Meet the new boss, David Lowery tackles the internet and the past while Ted Lucas gets past around

if they don't pay for music we'll make em pay for ringtones

i mean i have witnessed a decade of ilx skweeeeeeeeeeesoulseekoinkinvitespotifylastfm etc etc etc decadence. and you will all pay in the afterlife.

and before anyone gets on my case I'm speaking from anecdotal experience of course - kids don't go into a store and see things laid out in chronological order by artist, or hear about things from music "authorities" (be they Xgau or Bangs or the snobby indie guy behind the counter). The internet disperses content such that everything is available all the time, but it's largely context-free. They discover and absorb small pieces of the musical landscape but have no idea about the larger map - which is how I wind up with younger colleagues who for some reason know a bunch of old Carter Family songs but have never heard the White Album.

This is way different (not saying worse or better) from when I was younger and was accutely aware of the history of music - either from magazines, or record store clerks, or older relatives - but had limited access.

xp

and if they don't pay for ringtones we'll make em pay for zwinkies

I seriously have too many zwinkies I just need to get rid of them

if i were 14 or 15 now i would have 400 million albums on my computer. i stole everything that wasn't nailed down when i was that age. i didn't give a shit.

so you guys didn't have bmg and columbia house?

of course if i were 14 or 15 now i would never make it to 16 what with all the free porn out there on the web. i would have a serious coronary episode. jesus i was like a monkey back then i shudder to think...

it was pretty funny talking to my pre-teen cousins (who all have computers, ipads, etc.) about music a couple weeks ago. i learned that:

1. they know some michael jackson songs, but think he's "ok"
2. "rappers are really in right now", like nicki minaj, flo rida, and lmfao (?)
3. not so into adele, because too many of her songs are boring and slow

they weren't steeped in too many (any) historical narratives about pop music. one had a change jar that she had to put money in every time she bought a song off iTunes using her mom's account.

xp

between the bath salts and the meth and the porn and the corn syrup man oh man i was really lucky to be born when i was.

the one narrative I hear from kids is that all the best music was made a long time ago. exactly when and where and by who tends to vary.

dadstep

like hearing one of my college-age cousin complain about how all modern music sucks and all his peers want to listen to is the Dave Matthews Band (still!) was sort of depressing. He wanted to copy all my 70s soul MP3s.

kids don't go into a store and see things laid out in chronological order by artist

Does this mean that the record stores you went into had things laid out in chronological order by artist?

Also, what do arguing pants look like?

"Does this mean that the record stores you went into had things laid out in chronological order by artist?"

No it means that kids these days organize things really anally on their harddrives.

believe it or not, records/tapes/CDs used to contain information about when they were released! kids downloading shit don't necessarily get any of that.

Then how can they organize things really anally on their harddrives?

the information on my BMG order form told me stone temple pilots was in a genre known as "grindcore"...

personally I don't know any kids with hard drives of music. it's all on their ipods or phones or streamed from services and it isn't organized at all.

xp

but that's just my world of young people

and before anyone gets on my case I'm speaking from anecdotal experience of course - kids don't go into a store and see things laid out in chronological order by artist, or hear about things from music "authorities" (be they Xgau or Bangs or the snobby indie guy behind the counter). The internet disperses content such that everything is available all the time, but it's largely context-free. They discover and absorb small pieces of the musical landscape but have no idea about the larger map - which is how I wind up with younger colleagues who for some reason know a bunch of old Carter Family songs but have never heard the White Album.

This is way different (not saying worse or better) from when I was younger and was accutely aware of the history of music - either from magazines, or record store clerks, or older relatives - but had limited access.

xp

― a dense custard of infinity (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, June 21, 2012 5:06 PM (58 minutes ago) Bookmark

ehhhh i was only a big music consumer for maybe 5 years before getting on the internet and 10 years before it was really easy to google almost anything you wanted to know about any record/musician -- by comparison the '90s felt like a lot of groping around in the dark for info, patching together discographies bit by bit and then realizing that there was a whole album before that that i didn't know existed, etc. and that was cool, i enjoyed the hell out of it, but i think you're romanticizing the time when people had to work a little harder for information into some absurd scenario where they actually absorbed more info than they do now.

but that's just my world of young people

"The Sandusky defense rests."

n/a and some dude otm. Nothing more depressing than standing in a Sam Goody store in the nineties with only $20 to spend and the Suede album is $18.99.

how about when you heard that suede album

i remember buying my first 7 cds and it costing me close to $140 w/tax. saved up my money for weeks!

how about when you heard that suede album

it took me o-vah

I'm not trying to romanticize anything, it's just different now

it was super-annoying to not be able to afford/find stuff! I hated having to save up money and then drive an hour to find a fucking Velvet Underground CD

even so:

some absurd scenario where they actually absorbed more info than they do now

people remember things that require effort! in lots of ways, something that doesn't require effort has no value.

It's better now! I don't know how I survived the eighties and nineties without Wikipedia.

LIFE IS PAIN

like, why learn anything about music? it's all out there for free and you can look up whatever you want whenever you're bored and then forget about it as soon as oh hey look what's that over there

xp

Look, I agree that not being able to find an Essential Logic album in the nineties helped it accrue totemic value but I'll gladly sacrifice totemic value to (a) downloading it free in seconds (b) finding it used for a couple bucks on Amazon

Remember me? I had a book report due in science...
http://img122.echo.cx/img122/6549/britannica8wh.jpg

like, why learn anything about music? it's all out there for free and you can look up whatever you want whenever you're bored and then forget about it as soon as oh hey look what's that over there

On the contrary, nothing's changed: kids who are music geeks have MORE resources available to them. Casual music fans -- those who like you say show no interest in history -- have more options too. My sis, who's no critic, amassed several hundred cassingles through the nineties, a collection of bewildering range. It's really no different than some kid's iPod.

maybe I'm just disappointed none of my world of young people are music geeks. altho even my ostensible music geek coworkers have mystified me on occasion

i don't know any young music geeks irl, but tbh i don't know that many old music geeks!

college radio stations still employ young music geeks. Older ones too.

Emily White seems to care a bit about music, just saying.

letting the kids bring their laptops and rip music was kind of a "look the other way" way of saying thank you if you were volunteering at the college stations, isn't it? though some kids would actually steal physical records.

I would rather meet a young person who knows a bunch of random Carter Family songs than one who's heard the White Album.

I know a young person who has illegally downloaded hard drives upon hard drives of music. He also spends more money on new music than anyone else I know irl.

I would rather meet a young person who knows a bunch of random Carter Family songs than one who's heard the White Album

no, she was cool! full disclosure - I convinced her to come with me and some friends to a performance of Stockhausen's "Hymnen", whom she was unfamiliar with (okay no big deal there), and when she asked me what to expect the closest point of reference I could think of that she might be familiar with was "Revolution No. 9"... which she had never listened to.

which ironically is the only beatles song sarahel hears at bars constantly

lol

in terms of history, context and chronology isn't learning about the Carter Family before The Beatles actually the correct path?

http://gordonwithers.com/post/25597091567/reflections-on-white-lowery-and-a-way-forward

musician wants you to buy first from the artist's website and/or a local independent store

10 years before it was really easy to google almost anything you wanted to know about any record/musician

we had google back then but it was called trouser press

yeah i mean i devoured music mags and books back then, but you still kinda took whatever info you could find, instead of searching for exactly what you were curious about

when i was a kid, i didn't even know what to be curious about -- no one i knew personally enough to talk to had ever heard of more music than i had. no older brothers to talk to until high school. the library was really important.

During my lunch hours and esp for a couple hours after school each day, I would search obsessively for Sonic Youth and Pixies articles on my high school library's electronic magazine database.