How have your tastes changed in 2000?

This year I listened almost exclusively to R&B, hip hop, dance music and pop, after about three years of generally listening to guitar-based rock. '99 was also a big dance music year for me, but not nearly as much as this year has been. The number of rock groups I've discovered this year is pitiful really.

The dance music (and hip hop/R&B I guess) concentration has probably been the result of FT/Skykicking, in that I actually find it easier to write about than rock music, and also because I've been going to heaps of clubs but very few concerts (an economic concern, really).

Meanwhile at the same time I've been drifting towards the poppy end of things in everything, and this isn't just limited to pop music. So while my previous tastes in hip hop were pro Public Enemy and A Tribe Called Quest and anti Puff Daddy, now I'm pro Jay-Z, DMX, Juvenile, Missy Elliot and Lil' Kim and anti indie hip hop. I will dub this the NYLPM effect.

No, I still hate a lot of music!

This year I have discovered:

The Magnetic Fields & associated, the BBC Radiophonic Workshop (of course I heard their stuff before but *really* appreciated them this year), XTC (ditto), The Auteurs (ditto, again), Jay-Z and DMX (who I had dismissed before), Outkast, Max Tundra, The Coup, Piano Magic, Kelis, Spacemen 3, Jessica Simpson, Nick Drake, Ultramagnetic MCs / Kool Keith, Goldfrapp, much early hardcore ...

I should think that's more than enough :).

Free jazz. I'd been meaning to, and somehow just finally took the leap, via Matthew Shipp, then his collaborators. Also via Nels Cline, who I discovered via Scarnella (and you must discover Scarnella), and then who I investigated more of.

Electronic makes sense to me. Via Skykicking to UK Garage (with Napster mediating) and then to an appreciation for, tho not active pursuit of, Jungle and other genres. NYLPM effect hit me too -- mainly to an appreciation of Timbaland and Destiny's Child.

While my alt-country leanings were on the backburner this year, they've been rekindled by my recent purchase of Hannah Marcus, which I plan to explain at some point. Classic Pop also figures big, especially Tommy James and the Shondells. Blues -- I knew the real early stuff (Robert Johnson, Blind Lemon, et cet.), but the 50s Chicago stuff just entered my radar screen. Non-pop amerindie seems utterly dull these days, and I haven't heard a good new post-rock album since the last Tortoise (The Tara Jane O'Neil solo album is good, but hardly post-rock).

Two artists I bought one album of, then picked up a substantial catalog of -- Mekons (whose Journey To The End Of The Night album is so very good, along with their mid-80s country phase. Fear and Whiskey) and The Fall (via some live mid-80s album, then I picked up the whole Brix period). Both artists who I feel I should have become familiar with long before, like some critical obligation hangs over them or something.

On the hip-hop front, I'm still not collecting, but I discovered that all the hooks from hip-hop songs which stuck in my head had been Outkast singles, which inspired me to buy Aquemini and then Stankonia.

And then there's the Melanie C. album, which I'm still strangely enjoying very much.

The turning point for me this year was getting into Belle and Sebastian. Basically I think that various personal crises at the start of the year had led me to a point where I had no option but to start listening to that kind of stuff, or at least was open to doing so. Sad but true. So my direction this year has been retrograde - sensitive boy pop, angsty boy pop, that kind of stuff. As is obvious from the tone of this post I feel a bit guilty about it.

Three things that revolutionized my 2000:

1. Leaving college radio, so I no longer had good access to the stirrings of the rock underground like I used to. 2. Radio Disney 3. Napster

All of which combined lead me to now even listen to rock as a singles genre, and my mental rock history has shifted from (using easy examples) Funhouse - Paranoid - Never Mind the Bollocks - Metal Box - Appetite for Destruction - Nevermind - The Donnas to "Train Kept A Rollin'" - "Strychnine" - "Masculine Intuition" - "School's Out" - "Paranoid" (ha) - "Don't Fear the Reaper" - "Crazy On You" - "More than a Feeling" - "Ace of Spades" - "At Home He's A Tourist" - "Sweet Child O Mine" - "Smells Like Teen Spirit" - "Baby, One More Time". The second history is probably more valid than the first, and fits on one side of a 90 minute tape. I've also been listening to a lot more scandinavian rock, commercial rap, bubblegum, tin-pan-alley pop, french chansonniers, glam, R&B, booty bass, indie pop, and radio pop than I used to, and far less hip-hop, hardcore, funk, and psychedelia than before. Almost all my non-radio listening is done via mixtape these days, and the latter genres just don't seem to fit much with anything else is an easy explanation, but there's probably a deeper one.

I soured on lots of stuff, like all current indie and lots of free-jazz & avant-garde, the latter two mostly due to a burgeoning collection demanding increased standards. David S. Ware's new album blew me away by how straight everybody (Ware, Shipp, Parker) played on it, a real shift in direction for them, which got me to give some more listens to both Shipp's back catalogue (which in turn caused Cecil Taylor to make a lot more sense) and all the straight jazz I had lying around (straight by my standards then being Sun Ra, Roland Kirk, Dolphy, Ornette, but lately I've also been digging on classic Coltrane, Yusef Lateef, Sonny Clark). I was astonished to find out I liked lots of hippie shit I'd never previously considered listening to (the Grateful Dead's Americana period, two whole Beatles songs, "Sweet Home Alabama", Creedence, the Band).

Lots of American music from the first half of the century caught my fancy (Anthology of American Folk Music, Hank Williams, Bill Monroe, Blind Willie Johnson, the American Primitive album on Revenant) as well as newer icons like Mike Cooper, Fahey, Fahey, and more Fahey, who seem more and more relevant, what with the emerging backwoods psych scene (Six Organs of Admittance, etc).

I realized AMM are the greatest band (if you wanna call them that) in the world.

I listened to lots more pop than ever. What indie I did listen to was surprisingly non-confrontational pap (Mercury Rev, Teenage Fanclub, Go- Betweens) that, in many cases (such as Rev's), I'd previously ragged upon, or else classics I hadn't gotten around to (the Pixies, Dinosaur Jr, Green Day). Deserter's Songs is horrible, I still contend, but I like it and at least it's not as bad as their older stuff. One segment of the avant-garde which I still had time for was dense, heavy stuff (Borbetomagus, Bardo Pond, Skullflower, early Swans).

Two noticeable developments happening over the entire year were 1) I started listening to nothing but hip-hop during my commute to work (Goodie Mob and Outkast mostly, but also Wu-Tang Clan and mix CD-Rs of chart stuff) and 2) I fully embraced the Rock. Big Black, the Jesus Lizard, the Saints, the Birthday Party, Sabbath, Sleep, High Rise, the Hellacopters, Turbonegro, the Melvins, and the whole Nuggets box brought endless joy.

All in all, it was an astoundingly straight year for me, probably because I couldn't answer the question, where to go after Arthur Doyle and Ascension?

For me, the main change was that I completely stopped using indie- ness as a factor in determining what kind of music to like/listen to. Which means all the bad indie rock CDs I thought I liked (Dinosaur Jr., Sunny Day Real Estate, etc) have gathered dust on the shelf, Mos Def's album went from great to decent, and Jay-Z actually got some play on my car stereo. I still haven't bought any DMX or Cash Money albums, but I no longer automatically consider that trash and boring crap like Dilated Peoples gold. And I DID buy the D-Child album!

i made a peace with indie rock, discovering the dismemberment plan, shellac, and sleater-kinney, and (post-?)emo/hardcore, discovering camera obscura and black cat 13. i got _69 love songs_.

i got more into atonal and textural music.

i got more heavily into indian classical music.

i began to make forays into the realm of electronic popular musics -- experimental techno, hip-hop, and synthpop.

i started paying more attention to mainstream pop/rock music and taking it more seriously. i realized i'd always liked some critically maligned aor and hair metal. i think this was the combined effect of freaky trigger and chuck eddy. i generally warmed or re-warmed towards metal (pop for boys, if you will).

i realized i have little use for the rock canon and abandoned all efforts to know it. not too long afterward, i realized i like the beatles, dylan, and radiohead less than i thought i did.

First big change is that I like shiny stuff a lot more than I did 12 months ago. R'n'B in particular, but also some of the smoother garage and hip-hop stuff which I would have run screaming form a couple of years back. I reckon this is largely down to NYLPM, as is my increased appreciation of yer more mainstream pop in general.

In contrast to this trend, I've also got back into early nineties hardcore again after having forgotten about it for 5 years in favour of acid techno and its ill-assorted sibling genres.

As far as the guitar side of things is concerend, my tastes have remained fairly static. I still like the stuff I liked a year ago and dislike the stuff I disliked. YLT are still great and Baxendale still suck. The only real exceptions were the Magnetic Fields, who I'd never heard before and now love to bits, and Belle and Sebastian, who I've gone off in a major way. I would have counted myself as a bit of a fan at the beginning of the year but I'm fairly ambivalent about them now. Difficult to pinpoint why, but I suspect going to ATP and Scalarama may have had something to do with it.

Well, I found myself really just indulging more in my traditional artists (the ones with actual staying power and talent). I bought older albums because there hasn't been much music that's worth anything lately. Pink is probably the only artist who is more modern- esque. I dig her. I pre-ordered a Robyn album that will come out next year in America. But besides that, I can't really say anyone has tickled my fancy.

ok. after getting a big black album, shellac really doesn't seem as impressive anymore

I bet it still seems a lot more fucking listenable though.

eh. nothing too unlistenable about old-school hc with industrial beats and psychotic lyrics, especially considering what hardcore is up to these days. makes shellac seem like wankers. though i will give shellac credit for a certain level of emotional range.

Perhaps my most memorable discovery of the year was Napster itself. Up to now, I had resisted the urge, but for some reason I finally snapped and downloaded it. And I've made some great discoveries. I've found Tim Buckley's long-lost albums Starsailor and Blue Afternoon, as well as some interesting songs by Pram. I've also indulged my taste for cheese, seeking out guilty pleasures like Breathe and Bruce Hornsby. I guess the most telling detail about how I relate to music has changed is that, in deciding what to write here, I didn't turn to my CD collection, but my folder of mp3's. Here's hoping my hard drive doesn't crash anytime soon!