AV Club asks: Why do pop-culture fans stop caring about new music as they get older?
My theory is pretty simple: current music is a reflection of current popular culture, obviously. And popular culture is that which is made by, and for, 25 year-olds. And the further you get from being 25, the less the new music of the day means to you.
Basically, it's a generational thing: today's 25 year-olds all grew up in basically the same musical culture: Lada Gaga is revolutionary; Nirvana is an oldies band; the Ramones are a lame version of Green Day; the Beatles are as relevant as the Cold War; Elvis fought in the Civil War; and Robert Johnson probably walked with Moses. Maybe there's some good stuff in that old music, and that good stuff will get carried forward, but only in small doses, and only in ways that the popular culture in general approves of. And it doesn't matter if people are making mainstream music or something that's "alternative" to the mainstream; a shared musical history influences even the ways we try to be different. It is the base everyone starts from.
But, since people outside today's 25 year-old generation don't share that same base, today's current music hits fewer and fewer of the sweet spots we (all us 40 year olds...) expect good music to hit. It doesn't measure up to our standards because our standards were based on what we grew up on, not what they grew up on. And we continue to diverge.
Or, shorter version: every generation is influenced by different music; musicians write from their influences; and the less your influences line up with mine, the less I'm going to appreciate the same things you do. And get off my lawn.
And, no I don't mean to pick on the music of today. I have no doubt that this happens to all generations as they grow up, listen to what came before, then make their music, and eventually start wondering WTF is up with all that noise their own kids call music.
It's why the years of release from my favorite album list looks like this:
...heavily weighted around the years when I was in my early 20s. That was my generation's music. The music of the 80's was the music of the people a bit older than me.
And that peak in the early 70s is there either because the early 70s were an absolute pinnacle of musical quality, or it's because that's when my parents were in their early 20s, so it's the music that I really grew up listening to. I tend to believe the latter. Or perhaps my subconscious really likes Cisco's logo.
That's my theory, anyway.
This message was brought to you by Sudafed. I apologize for any stupidity.
Great post and I agree on the whole. I should try and work out some of my own stats via iTunes (it has a COM interface I could use) based on the stuff I play the most. But I can’t be bothered as I would surely ending up smashing my laptop into hundreds of tiny pieces. Using iTunes is bad enough … but intefacing with it???
However, I’m pretty sure the mid-90s would come out on top. Are we old farts now Cleek? Are we?
This is largely true. Being slightly older than Rob I know and possibly cleek (Uh, not exactly sure. Tomorrow I will be 42, the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything!) I have two actual peaks in my musical loves. One would be somewhere in the mid-eighties when I really formed my musical tastes. And then again in the early to mid-nineties.
Today’s music sucks!
Or maybe some (i.e. more than a few) people just listen to music less as they get older because once they have small children the perceived marginal utility of PeaceNQuiet (the household equivalent of LawNOrder) rises steeply, and if you aren’t listening you aren’t exploring, which means you don’t have the opportunity to find something new from the contemporary scene that you really like. That, and disposable income becomes a fond memory rather than a present reality.
I sort of missed out on my generation I think — the mid-90’s are underrepresented in my music library. Mostly I listen to *stuff from my parents’ music library or that I found via the records in my parents’ library — Dylan, Nuggets, Folk music revival — which is dated early 60’s – early 70’s — and blues/bluegrass/proto-country from the 30’s through the 50’s. Which I also found out about via my parents’ library, since my whole interest in that stuff can be traced to one album in particular, “See Reverse Side for Title” by Jim Kweskin. Which was my mom’s.
Oh and of course category 3, Robyn Hitchcock and stuff I found out about via RH and via the fegmaniax mailing list. Those three categories are probably roughly most of my collection one way or another.
If your parents like the music you like when you’re 15 years old, that music has failed. I used Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin and Janis Joplin to repel my big-band swing parents. Worked like a charm.
“Joe, TURN THAT DAMN THING DOWN.”
As nearly as I can tell, the chief merit of hip-hop is that old fat bald white guys like me just can’t love it, especially when emanating at 200 dB from the car next to us.
And I’m cool with being old and not liking it, as long as I’ve got an onion for my belt. You damn kids get off my lawn!
They’re my granddaughters, not my peers; but I’ve made sure they _do_ know the Queen of Soul. And Martha Reeves and the Vandellas. And LaBelle. And Ella. And Louis Armstrong.
happy 42 to platosearwax!
What we listen to as young folk trains our brains to understand it, and therefore relate to it. Thats why older generations have problems with new genres, and why we can appreciate music from the past. Taste is a matter of insight.
Our culture and environment influence what we hear. By the time we are 30 or 40 we have little time to listen to anything new, and our brains are less malleable. What is called lame may not have anything to do with the music itself, but how you were trained to think.
No, dude. Your gut is right. 70s classic rock is leaps and bounds better than, say, music from the 80s and early 90s. It is recorded and played on equipment designed by musicians. There’s a reason the vintage market stays strong. It’s not because we are sentimental about what some boomer might have played. It’s because the gear sounds awesome.
As for the quality of the the songwriting, to paraphrase Joe Boyd in White Bicycles, rock music was a big empty room with lots of room for loads of different stuff. 40s years on, that room feels pretty crowded. And stuffy and tired.
My students, once they reach a certain level of proficiency, always get seduced by classic rock. Seldom by punk rock (with exceptions) because, I think, a lot of those recordings sound like shit. Also because punk rock was a very 20th century, self referential, post-modern, ironic kind of thing. Classic rock (65-75, I’m going to arbitrarily decree)is the wellspring. It’s irresistible and I have no doubt it appeal will endure.
But Rock n Roll as a vital, creative medium will surely die. It is almost exclusively in 4/4. It spans a limited number of keys since it is dominated by guitars. The range of tempos is limited too. If you fall much below andante, your playing a ballad, not rock n roll. If you going balls-out presto, you’re doing some kind of genre metal.
There’s only so many permutations to the formula.
Sorry Mistah Steel, but I have to disagree with you in your first sentence; there was lots of really good music being made in the 80s, and especially in the early 90s. It was the era of bands like R.E.M., Sonic Youth, The Pixies, The Smiths, The Cure, Soundgarden, Joy Division, Red Hot Chili Peppers (intense and experimental in those days), Jane’s Addiction; I could go on and on.
I imagine that your students aren’t as drawn to punk rock because musical prowess is antithetical to punk rock. It was a reaction to the music of the 70s and the notion that you had to be classically trained to play rock and roll. Punk rock says you don’t need to learn your instrument before you start having fun and that couldn’t be an appealing stance to students who have put a lot of hard work into learning to play.
I don’t think rock and roll is in any imminent danger of going extinct. The Blues, as a genre, is thriving in it’s niche; even though every new blues song sounds a lot like all the blues songs that came before it, people are still listening to it, playing it, and loving it. The same will be true of rock for a long time to come.
There’s still lots of good rock music being made today, though vanishingly little of it is played on the radio where I live. I downloaded over 200 songs from bands that played at South by SouthWest and am happy to report that most are at least perfectly listenable; one third are really good and and about 5 percent are real gems. Not bad for a genre which supposedly peaked 35 years ago.
Monsieur C. La Canth (see what I did there?),
I submit that the music of REM, Sonic Youth, et all the rest you mentioned are only good in context. That is, their appeal is largely based on their antecedents. E.g., REM is the darker Byrds. Soundgarden is Black Sabbath but not so damn stupid. Jane’s Addiction is Yes but not so irritatingly proggy (but irritating for different reasons) RHCP is…well, they’re just a crappy Fishbone for white people, but we can agree to disagree? One love! I could go on.
Most of those bands (I know nothing about Sonic Youth, to my shame!), while they wrote some fine songs that I like very much, made TERRIBLE sounding albums in the 80s/90s. That time was a void of horrible digital technology. I’ve heard tell that mountains of cocaine have something to do with it too. The abysmal quality level poisoned the entire decade. That is why bands from the 80s sound paper-thin and teeny-tiny. Led Zeppelin, by contrast still sound like they are going to burst though my speakers and fuck my girlfriend. Surfer Rosa still sounds pretty good though. Thanks, Steve Albini!
The Blues (I love, play, teach it myself)is museum music. It is a beautiful fossil.
I will admit that I am trying to symbolically kill rock n roll for my own twisted reasons. I’ve spent a lot of my adult life making it and I think I’ve got rock-fatigue.
Your ratio of listenable to good to “real gems” is very consistent with my take on music in toto: 90% shit 5% good 4% excellent 1% trancendant-everyone-stop-writing-in-this-genre-this-is-perfection.
Oh, and thanks for reading my ramblings. I love to be (need to be)challenged on my bullshit, no lie.
“90% shit”
Sturgeon’s Law in action.
I had to laugh @ “crappy Fishbone for white people” but RHCP was pretty hardcore before they succumbed to the lures of sobriety and MTV.
In re Sabbath vs Soundgarden, I loves me some Sabbath and I’m a fan of Soundgarden. Sure, the latter owes a musical debt to the former but like you said, there are only so many permutations of the notes. The space they make between themselves and their influences is where the good stuff happens. Listen to “Beyond the Wheel” and you’ll hear Sabbath AND Zeppelin, but you’ll also hear four guys who know how to fuckin RAWK. Saying it’s only good in context is like saying Sabbath is only good because of Blue Cheer, or Zeppelin is only good because of the myriad blues musicians they {cough} borrowed from.
We have much to thank Albini for, not least of which because of his band Big Black. Al Jourgensen stole their guitar sound and turned Ministry into a scary-loud industrial band with it.
Oh, there was that whole Nirvana thing, too. They weren’t too bad.
Thanks for reading and responding to my ramblings, in return.
Ha! I was going to cite Blue Cheer, but decided that was too inside baseball. I won’t misunderestimate you again!
We have much to thank Albini for
including a cooking blog…
cooking blog? whaaa?
“I don’t own measuring implements, not because I don’t like them but because I would never think to use them. We’re not ninjas.”
“I have also successfully cooked for our cats.”
Trouser Minnow is one of my all-time favorite songs.
Trouser Minnow is good stuff! That and Dutch Courage are my favorite songs on that album. But really, I thought Ministry was sui generis until I sat down and listened to Songs About Fucking. Right there on the first track was everything I liked about Ministry’s sound. It was disillusioning, I tells ya.
Thanks for that link to Albini’s cooking blog, Cleek. I’m going to spread that around.
Parallel Fifths, I’m still trying to figure out what you meant by saying blues is museum music…. I don’t get out a lot, many of the bands you are talking about are not familiar to me. But for me, blues, especially Piedmont and Delta, is some of the most living music around. I think of classic rock as museum music in a way, meaning that I think it is tough (for me) to cover and have the music sound convincing, whereas I can play old blues and feel pretty fully self-realized musically, like what I’m singing and playing is relevant and meaningful. “Immigrant Song” is a song on a record — a museum piece, one I love to listen to but can’t really picture covering, and when I hear a bar band covering it it doesn’t really move me; “Deep Ellem Blues” is something I can play and feel, and when I hear a blues band covering it it rocks (or can rock). Which is how I would define living music, but that makes me think I’m coming from somewhere else than where you’re coming from. Since the recording quality of the original has little or nothing to do with how I’m going to feel about singing a song.
Or if you don’t like “Deep Ellem” how about “You’se a viper”
I agree that “Immigrant Song” also belongs in a museum. Maybe an art museum. Covering songs like that is pure folly. Just like covering Beatles songs, it invites, or insists really, the listener to compare your version to the original. You better be rolling heavy (or rolling weird, my band does a sexy, Latinized version of Time by Pink Floyd) if you want to cover stuff like that and not egg your own face.
I liked both of those songs. I found a version of Deep Ellum by Asylum Street Spankers on YouTube that is totally rockin. But for me, that is the very definition of old-timey music. It conjures up long, dusty drives on single lane highways, drinking a 5 cent coke, ladies in sundresses, Okies and segregated drinking fountains. All kinds of stuff. The Ken Burns slow pans around a black and white photograph write themselves to the sound of this music. It is music from a time and a place that is long gone.
But if it lives for you, that’s cool. I hazard a guess you’re an old fashioned kinda Kid, Modesto?
Yeah, guess so…
Thanks, that Asylum St. Spankers number is hot. They’re playing it more as a country tune than blues. But that is fine with me.
Conjuring up long dusty drives on single lane highways is something I very much want music to do. You know who I thought of when you said that, is the David Rawlings Machine. Who are one of my very favorite bands.
the Immigrant Song conjures up scenes of Trans-Ams with feathered roach clips hanging off the rear-view, for me. and i agree: museum piece. nobody should ever try covering it – not a straight cover anyway. Plant’s vocals are just too weird. leave it be.
David Rawlings Machine
speaking of, here’s Mrs C with David & Gil: Merlefest 06
Ah. David Rawlings Machine. Very cool. A rootsier version of one of my faves, The Handsome Family. They are a little more Nashville, and a little more twisted.
Speaking of covers, I do their Lake Geneva at any opportunity:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-P9hpNVeIhM&feature=BFa&list=AVGxdCwVVULXdfDD5k2HUNQT8H7UX4Bi7Q&index=9
I only know Handsome Family from the movie, “Looking for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus” in which they were great. What records of theirs should I check out?
Milk and Scissors and In the Air are the only two I have and they are great.