At what point should you just give up trying to keep up with what's hip and pop in current music, lean back in your rocking chair, and just listen to them ol' time jazz records?

http://cache.idolator.com/assets/resources/2006/12/velvets.jpg
Hey, I'm not a young man anymore

I listen to probably more than 95% 'old' music.
the contemporary music i listen to usually falls into the psych-folk, improv or blown-out garage punk ghettos

them ol' time jazz records

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I listen to the same records that you do, Pops

(That was supposed to be below [satchmo.jpg])

http://www.mainspringpress.com/Sleeves.JPG

merely returning to the familiar is a bad idea - novelty and refreshment are important - but the reason to seek the new is not to keep up with what's hip, but to seek what's good and may speak to the contemporary in a way the past did not, quite

http://www.selectadisc.co.uk/%5Cwrite%5CImage%5C268jlhook.jpg

I'm more interested in the way the past speaks to the contemporary, TBH.

http://media.npr.org/programs/morning/features/2004/sep/opening_lines/between.jpg

http://lauraquigley.com/uploads/flatmtgirls-2006a.jpg

That picture apparently taken just after Shel Silverstein rewrote lyrics of "Cover Of The Rolling Stone" for them.

How interesting it seems to go one way or another changes for me. As a teemager in the late 70s early 80s I found the past fascinating partly because I already had instant access the present, and that by definition made the past interesting, and partly because the culture was one of deletion - records literally went out of print - and that made me desire what I had already missed.

Post CD the past has been very much in the present. It’s easier to hear postcard Orange Juice singles now for example than it was in 1982. This had the effect of mainstreaming the past (Uncut, Word etc) and that along with getting older and therefore further from the daily presence of the present (discos, school friends etc) has made me desire the new more.

For years I have worked on a strict 50% new policy – and new must mean new bands, new composers and a reasonable percentage of complete risks (seeking out the unreviewed, here or elsewhere in the media). But I think ultimately it’s about strategies to keep things fresh. I operate very different rules for classical music, whilst in Art I have to force myself to go non-contemporary.

The medium now most like the way pop music was in the 70s is TV where most of us live in a permanent present (though the archive is waiting on a server somewhere to come back and bite us).

I'm 51, and although I listen to a lot of new music (one reason I lurk on this board is to get an idea of things I might like), I don't really try and "keep up." (Too much time and money, for one thing.) But I do find that listening to new things helps keep my enthusiasm alive. I hear old favorites in a fresh way.

I'm 45. Old, new, not yet released--if the music's good/interesting, I want to hear it. Call it omnidirectional omnivorousness.

New forum anyone? I Still Love Music, Honest?

I'll be 47 in April. Can the rest of you regulars reveal your ages also?

Three. (Seven.)

33 in 3 weeks

I'll be 50 this year, def. listen to more old than new, but my recent roadtrip soundtrack ranged from Ella Fitzgerald, Ruth Brown and Etta James to Three Mustaphas Three and Royksopp.

I'm currently over the half-way point to the age of 37. I'll listen to EVERYTHING at least once. There are too many determining factors deciding whether or not I will listen to a piece of music more than once to bore you all with them all here.

EVERYTHING = ANYTHING!

May i borrow that phraseology, inhibitionist?

I'm 42, 43 in May. Generally what I'm enjoying listening to at the moment (and for most of the last year) is music from the 1920's and 1930's

I didn't realise what a bunch of old farts we were!

http://www.carlosbela.com/aporias/wp-content/uploads/2007/02/raybarretto.jpg
EVERYTHING=EVERYTHING!

41. Still get mistaken for much younger.

http://www.jonolivermusic.com/images/album_covers/donny_hathaway_live.jpg
EVERYTHING=EVERYTHING!

Will somebody please enlighten me as to the identity of the [bluegrass-instrument-clutching] femmes pictured upthread?

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51CF4MSH6YL._SS500_.jpg

Did you mean this one?

(x-post)

Tried posting yesterday and it didn't show up, so apologies if this eventually shows up twice.

Closing in on 40, I still listen the same way and with the same ear towards new and old. Can never really tell what's going to be ephemeral and what's going to last. Inevitably I get rid of things I shouldn't have and have stacks of stuff I'll never listen to again. WIth plenty of stuff that was obviously going to last. But the "borderline" stuff can be frustrating (for space and time reasons). At least if something really sucks, you can cut your losses and move on, but when something seems to have potential...

But what HAS changed over the years is my ability to RETAIN the information. Movies and books have always challenged my crappy memory. (I'm not a pot-head, but my memory behaves as one.)I can watch a movie a year later and it's a new experience. But music was the one guaranteed memory since you're supposed to play it over and over. But while I can quote every guitar solo and stupid lyric from a song I don't even like from when I was 14, if I try doing the same with an album I listened to repeatedly last week, it barely registers. It's crazy.

Which is to say I have a better chronological knowledge of pop music for the years I didn't experience than the ones I've lived through.

Note to Douglas: Shocking Blue! Nice! "Long and Lonesome Road," "Out of Sight, Out of Mind" off the top of my head, but now I have to go back and dig them out.

Don't know if I'm a regular, but 47

35

I'm in no way a regular but I turned 27 yesterday and Smurfherder's post strikes a chord. I listen to more stuff than I ever have done before and as a result I have trouble retaining a lot of it. Increasingly I think "I'll give this album another go, I can't remember any of it from the song titles", yet on listening it's all very much familiar.

As for the old/new split, I usually end up buying around 40-50 new releases (albumwise) a year these days but that's only a fraction of my music purchasing. I've spent a lot of time in the past two or three years catching up with stuff from the late '90s/early '00s which passed me buy completely or which I dismissed at the time. That's one of the main reasons I think I'll always find something new, there are always bands to re-assess as your tastes change. Unless they stop changing, obvously...

Good thread this.

I didn't realise what a bunch of old farts we were!

Yeah, but it's comforting to know we're here in such numbers. Must nap. Sleepy now.

43. I find it interesting that you never get this age/pop crisis nonsense on metal threads. Which fits with the gigs I go to: as extreme as it gets, someone's brought the family.

I think maybe everyone under the age of 30 saw the word "jazz" in the subject and moved onto the next thread.

but only because it didn't say "douchebag"

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44

(god I can't believe I just typed that)

38, and this thread makes me feel young.

43. I find it interesting that you never get this age/pop crisis nonsense on metal threads.

You don't find too many under 25's at doom metal gigs for some reason. Strangely , the smaller the venue the older the audience tends to be I find.

I'm 23 and I listen almost exclusively to post-second world war, pre-mid 70s jazz at the moment.

xposts.

How is this thread not started by me?

-- Scik Mouthy

OTM

I actually started a thread not dissimilar to this one a couple of months or so ago, shortly after my girlfriend and I bought a house together - Tactics for choosing what to listen to

I'm listening to Autoditacker by Mouse On Mars right now. Earlier it was the last Les Savy Fav. Even though I know the MoM better and have had it longer, it almost seems newer to me. Not sure how.

I thought, post-Stylus, that I'd almost give up looking for new stuff, partly because of economics, but I haven't; I'm still buzzing about when new records are coming out, looking forward to Hercules, Elbow, Foals, Guillemots, The Do, other people I've not heard of yet. It's good.

Holding on to 49. I bought Shocking Blue's "Venus" single with my allowance money.

I'm 47. I listen to more music, old and new, than I did 20 or 30 years ago, mainly because it's easier to research and acquire.

If I haven't heard it, it's new to me whether it was made last week or 50 years ago.

OTM. We'll never be able to hear all the good stuff. This is the opposite of a problem.

Seriously, this thread is doing me good. These comments are OTM, BTW:

I think giving up is hard if part of your identity---that is, part of how you define yourself as a person, of how you define your aspirations---is finding new music. I think Carl Wilson's response to that Sasha Frere Jones piece in the New Yorker identified this component of identity with the liberal-arts-educated individual, who's been taught to value the finding of the obscure. That seems to get at something right, I think.

I don't have any advice for how to strip this out of your identity while remaining a devoted music fan, though. Lots of people I know have hit the stage where they give up on the new, and because seeking the new was such a big part of their identity as music fans, stop being music fans.

________________________________

I'm do try and keep up a little with current trends but really I have a more general addiction to novelty - a dissatisfaction with just enjoying what music I already have, and a compulsion to always be seeking out the new, even if it's just new to me. I don't mind if my "discoveries" are decades old. But sometimes it does almost feel too much like hard work - I would like to be more thankful for what I've got.

Sums up my feelings perfectly. Sometimes I feel less like a rock or pop or country or blues fan and more of a general obscurist. And while I love discovering new art -- especially new music -- I need to take more time to appreciate, and show more appreciation for, what I already have.

I'm 76 and ain't heard nowt new since USA Hardcore punk.

It's all on a loop and I'm afraid that the kids today seem to have no imagination.They certainly produce nothing new.

They don't even riot anymore