If it's too loud, you're too old.
“Dude, yer right, but I don't care. I'm old as you and I enjoy more easy listening now, but then again I've always peppered my John Zorn and with The Ames Brothers anyway. The bands that blew your socks off at the time were of their time and age group (early 20's) like you were. Maybe it's just not your demographic anymore. I suggest you do a "Strangers with Candy" thing by going back to high school to get in the groove of the current young mind.”
This raises the question of “out-growing” rock music. It’s true that I don’t listen to a lot of the same music that I did when I was younger. I am less inclined to listen to Big Black than I was when I was in college. It’s also true that my music collection includes a lot of things that I would not have gone near when I was in my 20’s. The Magnetic Fields, Elliot Smith and Catpower would not have made the cut 20 years ago (and Oum Kolthoum would not have, either).
Furthermore, I also think some music is fairly “demographic specific”. I remember when I first got into punk rock I saw a documentary called DOA. There is a scene with Sham 69 playing on a roof top to an audience of chanting kids that appeared to be like heaven to me. At the tender age of 14, I could not imagine anything better than being on that roof top chanting along. Now, I think I would be miserable up there with a bunch of obnoxious teenage vandals spitting on each other. It being in London, I’m sure it was cold and raining, too.
Nevertheless, the qualities of most of the music that I listened to when I was younger that appealed to me then still appeal to me now. I listened to it because it was good and I continue to listen to it for the same reason. I may not play the Stooges or the Ramones nearly as often as I used to, but I certainly have not renounced them either. I think the fact that I am looking for their current equivalents is evidence of this.
And if Leonard Cohen is more likely to make his way onto my stereo these days, so are Buck Owens, Louis Jordan, Nusrat Fateh ali Khan, the Art Ensemble of Chicago and Caspar Brötzmann Massaker. My musical tastes have not gotten mellower so much as they have gotten broader. That’s not to say that I’m no longer picky. I usually tell people that I hate music with two or three thousand exceptions. But I am more at ease with music that is softer or more challenging or more unfamiliar culturally than I was 10 or 20 years ago.
This raises the question of “out-growing” rock music. It’s true that I don’t listen to a lot of the same music that I did when I was younger. I am less inclined to listen to Big Black than I was when I was in college. It’s also true that my music collection includes a lot of things that I would not have gone near when I was in my 20’s. The Magnetic Fields, Elliot Smith and Catpower would not have made the cut 20 years ago (and Oum Kolthoum would not have, either).
Furthermore, I also think some music is fairly “demographic specific”. I remember when I first got into punk rock I saw a documentary called DOA. There is a scene with Sham 69 playing on a roof top to an audience of chanting kids that appeared to be like heaven to me. At the tender age of 14, I could not imagine anything better than being on that roof top chanting along. Now, I think I would be miserable up there with a bunch of obnoxious teenage vandals spitting on each other. It being in London, I’m sure it was cold and raining, too.
Nevertheless, the qualities of most of the music that I listened to when I was younger that appealed to me then still appeal to me now. I listened to it because it was good and I continue to listen to it for the same reason. I may not play the Stooges or the Ramones nearly as often as I used to, but I certainly have not renounced them either. I think the fact that I am looking for their current equivalents is evidence of this.
And if Leonard Cohen is more likely to make his way onto my stereo these days, so are Buck Owens, Louis Jordan, Nusrat Fateh ali Khan, the Art Ensemble of Chicago and Caspar Brötzmann Massaker. My musical tastes have not gotten mellower so much as they have gotten broader. That’s not to say that I’m no longer picky. I usually tell people that I hate music with two or three thousand exceptions. But I am more at ease with music that is softer or more challenging or more unfamiliar culturally than I was 10 or 20 years ago.
posted by Grasshopper at 10:19 AM
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