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?

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

I don't feel guilty about not keeping up with the new stuff any more then I don't feel guilty for not knowing all the old stuff. I also know there's way more old stuff still unheard by me than there is new stuff coming out and I tend to find I like the old stuff as much or better then the new stuff. So it's all discovery and if it's good I'll hear it eventually.

I am trying to keep up, even with mainstream "kidpop", but not necessarily liking it.

Besides that, dan OTM

if it's good I'll hear it eventually.

I wouldn't be too sure about this...

But Miles was obsessive about keeping up with the new shit!

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

Double OTM!

I'm 28 now, I'll be 30 in a year and three months, so is there any point still trying to be cutting edge with my music taste?

Uggh. You're almost 30 and worried about this? I'm 40 as of last month. This thread makes me feel even worse.

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 still value finding of the obscure, but these days I seem to get more kicks from finding obscure, previously unknown to me old music, so I'm like, they were making stuff like this in 1982?! Or 1974?! I don't think trying to keep up with trends necessarily equates with wanting to find new, odd, and exciting music. At this point the history of recorded music is so wide, I could probably spend the rest of my life searching for exciting and obscure music even if I never bought a new record again.

It's not necessary to think of it as a once and for all decision. You can drop in and out. Of course, you may lose the thread of how things have evolved if you drop out for a while, but if that's not so important to you, why bother? I'm probably finding more newly released stuff now (not so much 2007, but over the last few years) than I was for much of the 90s. I'd be kidding myself if I thought I was keeping up with things as much as many or most of you are, but my own slapdash approach to watching out for current things that looks interesting has its own rewards.

You could make the same arguments for movies, books, painting/sculpture... hell you could even stop paying attention to the news and just read history books instead.

And that would be fine. (xpost)

Yeah, I guess that's true. A couple of years ago there was a period when I was only buying old jazz and soul records, now I'm at least checking out new releases every once in a while.

(x-post)

Uggh. You're almost 30 and worried about this? I'm 40 as of last month. This thread makes me feel even worse.

add me to daniels gang.

I'm closer to 50 than 40 and yeah; sometimes you keep up, sometimes there doesn't appear to be anything worth keeping up with

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.

42, here. What sonofstan says goes for me too.

40+ ILX'ORS UNITE! (After our afternoon naps).

I think one thing you learn as you get older is what channels of investigation might be rewarding to you, rather than defaulting to That Which Is New. I'm 38, and I'm listening to (and buying) as much new-to-me music as I ever have, but less of it than ever is actually newly released stuff. A lot of what I like most now is stuff I would've dismissed as kitsch 20 years ago. Whatever, 18-year-old Douglas; I'm just gonna be over here listening to my Shocking Blue records and having a good time.

[rcrumb.jpg]

said the Finnish don't dance
they just listen to jazz
and sit in their rocking chair
now lean back
lean back
lean back
lean back

I wouldn't be too sure about this...

Really, because I'm postive that I'll eventually hear everything I want to hear.

Seems to me like the virtues of "keeping up" are overstated anyway. As somebody who's reached the ripe old age of 42, if I try to think of a good "new" band, I might say TV on the Radio or Panic! at the Disco, even though somebody who "keeps up" might consider these two hopelessly 2006.

But the thing is, I've ALWAYS been that way. I think the only album I've ever bought on the day of its release was Warehouse: Songs and Stories, and let's just say that didn't work out too well. I figure and always have figured that if it's good they'll still be talking about it in a couple years. That I didn't hear Minor Threat until 1988 or The Fat of the Land until 2001 has not since impacted my enjoyment of that music in the slightest.

So maybe I'll get to Against Me! before 2010, but if not, no biggie.

Really, because I'm postive that I'll eventually hear everything I want to hear.
But how do you know you'll hear everything you want to hear if you haven't heard it yet?

I think the hip/fogey opposition in music is pretty much defunct. The glut of great CD reissues combined with the free music explosion have made keeping up with older music a more challenging and rewarding task than keeping up with what's new. And because musicians are exposed to the same glut, they're now more likely to be self-consciously derivative, and more likely to frame their newness in terms of clever recombination of past elements, which just begs the question, why not skip the middleman and go straight to the source?

I am required for careerist reasons to keep up with the latest releases in a few specific genres (metal and to a much lesser degree jazz). Beyond that, I could give a fuck. I flip on MTV and VH1 sometimes in the morning (the only time they seem to play videos) and am almost always bored and repelled by what I see/hear. I derive much greater pleasure from mun2, the bilingual Latin music channel. But I never listen to the radio. I've got far too many downloaded -and-never-heard-in-their-entirety albums in my iPod already to worry about knowing what this week's hot single is. Besides, who am I gonna impress with that knowledge? I work in an office full of jam-band fans and brutal death metal obsessives. I have literally no one to talk about dance or pop/contemporary R&B or new rock or mainstream country with. So fuck it all.

But how do you know you'll hear everything you want to hear if you haven't heard it yet?
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51SK5E504SL._SS130_.jpg

I'm with Dan: it seems like I still hear almost everything I was meant to hear. It just takes longer most of the time.

As a member of the 40+ club, I wish I'd had these revelations before my mid-30s. Sometimes it feels like music ruined my life.

I'm 28 too, and I also had a phase recently where I was worried that I was getting stuck in the past, listening to too much old stuff. I guess my balance is probably 5-10% new stuff to 90-95% old.

The thing is, with older stuff, time (and the internet hive mind) are on your side, so it's easier to be sure that what you're buying is gonna be worthwhile. There's thousands of old records and genres that I'll happily spend time exploring while I let the hype settle on all the new stuff. I'll get round to it eventually if its worthwhile.

I've got far too many downloaded -and-never-heard-in-their-entirety albums in my iPod already . . . . Besides, who am I gonna impress with that knowledge?

So true, except for the part I removed via ellipses. I still get a tremendous kick out of discovering something new and exciting in the arts: Music mostly, but also books and films and visual art. But for precisely the reasons that I put music first in that string-citation, I worry that music will be first art form to begin to seem too trivial, too much of someone-else's time, too "young" for me to care about what's new and innovative. But what can you do? Can't stop getting older.

But how do you know you'll hear everything you want to hear if you haven't heard it yet?

If I'm not aware it's there, then I won't miss it!

Also, I keep thinking I'm missing out on stuff thats gonne be radically *new* and *different*, especially the longer I go without paying attention. But then when I finally do get round to checking it out, I'm always totally disappointed at how un-new it sounds! (Dubstep, for example...)

I seem to look for "new" and "exciting" sounds more in old music, where listening to new music is more about feeling at least a bit up to date, knowing what's going on and so on.

But maybe it should be the other way around...?

(xpost) exactly - that Basshunter single? Sounds like it was made in 1992 - and so do a surprising amount of new singles.

if it's good I'll hear it eventually.

I wouldn't be too sure about this...

Dan Selzer's nose for the obscure is legendary in underground (not indie) America.

the cream continues to rise to the top, as long as you're looking in the right places...for the cream. but sometimes i wonder if i still like cream as much as i did. it depends what kind of cream really. they've put all this stuff in it and i swear it doesn't taste like it used to.

Cream isn't the only stuff that floats.

I am just giving a hard time. You'll get frustrated to death if you get too hung up on all the great stuff you'll never hear. When I can't keep up I just spend more time making sure I'm listening enough to the stuff I've already got!

In fact, there are infinite ways in which to hear music you've already listened to.

Well no, there isn't. I just made that up. Sounded cool, in a Zen sorta way.

It's kind of nice, though, isn't it? To be pushing middle age knowing that there are universes of music that you'd probably like but have yet to hear? Hearing Mutant Sounds-ish obscurities like Instant Music and Fall of Saigon just intensifies it for me. Keeps me digging.

said the Finnish don't dance
they just listen to jazz
and sit in their rocking chair
now lean back
lean back
lean back
lean back

-- Alex in Baltimore, Monday, March 3, 2008 11:24 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Link

loooooool

to be honest, i don't think i've ever felt compelled to "keep up" with what was "new" -- my tastes were never particularly mainstream but I wasn't cool enough to keep up with the indie-obscurantists. I was always just hungry, that same "new to me" instinct other people have described.

after a while, repeated listening and familiarity wears down the power of even the best stuff, so i was always looking for something else to keep myself on that music high. there have definitely been periods - and now is one of them - where little of the "new to me" stuff I hear is doing it for me, and then you get into a bit of a vicious circle: having been burned by something mediocre, you feel less compelled to test/look for something else. usually i spend these periods in comfortable old sweaters, like enjoying elvis costello's or nick lowe's voice whatever crap they happen to be singing at the moment.

the only thing that bothers me about not keeping up with new/current stuff is the fear that I will lose touch with the dominant idiom(s) and get into a position where I just don't "get" the majority of music. I already kind of feel that way about current rap/r'n'b, where I'm sure there's a lot about it that i don't appreciate just because my knowledge isn't deep or broad enough.

another member of the 40+ club here, I mostly keep up with new music because of my DJ gig at a college radio station. ILM helps, as does hanging out in record stores and on the internet. I still discover new stuff all the time. And old stuff. I heard that Jay Reatard album today, it was great!

I want a list of 40+ year old ILX'ors, so I don't feel so alone (this thread is beginning to make me feel better, seeing others in the club).

Re people over 40 on ILX:

Kogan is 54, Aimless is 53, Beth Parker is in her early 50s (I think?), m coleman is 49, Jaq is 47, xhuxk is 47, Martin Skidmore (RIP) is 47, Dr. C is 46, mike t-diva is 45, Rock Hardy is 44, Ned T. Rifle is 43, Orbit (RIP) is 43, etc.

-- jaymc, Friday, 15 February 2008 17:46 (2 weeks ago) Link

I'm 42.

"I'm 28 too, and I also had a phase recently where I was worried that I was getting stuck in the past, listening to too much old stuff. I guess my balance is probably 5-10% new stuff to 90-95% old.

-- gnarly sceptre"

that just about sums up my current percentages (and i am also 28). and it really does seem to be mostly jazz and soul music that gets me these days, even though i still love so many other kinds of music.

i never totally give up on new music, but i know the outlets where i can find the kinds of things that appeal to me and i check them regularly. i get surprised by new/unexpected artists very infrequently, at least in terms of new music. i actually get surprised much more by old music, and it doesnt even need to be obscure. i dont care if music is new or old, obscure or popular, as long as it fucking moves me i'm all about it.

i'm not worried about keeping up with anything other than the kind of music i want to soundtrack my life. it all fits together.

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

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"

http://bp2.blogger.com/_pezd59V2Syw/RsBstoVW16I/AAAAAAAAACs/PEiCcuxcgJ4/s1600-h/hank_aaron_grande2.jpg

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

I'm 39. Still addicted to "keeping up" (meaning both new and never-heard) almost to the point of OCD. Until I saw this thread title it never occurred to me that NOT keeping up could be liberating. Maybe I'll just try it.

Until my early/ mid thirties I was an obsessive keeper upper - personal upheaval and boredom produced a period where, for the only time in my adult life, I wasn't buying that many records; i drifted back in via improv. and Wire-ish chin- strokery, but was as interested in SME stuff from the 60s/70s as contemporary stuff. There followed Brazil obsession/ Country soul fixation/ Afropop and much else; what's never really returned is any real interest or attention to indie/ alternative rock, or any worry about hearing new stuff (in my working life, I see loads of live music, so I do know what's "now"- I just don't often like it)

I listen to a lot of music and buy and lot of records, but lately I've been mostly been into older music, buying less and less new records and listening less and less to new stuff. I still might get some new records if they sound interesting or if there's a new releases by a favourite artist of mine, but mostly I've given up trying to keep up with what's trendy. Looking at the ILM 2007 tracks poll, I've heard exactly 6 of the tunes in the top 50.

I'm 28 now, I'll be 30 in a year and three months, so is there any point still trying to be cutting edge with my music taste? Does anyone besides DJs, critics, and people in the music industry really need to keep up with all the latest trends?

-- Tuomas, Monday, March 3, 2008 9:21 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

I'm going through the same thing, and I'm only about to turn 20 in may. I can't seem to be able to bring myself to do it though, it's like killing off a part of me, and despite how much I can tell myself its for the better, I manage to overpower myself.

one of the best moments of my musical obsession was when i quit caring about new drum and bass records. i had been buying other stuff the whole time, but i felt like i HAD to keep up with that shit. when i quit deejaying it and moved on, it was super liberating. since then, the % of old music increased and increased to where i am today.

I'm 29 and have pretty much always been more interested in older music, though I listen to more new music than I used to. For two or three years in my late teens practically all I listened to was classical, jazz and pop vocal stuff from the '20s-'40s. I've actually paid more attention to new music in the past seven or so years than I did earlier. In my teens it seemed less dangerous to invest myself in older music; I felt like I could have greater ownership of it. Newer music belonged to people who could invest themselves in being tastemakers. In the '00s, I've found that the combination of just being older/less insecure and the accessibility of new music via the web has made it all seem much more open and less personal; the sense of ownership isn't as important anymore.

Here's a related old thread of mine, although I drone on autobiographically in the last post:

Why keep current?

Although it's not all that bad for me, I did only hear Crank Dat Soulja Boy for the first time less than a week and a half ago.

May i borrow that phraseology, inhibitionist?

-- violoncellos, Tuesday, 4 March 2008 17:27 (Yesterday) Link

For a nominal fee, yes.

when you'll have children, i guess

them ol' time jazz records

I've never cared about what's hip or trendy - alot of the new music I listen to is nowhere near the top of the charts or hyped by supposed tastemakers. Nowadays I usually discover new music via music sites, friends (online or off), and such. Discover alot of old music that way too, stuff that's far from canonical.

I still need to discover most ol' time jazz records for the first time....

i think he meant: in what point should you just stop seeking for new music and listen exclusively to the things you already know

When you have children?! Hells no! You'll want some time to yourself and hitting the record shop and closing the bedroom door and putting on something new will keep you sane.

I keep up with my old favorites (Thomas Dolby's new album is pretty good!) and occasionally hear something cool by young artists (P.S. Eliot was introduced to me yesterday) but it's true that the past number of years I've been more interested in music from the 50s-70s than 00s. As Dan said upthread, I expect to run into things I love eventually - and ILM helps immensely in that respect.

well, for my friend's at least, it was the opposite..ot maybe it's just the age idk

alot of the new music I listen to is nowhere near the top of the charts or hyped by supposed tastemakers
alot of the new music I listen to is nowhere near the top of the charts or hyped by supposed tastemakers
alot of the new music I listen to is nowhere near the top of the charts or hyped by supposed tastemakers
alot of the new music I listen to is nowhere near the top of the charts or hyped by supposed tastemakers
alot of the new music I listen to is nowhere near the top of the charts or hyped by supposed tastemakers
alot of the new music I listen to is nowhere near the top of the charts or hyped by supposed tastemakers
alot of the new music I listen to is nowhere near the top of the charts or hyped by supposed tastemakers
alot of the new music I listen to is nowhere near the top of the charts or hyped by supposed tastemakers
alot of the new music I listen to is nowhere near the top of the charts or hyped by supposed tastemakers
alot of the new music I listen to is nowhere near the top of the charts or hyped by supposed tastemakers
alot of the new music I listen to is nowhere near the top of the charts or hyped by supposed tastemakers
alot of the new music I listen to is nowhere near the top of the charts or hyped by supposed tastemakers