Do you still "blind buy" CDs?

Ah..well for once i agree with you Floor is an amazing female vocalist,i saw her perform live about 2 weeks ago with After Forever here in my hometown which is near Amsterdam..oh well i was just curious why you choose that picture..i think i have a pic somewhere taken at the gig,she's wearing that same sexy outfit..:)

Brett - K A L I S I A said:
Why do you have an ass in your avatar ? Is it yours ? ;)

...Wisshhh...;)
 
I did get sick of buying cds only to discover that there were a couple of good tracks and the rest was dross. So I would download the mp3s and see if it was worth parting with money for. BUT I am currently on dial-up so it is back to buying them blind, asking my mate Neil or waiting for Maria to play them on her show.
 
Angeleyes Part II said:
Ah..well for once i agree with you Floor is an amazing female vocalist,i saw her perform live about 2 weeks ago with After Forever here in my hometown which is near Amsterdam..oh well i was just curious why you choose that picture..i think i have a pic somewhere taken at the gig,she's wearing that same sexy outfit..:)

I just saw After Forever in Madrid 3 days ago, fantastic concert as always... in spite of Floor's illness. They're a great band, and also very nice people.

Btw... Brett, so do you like Conception? (and we're going a little bit off-topic here...)
 
I occasionally blind buy, but..these days it's probably not as "blind" as it used to be. If I know the work of the musicians involved, or sometimes the producer/engineer's work I'll occasionally do it, but "blind" in the old days used to mean without hearing a note or if the cover looked cool, right? It's been quite a number of years since I did that...long before the days of mp3s I might add..

That being said, these days I pretty much ONLY blind buy stuff I absolutely know I'll like, such as the latest Keith Jarrett album, or Miles Davis boxset. Those have never disappointed me in the least, so I still have fun "impulse buying" stuff like that. I don't need to hear a note of it up front either, and I'm always 100% happy with the albums too.

I can remember buying the Todd Rundgren album "A Wizard, A True Star" back in the days of yore, simply because I thought the cover was killer. I had a day off from the studio, so I wandered into my neighbourhood record shop in Woodford and browsed around for a while. I saw this in the new releases section and asked my friend Dave, who worked behind the counter, what it was like. He said, "really out there" or something like that. Sounded good to me, so I handed over the princely sum of £2.00 and walked home with it under my arm.

The album completely blew my mind, and the next day off I had I went back and got all his other albums, again, all as blind buys based on absolutely loving the first one. They also completely blew me away and in fact to this day TR remains my biggest musical influence, bar none.

Those days, particularly in the rock/metal genres, are loooong gone for me.
 
Thonolan said:
I just saw After Forever in Madrid 3 days ago, fantastic concert as always... in spite of Floor's illness. They're a great band, and also very nice people.

I hope she'll be better in two days when they'll play here !

Thonolan said:
Btw... Brett, so do you like Conception? (and we're going a little bit off-topic here...)

Oh yes I do !!! Roy is one of my favorite singer & Tore one of my favorite guitar player... I discovered them with "Parallel Mind", liked it but not too much. "In Your Multitude" then raised the bar much higher for me, and when "Flow" came out, I remember talking to a friend and we both concluded that these guys understood everything about music, this album is so amazing ! Too bad I never saw them live unfortunately (tho I saw 3/4 of them in their other bands).

Then I followed Roy in Kamelot, and I have to say that I'm very happy with his carreer because Kamelot is band fantastic band now (and he's for a big part of it I'm sure, to me "The Fourth Legacy", "Karma" and "The Black Halo" are all masterpieces - too bad I left my CDs to my ex who loved them as well -, but for some reasons I didn't like "Epica"), and I followed Tore in Ark as well (their first demo was ok but their album "Burn the Sun" is a masterpiece as well !!!).
 
Absolutely...sometimes it's worth taking the chance and can be a real surprise. I've discovered some great bands through, essentially, an impulse buy without ever hearing a note...noteably Yyrkoon, Scarve, Unmoored, Frantic Bleep.....
 
Brett - K A L I S I A said:
Oh yes I do !!! Roy is one of my favorite singer & Tore one of my favorite guitar player... I discovered them with "Parallel Mind", liked it but not too much. "In Your Multitude" then raised the bar much higher for me, and when "Flow" came out, I remember talking to a friend and we both concluded that these guys understood everything about music, this album is so amazing ! Too bad I never saw them live unfortunately (tho I saw 3/4 of them in their other bands).

Then I followed Roy in Kamelot, and I have to say that I'm very happy with his carreer because Kamelot is band fantastic band now (and he's for a big part of it I'm sure, to me "The Fourth Legacy", "Karma" and "The Black Halo" are all masterpieces - too bad I left my CDs to my ex who loved them as well -, but for some reasons I didn't like "Epica"), and I followed Tore in Ark as well (their first demo was ok but their album "Burn the Sun" is a masterpiece as well !!!).

I've never seen Conception live either :confused: . Anyway, we might have a chance to see them in the near future, since the band is back! Maybe you're interested in reading the interview I did to the band last year: http://www.ultimatemetal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=207201

I've seen on the Kalisia website your favourite musicians and influences... yeah, Conception are there :D
 
Oh cool I'll read that interview, Ingmar is cool, I met him and was very fun even if playing in his black metal project :)

I've seen on the Kalisia website your favourite musicians and influences... yeah, Conception are there
Haha, well, who isn't anyway (tho I tried to restrict myself to 5 names per style, so damn hard !!!) ? lol
 
Personnally I often go to my record seller (who's also a very good friend) and he usually reserve me the albums I most likely to enjoy. I usually listen to one or two songs and then make up my mind whether I'm buying it or not.

For some bands (those that I already know for some times), I usually don't listen to it before I buy it, just to manage a little surprise. That's what I will do with the new Katatonia e.g.
 
As a younger person of the interweb era, I have only purchased a few CDs from the bands I like. Ever since I was about 10, I downloaded music from artists I liked. When I was about 12 I started listening to less mainstream music that people talked about in various games I played (CS and EQ). Shortly after I started playing guitar and was obsessed with Modest Mouse until metal started growing on me with some of the more mainstream bands like Metallica, Megadeth, and Iron Maiden. I then started buying my favorate band's shirts to support them, I didn't have a job and it was a way to get my parents to spend their money supporting my favorate bands as they probally wouldn't give me alot of money to spend on CDs each week. I still don't have a job to this day, and I just support bands by buying shirts and going to shows.

I think that maybe downloading music didn't force me in to the more extreme metal as much as "blind buying" cds. If you go spend $10 to $20 dollars on a CD, listen to it, and you don't like it the first time, chances are you're going to listen to it at least a few more times to make up your mind. Since downloading music is so effortless and costs no money at all, for the longest time I would give some songs one listen and consider the artist garbage. I listened to only Old Metallica, Megadeth, Pantera, Iced Earth, and Iron Maiden for the longest time because I was not "forced" to listen to music I spent money on. In the past year I've started branching out and giving the more extreme metal genres a chance, I now prefer death and black metal vocals over my old cherished power metal vocals, and I've learned to love dissonence and synth, and more technical and complex riffs over the ol boring recycled powerchord progression with a few gallops or chugs thrown in.

Today I saw six kids at my school with Korn shirts on. While I do respect Korn because they make a living playing music and doing what they love, I do think that there are many more talented bands out there. I thought Korn was one of those bands that falls under "music for people who don't listen to music" catagory, but six kids wearing Korn shirts... I am begenning to wonder if downloading music is a bad thing, if it prevents kids from "forcing" themselves to listen to other types of music. If I didn't play guitar and didn't force myself to listen to other styles to mesh with my own, I don't think I'd be listening to Kalmah, Opeth, At The Gates, or Dimmu. I think I'd still be listening to Metallica, hell maybe Korn would be my favorate band :puke:
 
While it is a rarity nowadays, I do still occasionally blind buy a cd. I will pick things up if I get a really good recommendation from someone I trust, even without hearing it first, but that doesn't happen all that often anymore. I agree that if MP3's are available for me to check out first, such as on a Myspace page, I will do that. As soon as I'd heard about you guys (both from word of mouth and from reading articles) I found the Myspace page and checked out the songs. We've really reached out to alot of people through Myspace and honestly I think it's a great thing to have around as well.

Come to think of it, just a week ago, my drummer and I came across a cd by a band called Klimt1918 and bought it purely because the sticker on the front mentioned a mix of U2, Interpol and Katatonia influences, and the cover art was cool. Luckily, we quite enjoyed the music when we listened to the cd later, so it was a successful gamble :)
 
I do it all the time. Sometimes I find myself with something that is not particularly to my taste, but most of the time I am fortunate.

I have been like this for years, I will buy blindly based purely on band name, label, artwork, review, conversation, or any combination thereof.

As far as this forum is concerned, possibly the 2 most important buys like this were Nightingale's "The Breathing Shadow" in a second hand shop soon after its release (based on artwork and label only, it was only when I got to the pub I looked inside and realised it was that bloke whose name is on loads of CDs... then came an expensive Swanö obsession) and "The Candlelight Compilation". I was familiar with Emperor and Enslaved, but was blown away by Opeth, Beyond Dawn and Solstice in particular.

I bought the last Novembers Doom one blind, simply because one of the band posted on Dan Swanö's forum thanking him and James Murphy for the sound. I don't need a higher recommendation than that combination of names.

I have just picked up a Riverside CD this weekend at PPUK based on little more than I know someone recommended I check them out.

Last year I set up a CD trading thing with some mates for the very purpose of discovering new things that they recommend. I kind of based it on the old tape trading thing from the 80s (just slightly too young to have partaken at time). Every couple of months we pass a compilation we have done round the others and receive one from everyone else too. Seems to work well when we get motivated.

I am loving the whole MySpace thing now though, it is such a powerful tool.

I recommend everyone checking out a lable sampler if bands that they like appear with a couple of tracks. You will be amazed just what gems you can unearth.