This is the thread where old-timers can ask millenials music-related questions about the recent past

1. Blogs, Pitchfork.
2. During high school? No.
3. I'd imagine kids in high school these days cherrypick from more genres than I did, but when I was in HS, I pretty much stuck to indie rock and the odd mainstream rock/nu-metal band.
4. All the dudes listened to pop-punk.

-google glass
-google glass shows us radio waves, it hurts, we don't try that anymore
-all are united under glass
-all are united under glass

what is music? is music a sushi? where is my flannel

m y favorite band is vitaminwater

1. What turned you on to Hall & Oates and why do you like them so much?

2. Does freestyle dance music sound hopelessly old-fashioned (although still great) to you or does it blow your mind a little?

3. Do you feel any lingering resentment over the fact that "End of the Road" by Boys II Men was #1 on Billboard for 50% of your childhood years?

born 1990, so was in high school during the mid-2000s...

1) mostly friends. our shared taste for rock was based in our parents' music collections, and these served as our primers. generally parents' records, recommendations from friends, and especially the internet. I used (and still use) Wikipedia as a way of discovering bands I haven't heard of before.

2) Virtually none whatsoever. Chris Moyles every morning on the school bus put me off radio for life.

3) Not really. There were kids who would be deep into one genre, such as the pop-punk lovers, but it was a rare beast who shut out EVERYTHING but their preferred noise. they might like "hey there delilah" for example.

4) I like doing this whenever I can, and sometimes would look through another person's ipod, but it's not quite the same, as an entire CD is more of a commitment than a single downloaded track. Doesn't really bother me though.

- What was the most common source for discovering new music?

Born in 1990 as well. Parents records first, then Greatest of All Time lists, then blogs, especially Pitchfork. Can trace the moment I fell in love with music to one particular car ride listening to the Beatles with my mom and dad. When it was time to dive deeper, I still stuck to things that my parents liked, but slightly broadened my perspective with all-time lists. I particularly remember the VH1 list of 100 Greatest Rock Songs, which people should really dig up. It's a fairly distinct summarization of the Boomer Rock Canon (with lots of Motown and R&B classics thrown in). I remember poring through the Rolling Stone list of 500 Greatest Albums, and then listening to all those records. I discovered Mp3 blogs and Pitchfork around my junior year in high school. In hindsight, my experience was somewhat academic, starting with the basic building blocks of modern rock, and delving deeper and deeper into the more complicated stuff as my life went along.

- Did radio play much of a role in your listening habits?

In the pre-iTunes days, absolutely. The radio was a frequent topic of conversation amongst me and my friends and classmates in elementary school. I would listen to Z100 in the morning every day before going to school and I would stay up late at night to listen to the Top 9 at 9. As obsessed with lists as I was, I also tried to listen to Casey Kasem, who still did his show when I was a kid and was syndicated on Saturdays on the big pop stations, whenever I could. In the pre-iPod connector days, I would listen to Classic Rock radio in the passenger seat. Also, I can definitively say that I would not have gotten into rap if it weren't for Hot 97. It's not radio, but I remember that TRL was very popular around 5th or 6th grade (1999-2000), and I can still recall all the words to a lot of the biggest videos of the day (including Oops I Did It Again, The Real Slim Shady, Forgot About Dre, and the immortal Bad Touch by the Bloodhound Gang).

- Were kids divided into single genre listeners or was it more common to like bits from across many genres?

It depends on our age. By high school, the iPod era was well underway, so everybody had their own tastes, though I do remember some bands being particularly popular. In elementary school, people were mostly unified by pop radio, which is to be expected, except for weirdos like me who listened to the Beatles. Britney, Spice Girls, 'NSync and Backstreet had their day, and even though I wasn't the hugest fan, I still bought No Strings Attached and Millennium. Eminem at his peak was probably the artist that most people (read: boys) my age could agree upon and everybody owned the Marshall Mathers LP. Get Rich or Die Tryin' was also a major touchstone. The Red Hot Chili Peppers and Dave Matthews Band were inexplicably popular, but at least Outkast got the best reaction at school dances.

- Like the scene in "High Fidelity", it used to require just a quick flip through someones LPs or CDs to get a sense of their tastes. Did it even matter that it wasn't easy to do that anymore?

A quick look through their iTunes library would tell a bit of a story. It was so much easier to access music though that you wouldn't necessarily know if somebody loved an artist even if he or she had torrented their entire catalog. Again, CDs and such did not completely disappear until I was a senior in High School. By college, everybody had iPods or iPhones, which made sharing music easier, but it was not quite the same.

OK youth under 25. Your thoughts on the following bands:

REM
Pavement
Nirvana
U2
Springsteen
Elvis Costello
The Replacements
The Who

what if yr'e just over the cutoff (27)

Guess that rules me out, too.

I will say, I don't like any of those bands except Nirvana, The Who, and maaaybe Pavement. I grew up on metal/grunge/60s pop though and all modern music I like has traces of that so I might be the wrong one to ask

I was born in 1985 and I'm still confused as to what generation I'm considered part of.

What band names did the dirtbag kids who smoked cigarettes across the street carve into the desks in high school?

What bands/artists largely ignored by ILM were hugely popular and are going to dominate classic rock playlists in 2034?

If it's not all emo/pop-punk I will be surprised

gen y aka millennial = b.1980-2000 imo

REM - automatic for the ppl yes
Pavement - no all terrible
Nirvana - yes love them (was 10 in 94)
U2 - all that you can't leave behind i heard most, but also joshua tree
Springsteen - thru parents yes esp born to run, e street, darkness at the edge
Elvis Costello - found out about in highschool from spin magazine iirc (or rs?) liked this year's model but liked joe jackson's sharp even more
The Replacements - nope nothin
The Who - my generation + who's next bc parents

my thoughts specifically on replacements + pavement is that i group them in my mind w/ a kind of gen X college radio indie sound that i don't get at all (this category obv huge and there are exceptions but like the cure, siouxsie, new order, the fall, stone roses, pixies, sonic youth all vaguely in this category for me)

There is this saying among people my age that the kids growing up these days don't even have an idea what a CD is. On the other hand, I know most music being marketed to little kids (at least where I live) is still bigger on CD than any other format, so it seems at least kids below the age of, say, 10-12 years old are familiar with CDs. What is your take on this? Do people your age know what a CD is?

my thoughts specifically on replacements + pavement is that i group them in my mind w/ a kind of gen X college radio indie sound that i don't get at all (this category obv huge and there are exceptions but like the cure, siouxsie, new order, the fall, stone roses, pixies, sonic youth all vaguely in this category for me)

― Mordy,

^^^^ Exactly. I would even add REM to that list, too. But for me I would give an exception to Sonic Youth, they were intense/interesting enough for me. All the others you listed, to me, have either nothing unique about 'em, or, no hooks. No real meat to be found.

No meat, but many puppets

My friends and I grew up on trading CD-Rs and flash drives full of albums we downloaded. Actual store bought cds were a huge part of my life, too.

Before all the downloading I mean

The Replacements are a band that I didn't discover till my 20s, and for the longest time confused them with The Residents, and felt like that they were band a that I would have really liked had I discovered them in my teenaged years, when me and my brother were into a lot of pop punk and stuff like Gin Blossoms and the Goo Goo Dolls lesser known stuff.

just turned 26 so i'm including myself

REM -- never really cared too much, they were always a band i felt i had to get into eventually, liked their radio hits but "electrolite" was HUGE for me in HS, totally seminal romantic emo boy shit
Pavement -- hate, have never been able to understand what anyone gets out of them, totally boring nothingness that hits 0% of my pleasure centers and means nothing to me. BUT remember when everyone was mashing the black album up with everything? there was a pavement mashup and i really liked a couple of those songs. that's all i've ever gotten out of pavement.
Nirvana -- when i hit 7th grade and started watching every top 100 list VH1 would air when they were rockist, i fell in love w/nirvana and cobain and had the kurt+acoustic guitar+signature t-shirt from hot topic. then in HS went through an anti-my-younger-self phase and hated nirvana and told everyone how overrated they were. recently i decided it's probably time to get over that and now i like them again.
U2 -- strained to like them bc felt like i had to, always liked sunday bloody sunday and i will follow, can't really listen to them now bc bono's glasses
Springsteen -- in HS i fell really hard for a girl who was a massive bruce fan and became a bruce fan. now she's married to someone else and i'm still a massive bruce fan. he's still what i consider "favorite" cause everyone's favorite was their favorite at 16 etc. tho i also remember the time before ~2003/2005 where he was the least cool person alive. still loved dancing in the dark then tho.
Elvis Costello -- grew up listening bc parents, eventually got into him "for real" bc i felt i had to, LOVED this year's model bc angry boy feelings, now he's too much of a dick to listen to tbh
The Replacements -- loved them in HS, meaning i loved the 6 songs i downloaded off slsk in HS. i still haven't listened to more than that and probably never will but i still like them. hanging party.
The Who -- boomer shit had to like it

"90s indie" is too big a descriptor, i like elephant 6 and 90s pixies and MBV and built to spill and stuff, i just find the specific guitar indie of pavement and GBV and... sebadoh?? (i haven't spent much time w/these bands) terribly boring and unappealing in every way and i can read a million reviews and still not really grasp what anyone gets out of them

― ^^ post obviously honoring and supporting Qualcomm (zachlyon), Sunday, October 20, 2013 3:35 PM (8 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ha ha I can see newjacks not digging Pavement, but didn't think I'd see "How can anyone enjoy these GBV songs with twelve hooks crammed into two minutes?"

I grew up with CDs, but then turned to mostly downloading from age 14 to around the point of graduating college. Of course for a good while, most of my downloading consisted of downloading individual songs as opposed to albums. Then when I graduated I was like "I'm no longer a poor college student, I can actually afford things!" and then started buying a lot of cds, despite getting an ipod around that time because the idea of paying for downloads has always struck me as a bit odd. Also, this was around the point where a lot of music chains were going out of business, like A&B Sound and Music World, so I was able to pick up lot of stuff cheap.

ha ha I can see newjacks not digging Pavement, but didn't think I'd see "How can anyone enjoy these GBV songs with twelve hooks crammed into two minutes?"

― relentlessly pecking at peace (President Keyes), Saturday, June 28, 2014 8:02 PM (21 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the things you ppl call hooks smh

you ppl

gen y aka millennial = b.1980-2000 imo

― Mordy, Sunday, June 29, 2014 12:30 AM (49 minutes ago)

Yeah, I think this is the generally accepted bracket. But even though I fall into it myself, I kind of see the question being more interesting answered by those born 1990 onwards. Not saying that you and others born in the '80s shouldn't respond if you want to, just where my interest lies. Also, maybe '80s kids fall into a time where things were changing but hadn't yet changed, if that's not too woolly a statement - I'm thinking like, I had the internet as a teenager, but it came at around 15 and was a very different place to today. A large period of my formative years were pre-internet, never mind pre- youtube, spotify, facebook, etc.

Yep. '88 here, and I feel like there's a whole world of difference between people who remember what life/music was like before the internet and people who don't. Where that dividing line is, I don't know. But somewhere in mid to late 80s I'm guessing.

there is a big cultural/technological/social difference between ppl born in 1980 and 1990, ppl born 1985 and 1995 etc

the real secret the feds don't want you to know about is that the concept of cultural generations is 100% bullshit and shouldn't be taken seriously for any reason

1 weird trick the generational bureau doesn't want u to kno

also weird: separating history into decades

Gen y really should be split pre/post high speed internet

We laugh but it already is in a way

this thread maybe deserves a second chance

probably not but still

I keep saying that ppl born b/w maybe like 78 and 85 should be called the "betweenials." Everybody start saying this plz.

Googled "betweenials" and found a lone Twitter mention. Shit; I thought I made it up.

it's too late now, the millennials are now old and jaded like us

did millennials grow up exposed to R&B at all or just hating U2, REM, Pavement, etc?

why does millennials never want to Weezer??

also, I wish the dumbfuck who hates Pavement would say that to my face while the stereo plays "Grounded", so I could tell him that's exactly what he is. Boyz are dyin on these streets!

I keep saying that ppl born b/w maybe like 78 and 85 should be called the "betweenials." Everybody start saying this plz.

and people born in 1976 are "bicentweenials"

Hi millennials. Are you planning a post-ironic discovery of roots rocks and/or Americana any time soon? It's so uncool now which actually makes it cool.

hasn't this already been a thing for a while?

uh oh kornrulez, you're even older and more out of touch than you thought.

has there been a critical reassessment of dave matthews yet? feel like that's coming eventually.

was I the one who hated pavement? you have permission to murder me as long as my grave says "fuck pavement" and nothing else

As someone born in 1985, I consider myself part of "Generation Y", but not really a "Millennial".

I feel like there's been a bit of Phish reassessment in recent years, but not quite Dave Matthews reassessment.

has there been a critical reassessment of dave matthews yet? feel like that's coming eventually.

I'm convinced that his popularity among my generation stems from the fact that nearly half of millennials smoked weed for the first time at a Dave Matthews concert.

I'm pretty sure there's been an Americana revival every decade for the past 10 decade.

s

i'm born in 1988, came to music through my brother who is ~10 yrs older than me so operation ivy, early weezer, dillinger four, catchy pop punk stuff i guess. (this means i like pavement). i think the first CD I had was the first Gorillaz album (stole from my bro)? also a lot of distinct memories of downloading like, 'and out come the wolves' track by track on a 56k modem. you could listen to part of the song if you waited 20 minutes! the whole song would take longer. i bet i still have some of the CD-Rs from that

definitely interested in the perspective of people even younger tho, i definitely feel like i saw the internet *become* a 'thing'. would definitely be a sea change for it to already have been a 'thing' by the time you were scoping out things and forging your tastes

Young kids don’t understand the old timers never understanding why the young kids don’t know the old stuff

Yeah old stuff is so much harder to find nowadays

Heh, I can remember old-timers in the 80s not understanding why I didn't know Camel, Deep Purple and Uriah Heep.

I don't know where to put this, but I have noticed that younger millenials and zoomers seem to embrace music from all genres, and artists all along the hipness spectrum, equally and unselfconsciously and unironically with little regard to what's "cool" or not. That is amazing and wonderful. It seemed to take some sort of religious conversion to get a generation (or two or three) of corny indie fuxxors there, and it just comes naturally to today's kids.

it's one of the best upsides of spotify/youtube/celestial jukebox culture as presumed birthright

They're welcome to join the Xenakis listening thread.