Have drugs ever had a significant impact on your listening habits?

Whoa man…sorry for the sophomoric sounding topic, but I do have a legitimate question hiding under here.

I used to be into mostly harder edged music, loud garage punk like the Oblivians, the Reatards, as well as thrash, Discharge, that type of thing.

Several years ago I started smoking pot heavily again for the first time since my teen years, and I frequently found myself playing jazz when doing so. At first it was just pleasant to my ear but I couldn’t have told you what made one recording good and another average, it just all kind of sounded like the same pleasant randomness. Eventually, however, the structure started to become clearer, and I started really hearing what was being played for what felt like the first time. From there, I started being able to discern between different styles of playing, players themselves, etc.

Flash forward several years and that harder music above feels like it belonged to a different lifetime of listening. Now I usually only want to hear improvised music of all kinds, both jazz and others, and structured music is often very hard to listen to because it feels so planned and simple (even when I’m stone cold sober).

Anyone had similar experiences with any drug? Maybe an album or genre that never clicked until you were under the influence?

So…yeah. Weed inadvertently changed my musical life without there ever being a plan for such a change to occur.

Weed, man.

some speak of an experience known only as the "420 unlock"

yes

rave music didn't really make sense to me until I went to a rave and took acid and ecstasy

this describes what pot has done to my listening habits too, it makes things more 'apparent' to me or like it brings out my imaginative capabilities. i used to love it for trying to appreciate challenging music of all kinds but weirdly, it's also made pop music with vocals and lyrics that i connect to more wonderful, etc. the other day my boyfriend played me a chopin etude while i was a little stoned and i completely lost my mind.

i look forward to stoned evening dog walks, that's when i rattle the doors on 420 unlocks

Yes weed enhances my listening experience a lot, I’m not like agitated or fidgety but I can enjoy myself and really get into the music.

I've come to accept recently that herb ratchets up my anxiety by about 400%, so I've had to cut it out. The only thing I miss about it are the insights it gave me while listening to music.

basically weed in college was an eye opener, i previously had listened to a lot of punk stuff, but radiohead amnesiac and MBV loveless really opened my ears to texture, atmosphere, production, all that heady stuff

but yes i had to quit because i believe the stuff induced an anxiety disorder within me

I’m not proud of it but I basically smoke all day everyday cuz I work from home and I just love weed.

420 makes me feel way more empathetic (especially edibles that are a touch too strong) which definitely can cause a lot of anxiety but also can do cool things when I'm listening to certain music. Listening to Raymond Scott's Manhattan Research was a real trip, hearing all these ads for companies that don't exist anymore & these electronic noises that were super state-of-the-art at one point but are now hopelessly obsolete. I close my eyes and feel like I'm in the 60s.

another really transportive album is Hosono House...well all Hosono is great while high but there's something with that album in particular, it's like you can see the exact room it was recorded in

I took MDMA one time at a dance party thing and was like "oh I get why people do this" but it didn't make me want to listen to rave/dance music on the reg.

Otherwise I've never taken anything and been like "damn Elton John fucking rules!"

After smoking weed for first time in high school I started to hear music as pure sound, and that was accentuated by getting into "rave music" around the same time. No lyrics, no traditional sound structure, just SOUND. Basically deconstructed my entire relationship with music. Eventually kinda built back up piece by piece my appreciation for traditional songs (and by extension, singers) and almost never listen to instrumental music now, but I still first am taken in by the sonics of music.

Otherwise I've never taken anything and been like "damn Elton John fucking rules!"

― chr1sb3singer, Wednesday, January 19, 2022 6:33 PM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

lol a stoned first listen to 'honky chauteau' gave me this opinion for real

Since I pretty much quit drinking, my alt-country/Americana consumption is near zero. It's so deeply entwined with being drunk and sad (not necessarily actively, but the mindset when I'm often drunk and sad), listening to Uncle Tupelo or Jason Isbell feels weird when I'm not.

Just has to be cold enough, for me

Weed definitely made me more likely to put on a record and just like lie down in my bed and sink into the music. I had similar experiences later in life just from the first handful of times I used audiophile headphones though, a sense of heightened, almost three-dimensional perception of the music that is so overwhelming that I didn't really want to and barely could do anything else.

love that feeling

Since I pretty much quit drinking, my alt-country/Americana consumption is near zero. It's so deeply entwined with being drunk and sad (not necessarily actively, but the mindset when I'm often drunk and sad), listening to Uncle Tupelo or Jason Isbell feels weird when I'm not.

― papal hotwife (milo z), Wednesday, January 19, 2022 1:49 PM (twenty-one minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Were you an American aquarium drinker?

Since I pretty much quit drinking, my alt-country/Americana consumption is near zero. It's so deeply entwined with being drunk and sad (not necessarily actively, but the mindset when I'm often drunk and sad), listening to Uncle Tupelo or Jason Isbell feels weird when I'm not.

Didn’t cover this in the OP but yes, I can wholeheartedly agree with this, and yes, I was an American Aquarium drinker.

I would say listening to music had a way bigger impact on my drug habits than the other way around.

One of my favorite bands growing up were kind of pot cheerleaders, and volumes written about the influence of drugs on the music of others. I likely never would have touched the stuff, if not for that.

No influence on my listening habits or preferences, if anything I was less inclined to listen to music high as I really did not need any external stimulation.

i preferred jazz, hiphop, krautrock, and new wave before i had my first experience with cannabis. after i heard stuff like blue train or seventeen seconds while having a stoned summer evening walk, i found i was able to reach that resonating "enthusiastic first listen" feeling much easier. and actual first listens were far more meaningful. even with records that i knew really well beforehand; in the right context while high, it was like i was now able to look at the same old picture from a different angle and notice many details that were unclear from my previous vantage point.

reminded of the mark burgess song "you opened my mind (then the acid kicked in)"

being on painkillers and listening to Meshuggah's Nothing the day it was fucking heaven. I really need to do that again sometime.

other than that, I mean weed has sometimes made me enjoy some albums slightly better, but usually being plastered to music enhances it more for me, mostly because I'm uninhibited and can physical move to it awkwardly and not care what people think.

*the day it was released

I share some of the above weed experiences, especially with jazz. I had enjoyed jazz plenty over the years and built up a little CD library of obvious classics. But one night I saw the Vandermark 5 when I was stoned and I got it. It was the first time I really understood the whole dynamic of improvising over changes. I was even keeping time. When the drums cut out at one point and there was a long horn solo, I realized I knew exactly when the band was going to kick back in, even though the solo was not in any meter.

So, yeah. Jazz really clicked for me in a lot of way after that. That's when I started being able to listen to even Ornette and Ayler and feel like I understood what was going on (at least to some degree). Not that the association of jazz and weed is exactly novel, obviously.

Also I remember listening to Kate Bush's "The 9th Wave" stoned in college and hearing all kinds of things in it I'd never noticed before.

To answer the OP: yes

I've come to accept recently that herb ratchets up my anxiety by about 400%, so I've had to cut it out. The only thing I miss about it are the insights it gave me while listening to music.

― peace, man, Wednesday, January 19, 2022 12:33 PM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

omit "recently" and this is me, too

Jazz really is the best music to listen to stoned. The only time I really miss weed is when I am listening to a jazz record and realizing how much 420 would enhance the experience

Weed definitely made me more likely to put on a record and just like lie down in my bed and sink into the music. I had similar experiences later in life just from the first handful of times I used audiophile headphones though, a sense of heightened, almost three-dimensional perception of the music that is so overwhelming that I didn't really want to and barely could do anything else.

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Wednesday, January 19, 2022 3:31 PM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

this. i'm barely ever at it but wish i could make this happen consistently. it's some kind of warped perception of time that happens? unless i just get super sleepy, which is more likely.

weed is for doing taxes and going to the supermarket

Yes, many times. Mostly weed, alcohol (particularly at live music events), acid only once and by complete accident.

Probably my two favorite concert experiences were my wife and I being super drunk at a Hold Steady show and the covered Lawyers, Guns and Money as an encore and a Wild Flag show where they covered Television's See No Evil as an encore. Both of these were in Portland prior to having a kid and feel like two lifetimes ago.

Weed was usually very positive though I remember listening to Fugazi's Repeater and just getting way into the sound and production of it all then feeling really guilty that Ian Mackaye would be disappointed in me for sitting around and smoking dope because I knew that I couldn't cope.

Jazz really is the best music to listen to stoned. The only time I really miss weed is when I am listening to a jazz record and realizing how much 420 would enhance the experience

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NO2wIu_c1U

The only time I really miss weed is when I am listening to a jazz record

Same. Or reggae. Or prog. W33d really makes all music sound better to me, even the garage punk noted above, but obviously the more sonic depth to the performance/recording the more perceptions there are to be experienced.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7k2JOFA6rIg

As with zacata, my listening has shifted from mostly harder edged music towards predominantly jazz, psych, dub etc. But no pot involved in the transition.

I never really appreciated "Music for Airports" until I listened to it stoned at 4:00 am.

this thread is not good for me.
makes me want to swap my love of red wine for weed.
that said, i have only ever had one weed-n-music experience.
and it was not that great ...
basically, reading festival 1990 - i was there to see tackhead as part of the sunday afternoon lineup.
just before they came on stage a friend of mine handed me a spliff maxed out with homegrown.
took a drag and then tried to walk nearer to the where the action was.
yeah.
to say i did not move from that spot and get into the tackhead excess would be an understatement.

I am probably more into audio equipment than the avg ilxor, but good weed is the best tweak available.

weed is for doing taxes and going to the supermarket

― Karl Malone,

underrated post

It's a good way to stay stocked up on pineapples, that's for sure.