Let's get a little bit of culture up in here.
Yeah, but not Canada. There's only so much Alanis Morissette and Bare Naked Ladies I can hear... Oh, Neil Young. Canadiens, please post lots of Neil Young :) Just kidding.
I have to stick up for Canada here as my favorite bands seem to all be Canadian (or women and often Canadian women). A lot of great things came out of the Canadian music scene in the mid 2000s. Arcade Fire, Broken Social Scene and all related bands (Stars, Metric, dozens of others). I'll plug the New Pornographers for a Vancouver band, Tegan and Sara for Calgary (though they might as well be American at this point), and Rural Alberta Advantage for a Toronto band that isn't BSS related. I should add Wolf Parade and derivatives (Handsome Furs, Moonface, Sunset Rubdown) for Montreal and Wintersleep for Halifax (I think?). To cover Manitoba I'll toss The Weakerthans into the mix. Not that I don't enjoy friendly jabs at Canada's music scene. My favorite Daily Show bit was joking about Canada dropping the queen as their head of state and John Oliver says "oh sure, drop the queen, who are you going to put on your money, Bryan Adams?"
I'm an American, but I lived in Budapest for a number of years. Played music there. Went to shows there. Was a part of the music scene. So here are some of my favorites. Locomotiv GT - "She's only 14" - Good old fashioned stadium rock from behind the Iron Curtain in 1973. DJ Palotai - "Abrak a Dubra" - Great dance DJ, pulling all kinds of world music together into great tracks that you can't help getting up and dancing to. Masfél - "Zuma" - Prog rockers who continually reinvent themselves and their instrumentation, while still maintaining a fascinating core sound. Kéknyúl - "Expect Me!" - My friend Andy's band, "Blue Bunny", is right in the R&B groove, while still bringing something new to the genre. Love these guys! Szupernem - "K-k-k-kétszer" - Three piece snotty pop punk band who have absolutely distilled all the best of the Ramones and Green Day into pure fun. Tankcsapda - "Agyarorszag - full album" - The most honest metal band in Hungary. Starting off as a direct copy of Motorhead, "Tank Trap" has now spent 20 years putting out just fantastic straight-ahead metal. And if that ain't metal enough for ya, they have an official YouTube channel where they release ALL of their complete albums FOR FREE. Just fucking great music, great fans, and a great time. Check out this live recording of "Kicsikét" to hear something amazing: The band drops out for the verses, and lets the crowd sing along with the singer, then powers into the chorus, and drops out again for the verses. Gives me goosebumps every single time. Anima Sound System - "Anima - full album" - Simply the most enchanting electronic ambient trance ever produced, anywhere in the world. This is their first album, and the following ones are just as amazing. If you listen to just one track, make it "68". Amazing. Enjoy!!
Note a #bugski. The original title for "Tankcsapda - "Agyarorszag - full album" - " was "Tankcsapda - "Agyarorszag (full album)" - " but it broke the linking. Here's what happens: The left-square-bracket plus right-square-bracket method of defining the link text breaks if there is a left parentheses within the link text.
Dutch music, much like Dutch cuisine, either borrows a lot from other countries or is not worth mentioning. Most of the modern Dutch musicians sing in English because frankly, singing in Dutch sounds silly most of the time. Seriously, this compilation of mostly-recent Dutch music is like 70% English. Ignoring that, there is some good music that is in Dutch. Acda & De Munnik springs to mind. They're like Dutch Simon & Garfunkel and known for their guitar / piano music and witty lyrics. Like this one: If You Finally Leave Me / Can I Still Come Along? Read that the inspiration for your first album / Came from your dying mom / She didn't deserve that / At least, that's what she told me yesterday. The other artist that I hold dear is Stef Bos. He sometimes hits it right where it hurts, like in this song Farewell: Or here: The last word / The last dance / The last light / Then starts the night.
Enjoy some Chinese metal. edit going back to my idle ways now.
New Zealand has a good mix! Hip-hop is fairly prevalent amongst the most well-known artists; After each link, under the video has a bit about the above clip, just so avoid any formatting confusion. I'm not great at this.
You've probably heard a lot of the typical diddly-aye music, which is always about my bonnie wee lass that I left in the green fields of Ballymactwohill on the fair Emerald Isle: The High Kings - "Star of the County Down" Have a look at this great jig with a bit of a twist (trad music doesn't usually feature didgeridoos). Hermitage Green - "Banish Misfortune" We do occasionally make different music. Here's some math rock. Adebisi Shank - "You Me" And I don't think I can let you go without mentioning the best/only Irish black metal band. Primordial - "The Coffin Ships" And, in case you were wondering, no-one here ever listens to U2. One last thing. Ireland won several Eurovision competitions back in the day; a quick blast from the past here: