Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[pwhodges]

Looking at what I've been playing recently*, it occurred to me that the music I have lived with covers a much longer period than most of you here have lived.  In the pop side of things (classical music is rather different, to its loss), most music is "current"; I have virtually no popular music from before my own teens, but on the other hand, I listen to music from my own teens, my children's teens, and the present.

Leaving aside the rubbish that every time has, which will be lost without regret, do you generally view music from before your own time as golden oldie stuff, or just dusty relics?  Illustrate with bands or albums to taste.



* The last few days have included: Sinatra (Wee small hours), Dire Straits (Brothers in Arms), Beach Boys (Pet Sounds), Fleetwood Mac (Rumours), Prince (Purple Rain), Siousie and the Banshees (The Scream), John Lennon (various).

[A Shoggoth on the Roof]

Older music is just as awesome as newer music. I dunno about golden oldie, that's overly romanticizing it. But dismissing it just because it isn't modern is just as absurd. I mean, for example, there's no way in hell I could choose between The Beach Boys or The Unicorns.

for reference, born in 1992.

[Thrillho]

Uh, I think you're underestimating the tastes of people on here. Plenty of us listen to stuff from the 50s and 60s, and I'm sure some of us listen to stuff from even earlier.

[Inlander]

For several years I listened to almost nothing but jazz. I still love it, so (again, excluding classical music) my listening habits stretch back more than fifty years before my birth. I try to be open-minded about music. My mum was aghast when I brought home a Sinatra album (Wee Small Hours, actually!) because that was her parents' music (she's 60). Actually I find popular music from before the 50s often has a level of sophistication and complexity that's missing from much of today's popular music - probably because it was written for, and enjoyed by, adults, rather than the teens who dominate popular music today (I'm talking about genuinely mass-popular music, rather than the indie stuff that most people in this forum listen to).

[squawk]

I'm seventeen years old and pretty much nothing sounds "old" to me.

[Dimmukane]

To me there is only good and bad music, I don't see it as being new or old.  I frequently discover music that has been around far longer than I have, but since I'm just hearing it, it's the same as being new to me.


Just my two cents.

[billiumbean]

I don't think that older music should be dismissed at all for being old, but it seems like, in my group of friends, you can't criticize older music, either.  I have definitive opinions about all music, but I'm not a blasphemer if I talk about not liking Bowie's disco phase or something.

Also, to me, old music has a different feel, at first, as if it's not quite as relevant to my life as something more recent.  It just takes getting past that phase for me to appreciate it equally, I don't know why.

[IronOxide]

My music collection (chronologically) resides somewhere between The Anthology of American Folk Songs and Philip Glass's new recording that dropped in the last week.

I find myself in an odd circumstance in my youth in that on an average day, I find more often than not I am discovering 'new' albums that in general are older than me. In a manner, when I hear a Jazz or Rock album that I have never heard, I often feel it as 'newer' than some of the indie rock albums I hear today.

Every artist does something slightly differently in a way that allows them to sound 'fresh'. I am still taken aback by the modern sound of Ornette Coleman 50 years later and find his music much more "current" than much of the mainstream pop music (even without needlessly conspicuous autotune).

Also Paul, with all due respect, I will take issue with your statement that "to its loss" it is not very current. While it does have something of a longer history than other musical forms, the classical music scene has had quite a boom recently. With new great composers like John Adams, Philip Glass, and Eric Whitacre (one trick pony or not), classical music has never been more current. It is not that it is locked in history, it is that the lines between classical and popular music are ever blurring, moving from some kind of elevated, untouchable class to musicians just the same, making the distinctions a little less concrete.

What we are experiencing today is something like the movement of the renaissance lead by Farmer and Morely, where classical music can become popular, because they share many of the same conventions, and just experiment a little more on the live performance and harmonization.

[ThePianoMan]

Age of music doesn't really make a big difference to me. For a while I was mostly buying albums 15+ years old, almost no current stuff. Now it's a little more balanced, but I still enjoy as much old music as new music. Music is music; there's really no "golden" time for it, just good times for particular genres and scenes.

[RallyMonkey]

If I need to listen to the radio, I listen purely to the station which plays the syndicated True Oldies Channel. I like it, because all of the crap has been filtered out. Only songs that have been remembered for over 40 years are played, so, whether I personally like the songs or not, they're near guaranteed to be listenable based purely on the fact that there's something to the song that people remember.

[look out! Ninjas!]

I don't really see old music as "old," and I don't really want to either. Sure, some music can only really be appreciated in the context of time, but if it's still good it's still good. That and I'm still discovering bands that were around well before I was born so it doesn't seem like it came from the past. I know it'll be different for people that grew up with the stuff, but if it's fresh to me...

[Spluff]

Blues, Jazz. There hasn't been any good blues or jazz for many years.

[KickThatBathProf]

That is simply not true at all.

[De_El]

I am pretty young. I was born in 1990. I think that although I do listen to music that stretches as far back as the 1940s, I certainly do not listen to music that old as often, and the music I listen to the most centers mostly between 1980 and now, reaching an apex somewhere around 1987. I do sympathize with the view that of the music from previous generations, music still commonly listened to has sort of had its chaff filtered out, but at the same time I am wary of a sort of complacent and masturbatory approach to music and culture exemplified by the sort of people who lavish praise on the music popularised in their teenage years and dismiss everything after it as trash.

[BeoPuppy]

I listen to some jazz and old rock from before I was born, sure! Loads of music has a lasting value. If anything I wonder whether any music produced today will last as long as, say, Nina Simone's songs. After all, it seems that making music is less special and music is far more a commodity counted in GB and not in special albums.

[rynne]

On one hand, I think that ignoring older music is pretty stupid; I don't think anyone is so naïve to think that only the X-number years of their lifetime produced good music.

That being said, in thinking about my response, I realized that the majority of music that I listen to that predates my birth are artists that directly or indirectly influenced modern bands that I like: Bowie, Eno, Suicide, King Crimson, Tubeway Army, Modern Lovers, Love, Throbbing Gristle, Kraftwerk, Can, Neu!, etc., etc.  The only exceptions I can really think of are 60-era girl groups and bluegrass (which I don't have any albums of, but it’s pretty much the only music I listen to on the radio: thanks, NPR!). 

I don't know if that's 'cause I'm disinterested in things that didn't influence the "living" music I've directly experienced in my lifetime, or because it's simply easier to evaluate older the music in the context of what I know (i.e., it's easier for me to determine that I'll probably like Kraftwerk because they've influenced so many bands I already like than Sinatra, who as far as I can tell, hasn't had much influence on bands in my collection).

[JimmyJazz]

Music should be judged on whether or not it's GOOD, not the decade it was made. The older people who dismiss music after "the good ol' days" or kids who assume all music made before they were born sucks are both incredibly ignorant. My favorite bands tend to be older ones, but I'm not one of those people who put the "classics" on a pedastal and call everything else crap; those people piss me off.

[BrittanyMarie]

I think I'm in the (maybe?) unique position of having the "old" music constantly around me as I grew up. My first favorite song was by Hank Williams Sr. I lived with my grandparents on the weekends and the summer, and my grandpa loved AM country, so that's what I listened to.

Even when I got into middle school and high school I hated most everything that was on the top 40 radio. From having grown up with old country music to parents who listened to late 70's/80's music when we went anywhere, I never had the connection to music from my own era at all until I started listening to the more underground music that was happening at the time around Athens GA and Vancouver/Victoria and Olympia WA. And even a lot of that was early 90's stuff I was listening to in the early 00s.

Lately I've gone back and pretty much listen to only old school country music again.

[A Wet Helmet]

I've actually thought about what weds our tastes to certain music for quite sometime.  85% (at least) of what I listen to is music that was recorded pre-1990 or so.  Some of it considerably pre-1990.

I was a teenager in the 80s and listened to what was, at the time, very current music.  Although I believe we continue to mature throughout life, (I'm certainly not engaging in the same behavior I was when I was eighteen, or even 25 for that matter) I think our personalities and tastes are basically 'set' by the time we're in our early twenties.  So though I realize that music today is talking about the same things that music was talking about 20 years ago, it just doesn't stir the level of excitement in me that it did then.   Is the music from my teenage years nostalgia?  Maybe.  I just finished listening to Black Flag's Loose Nut in its entirety, but I doubt that something contemporary could evoke the same emotions.  I remember buying that on vinyl when it hit the record stores, and it was a big deal, you know?   Hell, I remember listening to TSOL's Dance With Me and considering it a life-changing album (still do!)

That time period was also when hair bands and shitty synth pop was king.  Any kind of underground music then felt like it was something special.  I was in college when Smells Like Teen Spirit hit MTV and Peal Jam's Ten hit record stores a month later, so I was already fairly grown before "alternative" really became the new pop.   I think there may be a certain amount of snobbery inherent in me --though not deliberate nor intended-- that feels like everything that has come since has been a fairly shitty rip-off of the music I grew up on.   And I don't say that with the intent to belittle musician's today.  There are some great, sincere bands out there.  I just don't feel like any of it is new, fresh, exciting, or particularly ground breaking.   As I grow older and my musical tastes broaden, I've even come to realize that the stuff I listened to in the 80s wasn't really all that new either... but it felt like it to me.

Besides the punk that fueled my teen years, I also listen to a lot of classic rock.  At the time I'm typing this, Skynyrd is coming through my headphones.   Jazz has become a bit of an obsession lately too.  Yesterday at work I was listening to Wes Montgomery and Django.   I've never particularly gotten into any country for the past 40 years or so, but earlier than that... I'm a huge fan of country blues --Lightnin' Hopkins is one of my favorite artists of all time-- and the original Sun records stuff.  Much of which was really pretty twangy.    

[KharBevNor]

That is simply not true at all.

Exactly.

There's never been any good Jazz.

[pwhodges]

Oi there!

[Avec]

Every age has its good artists. For the 20th century, the likes of Billie Holiday, The Ink Spots, Miles Davis, and anything with a nice jazzy feel. Classical music is called classical for a reason; especially with CDs and vinyls on the cheap, it's something everyone should listen to at least once in their life. Obviously, there are certain gems which still can and will dominate the music market and appeal. I believe that the Beatles will never die as a piece of art. The decision between a relic and a legend is mostly personal preferrance. Only a couple of my friends actually appreciate Billie Holiday. But I'm just so addicted to music that it'll keep me looking for new stuff while appreciating this generation's predecessors.

[Patrick]

Uh, I think you're underestimating the tastes of people on here. Plenty of us listen to stuff from the 50s and 60s, and I'm sure some of us listen to stuff from even earlier.

Even not counting classical stuff, this is definitely true. The golden era of blues was the 30s and I have been known to get my Robert Johnson on. I've also got a pretty respectable Glenn Miller collection (amongst other swing/jazz from the '30s and '40s). And with regards to the '50s and '60s, I am a massive Bo Diddley fan.

Age only dictates your music taste if you're a non-adventurous pop whore, really.

[Zingoleb]

Uh, I think you're underestimating the tastes of people on here. Plenty of us listen to stuff from the 50s and 60s, and I'm sure some of us listen to stuff from even earlier.

Even not counting classical stuff, this is definitely true. The golden era of blues was the 30s and I have been known to get my Robert Johnson on.

I was hoping that someone would mention Robert Johnson.

[billiumbean]

Age only dictates your music taste if you're a non-adventurous pop whore, really.

Like I said earlier, my apprehensiveness to become attached to old music is more psychological than simply my foreknowledge of the age of the album.  I want to become attached to it, but can't always, and I know the only reason is its age.

While I agree with you that someone who looks down on old music should be looked down upon themselves, age still dictates me in a large way for other reasons.

[Zanzan]

I keep (re)discovering stuff from before I was born and I often find myself appreciating it.

Over the last few years, I've seen my tastes shift from early 90's pop to various 70s & 80s genres and going further back in time. There's just so much stuff that was released inbetween the 60s & 80s that it'll take me another few years to get through the "popular" music from these eras. I know I'll probably be skipping some, but it's just impossible to appreciate every single damn artist/album/song.

[Zingoleb]

See, that's my problem. I wish I had a limited taste in music instead of being able to appreciate - and wanting to hear - everything from death metal to Indian ragas to country to Celtic jigs and reels to classical. I wish I could just listen to one genre and appreciate that instead of trying to hear everything ever recorded.

I loathe to think of what I would be like if I lived in, say, 2085.

[Inlander]

I was hoping that someone would mention Robert Johnson.

To be honest I prefer my Bluesman named Johnson to be of the Blind Willie variety.

Well that's assuming that we're classifying him as a Blues singer and not a gospel singer which is a whole other issue.

[KickThatBathProf]

That is simply not true at all.

Exactly.

There's never been any good Jazz.

Your opinions are just so adorable.

[RedLion]

I was born in '89 and I adore just about everything from 1920's onward. Some of my favorite songs come from the 50's and 60's, and for straight-out, kickass rock, the 70's was an amazing decade.

[Reed]

I'm the child of two ex-hippies, so I grew up listening to Led Zepplin, the Who, Jefferson Airplane, etc. These also happen to be the bands I go back to when I'm tired of everything else in my library. I think my appreciation of music from the 60's and 70's has really broadened my taste and has had a really positive impact on me as a person.

[The Joker]

The golden era of blues was the 30s and I have been known to get my Robert Johnson on.

WIN.

I listen to old rock almost exclusively, not because of the time period it came from but because I like it.  I just tend not to like newer music as much. 

I just wish people who listen to any kind of metal would acknowledge that without people like Robert Johnson and Jimi Hendrix, metal probably wouldn't have never would've existed, dammit.

Was that relevant?  Maybe not.  I don't care.

[BeoPuppy]

I hearby acknowledge that without Robert Johnson and Jimi Hendrix metal as we know it would not exist. Nothing lives in a vacuum and everything influences everything, certainly musically. Okay?

[Daft pun]

Age only dictates your music taste if you're a non-adventurous pop whore, really.

Like I said earlier, my apprehensiveness to become attached to old music is more psychological than simply my foreknowledge of the age of the album.  I want to become attached to it, but can't always, and I know the only reason is its age.

While I agree with you that someone who looks down on old music should be looked down upon themselves, age still dictates me in a large way for other reasons.

My feelings exactly.

I honestly don't understand people who only listen to music from the 60's and 70's while they were born later. It's almost like renouncing the present to me.

[Thrillho]

I don't think Patrick was saying he renounces all modern music, more that he doesn't renounce all old music.

[Daft pun]

That remark wasn't aimed at Patrick specifically, though I suppose it could be. The person I had in mind would be someone who claims that music stopped being relevant after Led Zeppelin or Pink Floyd or whatever. Which I just cannot understand.

[pwhodges]

It's much worse in the classical world, at least among the populace.  So many  people think that nice music  ended with Elgar and Rachmaninov (apart possibly from that nice Mr Lloyd Webber) that it's really depressing at times.  "Ooh, I just don't like that modern stuff" they say of music written a hundred years ago.

[Patrick]

I don't think Patrick was saying he renounces all modern music, more that he doesn't renounce all old music.

Truth. I mean, the vast majority of what I hear on the radio nowadays? I can't stand it. But Ted Leo just put out an amazing new EP, Wilco constantly keeps releasing stuff that is awesome, Rx Bandits are working on new stuff, Cake is putting out a new album this year.

Basically, music is like people. Music IS people, if you want to go into that discussion, but as far as age goes, the year is irrelevant. Sometimes sounds come out, and the masses are like "Fuck that noise!" but in 10 years they'll be like "...oh man, so ahead of their time." Other times, what you love now is going to be forgotten in like 5 weeks (I am looking at you, Katy Perry).

[ThePianoMan]

It's much worse in the classical world, at least among the populace.  So many  people think that nice music  ended with Elgar and Rachmaninov (apart possibly from that nice Mr Lloyd Webber) that it's really depressing at times.  "Ooh, I just don't like that modern stuff" they say of music written a hundred years ago.

It's because after that classical got all, you know, CHALLENGING.

Honestly, most of my favorite classical is early-to-mid twentieth century stuff anyway. Stravinsky, Messiaen, Bartok, Shostakovich...I haven't managed to develop a taste for too much serialism, but I guess it'll come with time.

[Alex C]

Times and styles change, and sometimes people find themselves having an affinity for a particular sound and aesthetic and thus an era. Nothing wrong with that. I mean, if you like funk than it's perfectly natural to enjoy a bunch of albums from the mid '60s and '70s since there was such a large talent pool out exploring the sound at the time. Honestly, as Tommy said, I find that the quality of the recording counts for a fair bit with me, and that's usually the only hallmark of age that leaves a mark on me. My preference is definitely for the "High quality but no frills" school of recording for most music. I'm not a big fan of going balls out no fi as a badge honor (I'm looking at you, black metal), but that doesn't mean I want everything compressed to hell and back either. I'll admit to having all sorts of double standards, however. Context is everything.

[pwhodges]

I haven't managed to develop a taste for too much serialism, but I guess it'll come with time.

Don't rush; I haven't either, and frankly I reckon it was a big dead end.  But I do enjoy the small Schoenberg piano pieces.

[KickThatBathProf]

My point of view on serialism is more or less it isn't really enjoyable to listen to aesthetically but it's more enjoyable to analyse how Shoenberg, Webern, Berg, etc. composed the work.  I always enjoy listening to composers who arrange an element of music differently than classical or romantic composers.

[The Joker]

I hearby acknowledge that without Robert Johnson and Jimi Hendrix metal as we know it would not exist. Nothing lives in a vacuum and everything influences everything, certainly musically. Okay?

Thank you.

[IronOxide]

My point of view on serialism is more or less it isn't really enjoyable to listen to aesthetically but it's more enjoyable to analyse how Shoenberg, Webern, Berg, etc. composed the work.  I always enjoy listening to composers who arrange an element of music differently than classical or romantic composers.

You see, I actually find serialism (when handled by a master) quite aesthetically enjoyable. It extended from an appreciation for the text (particularly in Pierrot Lunaire), to a point where the themes and sets and the interplay between the parts becomes fun and sometimes soothing.

Make of that what you will, I very well may be a freak of nature.

[KickThatBathProf]

Man personal taste is personal taste.  I'd personally more enjoy something slightly less avant-garde like Stravinsky's primitivsm period or Hindemith's works with quartal harmony or pretty much anything minimalist, but I could very well see how some people could find serialism soothing.

[michaelicious]

I was hoping that someone would mention Robert Johnson.

To be honest I prefer my Bluesman named Johnson to be of the Blind Willie variety.

To be honest I prefer my Bluesman named Blind Willie to be of the McTell variety.

(I actually really like both, I just couldn't pass up the opportunity)