event she doesn’t even remember.
Anyway, this song. I mean, on the one hand I feel like I can just say listen to it, it’s great. On the other I want to write an essay. The kind of music I’ve been hunting through the most the last few years is, and forgive me for being mostly ignorant of how you might refer to it, West African dance band music. People like Rail Band, Bembeya Jazz National and others (Fela Kuti too, but he’s another thing, I think). It’s great, and supposedly (how would I know) is using traditional African music played with ‘western’ instruments to make a sort of light as air sounding but heavily rhythmic, groove. It’s just I always feel like I’ve not quite found the version of it I want to hear.
All that to say this track sounded like another form of what I’ve been chasing. Arrow is from Montserrat and this is apparently Soca music, and I assume comes from a similar mix of influences. I must have heard this version before but I never listened. It’s just great fun from start to finish, that’s all there is to it.
As predicted by:
Another masterful reveal Pyatnitski. Go ahead and blast Supersilent - 1.3 for yourself to wind down. You sure have earned it.
Then come back immediately to do the final reveal.