I finally understand what my parents felt like when I was a teenager and how they felt about my music at the time.

Now you hear it on commercials and in TV shows and movies, but at the time it was pretty progressive.

I just don't get the music of today. At least, not the subculture music. Especially hip-hop and "modern" electronic music (dubsteps, etc.).

I won't say that it's bad. I just don't understand it. To me, a lot of it really does just sound like noise.

Don't get me started on side-chaining. When I first heard it (here on KVR), I thought it was just an unintentional effect or resonance or something. I couldn't begin to imagine that it was intentional! It kinda hurts my head when I hear it.

Then again, my own musical tastes have changed. At least, what I listen to on a normal basis has changed. It's actually come full-circle.

I went from orchestral, electronic (of the '70s and '80s), and New Age when I was younger to heavy metal and death metal when I was a teen to early 20s.

Now I'm back to easy listening and orchestral most of the time, though I haven't lost any love for the heavier stuff. I just don't really listen to it anymore.

Hm - I'm 36 and I don't get most contemporary popular music. I didn't get that stuff 20 ears ago but there was an occasional 'guilty pleasure song' I would like in a tongue-in-cheek way but nonetheless genuinely, before returning to my Pixies, Sonic Youth and assorted 60s heroes. (I don't get that phenomenon anymore but then I hardly listen to the radio at all.)

Along came electronic music in the very late 90s (for me) so in between that and the 90s guitar thing I think my musical upbringing has been most interesting and conducive to open-mindedness.

I don't feel modern popular music is noise so much as I think it's kind of lacklustre and boring. Much of what the kids seem to be listening to these days seems to have its origins about 7-10 years ago with bands like Basement Jaxx, Outkast, Daft Punk (sidechaining!!) but at much higher levels of sophistication imho.

I don't know. Am I just doing the I-was-doing-it-before-it-was-cool thing??

I listened to my first 'wub wub' bass dubstep at an open air thing almost 8 years ago and it BLEW my away! (both figuratively and literally with the subwoofers). And now it's the big thing happening and I listen to skrillex and it sounds just like that, only now I've been listening to it so many times that it just fails to tickle my novelty receptors.

My brother is 26. He and his friends listen mainly to Punk Rock and Ska P - not necessarily stuff I can relate to but I don't feel old next to them seeing as all that stuff was on the table in the exact same form when I was their age (and much younger).

There are some contemporary artists I really like (like say Joanna Newsom, a band called Phantogram, some English teen rapper girl with her own guitarbased band rapping in cockney I forget the name of etc.)

It's all so branched out these days, MUCH more than the 90s, and they were getting crazy already with grunge, techno, rockabilly, hiphop, metal etc happening at the same time.

There's something there for everyone!

Marco
Last edited by Bonteburg on Sun Mar 18, 2012 4:12 pm; edited 2 times in total

Oh goody.

I think I get the old man syndrome. I have it a fair bit of the time when I am listening to things like Fresh FM up here...but most of the time I just let it go...

Sometimes it is just better that way.

Hiphop is well over 30 years old.

The Sugarhill Gang?



The Last Poets or even The Watt's Poets...ca. 1971

I worry I'm like that too... I've listened to a lot of guitar bands over the years (I guess the late 80s were 'my' generation, husker du, sonic youth, pixies, throwing muses, slint...) and it pains me that I haven't heard a guitar band in *years* I thought could hold a candle to any of them. But is that just me, am I 'full' and can't process anything else without referring to older stuff? Am I tired of trying, comfy with what I know?

Not sure that's true, I still here plenty of new electronic stuff that, while hardly being the most original stuff around, still does it for me.

I have a theory pop culture can only take so much, maybe we are reaching the boundaries, if you want to keep things within certain parameters (y'know, tuning, song length, discordancy ) Pop *is* eating itself.

As for popular music, Every once in a blue moon something smart comes along that really perks up my ears. The thing is now I'll most likely not hear it to perk up my ears. I'm not looking for it or waiting for it or bothering with the barrage of crap to find it anymore. I just don't care. The time I spend listening to music is better served making it.


Most of the biab users groups and forums are filled with those in their 70's and 80's. I made a joke about the old men of biab. I'm 50 and use it everyday. It turned out that quite a number of people of all ages use the program. Which kind of shocked me and gave me hope. While biab is good for many types of music it really shines for jazz.

Same generation, but Ive also seen a lot of excellent stuff come from the artists in those bands (Bob Mould, Tanya Donnelly, Kirstin Hersch, David Pajo etc) which have continued up to the present. Meanwhile, my guitar-band-y inclinations have also headed off towards some of the the more psychedelic/ambient/droney perimeters, from Blut Aus Nord to Earth to Flying Saucer Attack.

You could try Source Tags and Codes by …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, Passover by The Black Angels and The Shivering King by Dead Meadow for some recent, and less outre, guitar stuff I think is noteworthy though.

I'm 47 and feel completely the opposite. I've been blessed (or cursed) with a desire to hear new music my whole life. There have been phases where I thought the current crop of new music was somewhat lacking, but now isn't one of those times. I'm excited about more new bands now than I have been in at least 15 years, maybe ever. I'm lovin' it!

I don't even think modern pop music is that bad. Yeah, a lof of it is just catchy bubblegum crap, but that has always existed. Hell, the 60s had some of the worst bubblegum crap ever made. Judging modern music on Ke$ha or T-Pain is as baseless as judging the 60s on The Archies. FWIW, I'd rather listen to a whole day of Ke$ha than 5 minutes of Ohio Express.

The good news is that there IS as much good music out there as you are willing to spend the time to find. The current crop of 20 - 30 somethings has a great wealth of influences (from the 60s - 90s) and they have the creativity and sense to use them well (I'm sure the cheap availability of digital recording doesn't hurt either!). I was watching an interview with the electronic musician Grimes, who is 23 and looks like a cheerleader at an alternative high school, and she was talking about how the history of electronic music in Vancouver influenced her (especially Skinny Puppy and Nettwerk records). Damn, she wasn't even alive then! How cool is that?

I feel uniquely unqualified to comment on what new music other people may like, but here is what I am listening to these days:

Guitar oriented: Silversun Pickups, Black Keys, A Place to Bury Strangers (APTBS), The Kills, Raveonettes, Sleighbells

Electronic: M83, The Big Pink, Apparat, Grimes, James Blake, Broken Bells, sbtrkt, MGMT

"Alternative": The XX, Joy Formidable, The Shins, The National

Labels to watch: 4AD, Fat Possum,

I could go on and on!

I think I may be a Benjamin Button type of character in this regard... born old. When I was becoming a teenager in the 70s I thought most pop music was crap and went straight for the British Invasion and Psychedelic rock of the 60s. At the time I thought, "Now sucks. The 60s were great." I was wrong. The 60s only seemed great because they'd been filtered by time. Go back and look at the charts and you'll see tons of really crappy "How much is that Doggy in the Window" songs along side of "Paint it Black."

So, dubstep? Yeah, most of it is crap too. I heard a track... it was actually the soundtrack to a new game promo. Borderlands II. I really dug it. Great track. So I looked up the artist on Spotify and started listening to their tracks...

Most were crap. I think I found about 2 that I liked. Oh well. And rap? Yeah, most of it's horrible, but there are also some amazing gems. I've been working on a spy game for the last few months and in my head I've named it "Sabotage" and that song is now running though my head all the time. It's awesome. Oh yeah, and a few years back I found a group called clouddead that is pretty much the most amazing rap I've ever heard... I probably relate to it more than most rap because it's a bunch of nerdy white guys, and I'm a nerdy white guy. What up my crackers?

So I think the real thing that happens is that when you're young, you have the time and desire to wade though all the crap and find the gold. When you're older it's easy to just skip it all and retreat to old favorites. I say make the effort though. There are gems out there.

It's inevitable. I catch myself all the time. You call that music? What the hell are you wearing? Get a haircut or comb it.....
Then my father's voice saying the exact same thing echoes in my head...
But I get called boss and sir a lot, so I like that.
I guess Sheryl Crow summed it up:
If it makes you happy
It can't be that bad
If it makes you happy
Then why the hell are you so sad....

In olden days, a glimpse of stocking
Was looked on as something shocking.
But now, God knows,
Anything goes.
Good authors too who once knew better words
Now only use four-letter words
Writing prose.
Anything goes.
If driving fast cars you like,
If low bars you like,
If old hymns you like,
If bare limbs you like,
If Mae West you like,
Or me undressed you like,
Why, nobody will oppose.
When ev'ry night the set that's smart is intruding in nudist parties in
Studios.
Anything goes.

(I did not write these lyrics)

hmmm...curmudgeon is the word that comes to mind.

Don't worry, I sometimes have the "Get off my lawn" complex, and we all know how old I am!

...can't go an hour without my employer reminding, he thinks he real funny.

one of the employees starts talking to him, he responds - after making sure I am in ear shot - "Oh my days been going alright, could certainly use a beer or two. I was going to ask Nolan but how am I going to explain to the cops I was letting a minor buy alcohol?"
I'm 19...