Ignoring all the great music made before you were born so you can concentrate more on the music in your lifetime...

What if you're just bored with everything?

I often find that I don't really go out of my way to hear records made before 1990 or therabouts, although I like loads and am sure I'd love even more. I think this is more due to time and money constraints than anything else. Plus the fact that I'm always going to be able to get hold of a copy of Exile On Main Street or What's Going On, whearas something by MRI or A1 People or Xinlisupreme or whoever could be pretty hard to come by a couple of years down the line.

Mmm, tasty.

NED HAS A POSSE

Oh yes. Maybe.

ramble ramble ramble

These days, I buy new music all year 'round and save up on the old stuff fer my x-mas wish list, tho more out of a sense of obligation than anything else- I know I'd probably enjoy 12 canon albums more than 12 new releases, but a) why give my $$ to ppl who are dead/rich enough already?, and b) live in the NOW and assorted clichés.

I guess though, in all honesty, that until I was in my early teens I didn't listen to much music that was very old. I still am most nostalgic about music from when I was a kid. I guess I started listen to the radio on my own in around 1970. I had a much older brother and sister, so I was exposed to music from the late 60's pretty quickly. I can't remember clearly whether I thought of the Beatles as "old" music in the early 70's. I certainly didn't think of them as "too old." On the other hand, music from the 50's and early 60's tended to be radically other and dated sounding. It's taken me a while to find pop music from this era that I like much. My brother and sister would have thought of it as old, but it was too late for it to have been music from my mother's youth; so there was no one in my immediate family to stick up for it.

But when I started to discover new music on college radio (punk, new wave, early industrial, last gasp of the golden age of roots reggae, avant-garde music of various sorts, electronic music), the old and new were mixed together. I was discovering current punk bands alongside defunct prog. and Krautrock artists. Free Jazz was new to my ears, though much of what I was hearing was ten or fifteen years old. Because I was exposed to new styles of music on an electic radio station with a strong sense of musical history, I learned the new and old side by side.

Having said that as I love great singers I do collect records by people such as Otis Redding, Billie Holiday and Paul Robeson. It's as near as I will ever get to hearing them live.

It probably helps that pop/rock music hasn't really changed THAT much.

and older people who've been through getting into and then getting bored with peer group music, bored with pop songs popping, heard john coltrane enough to warn you not to waste your time on him (though i have, so WARNING: John Coltrane is a waste of time given all the great saxophanists since that adopted the best bits of 'trane but didn't get stuck on him)

music can be the endless churn of the latest pop music, but that got boring for me, so it became a learning curve into more and more intriguing music, music that's still fun to have around

so most enduring for me has been 20th century post-serialist and pseudo-serialist clasical music -- it has a respect for my memory, slowly drawing me in, each piece a little learning curve of its own -- and that music spills nicely into some of the great free jazz

free jazz doesn't churn, and it's pretty timeless if it's good, and often pieces will be demonstrations of force and art -- the "fire music" of today is a second-rate alt-pop music mutant and gross simplification (xcsue me) of most of the earlier stuff -- obviousley there are good current "free" practitioners, but Wm Parker is just riding the alt-rock wave -- the difference is that the pop/pseudo free jazz has a slightly longer learning curve than alt-rock, but in the end, it's still a pretty short curve (isn't that the defn. of pop music ?)

it's really depressing seeing people get sucked into music like phillip glass (music that's as functional and interesting as everyday furniture masquerading as high art deserving a place in your collection) or john coltrane (great marketing since the guy is dead, all the music is finite, start at the end ('67) and see where he ended up, like studying a statue of coltrane, some artistic flare but it'll always be the same shape)

this is not snob talk, it's my experience with pop music -- you'll burn up most music as you subconsciously get much too well acquainted with it -- then you'll hear other music that pulls the same strings and all of a sudden isn't exciting even if it's new, and you'll end up in the position Ned sounds like he's in (i'm assuming this from what he's written so excuse this but i think i can relate to it as a 'i've heard that before, gimme a new thrill, or have i reached the limit with music' feeling)

or is it just that it's a very emotional learning curve ? part of growing up and out of this music that's so often associated with personally held social and emotional feelings from all-important teenage time ? are teenagers escaping into music really any better off than if they got into playstations or cable tv ? (goths for example)

i do know people who seem to pursue the music, the scene, the canon in a train-spotter obsessive compulsive way as adults, and if they were 15 years old you'd think that what they were taking so seriousley was actually pretty childish -- and maybe they did "hate their peers" .. sad ? adults on the periphery of "normal", "square" or "bourgeouis" society adopting what started as pop music as their _serious_ art/culture, in a private fetishist-collector way that's both the same old materialist yawn and an excuse for anti-social behaviour ?

You need to get out more.

It sounds as though you think everyone else should value the same thing you value in music. In fact, many of us apparently are able to derive some sort of thrill from the same pop song, over repeated listenings; and if not the same pop song, then, anyway, many of us are able to continue to enjoy new pop songs and not lose interest in it all.

I doubt very much that listening to free jazz* and "20th century post-serialist and pseudo-serialist clasical music" would be a solution for me if pop music, and other less than ultra-demanding forms of music, were to permanently lose their interest. This is music that I don't think most people would want to listen to.

It's very clear in my listening that some pop songs do get used up pretty quickly, but there are others that continue to live for me decades later.

*I mentioned being exposed to free jazz, above; and it was intriguing at the time, but for the most part I don't find I enjoy it very much.

First they came for the boy bands and the plastic looking teeny-bop girl singers, but I was not a fan of the boy bands the plastic looking teeny-bop girl singers, so I said nothing. Then they came for the modern rockers, but I was not a fan of modern rock, so I was quiet. Next they came for the rap MCs, but I was not a fan of rap, so I did not protest. By and by, they came for the "fire music" posers, but I was not a fan of the "fire music" posers, so I did not respond. Finally, they came for the Moroccan gnawa ensembles, but it was too late for me to do anything about it.

I don't really care to defend most pop music, but I'm sure george would lump most of the music I listen to into that category anyway, so I might as well wave the pop flag.

david boo-ee, he's pretty pop, but he talked pre-christian-science mick garson into contributing the only really free/20thc. piano solo i've ever heard in a pop song into Aladin Sane (1913,1938, uh 200- ?), which led me to all sorts of other music just not happening in pop

sometime twenty- five years ago there was so much more music in pop and rock w/out it being prog (tuatara s music) -- i'm going after that 'cause i don't want to let it die -- maybe i'm so old that there's little 'learning curve' now, but i know there's less learning curve than ever in todays pop music
yeah, some older pop music is pretty timeless and non-dissable, but it seems as though current pop music almost has to pose as ironic tribute or invoke the spirit of the king, borrow stuff from the past or just get rarely lucky -- does pop/rock music run in 40 year cycles with sub-cycles of 15 years ?

RS: i hope i'm not sounding too simplistic, because i don't think these often personal boundaries in taste are simple at all

no

how? maybe in 20 years time you'll suddenly spot what it is everyone else is aware of that you're missing...

''this is not snob talk, it's my experience with pop music -- you'll burn up most music as you subconsciously get much too well acquainted with it -- then you'll hear other music that pulls the same strings and all of a sudden isn't exciting even if it's new, and you'll end up in the position Ned sounds like he's in (i'm assuming this from what he's written so excuse this but i think i can relate to it as a 'i've heard that before, gimme a new thrill, or have i reached the limit with music' feeling)''

I think you George, might have reached a point where you can't learn anymore.

Isn't it some sort of neurological thingy?

how much time does this new pop music require to work on me ? maybe it's a neurological thing that i just react against repetition because i do try and listen, i entertain hope, but my learning of other musics and arts has not been blunted, and mark it didn't take me 20 years to understand all the pop music i got through yet could still hum to you, and i can hum the current stuff 'though not pleasantly naturally -- i have a hunch i haven't missed the point of it -- and how have you had those same twenty years to be able to not dismiss it as pop music that pops ? and if not, how can you distinguish it from the more long term pop music results ? is it different pop music ?