like, all the people who really do love music, but at some point stop seeking more. what are they all about?

Okay. What I'm all about:
1. Childrearing.
2. Already love more music than I can listen to and appreciate over a five-year span.
2a. The knowledge that, as I integrate more new music into my collection, the old stuff-- that I dearly love, and that is so much a part of me still-- will get listened to less and less. And I know I would miss it.
3. The fact that much of my spare time is spent playing in a covers band-- and our musical focus is to play the songs that please the crowds who are older than I am. (!)
4. (and perhaps most important) I listen to music too intently. I can't multitask when I listen to unfamiliar music, because my mind is totally focused on the music, learning it, teasing it out, getting to the bottom of it. Which means that I can't listen to new music when I'm at work, or when I'm talking to my spouse, or when I'm spending time with my child. Which means that the amount of time I can spend listening to new music is down about 90+% from when I was in my twenties (when I had both more time to focus on new music, and better ability to do same).

xxpost -- At one point I would have agreed with that but I now think it's far more key to balance the motion with reflection. The two work in tandem.

I touch on this same stuff here.

I think it's hard to replicate the kind of attachment-forming musical experiences you have when you're a teenager or in college. It may partly be a certain loss of romanticism as you get older. Like I remember smoking up and listening to Coltrane at the Village Vanguard for the first time, and reading the liner notes, and just thinking that it was all like some great cosmic statement or something, and forcing myself to focus intently on every chorus of Chasin the Trane and getting giddy about it. It's hard for me to imagine bringing that same kind of intensity to a new musical experience now.

Certain kinds of musical drugs also just lose potency after a while, like the surprise of a jarring prog rock change or the heaviness of a fuzzed out psych riff. I mean those things are still great, but when you've heard enough of them they stop giving you the same high.

Much of the new music that I'm exposed to sounds perfectly pleasant, which is not criticism, but also points up why it doesn't stay with me. The music that stays with you isn't "perfectly pleasant"--it's NECESSARY.

I believe my view is entirely because I'm old, and the psychic space that most new music would fill (for me) is already taken up by some other, older (not necessarily better) music.

41, wife, child, mortagage, bills. Pretty sure that a lot of what made music seem so magical and compelling in my 20's was the idea that it was going to open up on some other, more interesting and wonderful and possibly technicolor, world: that if I bought the right el release I'd suddenly find myself in Paris discussing film theory with some beautiful and famous music reviewer (because music reviewers all live glamorous lives). The realization that it pretty much doesn't probably puts a bit of a damper on things.

Still seek out new stuff (bless you Rhapsody), but much more interested in filling in gaps. Kind of crazy when you realize that you could probably spend a lifetime tracking down every worthwhile release from like May through June of 1983.

*the ultimate moment of scales-from-eyes wonder, was meant to be the stress there - I've had numerous Damascene overtakings

Oh, not that I don't interleave discovery with COPIOUS re-listens! All the time I'm going back, manically repeating something, luxuriating in a brilliance I know to be there. But I never stay still for too long, and I shift my phases.

Hurting - that's the great thing! I feel mature enough to truly know the music I listen to, to appreciate how it was made, why it was made and who made it - and also revel in it as mental stimulation. I'm also keenly aware I'll never hear all the good music ever made, so these jarring changes and heavy switch-ups and whatever elses will always leap out at me in different permutations, with different narrative imports. Anything that adds vocabulary and idiom is of worth.

This discussion is making me think one of the best quotes on music I've read -- Andrew Eldritch, at the beginning of a 'ten favorite albums ever' piece for Q almost two decades back, said before he ran through his list that he had barely listened to said albums for years and years, instead noting that in his case all he had to do was look at the sleeves and everything about them (and the times spent listening to them) would come back. This is mostly where I'm at now; the newest musical obsessions I have where I am actually listening to the music are quite new indeed, for me if not necessarily general for others.

Oh man, I would love to read that, for the quote & to see what Eldritch picked!

haven't read the thread but I've always suspected my biggest chunks of music consumption (retail, library, borrowing, dl) were when I was pretty much the most miserable.

been pretty happy lately so about once a month I dig deeper into my own collection and start weeding out what I'm not super stoked on. makes the ipod less of a chore to listen to, that is for sure.

Oh man, I would love to read that, for the quote & to see what Eldritch picked!

I can't seem to find my copy of that around and initial searching online turns up nothing, which honestly is surprising me quite a bit!

Lady GaGa isn't being marketed to 40yo heteros, knowhutimean - in a lot of ways new music isn't MADE for old people. it's made by young people, written about by young people, bought by young people, the market continually demands a ferocious rate of turnover and always new new NEW stuff - you can see how this might be unapealling/uninviting to older folks

That's much less true than it used to be i think: my parents were in their 40s during the '60s, and sneered at the Beatles/ Stones etc, and by the time i got into Bowie in my early teens they were just disgusted - it would have been impossible then for people their age to grasp what was going on, I think - whereas I'm 50 this year, and while I don't buy lots of new stuff, my daughter acquires stuff, I hear it, we talk about it in the same terms. Although she find a lot of what I like to be too 'out there' .....

And I still get into new things - although more new to me, even if recorded 50 years ago, than new new.

I'm sure there's a relevant borges story but I can't decide which one it would be.

it's the Library of Babel! the first time each of those librarians found a coherent text, it was probably life-changing. and then I think this thread has already identified all the types: the ones who keep searching for a master catalog, the ones who jump down the airshafts, the ones who decide it's all just random and what's the point ...

pretty much what everyone else has said to one degree or another minus the stuff about kids but especially the bits about too much out there and limited free time i have to split between competing interests and the "high" wearing off to some degree. the junkie phase is over now; hearing something Brand New and Kinda Good no longer does shit for me. but the stuff i've heard (and continue to hear) over the years that lingers, that "has staying power" for whatever reason, i find the experience deepens with each listen. which certainly helps with the process of weeding out shasta describes above.

(you'd think this would be complicated by the fact that i get paid to write about music but once i stopped thinking that i actually got paid to "keep up" with music (versus actually writing about it) things became much, much easier (however much this is actually true given how the writing-about-music economy actually works now).)

Much of the new music that I'm exposed to sounds perfectly pleasant, which is not criticism, but also points up why it doesn't stay with me. The music that stays with you isn't "perfectly pleasant"--it's NECESSARY.

I believe my view is entirely because I'm old, and the psychic space that most new music would fill (for me) is already taken up by some other, older (not necessarily better) music.

THIS. I think this is the best summary of what I've been feeling and trying to express, thanks Slim! I still have annual experiences which either point to "Where has THIS been all my life!" or just thrilling new bands. Not nearly as often as I used to, but it still happens and the yearning for that experience keeps me going.

Kind of crazy when you realize that you could probably spend a lifetime tracking down every worthwhile release from like May through June of 1983.

This too! I'm a post-punk junkie, I just keep mining that fertile territory and little nuggets keep appearing. But this perspective is true for anyone whose interest in a particular era runs deep - look at how many garage rock comps there are out there, with more each year!

all he had to do was look at the sleeves and everything about them (and the times spent listening to them) would come back.

Lastly, this BIG TIME. At my current rate of listening I may only pull out one of my all-time top 10 albums maybe ten more times in my lifetime, that's alright. It's playing randomly in my brain all the time.

all he had to do was look at the sleeves

What's a sleeve? lol

It seems like at some point discovering the years' hottest new album or best new band, or even hearing "great new music" from any era, seems to mean less, and maybe that's because the adolescent's lust for sensation and thrills starts to fade, or the pride in being on top of the music scene and knowing what's new and good doesn't mean as much, or even make sense, when you're older.

The law of diminishing returns am i rite

Brand New and Kinda Good no longer does shit for me

Goddamn I love you all. I can't have this conversation with more than a few people in real life, they just don't understand where I'm coming from.

OTOH I have found new musical thrills in understanding what it really means to need a certain maturity to appreciate certain music. I mean I used to think this was some kind of bullshit thing like swirling wine in your mouth and naming the fruits you taste. But then at a certain age you hear a certain Joni Mitchell or Steely Dan song and say "Yes! I get this!" and it's really an amazing comfort.

I dunno, I tend to have even less patience for a lot of mature work as such now.

33, married with a 3 month old daughter, full time job, part time music business and going back to school.

At this point my life feels like I have to shove 10 pounds of crap into a five pound bag. Oddly, I feel the opposite about finding new music. I hardly have time to listen to it, so when I can find a couple hours to listen to and organize records in my studio it feels like heaven.

The flip side of that is that I cannot engage with digital media, CD's or LP's for that matter. The only format I can really get into is the single. I don't have the time or attention span to engage with larger works. When I listen to music I usually just throw on a handful of sides and listen to them.

I also find myself not engaging in new music inside of my genre as much at the moment. I think that has more to do with me not having access to a decent physical record store that stocks what I am into at the moment. I still can't get my head around download stores or getting mp3 promos of new records. If it isn't on vinyl, it isn't real to me right now. Limiting myself to vinyl is the only way I can deal with the flood of music that is out there right now.

I did come across a huge collection of dance records from 1980 to about 1996 at a local store out here recently. It came from a distributor who went under and a closed used record shop in NYC, and the records sat in a warehouse for about 15 years. I bought about eight linear feet of this collection for about two dollars a record. I feel like it is going to take me about a year to know all of these records that I bought. It feels great to dig through these records and find a great track on one of the records. The thrill is definitely still there, I just wish there was more time in my day to chase that thrill.

There is no doubt in my mind that there is a lot of great music out there and there is more being made every day. I only wish I had time to engage with more of it. I am one of those people who really needs to spend a lot of time with a piece of music before I feel like can appreciate and enjoy all the nuances of a piece of music. My listening habits were never in line with the ipod music experience. Even when I was young I felt it was better to know a few records really well, I just wish there was more time to invest in entering other people's musical worlds.

I still can't get my head around download stores or getting mp3 promos of new records. If it isn't on vinyl, it isn't real to me right now. Limiting myself to vinyl is the only way I can deal with the flood of music that is out there right now.

You actually touch upon something that has been one of my best strategies for recent years, namely knowing where to draw limits -- or rather, knowing that limits drawn, however potentially arbitrary, are often necessary to create a context and space. Not that we haven't talked about it before on here on other threads, but I've tended to apply it broadly in various areas of culture, not just musically. It's a slight recognition on my part that a little caution prevents against going off a deep end.

i think it has a lot to do with curiosity. some people maintain it about music (and fashion and other stuff deemed adolescent by people who don't care about it), and others don't.

The fashion comparison is an interesting one to me.

Obv there are some people who go from being interested in fashion to actually not caring at all - fashion becomes

entirely

And then there's a lot of people whose interest in fashion gets channelled through very functional and accordingly restrictive (even staid) channels - e.g. if you're a guy who works professionally, it's likely that your thoughts about fashion as it applies to you become more heavily focused on suits, shirts, ties etc. You might still have strong ideas of what is stylish and what is not but the broader context is one of functionalism.

more generally what you see, even with casual fashion, is that for most people as they get older their taste stops changing so much. "Youth fashion" changes heaps, but the stuff that's marketed at the 30-50 bracket (male and female) changes very little, occasionally receiving the outer ripples of some big splash elsewhere but that's about it (e.g. the 30-50 hetero male bracket have almost entirely resisted the trend back towards skinny-leg jeans and pants). These people might still care about what they wear and about looking good, and may spend as much or more on their clothes than they did when they were young, but the notion of "keeping up" with trends stops mattering so much - indeed, these people might start to talk about (or at least agree with the idea of) certain styles being "timeless".

And of course there are lots of middle-aged people who do keep up with fashion pretty obsessively, who are the fashion equiv. of adults keeping up with the charts or with generalist music magazines or websites.

And people who keep up with a particular strand of changing taste while ignoring the rest (e.g. they jumped onto the trend towards fishermen's pants 8-10 years ago but have ignored the skinny jeans trend) - these are like people who follow jazz or folk or whatevs pretty closely and almost exclusively, go to live gigs etc.

And people who seem stuck in a fashion timewarp (you know the music equiv).

But the largest group I think fall within that "timeless" category.

The commonality on both sides of the equation is that the importance of taste comes down to two possible motivants:

1) your relationship to the object of taste; and

2) changes in your own life, regardless of their relationship to the object of taste; and

Taste never stops mattering, but the need to reform or develop your taste is most urgent when your personality/life in general is in upheaval (or at least development), as per (2) above.

If/When your persona firms up, e.g. "I am Tim who works at this job and lives in this suburb and am in a long term relationship with that person" then (2) starts to recede. Your taste at that point is likely only to continue to transform on a regular basis if the firmed-up-persona already and still considers the relationship to the object of taste to be a relatively central fact of yr existence. The jazz (or whatever) fan who still keeps up with developments in jazz but ignores the rest is someone to whom "keeping up with jazz" is important but "keeping up" in general is anything but.

The justifications for not keeping up are entirely subjective of course and it comes down to utility to one's own life and the way in which taste is received and judged socially. A 50 year old guy is likely to look better in a suit than in skinny jeans and a t-shirt featuring a photo of a young river phoenix, but this is basically a matter of social convention rather than expressive of some ultimate core "truth" about fashion.

It seems like at some point discovering the years' hottest new album or best new band, or even hearing "great new music" from any era, seems to mean less, and maybe that's because the adolescent's lust for sensation and thrills starts to fade, or the pride in being on top of the music scene and knowing what's new and good doesn't mean as much, or even make sense, when you're older.

The law of diminishing returns am i rite

― Cunga, Monday, June 28, 2010 10:00 PM (21 minutes ago) Bookmark

dunno, I find that the more I learn from an era makes the whole picture of music seem richer and more fleshed out. My love is 12" dance records from 1975 to today. The more I learn about those old records, the more I enjoy the whole spectrum of dance music. The tapestry of the music gets richer and richer the more I know.

That being said, I have spend the last six years in places where my interests in music had virtually no social value whatsoever. I had to be motivated by the reward of enriching my own inner world because there was no way I could discuss my interests without seeming either pretentious or just plain weird.

I think you can love music purely for it's own sake. That being said, I don't think that is the only valid way to listen to music. There is nothing wrong with using music as a badge for your place in youth culture. There is nothing wrong with outgrowing music. Life is a great big place, it isn't anyone's place to judge others when they arrive at different destinations in life with different priorities. Do people who are super into food look down on us because we obsess over bits of plastic rather than really good local organic food?

Oh ilx I just log off for a few hours and there's now 127 comments posted in less than six hours.

I'll give a cookie to anyone who has been reading the whole thread and can tell who has posted the most OTM comments so far.

The usual suspects.

I dunno if this resonates with anyone else, but TV got really good, and it's much, much easier now to find the good TV than the good almost-anything-else.

The social capital afforded by loving music really dropped off for me after high school. I don't think it was age---as soon as I went to college, everyone was into different things besides music & so it's been a pretty personal journey since. I don't have any other pop arty interests (no tv, no film) but I notice that those buy a lot more social capital in my peer groups, i.e. you can talk about Glee or The Wire with people, but if I want to talk about e.g. Taylor Swift then I'm outta luck. (Hence why I come here.)

If/When your persona firms up, e.g. "I am Tim who works at this job and lives in this suburb and am in a long term relationship with that person" then (2) starts to recede. Your taste at that point is likely only to continue to transform on a regular basis if the firmed-up-persona already and still considers the relationship to the object of taste to be a relatively central fact of yr existence.

Great post, Tim. I would call this some kind of "comfort zone". Of course, I - try to - fight against it. Of course it's inevitable at some point. But it seems very silly, very non critical to surrender too. Does not always work, and i always end up seeing at some point i'm fooling myself, or being intellectually dishonest. I think that anyone who - or try to - resists it really can be critical at some degree.

agree very much w/ tim's point, but i think the process can perhaps be at least slightly less dependent on psychological need, on how we conceptualize ourselves. i mean, i'm a 40+ music fan, and i know that a big part of what keeps me engaged w/ new music is my desire to feel current, up-to-date, "hip", or whatever. i can't deny that. the same impulse makes me wary of nostalgia & habit, so i refuse to spend too much of my time with the music i've loved the best and longest.

but there's also the fact that, for me, the rewards of music change over time. no music is infinitely capable of providing "that feeling". it gets played out, becomes weirdly dry and distant with time. that can't be avoided, but the more i engage with new music & culture, the more i find that my entire frame of reference changes and keeps changing. i absolutely LOVED early grunge & retro garage rock in the late 80s and early 90s, and i kept that love burning for quite a while. but over the past decade or so, it's started to fade. i still like the songs i used to like, but can't help viewing the musical choices involved differently. the cock-rock excess and bombastic production that seemed so funny and intuitively correct way back when now often strike me as foolish, unimaginative and dull. same goes for richer, less formally derivative music that i loved even more: the pixies, sonic youth, etc., though in different ways and to a lesser extent.

i have changed, and so the music changes, and in doing so, almost always seems to move away from me. as a result, i can only keep myself interested by finding new things to be interested in, and i love being interested, being excited. in this regard, feeding novel ideas into the system is crucial. novelty keeps my concept of musical reality off balance, forces it to constantly reorient itself. this allows me to continually experience a shock i find pleasurable, but it also keeps me from ever becoming too comfortable in relation to older stuff. my point being that my relationship to music has at least as much to do with the function and effect of music in my life as with defending my sense of the kind of person i am.

If you've grown up equating knowledge with self-worth, which is a natural enough defense mechanism for a lot of smart, awkward kids, it can be liberating to take some time off from keeping up with the new stuff. It's a way of saying you no longer feel like you have anything to prove. (Also, taking a break from increasing your breadth of knowledge gives you time to concentrate on depth.)

Tim is otm about the relationship between stability in your life/ persona and the development of your tastes, but I think I would take it further and say that the role of your tastes in the formation of your identity is only part of the equation. Barring a soporifically comfortable life, I think fear of becoming intellectually stagnant is just as powerful a motivator as the degree to which a person's tastes are part of their identity. Once you've established the habit of turning to music for intellectual stimulation and novelty, it seems likely that devoting all your energies to simply consolidating your tastes will eventually become unsatisfying, and you'll get restless and start craving newness.

Or at least I did, anyways. By the time I finished a lengthy consolidation period in my 20s (almost no new music for two years!), I was craving novelty, strangeness, and unfamiliarity, just as contenderizer describes above. Resolving the depth (consolidation of your established tastes) vs. breadth (familiarizing yourself with new things) problem is one of the most fun parts of being "a person who really loves music", really: seeking out new things without becoming a mere follower of trends, enjoying old things without becoming stuck in the past.

I guess my comparison with fashion can imply it's all in the mind and that all choices are arbitrary and meaningless.

but of course someone actually into fashion would really contest this.

my point being that my relationship to music has at least as much to do with the function and effect of music in my life as with defending my sense of the kind of person i am.

I guess the question is where does the first part of this sentence start and the second part finish? or vice versa. "who I am" and "the function and effect of music in my life" seem pretty inextricable to me.

I dunno, I think "music as something fun to talk about with other people" ≠ "music as a definition of who I am". Which is just to say that "the function and effect of music in my life" is a pretty broad category and includes "instrumental" functions such as promoting conversation (thought of as an end in itself).

i'm surprised so much of this thread has focused on our personal reactions to music, how a song can affect us individually, rather than the importance of general cultural awareness, whereby "keeping up with music" is basically the same as "keeping up with current affairs" (given that i am - we are - people ho take an interest in culture as a general thing, not just specific bits and pieces of it)

"Keeping up with current affairs" doesn't necessarily make a person more political or a deep thinker about the world and what's going on in it. It's quite possible to have a superficial pub quiz knowledge of current events, but even then what you're usually talking about is a very specific set of talking points covered by a limited number of media. I'd argue that even a reasonably diligent news junkie only has the most partial grasp of what's going on in the world. News is a selective snapshot I think, not a mirror into how most people are living their lives on any given day.

Likewise with your idea of keeping up with what's current in music, I think. There's too much going on to really be "keeping in touch" with anything other than a slice of what's maybe relevant to you and your social/cultural circle. But that's not the whole world, and a lot of the world will be more taken up with music that's old or music that's outside of the media altogether. Defining what's "now" in music seems a very subjective and sort of doomed task to me.

I agree that a certain kind of curmudgeonly back-turning on any modern culture is usually the mark of a reactionary idiot, but culture isn't events - culture can be thousands of years old and still maintain currency, because it's shaped by whoever's using it right now.

I hardly listen to anything I already know I like, outside of classical music, by the way - I consider this part of the music collector sickness, & I'm OK with that

Heh, even when I put on old stuff I know I like it's because I can barely remember what it sounded like - up to about age 17 stuff is pretty firmly imprinted on my brain, after that it is "oh, that was a good record I bought at the same time as 10 other ok-to-good records, now what the hell did it sound like?"

think I have a special musical amnesia (gave up on learning the guitar because if a song wasn't in my head I couldn't manage to play it at all) but still, for all I can remember of most albums I go back to, I may as well be back in the record shop picking them up unheard except for one track or the vague knowledge that someone once said they were a bit like someone else

i went through a phase about 5-10 years ago (i'm 35 now) where i rarely sought out new music because there was so much out there, i had some pathological fear of buying (or buying into) the "wrong thing." i eventually concluded that it was okay to admit ignorance, be a dilettante, and like what i found pleasurable, as opposed to thinking, "i am this kind of person, i should like this music and not like this other music."

i don't know if this unusual here, but most of my irl are musicians or involved in various music scenes in different ways, so listening to music, talking about music, and going to shows is a significant part of feeling socially "connected." i've lost track of how many times i've had similar conversations with people irl as i've had (or read) on ilx.

last week, i and two other friends, both in their mid-30s were trying to understand what chillwave is. In my social circle, there's a good faith effort to be aware of what's going on in more mainstream music culture, but it isn't a priority, because most of the attention is paid to people's own work and that of their friends and peers, and folks a few steps above or below in the cultural "ecosystem." So, it's okay to not know what chillwave is, and it's okay to express curiosity about it.

Hrrmmm. Wonder if it is very much hormonal during adolescence - then is my current "OMG, I want to hear MOAR AND MOAR NEW TYPES OF MUSIKS!!!" rush that I'm on equally hormonal, due to the menopause being in the post?

i would think that menopause, for most women, does not correlate with a need to hear new music.

New experiences, though - because it often gets bundled up with Empty Nest Syndrome, and that's when yr Stereotypical Woman takes up basket-weaving, dumps their husband and flies off to Greece and other such cliches. Because my chosen experiential preference is music, that's how I experience it, perhaps?

yeah, that's just what i was thinking - pursuing one's passions? Like when my mom hit menopause it was all about taking extended learning classes about modern European history at Stanford and taking frequent trips to France and trying as many different kinds of cheese as she could.

the research into musical taste & brain chemistry that aerosmith cites upthread is discussed at length in this fascinating book:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_JbTmZQDvs7Y/SEOE-3WI6sI/AAAAAAAAA8E/dGaenZ8m9mE/s320/this+is+your+brain+on+music+daniel+levitin.jpg

^^^^ I mean to read that, after reading Oliver Sacks Musicophilia.

On a personal level: I was going to say I stopped "seeking more music" a while ago but this isn't really true...its more the way I seek music has changed...I don't 'actively seek' in a way where I MUST hear xyz. And yet since I became more languid about this, I've heard more great new music than before. I wouldn't say my approach is passive exactly but I seem to hear the things I want to hear...a new thing opens the door to some other new things, but I don't feel like I'm chasing things, they just come

i'm surprised so much of this thread has focused on our personal reactions to music, how a song can affect us individually, rather than the importance of general cultural awareness, whereby "keeping up with music" is basically the same as "keeping up with current affairs" (given that i am - we are - people ho take an interest in culture as a general thing, not just specific bits and pieces of it)

― لوووووووووووووووووووول (lex pretend),

But yes on a wider level this has come somewhat at the expense of general cultural awareness. Was talking about this with a friend the other week...there was a period of time when I did this more...but at that time felt like there was an subconscious internal pressure to have an opinion on all these things when actually I didn't have much of an opinion on them at all...ended up hearing lots of things I neither liked nor disliked

xpost

Musicophilia is v. good too, more anecdotal/personal. Levitin zeros in on the questions raised here in great detail. research indicates that the brain uses music to encode all kinds of memory. studies suggest there is a point in late adolescence/early adulthood when our physical capacity for processing new music peaks (or begins to deteriorate...)*

*wildly inaccurate paraphrase

I'm happy to let other people curate 'new music' for me, so in a few years time I can revisit and explore the cream of the crop, as it were. That's what I've been doing anyway ever since I formed my 'taste' as such - going back to influences, to find what I missed, etc. Even looking backwards can open new doors.

In any case I already do it, to a greater or lesser extent, with books (I've got a shelf full of 'em, only a few 'new' when they were purchased), movies and television (DVD box sets ahoy), so why not music?

As you can tell, I don't really care too much for 'cultural awareness'; I find I absorb enough the web and TV that I can make a passing guess at what's happening, but I don't consider that integral to my own private experience.

That should be 'enough FROM the web'

"you must keep up with music just like current affairs"

this is like knowing the football scores so you can chat with people at work or w/e

don't keep up with contemporary dance/architecture/___________

too busy keeping up with stuff i want to keep up with

Fantastic thread.

I definitely identify with the idea that your window for seismic, life-changing experiences with music closes after a certain point. But I bet it has as much to do with brain chemistry as the realistic fact that as you get older, you become more familiar with various sounds and styles. I got excited about Pavement and Sonic Youth in high school, and Stereolab and Tortoise in college, because I had never really heard anything like these bands. And it was also exciting to think that there was so much else left to explore. Now that I'm in my 30s, there's still a ton of music I haven't heard, but I've heard enough that little really blows me away as an amazing new discovery. For better or worse, I'm more able to put it into context.

I feel like I've had two phases of being a serious music fan. When I was younger and interested in identity formation, I felt like part of seeking out music was in order to refine my tastes. So once I began to gravitate toward a certain set of sounds, I only really listened to those sounds for a while. I wanted to be able to point to very specific bands and say, "This. This is me."

After college, I self-consciously tried to expand out of this dead end, but it wasn't really until I discovered ILM at age 24 that I adopted my current mp3-collector dilettantist approach. The idea of being somewhat knowledgeable about a wide variety of music and genres appealed to the librarian-archivist in me, and the technological environment of the '00s made it more possible than ever. Make no mistake, this was still identity-driven to an extent: I took a fair amount of pride in my catholicism and in challenging friends who dared to dismiss entire musical genres. At the same time, I never felt like I had enough time or energy to really dig far beyond what I discovered on a handful of blogs or websites, and lately, I have even less. I'm still hearing far more than most people I know, but at this point I'm mostly just keeping up with new releases (which are easily downloadable) rather than going out of my way to investigate older stuff I haven't heard.