do you ever feel like you are getting too old to be a music obsessive?

I don't think you can ever be too old to be "into" music but I feel that being truly obsessed with it is something that should be left to the kidz (because of their higher disposable income, mainly).

Of course being the total hypocrite that I am, the only thing that will likely cease my record collecting will be destitution or children (more likely both at the same time)

How the gulf between the average person who I would have considered part of my peer group 7 or 8 years ago has turned into one of those 12 cd people, who has a kid, a job, and a mortgage, and here I am not feeling like joining consensus reality one bit. How do the older ILM'ers deal with being older, and being part of a completely separate discursive group?

It's not a problem, though. It doesn't make me feel out of place. There are plenty of other things to talk about. And everyone I know is obsessive about something. Why not music?

I do have less tolerance for crowds, though, so I'm not as keen on live music as I used to be.

I know at least 40 people of around 35-45 who are equally nuts about music.

This job, kids, mortgage thing is a cliche which is incomprehensible me. *Settling down* - WTF!! Why, I mean WHY should it make any difference to what I'm interested in? Sure, work and kids take up time, and there are times when I can't go to that gig or nip off for a band practice, but so what?

Much like Dr C, I am buying more records than I ever have (whilst I still can afford it!) and my tastes are increasingly catholic as I search out new things to listen to. I certainly hope I don't lose this passion and since I've made it this far I don't think I will.

I seem to remember my parents saying that I would become less interested in this as I got older as they had but it doesn't look like it.

I'm sure a lot of people wouldn't understand, the type of people who make comments when they see the number of records I have but, thinking about it, almost all the people I know act like this about something whether its books, videos, dr who...etc.

My Dad regularly took me record shopping when I was a wee lad. When I have kids, that tradition will most definitely continue. It hasn't taken any effort on my part to maintain the level of enthusiasm I had in my teens.

At my 40th birtday party there were around 50 people there, and I reckon 30 were totally obsessed with music, and aged mainly 35-40. The poor DJ had to deal with requests for anything from obscure bluebeat sides, to a Claudia Brucken 12" b-side and stuff by The Mekons. (He did a good job, btw.) I've met the best people I know through music, and I'm proud to know all my music friends. A quick pint can turn into a heated discussion about Hot Chocolate's finest album track, or who was better - The Bourbonese Qualk or Attrition.

I suppose, to answer a question posed on another thread, that's why I Love Music. You meet such great people - and that includes you lot, or at least those I've met so far!

I do notice that my friends have become less interested in seeking out new music as marriage and children. My gender may have some bearing on it - i meet lots of male music fans my own age and older who express surprise that a female of my age would be into the stuff i am.

I don't think a passion for music is something that ever leaves you - my boyfriend is 35 and the depth of his musical passion makes me look like the sort of person who only buys what's in the album chart top ten.

dinner with paul simenon? *feels envious*

It pays off in other ways - I must have many more times the number of good friends now than my non-music obsessed schoolmates; I've met so many brilliant people throught it. Many of which are breeding and having 40th birthdays and still going to gigs, while others are mailing for advice on what college to go to when they leave school.

So many of the people my age who have backed off from music culture in the name of family or career claim to be jealous of those of us who are still in the game. Therefore, I have come to the conclusion that this is what I am, and anyone who has a problem with that isn't worth the brainpower necessary to hate him or her.

I've only felt old at certain all ages shows I've attended, where most of the folks (& bands) are decked out in their thrift-store uniforms, their chain wallets, their punk rock patches, and I'm chilling with my slacks & button-down shirt over in the corner. (Hey, how you doin'?) This scenario says more about my questionable concert-going attire than offering any insight into some supposed music/age schism.

what about in critique of indie kid critiques?

But there is what some retailers have called 'the fifty quid bloke' - the middle-aged man who has money, who maybe goes out for lunch, turns up in the music store with his tie slightly askew, browses around and before he knows it, has spent £50 on CDs. That's the type of person who is helping sales of CDs."

[That will be the so called over 40s "grey panthers" on ILM.]

My biggest regret as a music listener is that I spent so much time trying to be cool. I listened to indie rock to the exclusion of almost all else, mainly because I thought it would be easier to chat up girls in granny glasses if I knew a lot about Sebadoh, rether than, like, Tha Alkaholics. I kept hip hop and soul music in the closet, my secret shame. I didn't dare listen to dance music for fear that I would be pegged as gay. I wish I could go back in time and recommend myself some records, and when old me says "What? You're kidding!" I wish new me would smack him upside the head and say "No, I'm not fucking kidding, you assheaded classist elitist know-nothing."

Seriously tho, the only thing that changes when you have wife house family, is you don't have time for recod shopping or going to record fairs.

I use kazaa to taste obscure stuff and gemm to buy it cheaply if poss.

My kids appreciate some of the stuff I like, and 'don't mind' most of it. Alice (3) on Coma Girl 3 secs into hearing it for the first time "Oh I like this..." starts to play air guitar... (Last time I played it "Oh not this again..")

Fwiw I do my music buying almost exclusively on the net.

Also, I'm not sure about Martin Skidmore's buying habits but (despite our similar ages and some major areas of overlapping tastes) I don't think my music buying habits bear much similarity to Dr. C's - I mean: he bids for stuff on E-Bay; he buys second hand stuff including vinyl; he actually sells records and CD's he's bought.... all things I've seldom if ever done.

I on the other hand feel driven to own entire back catalogues of certain bands / musicians and in extreme cases (Beefheart mainly) have even been known to buy and trade bootlegs which I believe are equally alien concepts to the Doc.

Why sometimes it looks almost as if we "grey panthers" are just like "real", "ordinary" music obsessives with our own individual personalities and everything, only somehow.... older!

As opposed to what? Downloading music? I disagree.

"Stevienixed puts like I pretty much would. And I was looking for a house recently anyway. ;-)"

-- Ned Raggett (ne...), March 7th, 2002 12:00 AM.

Sorry Ned.... obsessive tendencies can manifest themselves in all sorts of alarming ways, can't they? < maniacal grin >

The vision of Ned 'n' Nath playing golf would be frankly unreproduceable.

http://www.michael.phatcatz.net/awtv/Comedy/SoundVision/neil-dino.jpg

i. You all seem much older folks than I... i.e. 21. :-)
ii. A love of music should not be dictated by how many years one has spent alive... do not feel that it is odd at all to be massively into music when over 30 or 40; it is surely a more worthwhile interest than some have. I can't ever envisage myself pushing music to the back seat; it is inimically part of me and always will be. Unless I change remarkably. ;-)

No!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And I'm really ancient!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(Mind you, I don't stick posters on my wall of all my faves!!!!!! Due to my age and breadth of musical knowledge, if I did, I wouldn't need wallpaper!!!!!!! And I'd probably end up having to make painful decisions about whether the final space on a wall should be filled by a poster of Napalm Death or tha Nolan Sisters and suchlike!!!!!!!)

I'm starting to write songs again, as stale as it feels; my main cause for sadness is that I don't have a single friend that really cares about music anymore. They prefer to suck their bosses dicks and become high-flyers.

I'm just a lonely guy sitting in my room with a guitar at 11:37pm on a Saturday night.

thank God my boss likes music, then

I'm well into 4 digits with my cd collection, yet when I met my wife she had 1 cd...Abba's greatest hits, that somebody gave her.

My friends and I all care way too much about music. In fact, my wife gave our group a name...the Gay Music Club, because we're all really, uh, gay about music.

So to answer your question, yes, I feel I'm too old to be a music obsessive. But no, there's nothing I can do about it, and I don't see it ending any time soon.

No, I am not too old to be a music obsessive. However, I am probably too old to be this obsessed with music without having any kind of social, creative, or professional stake in it whatsoever -- for me it basically amounts to a hobby that pays off in nothing but pleasure; which is, of course, unquantifiable ... but as I get older I become more aware of the enormous amounts of time, money and effort I put into the pursuit of music, for returns that are invisible and intangible and enjoyed by exactly one person in my life: me (though I'm the only IMPORTANT one, after all!).

In other words, the degree of my obsession with music, together with my specific tastes in same, represents the very opposite of any kind of recognizable social capital for someone of my age and in my nonexistent relationship to music as a collective cultural endeavor. Not that I give much of a fuck; I'm just more and more aware of this as I get older.

This thread is full of truth. I am in my mid-40s and still exploring the vast range of music that's so easily available via the net, the library and friends, while still loving old stuff I haven't played in year. I often wonder WHY I am this way - am I filling a void with music or does it help to avoid something? Using music to differentiate myself from other, or as a way to connect with like-minded souls? But I've always been passionate about things that grab me, music is one of them but it's paramount among my interests.

I do feel more and more isolated as I get older, though. I have some friends who consider themselves into music, but not to the all-consuming level that I feel. And I'm a counter-example to the marriage & kids muscles out time for music theory espoused upthread. They come along for my musical rides!

I'm 37 and my wife and I just had our first child. My obsession with music is as strong as ever, and, in fact, lately I feel I am more aware of its power because I have so much less time, energy, and resources to devote to it. It's as if I can hear the turntable down the hall calling plaintively in the night--"Where did you go?" That said, the pull of a budding family is hitting me with equal or superior strength, and I hope neither will ultimately detract from the other. I know I benefitted enormously from having a dad who was nuts about music and subsequently passed on the disease to me. Maybe my son will prove susceptible. After all, there are worse things you can do with your spare time.

― lee g, Wednesday, March 6, 2002 5:00 PM (9 years ago) Bookmark

man, just scrolling through this old thread and saw this. 9 years later, replace 37 with 34 and I could've written this exact same thing.

you out there, lee g? update? did one detract from the other? is your son a music obsessive?

can't speak for lee g, but 9 years later i think i was a little bit wrong

At 27 I'm starting to feel like I've wasted time buying/listening to/obsessing about music when i could have been doing better, more fun stuff. I don't get as hooked on particular songs as much as I used to, either.

don't remember feeling this way, can say with authority that i feel the opposite now. i've definitely wasted money but i don't regret any of the time i put into music.

I don't think you can ever be too old to be "into" music but I feel that being truly obsessed with it is something that should be left to the kidz (because of their higher disposable income, mainly).

piffle

Of course being the total hypocrite that I am, the only thing that will likely cease my record collecting will be destitution or children (more likely both at the same time)

it ended up being downloadable music that did it. children? lol.

Nah.

came here to post exactly that

naw

The biggest changes on my end have been that a) these days I really like metal whereas when I was younger I thought it was cool but impossible to take seriously, b) I loved me some corny indie fuxxor shit when I was in my late teens/early twenties and now I'm mostly baffled by it, and c) I was never hugely into 'songs about relationships' as a broad cross-genre umbrella, and each passing year has further reduced my patience for such fare. My music hoarding habits have stayed about the same, though.

I personally am probably more into music than ever, but I do feel like I've aged out of a lot of the online discourse about the canon & making pointless predictions about what's gonna happen on RYM or what the next Fantano 10 is gonna be

fuuuuuuck no

chasing the magic of music only becomes richer and more rewarding as i age, though maybe more elusive and complicated.

engaging in discourse about music with straight dudes who don't like pop because it isn't 'authentic' - way too old for that shit

no and i have more money to spend on the hobby too

I mean, maybe I'm less likely to wear a band tee or put up a poster, and I care a lot less about the collectable aspect (mostly stream these days) but as likely as ever to obsess over music.

lol map if that's a dig at me, that's not why I dislike (a lot of, but hardly all) pop music.

It occurs to me that I've never owned a band t-shirt, which probably makes me a hapax on this here borad.

Hell no.

I don't have any posters or band t-shirts, but I never did even when I was young.

That said, I've never been more thrilled with new music (as opposed to legacy/older music)--I bought more newly-released albums/EPs in 2020 at age 40 than I ever have in my life--about 400. I think the only thing that would make me feel hopelessly old is *not* being a music obsessive.

this is the kind of band shirt I wear nowadays

https://specificlads.com/specific-lads-nin-ross

12 years ago "being a music obsessive" for me included the exhausting part-time job of feeling obligated to keep up with everything, even things i didnt like or care about, for the sole purpose of being able to have an opinion on it and "keep up with the conversation", which is a horrible way to live.

Today I probably listen to the same amount of music that I have at other points in my life, but 0% of it is stuff I'm forcing myself to for Discourse purposes and 100% of it is music that I want to hear and care about, and I get more enjoyment out of it than ever before.

tbf have not owned a lot of band tees over the course of my life. Very few actually.

that's kind of what staying home and listening to records all the time has done for me

my MP3 library has spiraled out of control, there's like 300 days worth of music in it, and I haven't really been able to devote enough time to any of that to make it a favorite

whereas with records you can listen to them every month or two and really get into them in a way you can't when you're just constantly trying to find new stuff. so many records in my collection are ones where I've thought "this is pretty good, I'll get into it someday", well "someday" is finally coming

i had a few band tees when i was a teenager. i'm considering a band tee right now (death) for wearing to the gym tbh. thirty bucks is a bit much though.

I swore off band t-shirts in 1999, now I am thinking of buying one again, though a Lungleg one, so pretty much picking up where I left off.

I guess I'm not sure if you have less desire to discover new things as you get older or if your library just becomes more "full" and you realize that there are only so many albums you can be into. I realized recently that there are albums I've been calling "favorites" for a long time despite the fact that I haven't actually listened to them in nearly a decade. in fact I recently wrote a blog post about it

https://critterjams.wordpress.com/2020/12/29/2020/

i actually might have bought more band tees this year than any year of my life, trying to support bands during covid. throwing out a bunch of my 15-20 year old band shirts, i thought how weird it will feel when in 15 years all my tshirts will be for all these bands i like during this one weird slice of time

i wear more band/label t's than i ever did in the past b/c i buy them direct from the artists and it's a space-efficient way to pay penance for using spotify. i stopped wearing band t's when i was younger b/c i guess i thought it looked tryhard or something but now i just want to rep things that are good b/c so many bad things are overrepresented

Xxp

How can something be a favorite if you never actually listen to it?

I've actually been thinking about this lately (and I disagree). Would make a good thread topic imo

I listen to my favorite music the least

makes sense, you already know it’s good

This old thread is sort of related: do you fetishistically AVOID listening to your favorite albums?

ha never saw that thread, was just going to post the exact sentiment in the 1st post there

Agree that it would make a good thread topic. Usually I'll binge listen a fave, shelve it for a good while, re-binge on it a few months/years later then either conclude that it doesn't quite hold up or induct it into my head pantheon.

xps

Misread that post as "alone, dimmed lights, soft drugs, total attention to the stereo" xp

I get that argument and it's no fun to relisten to an old favorite and realize the critics were probably right all along (I recently had this experience with Cake) but sometimes they really do hold up and you ask yourself why you're not pulling it out every week

I read your blog post (but not slowly or carefully, so apologies if I'm misrepresenting you here) as an acknowledgement that certain artists or titles become exalted almost arbitrarily according to what else you've already heard or haven't heard when you encounter them initally.

= Absolutely.

The thing is, those encounters tend to be the ones that help you to establish personal aesthetic or theoretical frameworks and push you to incorporate new ideas. At least, that's been the case for me.

The question of whether something like that holds up feels kind of unnecessary, if you're talking about something that shaped the way you listen to everything else.

Fuck that 'music's something you slowly lose touch with as you get older' narrative. It's meant more this year than ever. I've also started wearing band t-shirts again in the last couple of years and am now of an age when I can say 'cool t-shirt' when I see someone else wearing one - and not give a shit if everyone wants to cringe themselves inside out.

I wish I had the money (and space) to buy physical copies of everything I've loved this year.

Xp Some things register as "favorites" more because they reflect a theoretical or critical ideal. Still others are too rich, or too intense, to want to listen to them regularly. There's also the thing roger adultery wrote in the old thread about a lot of those records being ethched into your memory and having no need to actually play them ever again. Really, there's a laundry list of reasons why i might not go back to those records often or at all. It's a complex question worthy of its own thread :)

No

I love music so much

Shaming people over their nerdy hobbies was still residually a thing when this thread was created. I get the sense that we've mostly moved past that in the interim, thank fuck, although it's ever liable to come back.

xp otm

xxxp - both very good points, and of course I admit that spending a year tracking down stuff on vinyl has also changed the way I think about music in a fairly arbitrary way

personally I've been pretty obsessive when I discover something I like - if something clicks with me I have to track down everything because I want to hear the full story (which in the case of something like say, Yellow Magic Orchestra, can take over a decade). but then I spend a lot of time looking for something similar, something that clicks with me the same way, and wind up listening to a lot of bands that I can't figure out if I actually like or not

ultimately the phase I'm going through now is maybe something of a correction to my first couple years in college, when I was downloading everything under the sun because I was afraid all the filesharing stuff was gonna go away soon. In 2005 and 2006 I went through so much stuff, so much of it I absolutely loved, but it's not until now that I go back to something like say, the first Harmonia album (which, according to iTunes, I've only listened to four times) and really start to pick it apart and appreciate it. a lot of that stuff was music that I figured I'd return to some day but that day never came because I was always searching for something new.

from when I was a teenager until my early thirties I probably spent over half the time I was awake listening to music. the last decade I doubt I've spent more than 2 hours a week listening. it's not like I'm busy doing other stuff just that I never feel the desire to listen to stuff whilst I'm reading or playing FIFA or cooking or driving to work etc think I've maybe made it through 3 full length(as opposed to kpop ep/mini albums) albums in their entirety in one sitting this year. mind you I don't watch films anymore either.

no

I mean it's dizzying to think of all the stuff I got into my first 2 years of college - Devo, XTC, Sparks, Gary Numan, Depeche Mode, Elvis Costello, Brian Eno, Aphex Twin, Squarepusher, Thomas Dolby, YMO (and some of the solo stuff), Moonriders, Cornelius, Polysics, Can, Neu!, Faust, Cluster, Genesis, King Crimson, Yes, The Orb, Mouse on Mars, LCD Soundsystem, The Books, Cardiacs, Van der Graaf Generator, Zappa, Happy Mondays, Ween...and that's just off the top of my head. so much of those catalogues I just kinda skimmed over. I think my epiphany came when I got a turntable and found a copy of King Crimson's Lizard, an album I'd heard a few times and thought was "entertaining but pretty bad" and played it until I began to legitimately like it

Yes. I dont want to get sucked in and obsessive about music like I had to be. I want it in my life but I'm ok not spending hours each day looking up songs and albums. All that effort. I cant be bothered anymore. Plus I have loads of old albums I neverr really listened to so now seems like a good time. I'm prob missing out on a ton but hey, I think I'm ok with that now.

Xp, yes sorry for kind of glossing over the other part of what you wrote, about wanting to make the space to turn your gaze inward, cherish the things that shaped you even though it could have been something else just easily. Kind of like drawing boundaries around your home, while you could be off exploring somewhere, in search of a new site.

I support it, fwiw.

I don't watch films anymore either.

This is the big change for me as I get older, too.

I guess there's sort of a distinction there, revisiting albums that shaped who you are that you still know every note of vs. revisiting albums that you got into a while ago but didn't fully take the time to appreciate or understand

I still don't really understand anything tbh

I would admit that i've failed to appreciate that distinction. If I'm framing things in the context of a collection, and out of 1,000 things i've heard in passing this is what i want to revisit feels like drawing a similar kind of boundary. But i'm superimposing my own attidutes here at this point.

It was a jazz funk Christmas over here at chez brimstead

I turn 25 a week from today

The idea of nearly 25 being too old for anything is quite amusing...

Tbf I remember complaining to my roommate at exactly that same age that our apartment looked too much like a dorm room with all the posters. And every surface covered in skate stickers etc

"do you think we need to, like, start wearing collared shirts?"

Don’t want to answer the original question, but I probably do feel too old to read this thread.

Re: the original question, what's the correlation between youth and music anyhow?

I'm just about old enough now to feel really alienated by (not just indifferent to) certain strains of youth music. Never thought it could happen to me :)

It's also been many, many years since I felt like the music in my headphones made me the coolest kid on the block.

My social life probably doesn't revolve around music as much as it used to. It's also less likely to encourage me to do stupid shit.

None of these things are bad. It's almost taken for granted that music is the domain of the young idgi

Think there’s a Jethro Tull song about this iirc.

You can only be too young to rock n roll these days tbf

I still use music to regulate my feelings, typical adolescent behavior.

Yes. I dont want to get sucked in and obsessive about music like I had to be. I want it in my life but I'm ok not spending hours each day looking up songs and albums. All that effort. I cant be bothered anymore. Plus I have loads of old albums I neverr really listened to so now seems like a good time. I'm prob missing out on a ton but hey, I think I'm ok with that now.

― candyman, Tuesday, December 29, 2020 7:08 PM

I identify with this a lot, but overall "no" to the question. It's become so easy to sample and hop around catalogs, scenes, labels, genres, etc. that I don't feel like I'm "obsessing" over certain things like I used to - it's a wider net. I still wind up buying physical copies of releases I really get into. Enjoying listening through old stuff as well, and clearing out what has no business kicking around anymore. I still like loads of what I did years ago but I think staying engaged makes me less sentimental than I otherwise would be.

There isn't any way not to miss out on a ton.

i am nigh on 40 :p

I feel like the music itself is as rewarding as ever, but there is less inclination to know the minutiae around said music (release dates, producers, studios, labels etc).

Likewise, a waning desire to rank or chart music, not as a response to online list or discussion XYZ, but a natural disinclination beyond “this is great”, or “this is one of the best things I’ve heard this year”

I find the above has been helpful - not as a forced process but as a natural one - in terms to taking music at face value

(Or taking music at face value better; some releases will invite a level of curiosity beyond the 40 or 50 minutes of the actual music, but it’s not necessary for every great release to be ‘studied’ in the same way)

None of these things are bad. It's almost taken for granted that music is the domain of the young idgi

I think when you're young all the peripheral aspects to music can become focal points ie being part of a scene, meeting like-minded people, using it as a personality identifier, ingroup/outgroup identifier, generational identifier. Whereas when you're old it's like all about the music maaaan. That's why a lot of ppl are into music way less as an adult than they were as a youth: they were never really into Music to begin with, but rather the psycho-social aspects I just mentioned. Obv they did and still do enjoy music for its own sake but it lost those other meanings/functions as they got older. For "music obsessives", even if they too lost those other meanings/functions, the remaining husk of the Love of Music remains and is as big an entity as young normies' peripheral meanings/functions + Love of Music

I listened to too much hip hop in my teens and if I'm honest, I do think I'm too old for most rap now. I can still enjoy it but as I've aged, I see what stretch Armstrong meant when he said rap cant represent the full spectrum of emotions (I read this when I was 16 and was like STFU stretch! WTF do you know?!). I'm glad to be out of that particular phase, as well as feeling like I have to keep up to date. Though I do enjoy just hearing pop on radio 1, or diff stuff on 6music or nts or whatever, but often I dont care about finding out more or buying it, I'm happy just hearing it. That's pretty weird tbh, and I dislike becoming someone who listens in that way now, but I dont feel like being drawn down any huge rabbit holes. I'm happy getting better acquainted with what I have.

No

I feel like the music itself is as rewarding as ever, but there is less inclination to know the minutiae around said music (release dates, producers, studios, labels etc).

Yeah def, idk how much of this has to do with streaming/piracy, decoupling of the music from any physical packaging and artwork... in the old days, i knew a lot of the peripheral stuff before I heard even a note, and often that was what drew me in and got the CD in my hands. i might have had a strong impression of it before the actual music even hit my ears. Now i never read about music i haven't heard yet, or if i do i'm probably streaming it as i read.

It's funny because when I think about music I've "studied" in detail, from that time - maybe the first record that comes to mind is Plux Quba, which has remarkably little metadata attached to it. There's nothing really to read up on there, it doesn't even have track titles for the most part. It's gotta be something else.

I think it's more that when I was 14... What sorcery is this? I had to know. How did they do that? Because I wanna do it too. What's the secret, I wanna see the sleight of hand. That's why I'm buying the magazines or whatever.

And eventually, you know, I'm 23, I have an idea- maybe I can't exactly replicate the trick myself, but I can tell what's going on behind the scenes more or less. And it's just not as beguiling anymore. It's not so impressive. And pretty soon I'm 30 and I'm quite sure that I don't want to be a magician anymore. I don't want to know how they did it. I just want to be enchanted again like when I was a kid.

And Granny, I was nodding along quite happily there, you *almost* had me convinced. Except- I think a sociologist would have a field day with this site, don't you?
"Classic or Dud" is anything other than an ingroup/outgroup identifier?

For me, the issue with aging and music has to do with how much more new music I can listen to now that my life is almost certainly more than "halfway" done. I roll my eyes when people talk about a "bucket list", and my reaction to potential imminent death is not going to be listening to my gaps in some band's discography, but the time left seems finite (even if it is still probably measured in decades), and this affects my plans about what to listen to.

I realized that one reason I am hesitant to listen seriously to younger acts is that if they outlive me, I will never know their "whole story". On the one hand, this is absurd, unless I want to retreat to listening to the long-dead (who can still put out records if their name is Jimi Hendrix), but if part of the interest in music for me is seeing that long arc of a career and a life, why wouldn't I focus on the many musicians where this is still possible?

I'm aware I've twisted the intent of this thread backwards, but I wouldn't know how to search for this peculiar topic...

Sometimes I wonder if that lends to conservative listening,as I'm less inclined to listen to stuff that critics etc haven't already deemed soneone to be great. I'm too lazy now.

^ So much this
(for me, "critics, etc" definitely includes the ILM annual top 77)

I remember a poster on here saying that he had no time for bands that were starting out: "get back to me when you've made your eighth album".

Time is precious. Although, listening to eight albums is a lot more listening than just one debut. Also, they would prob have gone down hill by album 8. I'd wait until 3 or 4.

Xpost Sammy Hagar posted here?

Scott Seward, possibly posing slightly. I just searched for the post, couldn't find it, but there is 20 years worth of contempt and antipathy in the ILX archives keyed to the phrase "get back to me".

My music obsession is still burning strong, but it's more interactive. I practice viola two, three hours a day, and spend a lot of my leisure time comparing different performances of pieces I'm learning. I read about strings, I e-mail luthiers with questions, I plan on buying a new instrument once my finances allow it, etc. I don't buy vinyl compulsively as I used to... I bought only five albums on vinyl this year, down from ten the year before.

I remember a poster on here saying that he had no time for bands that were starting out: "get back to me when you've made your eighth album".

I said this, but I believe I said third or fourth album. It was a response to ILM's (and many critics') tendency to leap after the newest shiny object and declare every 19-year-old idiot who drops a single with a half decent beat some kind of genius destined to reshape music in his/her own image. A year later, they're inevitably gone and the same crowd is dribbling over a different 19-year-old idiot's debut single.

My music obsession is still burning strong, but it's more interactive. I practice viola two, three hours a day, and spend a lot of my leisure time comparing different performances of pieces I'm learning. I read about strings, I e-mail luthiers with questions, I plan on buying a new instrument once my finances allow it, etc. I don't buy vinyl compulsively as I used to... I bought only five albums on vinyl this year, down from ten the year before.

― flamboyant goon tie included, Friday, January 1, 2021 11:11 AM (twenty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

haha same, in a way! i went through my youtube history from this year and found i devoted a not insubstantial amount of time to drum cover videos

Professional musicians and critics have an excuse for music obsession, although I suppose if the income is insufficient, there's an extra pressure to drop it?

i also email luthiers with questions

I don't think professional musicians are "obsessed with music" in the same way as consumers. The cutest metaphor I can think of is "music consumers like to fly to nice vacation spots", and "music producers like to scan blueprints of planes and look at maps".

I said this, but I believe I said third or fourth album. It was a response to ILM's (and many critics') tendency to leap after the newest shiny object and declare every 19-year-old idiot who drops a single with a half decent beat some kind of genius destined to reshape music in his/her own image. A year later, they're inevitably gone and the same crowd is dribbling over a different 19-year-old idiot's debut single.

I've spent some time unpacking my own taste for "new bands", and I think the thrill of listening to a new musician is that their career arc is incomplete, and as such, exists only in the fantasy of the mind of the consumer. One an artist makes their second, fourth, eighth album, their career arc is visible. The metaphor I use to describe an artist putting out their first album is "an unstruck match". Tierra Whack, i.e., I listened to that album a hundred times in 2018. What is her second album gonna be like? It's impossible for her to make a second album. If she's gonna make another collection of 1m vignettes, people will get bored of the gimmick. If she makes an album of normal-length songs, people will like it less than the debut. So, I fantasize about her 2nd LP as being rap's answer to A Wizard, A True Star, some kind of continuous adventure that never coalesces into proper-songs but also keeps everything that fascinated me about Whack World. I do not anticipate that her 2nd LP will live up to my fantasy version of it. I doubt I will pay much attention to it, tbh.

I don't think listeners are "leaping after the newest shiny object", I think that fantasizing about a as-yet-unrealized career arc is an important part of music consumption

ILM's (and many critics') tendency to leap after the newest shiny object and declare every 19-year-old idiot who drops a single with a half decent beat some kind of genius destined to reshape music in his/her own image.

The most recent 19-year-old I can think of who got an ILM thread for her debut album was Billie Eilish—and she ended up winning a ton of Grammys and is a major artist (whether you may personally care for her or not).

Anyway, if everyone waited until an artist’s 3rd album to start paying attn, fewer artists would probably make it to their 3rd album.

(xpost, I guess)

I feel like I'm getting more obsessive. Covid gave me an excuse to do a lot of music deep dives this year, which has been very rewarding. OTOH, it has me missing clubs like crazy. I will say that new discoveries rarely hit me as hard as they did when I was young, but I'm ok with that.

I had a conversation with a friend who is deeply into clubbing last night, and during this conversation I realized just how much I missed the environment of "big sound". It's not that I miss live performances or going dancing per se so much as I miss being in an environment where sound is large and loud and it's moving my body, I guess

Tierra Whack, i.e., I listened to that album a hundred times in 2018. What is her second album gonna be like? It's impossible for her to make a second album. If she's gonna make another collection of 1m vignettes, people will get bored of the gimmick. If she makes an album of normal-length songs, people will like it less than the debut.

I was actually thinking about this the other day w/r/t the Jesus & Mary Chain, whose debut album was such a perfect single artistic gesture that the only possible follow-up would have been to announce the breakup of the band, preferably the day it was released. The fact that they continued to make records (some of which were good! some of which I liked!) was still somehow disappointing, because in an ideal world Psychocandy would have existed as their one and only statement. But generally speaking, I am a big believer that very few bands emerge fully formed and most bands get better as they go on. The most recent Deftones record may well be their best album, and/but it couldn't exist without all the albums before it. Baroness continue to get better with every album. Motörhead's 21st century output was better than most of their 1990s work. And on and on.

Ya, good comparison (wrt J&MC)

I personally really enjoy it when an artist who I've always found somewhat underwhelming suddenly starts making fantastic music in their 40s and 50s (David Grubbs immediately springs to mind, I love his last two albums unreservedly)

If she makes an album of normal-length songs, people will like it less than the debut.

If they’re good songs, why would ppl like it less? (A bigger number of ppl may even like it more.)

The format of Whack World is intractable from any concept of "good songs"-- they're great songs, and they are presented in an unprecedented format. I appreciate the unsolved mystery: 'did Tierra plan on this being the album? or was this a decision made late in the production process, to cut short the songs until they're effectively Amazon.com teasers?' Tierra Whack sticks out to me because her initial thesis is so singular, and I am curious as to how she intends to follow it up, either by continuing, or pivoting, or developing. Regardless: I doubt that what she does next will measure up to my fantasy sophomore album! maybe she will, maybe she'll supersede expectations.

all the new stuff from Tierra Whack has been great

I've spent some time unpacking my own taste for "new bands", and I think the thrill of listening to a new musician is that their career arc is incomplete, and as such, exists only in the fantasy of the mind of the consumer.

Well said, OTM

The cutest metaphor I can think of is "music consumers like to fly to nice vacation spots", and "music producers like to scan blueprints of planes and look at maps".

It really bothers me that I can't remember what it's like to listen to music without reflexively scanning the blueprints, even tho I'm no "musucian" and I haven't touched it in years!! And yet, I'm convinced that if I catalog my responses there's going to be a lot more overlap between these things than I tend to think.

Yes, I've been getting more into orchids.

Xp The obvious thing that undermines that distinction for me is "reference points", the ability of music to effectively be representational, through a culturally embedded language of signs.

Whack is THE BEST artist-on-the-cusp I can think of. Her second album will be great in ways that I can’t anticipate. I’m 50 years old (and feeling older) but I know music will always be a churning landscape of possibility which rewards the seeker.

Yeah I guess I sounded like a negatron when talking about her. Whack World was my fave of the year and yeah I love her recent singles, also. I just have been actively thinking about what LP2 is gonna be like and how I'm gonna respond to it!

I find I'm too old to be disorganized and that I can't go on just downloading stuff after reading about it online and then finding myself locked with a long list of obscurities from all genres and provenances. So I'm trying to rationalize it and explore things one at a time on my own terms, and also reconcile it with the fact that I now care much more about playlists and popular stuff. What I'm half saying here is also that I find a lot of music obsessing online to be ridiculous - not just the level of obsession but the stuff that is acclaimed, as if being passionate about music attracts some serious weirdos.

Rant aside, for this year I have a project of revisiting my music and being even more focused / selective than usual. It's also a question of diminishing returns.

A gazillion times in the last year I've read a description of an album that sounded dope, so i went to buy it, and then realized i already had it

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