Do You think You'll Still be listening to your current Favorite Music in Ten Years?

This is a list I posted over 10 years ago; Ned's also featured in the thread... The wonders of the internet eh? At least I've learnt a but more how to write and punctuate gooder since then.

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&threadm=kmw.755264639%40dcs.ed.ac.uk&rnum=1&prev=/groups%3Fhl%3Den%26lr%3D%26ie%3DUTF-8%26selm%3Dkmw.755264639%2540dcs.ed.ac.uk

Heh, still a lot of love there for much of that! Not all, to be sure, but it's a small amount in comparison.

I maintain I will still be listening to Crispy Ambulance in 10 years, of not 20.

Come to think of it, the only artists I stopped listening to altogether and can barely stomach are Pink Floyd (post-Dark Side) and Madonna (she's so insufferable even her good stuff has been tainted).

On my "to listen to" pile: Seefeel!

Agreed. I was buying breakfast this morning in a deli to the temple-battering strains of "Ray of Light" blaring out of radio behind the counter, and really....that is no way to start your morning.

-- Ned Raggett (ne...), May 17th, 2004 3:44 PM. (Ned)

Ned is Jim DeRogatis, and I claim my $5.

If the songs were class enough to capture your interest in the first place, why throw it out?

Nonsense. For a start, the hair length is different.

Interesting, I've pondered this concept more than once recently but I think you're the only one to come right out and say it! Out of curiosity, do you feel that way about other artistic media?

i had to think about this for a little while. i don't think i do. the music you like is first question of taste on the friendster form, right? i guess if i was talking purely about dancing, i'd say that going to a film isn't the equivalent of performing your approval on a dancefloor, but generally movies/literatue/art don't feel quite as usefully reducible to me. i don't know if that's poorly expressed, i'm tired.

It's a not particularly original suggestion to make that musical changes tastes are most in flux when your ideas and values wrt music are rapidly mutating, which I think tends to happen when the uses you get out of music change. Someone whose listening and thinking about music is entirely solitary is less likely to change their tastes on a regular basis than someone whose use of music is more social - going out dancing, reading music journalism or simply talking about it with friends has a mutational effect on ones ideas and values, and hence tastes. Being "fashionable" at the end of the day boils down to engaging with music at a social, not (or more than) solitary level. NB. I don't think one approach is necessarily better than the other.

Is it generalising to suggest that the older you get the more solitary and less social your musical contexts become?

This thread reminds me of a conversation I had in high school. I'm 39 years old now, so you youngsters out here probably can't relate to this, but I have always remembered talking one day with a kid who was a senior and I was probably a freshman or sophomore. He said "when you're old, like 30, you won't still be listening to the stuff you listen to now." I didn't agree then, and it turns out I was right.

I still listen to all the old punk rock, heavy metal and dinosaur rock I listened to back then. I have expanded (greatly) my musical horizons since then, but I can easily imagine being in my 90's (deity of your choice willing) and STILL cranking "Beat On The Brat."

Ned: Hiphoprisy?

I know there are are some things that I liked 10, 20 or even 30 years ago that I still listen to today and some that I don't. Some things I've grown to like more, others I've grown to like less.

There are some things that I still like in theory but which I never seem to pull them down off the shelf and actually listen to....

Josh is absolutely OTM about ".... given the hundreds of new things I've heard - and considering all the great stuff I've missed and caught up on in the interim - I by necessity listen to it less." but that doesn't explain why relatively some things are listened to more and more and are listened to others less and less.

I suspect that has to do with how both the music scene as a whole and my personal tastes and knowledge (of which my age and the "musical people" I'm involved with are certainly facets) have developed and continue to develop.

Some things I first heard 10 / 20 / 30 years ago continue to sound fresh and relevant, some to become even more so, some to become less so, and some have just ceased to do so.

Some things that sounded unusual, different, alien, innovative and exciting and challenging to me 10 / 20 /30 years ago continue to sound unusual, different, alien, innovative and exciting and challenging; others have begun to sound commonplace - some things have become so commonplace that I've just grown tired of them.

Sometimes that's because I just hadn't encountered that type of music before (and obviously the frequency with which that happens decreses as I get older); but sometimes it's because of the number of subsequent bands / musicians who've subsequently copied that sound, what other sounds they've mixed it with and what directions they've taken it in.

So, without knowing how everything else is going to change, I can't tell you which of the things I'm listening to now (or indeed which of the things I was listening to 10 / 20 /30 years ago) I'll still be listening to in 10 /20 /30 years time.

I will bet a fiver (bearing in mind that by 2034 a fiver will be a small coin with the approximate purchasing power that 5p has today) that I'll still be listening to Captain Beefheart 'though.