When I was growing up, it wasn’t cool to be a geek. When I was really little we barely even had computers or videogames to play with, so geeks had to do things like “reading” and “science” and the only science fiction shows on TV were old reruns of Star Trek and a bunch of movies about apes. I was very pleased when the Internet started to get popular right about the time I was entering college, dragging up with it the popularity of geek culture.
Today, it seems like our people have carved a niche for themselves in most areas of modern culture. There are TV shows just for us. One of our most beloved pieces of literature (written in the dark times known as “the Fifties”) was even turned into one of the highest grossing movie franchises of all time – at the turn of the millenium, no less. There’s a way geeks dress. There are shops out there devoted solely to selling things nerds will want. If you see a bunch of Mountain Dew cans around someone’s office cubicle, there is a fair chance they work for an IT department. They’ve even developed special kinds of Mountain Dew specifically formulated to stimulate the gaming centers of your brain (and, I suppose, to fuel fictional racial hatred).
It is curious to me, then, that there isn’t geek music. At least, not a lot of it. I love Jonathan Coulton to death, but he unfortunately stands relatively alone in a giant field of “mainstream” artists, relegated to that terrible “novelty” music category by most of society. I’m not crazy about the fact that Taylor Swift can replicate herself and win a Grammy for a musical documentary of her clones’ fight for mating rights with a football player, yet a song laser-targeted at the hearts of lovelorn IT guys like Code Monkey sits in relative obscurity. Other geek-specific forms of music exist, but are even more obscure. Gamers have been known to hoard and play videogame soundtracks. (Protip: DON’T try to listen to nothing but music from the Legend of Zelda series on a 15 hour drive if you value your sanity. ) We’ve even got our own music subculture, though very few who aren’t part of it already have any idea it even exists.
In the absence of music targeted toward us or music we’ve created for ourselves, what then have we turned to? Is there a specific genre we lean toward? I guess it should not surprise me that a culture like ours who prides ourselves on being different doesn’t really flock to anything in particular, and we like to take our chosen brand to its extremes. I know a UNIX admin who can’t get anything done without hardcore industrial or Eurodance blasting through his headphones. I have a friend who just completed his doctoral thesis in philosophy that lives on scary Swedish death metal. I like my rock to have big hair and huge synthesizers, and I like the songs to be about Greek mythology whenever possible. My wife, a graphic designer, listens to Adam Lambert and the Glee soundtrack, to Missy Elliott when she thinks I’m not listening, and then out of nowhere here comes a bunch of Modest Mouse albums “before they sold out” and post-Pavement Stephen Malkmus. I haven’t met a terribly large amount of geeks who like country music, but I suspect that’s more because of where I live than anything else. And you can’t tell me the gangsta rap sequences from Office Space haven’t been re-enacted a thousand times, at least in our imaginations. All those swirlies growing up made us much too angry not to want to bust a cap in someone’s ass, just a little.
I’m curious to see the response from our readers on this one. If you’ve got a second, check in and let us know what music keeps the nerd-fires burning in your soul. If I’m lucky, there will be enough of you that nobody remembers that my favored go-to music when I really need to focus on coding is Madonna. I only wish I was kidding. How was I supposed to know she was compatible with Perl regular expressions?
What, you haven’t heard of prog rock or art rock, genres created by geeks who read a lot of sci-fi and fantasy? Haven’t heard of Hawkwind, the band Michael Moorcock was in? Haven’t heard of geek-influenced New Wave bands, like Devo, Gary Numan, or Thomas Dolby?
Geeks and nerds drive a significant part of several musical genres.
.-= Talysman´s last blog ..Accretion =-.
Just getting ready for a major coding session and a quick glance at foobar2000 tells me that I geek out to four basic categories: classical, metal (esque[1]), soundtracks and weird. My current favorite (which is Video Games Live) combines three out of four being classical renditions of video game soundtracks which is, by virtue of its very existence, weird. I also see a prodigious amount of Bach, some Tenacious D, the Neverhood soundtrack and Diablo Swing Orchestra (an unidentifiable blend of metal and swing and…other things).
I don’t have the hard data (I suspect no-one does) but it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that my music tastes are entirely stereotypically geeky.
[1] Categorizing which bit of metal music falls where on the multidimensional topography of metal genres demanded by fans is above my pay grade. Way above.
Consider also Blind Guardian, who released an entire concept album based around The Silmarillion. And for the record, Burzum is black metal, not death metal.
.-= agentofn0thing´s last blog ..Who ya’ gonna’ call? =-.
Opera. Try the Vengeance Aria from Mozart’s Magic Flute.
Though if I need to actually do work, I have to have silence. Background music uses up bandwidth.
pornophonique, datarock, dragonforce, basshunter, the broadband, gerador zero are all extremely geeky bands of varying notoriety. the entire electronica genre could be classed as geeky due to it’s origins. within that genre you have celldweller, effiel 65, daft punk, I could go on. point is, geek themed music isn’t that hard to find if you look for it.
Er, I think that you aren’t looking around hard enough.
First, there’s Weird Al. The man’s been a geek icon for decades, but it doesn’t get much more mainstream.
Once you pull up Weird Al, you have to pull up the whole back catalog of Dr. Demento. They aren’t all geeky, but a fair number of them are.
Going to the other extreme, you currently have shows making the rounds in which major symphonies are doing video game music, Star Wars, and Lord of the Rings. Crossing the symphony crowd with the video game crowd is a pretty good indication that we aren’t fringe anymore.
Of course, I don’t think you’ll ever get someone like Coulton or MC Frontalot really in the mainstream. Part of their appeal is that they are niche. Then again, maybe one day Colbert will be hosting an awards ceremony, and request that Coulton do a number. Or maybe w00tstock will do a real tour and garner media attention. Or maybe some super-geeky movie will have a soundtrack that brings out some of the geek music stars. It could all easily happen.
.-= Lugh´s last blog ..“All The Great Hits” – Jimmy Buffett =-.
I love my old 80’s but get tired of them after a bit so I usually code to ambient or trance. It just goes well as background. But I will checkout the above mentioned bands. Always looking for more good music.
Great comments, everybody!
After reading this again today, it’s becoming more clear to me that the point I was trying to make didn’t come out quite like I wanted. It’s not that geeks don’t have their own music. It’s just that you don’t have “geek music” fans in the same way that you have “country music” fans. Perhaps that’s not exactly accurate either. Let me put it this way. Our music isn’t mainstream, in the sense that very little of it applies to all/most of us. I’m not sure really what the point of attempting to classify it in this way is, other than me wishing we had a ThinkGeek equivalent to the iTunes store. 🙂
Oh well. If nothing else, I have achieved this post’s secret objective: exposing a bunch of geeky music for everyone to go look up and download!
.-= Vanir´s last blog ..The Power Of The Music Of The Nerd =-.
Well, here’s my list of geeky music, based on what I like, and what the geeks I know like. I warn you, some of this stuff goes back to the stone age. We geeks have been around a long time.
Bluegrass – Alison Kraus (She made a record with Robert Plant!) and Nickel Creek. Also The Chieftans. Steeleye Span has been popular with many. Not quite bluegrass, almost a renaissance feel.
Proto-metal: Rush and Emerson, Lake, and Palmer. Rush is still making recordings. They wrote one song (Trees) that’s about a labor dispute between trees in a forest. Led Zeppelin have a song (Ramblin’, I think) that mentions Gollum.
Holla back @Tina for Opera. Wagner’s Ring Cycle is a great fit for FRP gamers. Giants, Dwarves, Mermaids/sirens, magic swords, dragons, etc. The whole deal. Music from it gets used in movies these days, like Excalibur. Also Carmina Burana. (Not opera, but still singing).
.-= Toldain´s last blog ..Lucky in Love, Unlucky in PVP =-.
Before there was Coulton or Frontalot, there was filk.
What you are really argueing about is promotion.
“I’m not crazy about the fact that Taylor Swift can replicate herself and win a Grammy for a musical documentary of her clones’ fight for mating rights with a football player, yet a song laser-targeted at the hearts of lovelorn IT guys like Code Monkey sits in relative obscurity.”
I’ve never listened to any of her stuff, but she sells alot more than Code Monkey. The thing is, geeks can fall in love and have all those stupid emotons associated with it, so they are part of the mass market that targets that crowd. Not everyone is the same form of geek and you cut your audience into a tiny parcel if that is all you are targetting. Me personally, I prefer “pop music” over geek music and I consider myself a hardcore geek.
Niche market. The same as RPG players are a niche market in entertainment/books so are the geek music listeners. If you have $1million (random amount pulled out of thin air) to promote 1 and only 1 musician, would you pick the one with a wider market or the niche? Therein lies your answer as to why we have no “geek musicians”.
However, with the proliferation of the internet and such things as youtube there is geek music out there; the trick is to find it. Maybe all it needs is a little promotion…something like a website where such endeavors is promoted.
My blog-http://bigballofnofun.blogspot.com/
.-= callin´s last blog ..The Rest of the Turn =-.
For me it’s mostly prog rock / prog metal, also math rock and some industrial stuff.
Scandinavian metal bands like Therion make a lot of songs about norse mythology and magic, Ayreon is all about sci-fi rock opera, and there are bands with names like Orodruin that are definitely geek-friendly. That’s just what I remember right now, but there’s a definitely geek atmosphere in Scandinavian metal (symphonic and otherwise).
Blind Guardian has a lot of songs about LOTR, and a general sword & sorcery theme. Epic metal might well be the one of the geekiest things ever, especially Rhapsody of Fire and their Emerald Sword saga. The whole idea in epic metal is to make songs about adventuring with your party, killing monsters, overthrowing dark lords, avenging dead friends and saving the world!
RX Bandits.
80s stadium rock does it for me. Lots of hair and guitar. Def Leppard, Van Halen, Heart, etc.
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It’s a tough thing to do. It’s also kind of hard (for me at least) to find other musicians that are on your same level of geekdom to do such projects. Aside from my current band (in which I’m the only geek), I’ve tried to put together another project that was strictly geek based rock/metal, since I noticed a poor offering of the genre even at large conventions. Finding band members is hard enough, finding geeky band members is a whole other beast. Everyone needs to be genuine or it just doesn’t work. All I can say is it’s tough.
You’re also talking about a genre that will really only gain popularity through doing cons, that are all over the country. Even on weekends, that kind of travel right out the gate will be difficult. Gaining a following in your starting city with such a band will be damn near impossible, has to be done through cons really. I live in the city that spawned MC Chris, and his local shows are not packed whatsoever, his dragoncon shows though, which are in the same damn city, are pretty packed.
As far as stoking the nerd fires, Amon Amarth can do the trick, so can Led Zeppelin. If you want to get a little darker Dimmu Borgir can help, and the Black Aria (1 and 2) cds from Danzig are good atmospherically. Oh, and lets not forget 3 Inches of Blood, their Destroy the Orcs song is gold, and the rest of their music follows the same enthusiasm. And hell, why not throw Coheed & Cambria in there too, a complete concept band based on a sci-fi storyline, sign me up.
.-= Juanmower´s last blog ..A Quick Heads Up =-.
No love for They Might Be Giants?
My nerdy bretheren I have a solution to all your musical miseries… that answer is….
PIRATE METAL!
Yes I shite you not, death metal about pirates. WIth all the ARRRR and yo ho ho in tack.
Alestorm!
In addition to that, other nerdy metal albums include things by:
Bolt Thrower, Three inches of blood, Steel Panther and Dragonforce.
In my opinion, as a musician and geek, when geeks get geeky about their music, it doesn’t tend to centre on a particular genre, but more around an approach to music in general, either as listener or performer. I know plenty of people who geek out over guitar amp specs or synthesisers, the type of wood a guitar is made of or the way in which someone’s time spent in france influenced their song writing style. It may be a different breed of geekery, but it’s definitely geekery.
And on another note, points to Weezer for mentioning a Dungeon Masters Guide in their geek anthem – “In My Garage”..
I started listening to heavy metal and playing D&D in the same year: 7th grade, 1987.
To me, Iron Maiden’s “Piece of Mind” album and the Forgotten Realms “Old Gray Box” will always be indelibly linked. Metal and gaming go hand in hand. The dudes in Dimmu Borgir, Cradle of Filth, and GWAR are LARPing as much as they’re performing in concert!
Rush has appeared in many responses here. Yep, that’s good geek music! Listen to “2112” – what a record!
Clutch also makes music that many of us geeks can appreciate. Lyricist Neil Fallon often references mythological creatures and fantasy or sci-fi themes in his gruff rock-n-roll preachings. Do some digging and find Clutch’s unreleased track “24 Earth Years”, which is ALL about D&D; it contains the line “My character was baffling / a druid-wizard halfling”. Clutch rules!
Also check out:
Baroness, Mastodon, Coheed & Cambria, Between the Buried and Me, and The Sword.
@Ravenwing: I can vouch for Therion. When I went to visit Dante and Stupid Ranger in Colorado, the shop SR works at suggested it for me, and it made me very happy on about seventeen fronts, all of which were metal.
@Ethalias: I think you hit it on the head. We don’t consume other stuff the same way as the rest of society, why should this be any different? 🙂
I think a couple of you are quite right about some geek music being a niche market, and not being “mainstream” without better promotion. Funny thing about things going mainstream…. people tend to stop thinking of them as geeky the further it goes. Unless somebody wants to tell my grandma she’s a nerd. Don’t do it. She’ll hit you.
Seriously, you guys. You have exceeded my wildest expectations for musical suggestions. I shall not be bored for months, and I may have some ‘splaining to do to my wife about the number that appears next to “iTunes Music Store” on my credit card bill.
My favorite suggestions so far: Blind Guardian and Alestorm. Pirate metal is the best idea pretty much EVER. I used to listen to this band called Detritus that had one piratey song, “Sailor’s Farewell” I think.
Despite wandering into this article not fully understanding what I was getting into, I consider this thread a success. 🙂
.-= Vanir´s last blog ..Full-Spectrum Thoughts: The Traitors Among Us =-.
Well, when it comes time to “get to business” I usually like to find the fastest, loudest punk I can find. I also like my music to challenge me in certain ways. I love that Bad Religion makes me hit dictionary.com every time the release a new album. That Against All Authority taught me about the history of anarchists with songs about the Haymarket 8, Saccho and Vinzetti, and Mikhail Bakunin (no, not the one-eyed guy from Lost, the guy he was named after). And I like that Propaghandi or Unwritten Law, or countless other bands aren’t afraid to challenge me, they don’t treat me as some Lowest Common Denominator. Now, I’m a southern geek, and I have 2 brothers who are friends of mine that I like to refer to as the Techno-Rednecks for their ability to work on computers the way most rednecks work on Chevy’s. I also have a huge soft spot for Cowpunk (Country / Punk mash-up). But outside of my ‘Zen’ music, the stuff I listen to when i have to bend the laws of space, time, and mathematics through sheer will power, I have a pretty eclectic mix. Industrial, Goth, and Thrash from my LARPing days. Classical, Jazz, and Avant-garde from hanging with the ‘Gifted’ kids and Chess club. Classic Rock, Psychedelic, and all that 60’s and 70’s stuff from my tree-huggin hippy mom. Just really all sorts.
But if I’m workin, that bass drum better be playing 32nd notes!
Ethalias nailed it. To be a geek is to appreciate the fetishistic nature of data, and you can tell that you are talking to a geek in a musical context when they start telling you WHY they like what they like. A geek’s reason for appreciating a song or artist or genre is NEVER “I just like the way it makes me feel”. It’s a firehose of trivia and theory that will be lovingly elaborated until you tell them to please, for the love of god, shut up.
I think if there is any genre that the geek might claim exclusive ownership of, it would probably be 20th century composition and pre-70s electrical composition. Things like Steve Reich’s piano phase, or stockhausen’s kontakt, or xenakis’s Pithoprakta… or even (more contemporarily) John Zorn’s big gundown – music that was really just the product of an interesting idea rather than something based around a catchy tune.
Great recommendations so far. But anyone evr listen to Blackmore’s Night? Ritchie Blackmore is one of the best guitar players of all time. Give it a try if you haven’t heard of them. Also the last album has more electric guitar work in it for those that like that.
Their song Home Again is a staple for any tavern setting in our worlds.
Diamonds and Rust is a hauntingly beautiful cover of a Joan Baez(?) song.
Great posts.