I don’t feel like I have this properly organized in my brain at the moment (perhaps because my car door painfully slammed onto the left side of my head on Friday?), but in times past I’ve held and been able to articulate a theory of music relating to my concept of “full on”. Music that is full on is not pussyfooting. It’s not pulling any punches. It’s not being tasteful. It’s not sticking in a middle eight for a nice change of pace. It doesn’t care about craft. What it is doing is starting out of the gates with the throttle at full and not slowing down until after the race is over. It’s being as intense as possible without pausing for breath. It’s having a rave up. Any transitions should flow from one full on part to another; no dissipation allowed. Full on music is perhaps easiest to spot in loud rock music, but sometimes soft music can be even more full on.
I used to have a list of tracks I would give as examples of such music; I’ll try to remember as best I can and append a podcast.
Update: For the time being, I’ll post just one track, which pretty much exemplifies the concept:
The Jesus Lizard “Boilermaker”
Amen sister brother man bring it on full on. I am with you.
Happens to me a lot in basements.