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

As I said, child-rearing often puts a major crimp in one's budget, time and energy needed to seek out new music. Something's got to give in terms of how you spend your limited free time, and with lots of folks seeking out new music is what goes away.

But the vast majority of people I know stopped ACTIVELY looking for new music shortly after college and just became satisfied with whatever the industry throws out at them. There's a reason American Idol is wildly popular - it's passive music marketing at it's finest. I'm not saying it's all horrible, but it's different than being a consumer of art vs. an appreciator of art.

it's funny jon and aerosmith yr comments kind of ring true in a related way to me--like when i was a kid my dad would play music loud every thursday night when my mom worked. he found new things here and there but was mostly concentrated on his faves of the past.

a couple years ago he went through an extended depressed/manic cycle, discovered burning cds, and got really into different music for the first time i could ever remember (mostly lots of slick 80s pop oddly enough). that whole phase has passed and i don't even know how much music he listens to these days but i have a feeling it's much, much less.

That is really interesting about psychological/physiological differences, underrated aerosmit albums I have loved. Do you know of any books, journal articles, etc, on the topic? I would really like to know more about that.

the problem is most of the new stuff I find doesn't scratch the itch, so a lot of the times I just wind up with my old music

I'm with you, mate.

(btw that's "oddly enough" since his alltime faves were band of gypsies and led zep 1 and 2)

aerosmith's point doesn't surprise me at all, would've guessed as much tbh. people often forget what slaves we are to our own biochemistry.

the brain & the body undergo all manner of changes with age

solved: geir has progeria

only had a 12-minute window in which to set his musical tastes for life

there was and will ever be only one steely dan, ya know?

altho I think there's also something to it in that modern western-capitalist culture has increasingly emphasized the segregation of generations when it comes to music ever since at least the jazz age - so much of music marketing is about niche demographics, and everyone knows kids have the most time/money to spend, so popular musical culture has increasingly revolved entirely around them. If older folks get tired of dealing with it, part of it is that it's constantly being made clear that they are not welcome - so much youth marketing is tied up in, like, generational/oppositional politics it's no surprise that as people get older they just say "ah, fuck it"

xp

flowers for hongroenon

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

Shakey is correct, but again that's all about POPULAR musical culture. But there's a wealth of music in the underground scene for all generations if they make the effort and have a clue where to look for new music. Certainly stuff like Pandora or Last.fm has made it easier to find?

That is really interesting about psychological/physiological differences, underrated aerosmit albums I have loved. Do you know of any books, journal articles, etc, on the topic? I would really like to know more about that.

man I tried to google it but it's a hard subject to locate - the main study was 5-6 years ago I think? it went a ways to explaining how, whatever music you got really into when you were a late teen, that's always going to be the stuff that sounds best to you: that connects most strongly to your emotional centers. now, if your appreciation runs afield from "it reaches me emotionally," or if "I love this music" extends to areas other than "it hits me," then I think you get a sort of extension.

I will try to locate the key study, it sort of confirmed something everybody kind of already knows intuitively i.e. the music you loved most from 16-22 will always seem like the best music to you.

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.

also there is a possibility that those people never really cared about music; they cared about the feeling that their music gave them, which is essentially the intense emotion of adolescence, not the pleasure of enjoying music.

i have a lot of friends like this and we've been having the "i don't know why i don't like new stuff anymore" discussion for like 15 years. somehow i have managed to care about music while they haven't, but i am also not very attached to my teenage years and they sort of are.

Hey underrated aerosmith, that is ok. If you don't remember I will employ the aid of a reference librarian, the ppl that get paid to find obscure stuff.

so much of music marketing is about niche demographics, and everyone knows kids have the most time/money to spend, so popular musical culture has increasingly revolved entirely around them

This is pretty true but lately I wonder if this might be starting to undo itself - feels like the crowds for the (Pitchfork)-hip buzz bands I've seen lately have had a lot more 30+ folks than I would've seen a decade ago - well, now I'm 30 too, so maybe I am just wrong about where the real buzz is, but I've been wondering if the cool youth subculture aspect of live music (though not recorded yet, but maybe that will follow) is starting to fade

I don't have kids yet, but cohabiting has pretty much got rid of all my music listening time and I feel pretty out of touch lately.

(I had a bunch more thoughts on this when I started typing but they all pointed in different directions and it is well past my bedtime so I hope this conversation is still going in the morning, Britisher time)

I will try to locate the key study, it sort of confirmed something everybody kind of already knows intuitively i.e. the music you loved most from 16-22 will always seem like the best music to you.

y'know this is something my dad always used to say. The problem is, when I think about it applying to me, it isn't remotely true. So much stuff I LOVED from that period I don't listen to anymore and really have no desire to listen to (the Replacements, the Pogues, Nirvana, Mudhoney, Fugazi, etc.) It's not that I think this music is bad now or anything, I'm just done with it. I dunno why this is.

part of it is probably that I was a very unhappy guy from 16-22, so it's not like I wanna relive that era a lot or anything. lots of bad memories/associations.

Like I said on the other extant thread:

The only one of my tastes that genuinely induces raised eyebrows -- even among some critic buddies! -- is my love for pop. The subtext seems to be, "You're too old to listen to this" or "You can't possibly mean" that I listen to Miley Cyrus with genuine interest (they think I'm winking or something).

yeah of course music doesn't suck, these people are never right. music just gets better and better all the time.

When I was 15 I listened to grunge and jungle and thought my parents didn't like it because it was too fast and loud and too FUTURE for them to comprehend. It is bittersweet to get older and hear the radio and think "man this stuff is just lazy soulless copies of the music of my youth" and then realise that that is how your folks felt about your music: not a blast of impenetrable alien genius that would have required a fundamental rewiring of their minds, just tired and derivative

xpost

true, it only took us 300 years to get from bach to drake, imagine how awesome shit will be in another 300!

I'm doomed to love slipknot forever

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.

This rings true for me as well - I still love "adolescent" things like comic books - and I'm a fairly curious fellow. While it's true that nothing hits me the way post-punk did when I was 17, it's also true that I've expanded my tastes significantly since then. *shrug*

What if you generally ignore new music but seek out mainly "new old" music? Like the really obscure shit that gets re-released on Soul Jazz or gets championed by Mutant Sounds?

(Not a parent but this topic is pretty dear to me (and pretty much the only topic I can still post to ILM about) - I went from someone who downloaded/bought about 5 new songs per day* to someone who essentially wasn't that into music over the course of 12 months which maybe not co-incidentally were my first 12 months of Real Job and Real Partner? It was totally weird and noticable and unpleasant at the time)

*: I get that this is not much to some folks here! It was more than most people I knew though?

there's still time to come back from something like that ^^

...the notion that there's something "wrong" with this is a comical muso reactionary reflex imo; it feels to me like, among fellow music geeks, there's this idea that anything less than permanent ongoing engagement is some kind of personal failing.

I don't know I'd call it "reactionary." I guess at a certain age some people feel like they don't need to travel and explore the world, learn other cultures and languages, and try new foods. They might also accept erectile dysfunction as just another phase of their lives. To each their own, I guess.

I guess one reason it makes sense to talk about parent here is the Ewing-y point about the use of music - like, what more than anything changed that year was that I had no real functional need for it anymore - I didn't need it to court, I didn't need it to socialize, I no longer really needed to position myself in some grand sweep of popular culture (I needed to position myself vis-a-vis the other teachers and the other 51 residents of the village the school was in but I could do that by, like, not shaving?) - it is kind of painful to realise how much of what was 100% the central passion of my youth was so, y'know, functional?

xp :)

can't say what's gonna happen, not a parent just yet but if watching my lil' girl walk for the first time isn't more excited than MIA sample Suicide i'm gonna be a little disappointed

What if you generally ignore new music but seek out mainly "new old" music? Like the really obscure shit that gets re-released on Soul Jazz or gets championed by Mutant Sounds?

I still listen to a ton of music but yeah for me the split is like 75% old stuff that is new to me (via reissues or downloads or just diggin it to stuff I've never explored before) and maybe 25% is new music being made now. This has been the pattern with me for quite some time though, even as a teenager I was disproportionately drawn to stuff from the 60s and 70s

if watching my lil' girl walk for the first time isn't more excited than MIA sample Suicide i'm gonna be a little disappointed

^^^this

if you don't think yr kids are more important than music, you shouldn't be having kids imho

Well, true, but lots of novelists and musicians who were awful people, sadly, needed a marriage and children to exploit for their best work. Not a position I endorse.

I don't know I'd call it "reactionary." I guess at a certain age some people feel like they don't need to travel and explore the world, learn other cultures and languages, and try new foods. They might also accept erectile dysfunction as just another phase of their lives. To each their own, I guess.

there's a case to be made for all of these - to argue that the asked-and-answered question is "one must always be seeking new experiences" is, yes, a reactionary position imo

like, the person whose position is "rather than know all there is to know about one area, I must keep learning about many others" is properly called a dilettante, and few would consider that a flattering term

this happened to me after a couple years of doing weekly college radio shows, where I encountered new music faster than I could process and form opinions about it; playing whichever track from this random new sublime frequencies release had the coolest-sounding title got old after a while and so I pretty much stopped seeking out new stuff. but I'm always happy to listen to anything that crosses my path.

lol is dilettanteism (musical or otherwise) still considered a "bad" thing?

Shakey - my split is roughly the same as I seem to dig up post-punk nuggets and obscuro Aussie garage-punk bands annually but my ability to LOVE new music has diminished (but not extinguished). Part of it I attribute to simply having been exposed to that much more music by age 40 than age 20. Something that might've sounded fresh 20 years ago makes me think "that's a female-fronted Buzzcocks", which isn't bad just not something I'm going to fall in love with.

I'd rather be a dilettante than a reactionary, honestly.

Word.

btw if people because of how they're wired or whatever are going to tell me how much new music sucks, i don't really have a problem taking a "reactionary" position in return.

lol is dilettanteism (musical or otherwise) still considered a "bad" thing?

valid question! to me - actually, yeah, I gotta be honest - somebody who can't speak with authority about anything but can weigh in with a sort of enough-to-pass opinion isn't really somebody in whose opinion I'm interested; I would rather hear from people who've gone to the trouble to know what they're talking about. but I think we kinda live in a dilettante world, Google/Wikipedia rather settles the question, anybody who wants to know enough about anything to argue about it can copy & paste to their heart's content

but to my mind yeah a dilettante is a person who's not seriously engaged with anything = a dull person

btw if people because of how they're wired or whatever are going to tell me how much new music sucks, i don't really have a problem taking a "reactionary" position in return.

not clear as to why one needs any kind of reciprocal position tho

because one is having the discussion, i guess.

re: first point i would rather hear from people that know what they're talking about too! but i have minimal interest in projecting my opinion about many topics onto others--i'd only say i "speak with authority" on 2 or 3 topics and music isn't one--i love it, am constantly seeking out more, but would rather listen to the best afrofunk record than 10 3rd tier death metal records or whatever comparison you like. so i have no ish with dilettanteism being applied to me in some fields.

(btw yes i do have a rarely-used music tumblr and it is essentially written for my friends for whom the title of this thread is extremely applicable)

I don't mind "dilettantism" if it's part of a fox vs hedgehog continuum.

Maybe it takes being older to realize you can have new experiences with what you have. Otherwise, maybe people of a certain age, kids-having or not, are too busy traveling, eating new foods, learning other languages, having sex, etc., to worry about new music?

Either way, I have glimpsed the value of patience--you'll get into stuff when you get into it.

I have glimpsed the value of patience--you'll get into stuff when you get into it.

Preach on! Music will be there, waiting for you, when you're ready...

It's almost worth a separate thread: does bachelorhood affect consumption?

Certainly doesn't hurt.

Partly true – I can't enjoy the experience because I'm nervous watching them, and if they're interested in music their comments matter.

TS: subjecting significant other to unloved music via speakers vs. neglecting/ignoring significant other while wearing headphones

It's almost worth a separate thread: does bachelorhood affect consumption?

In my case, most definitely. Before I started dating my girlfriend, I would stay up until ungodly hours downloading stuff and drunkenly posting on ILM. I also used to go to sleep listening to music, and I teased my girlfriend, several months into our relationship, that I wasn't getting into as many ambient/electronic albums anymore because my ideal venue for listening to them was in bed. Of course, I still play music around the house a lot, and there are bands that we both like and listen to together, but she's by no means as much of a music-nerd as I am, so we end up also devoting time to things like cooking or watching TV (both of which I rarely engaged in when I was single).

Partly true – I can't enjoy the experience because I'm nervous watching them, and if they're interested in music their comments matter.

Tom Ewing's most recent Pitchfork column:

There's a kind of experience I think every music fan has had. I call it the "bad ears": It's a kind of one-on-one Wyatting, and it's what happens when the assumptions you make flip over and leave you the one vulnerable. It's when you're with a friend, and you play them some music you like and you want them to like too. They don't say anything. And suddenly you're hearing it with the bad ears: Every pretension, every flaw in the music becomes utterly obvious to you. The lines you thought were terrific are revealed as facile. The lines you thought were lovably dumb are chasms of embarrassment. The song ends. You want to vanish. And your friend smiles and says "Yeah, that was good," and then it's their turn.

you're less likely to put on music that the other person doesn't like while doing the dishes

^^^ or reading, or playing with the baby, or anything really. I have a night or two a month where after the family is asleep I have a couple beers, put on the headphones and either listen to old LPs/CDs, or (rarer) some new music I've acquired.

The rest of the time I probably have the Nat King Cole Trio on.

It's almost worth a separate thread: does bachelorhood affect consumption?

Totally. One hundred percent.

Not necessarily the AMOUNT of consumption, but the TYPE, for sure. When you are in a relationship with another person, and especially when you share living space with them, you cannot help but have your consumption patterns/amounts affected by that sharing.

I play a lot less video games than I used to. I also go to a lot less live shows than I used to. This begins to change tonight. TONIGHT, I SAY! well, at least with regards to music. Its going to be on all the time, from now on. Period.

Foot. Put. DOWN.

It's when you're with a friend, and you play them some music you like and you want them to like too. They don't say anything. And suddenly you're hearing it with the bad ears: Every pretension, every flaw in the music becomes utterly obvious to you. The lines you thought were terrific are revealed as facile. The lines you thought were lovably dumb are chasms of embarrassment.

Yes, this. And that in turn makes me think that ALL musical experience requires that you 'buy in' to a certain extent, like you have to allow yourself to get into a certain trance and the wrong influence breaks the trance.

Really? Is this a gender thing? If I'm doing the dishes, I'm gonna listen to whatever the fuck I want.

oh there's definitely things my wife will complain about having to listen to. Steely Dan, for example.

(otoh I complain whenever she makes me listen to AC/DC so it's all good)

a kid in the equation alters things even further - loads of hip hop is basically totally inappropriate for anyone under the age of like 14 or 15

xxpost

Heh, my wife too. She told me to save the Dan for Jack and Larry's wild night out at the Regal Beagle.

lololol

There's a kind of experience I think every music fan has had. I call it the "bad ears":

multiply x10 when it's your own music

I don't know if it's a "trance" so much that after the initial period of evaluation I get ever so slightly complacent, which is when a fresh pair of ears helps.

xxpost

multiply x10 when it's your own music

Part of why I love the new C4n4st4 album is that I get the simple pleasure of hearing something I wrote without the self-conscious anxiety of hearing something I played/recorded.

TS: subjecting significant other to unloved music via speakers vs. neglecting/ignoring significant other while wearing headphones

Why take sides? Do both!

Ok, well I do the latter when the Mrs is watching Oprah, and it's cool. When we're in a shared space with music playing I make sure it's something that she likes or at least is spouse-appropriate, i.e. The Fall is right out.

I count myself lucky that the wife digs the Fall, Beefheart, metal of all sorts (altho particularly Sabbath, 80s stuff, and drone metal), the Bee Gees, Kool Keith, etc. the list of stuff she hates to listen to is pretty short actually

re. bachelorhood/consumption of music: no significant change for me. Neither with fatherhood. My consumption of tv & film has been basically zero since what would become my marriage began, though, so I guess that's the tradeoff I made (and ffs that's not the usual "I don't own a tv" brag, I think).

xp haha the only album my wife has ever told me to turn off was Trout Mask Replica.

my wife won't stand for much twee indie shit - Belle & Sebastian elicits howls of derision

We do better if metal and jazz (aka "doobie doobie music") stay on the headphones.

xpost -- You should heed your wife's wisdom.

yeah my wife has very low jazz tolerance too, with a couple exceptions (Miles, some Sun Ra stuff, Alice Coltrane)

sorry to turn this thread into "things my wife likes" carry on

Anything overly guitar-wanky / prog, bar Hendrix, gets snorted at, and probably rightly so, by my wife. No Zep, no Floyd, definitely no Steely Dan.

I've read this thread with great interest and, unsurprisingly, with an awful lot of identification, especially with jaymc's posts.

Ooh, David Villa.

We bought a house and moved in together nearly three years ago, at exactly the same time as Stylus ceased publication, near enough. This was then followed by about 18 months of career he'll for me, which I only emerged from about 4 months ago properly. I now have a "serious" job that requires me to not piss about on the Internet all day or sit in a giant library basement in my own listening to whateverthefuck I want during the day. For about a year after house/Stylus I gave up on new music and was very down about that; now I've reached a kind of equilibrium, which I'm very, very happy with. I don't listen to as much music as I did five years ago, but I watch more films, more TV, I cook, I go on more bike rides, I did a charity run the other week - all stuff that, while I was being a music monster, i couldn't and wouldn't have ever done. And, bar a couple of small things, I'm the happiest I've probably ever been. Between us my wife and I have bought 20+ albums released this year. I think that's a good amount. Even when I was monstering my most, end of 2004" I was always concerned about getting value out of music, listening to it enough to not feel that it was... trivialized.

I remember a few years ago being really upset and disillusioned when Freaky Trigger started the parallel food and travel and art and sport blogs, as if Tom et al had somehow betrayed music... Or not music so much as... The purity of being a music fan. But, as has been mentioned, a lot of music fandom is about identity and my identity then was as a music journalist, pretty much. My day job was untaxing and low paid and I defined my achievements by what we were doing at Stylus, I guess. These days, well, I just gave up writing about music after Stylus, for various reasons.

One of them being that, right now, I'm watching the football with the sound down and listening to the Owen Pallett album and posting to ILM via an iPad on my lap. I haven't got the time now that I used to. I don't know how. My job still starts at 9 and finishes just after 5. I guess I make twompeople sandwiches each day, and cook dinner each day, and feed cats, and water tomato plants, and cycle to Sainsburys for breakfast cereal (with headphones on) (on the cycle path at least, not on the road!). I like to talk to my wife. I pretty much watched no television from 1998 when I went to university until 2007. Now i watch... Not a lot, but a lot more than none.

I don't feel any pressure to keep up anymore, but there is still a desire there. I've never been quite the voracious seeker of new sounds that other compatriots were - for me writing about music was always more about fathoming my own existing tastes or enthusing things than about discovery - and i guess that's an influence.

My new boss is an ex music writer too. We have very similar taste, and occasionally geek out about Four Tet or Can or whatever after meetings. We did a music quiz together the other week and took it super seriously (and won by some distance, thankfully!). We vaguely talked about getting a show together on the very local community radio station. I'd never have considered doing anything quite so fun when I was still a monster. I wonder why.

My ex complained that my music was all "boppy". My wife complains about "whiny guitars". (she's probably very much in line with a certain strain of ILM thought on that one).

xpost -- Hahah I like your random World Cup interruption there.

Em's got money on Villa being top scorer, on my advice. I'm invested here!

Another batchelor here. The hours I am able to indulge in listening to music are probably incredible to most people in a relationship - basically music is playing any moment I am awake and not at work.

Might be related to this: one of the best sensations I know is when you're just getting to know your next favourite new album, you can't quite consciously remember the songs yet but you wake up in the morning with snatches of them running through your mind.

Also I love to burn out a new favourite album, completely overplay it - because I know another one will be along soon. There's no shortage of music to fall in love with.

xxpost my wife and I have the same taste but she can't stand the Dan either. i think its a gal thang

oh there's definitely things my wife will complain about having to listen to. Steely Dan, for example.

― insert your favorite discriminatory practice here (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, June 29, 2010 1:24 PM

Aren't you the guy who said his wife tended to listen to her box set of The Police only when he wasn't around, or was that someone else?

How music has changed since I am in a long-term relationship: I still listen to it, seek out new stuff, with a proportionate amount of passion & energy. I just don't do as many obsessive things surrounding that hobby. So I used to make a mix CD every month of every song I liked from that month (it seemed nice to have some empirical token of I'm Really Listening), and whenever I had a spare moment I'd sit around writing lists in a notebook of songs I liked, or songs of X kind of theme, etc. Lists. Or I'd draw charts or graphs about songs. I realized the other day that I haven't done any of that stuff in a couple years. I don't think that makes me less into music, though.

Aren't you the guy who said his wife tended to listen to her box set of The Police only when he wasn't around, or was that someone else?

oh yeah AC/DC and the Police are perennial bones of contention between us tis true

I've been following this thread and meaning to post since yesterday...all the comments about relationships and musical first loves and only having so much time for everything also speak to my situation.

At the moment I'm not really seeking out any new music, but at the beginning of the year I went through a voracious phase of loading 20 albums at a time on Spotify and making financially irresponsible batch album purchases. I'm sure the desire will drift back but right now my spare thoughts are focused on planning my next camping trip or working out a better way of stopping the earwigs from eating my bean plants rather than hearing every album on Olde English Spelling Bee. I've been passionate about music for about 15 years now, it seems strange to think that there's a virtue in never shifting my focus to things I know less about. I have accumulated more musical knowledge over the years than is socially acceptable, but pretty much everyone on my street knows more about gardening than I do - suggesting I should put more energy into the latter than the former.

Another reason people tend to get less interested in new music---when you start discovering all these bands, everybody in them is much older and presumably much cooler than you are. Some of them are from another generation entirely like John Lennon/Bob Dylan.

But then as you get older, the bands become closer to your age. Then younger. It gets really depressing when the bands that are considered "old" are all made up of people fucking ten years younger than you are.

Ten years? Try twenty...or more.

i was pleasantly surprised to note that the bands who made my three favourite records of last year are all older than me (and i'm no spring chicken). i'm pretty sure that's coincidental..

Paul Weller is older than me, so everything's ok in 2010...