like, all the people who really do love music, but at some point stop seeking more. what are they all about?

yeah, what's that all about??!?

and don't give me that "I have a baby now" bullshit excuse

getting old/jaded/bored

livin' in a post-oink world

i have a baby now

but srsly, i still seek more music, jesus christ there is so much music.
my older brother on the other hand, he kinda got off the "searching for new musical experiences" thing when he had a family. he still loves the music he loves (and occasionally I'll turn him onto something he gets really into) but for the most part he just wants to listen to sandy denny and neil young. With maybe Willie Nelson thrown in there.

there's actually a fair amount of research on this q. turns out that a lot of how you react to music when you're younger has to do with hormones & brain development. same as how you'll be more able to learn a foreign language when you're younger; the brain & the body undergo all manner of changes with age. music geeks shouldn't really quake in their boots too much about this -- no rule is hard & fast; some people are wired different than others; the amount of data we have on questions like this is limited. but based on the couple of bits I've read about this, I'd say that, for a lot of people, the question has to do with physical/chemical development. your taste forms; some music, and maybe some musical tropes/styles hardwire themselves into your taste; you are then satisfied as far as music goes. the notion that there's something "wrong" with this is a comical muso reactionary reflex imo; it feels to me like, among fellow music geeks, there's this idea that anything less than permanent ongoing engagement is some kind of personal failing. I'm among the damaged - I thirst for new stuff constantly - but I don't think there's anything wrong with people for whom the appreciation of music is a challenge they satisfied early on without need for further revisiting.

ok but it gets frustrating when these ppl claim that new music sucks or whatever

also fairly disappointed in hormones and brain development right now

I need to ask my dad this. When I was really little he used to sit and listen to music on these awesome cans for hours and hours while I played on the floor next to him. As I got older I discovered his stacks of records in the closet - not a huge collection, but big and deep enough to show that he really loved music at some point. But from the time I reached 10 until a few years ago (when he discovered XM) I don't remember him EVER listening to music of his own volition once.

ok but it gets frustrating when these ppl claim that new music sucks or whatever

I agree! but I think it's kind of like they can't help it - they can't hear how new stuff sounds different to people who haven't sort of crossed that aging/hormonal/brain chem line

lol I always feel I need to listen to more music, the problem is most of the new stuff I find doesn't scratch the itch, so a lot of the times I just wind up with my old music

As I said, child-rearing often puts a major crimp in one's budget, time and energy needed to seek out new music. Something's got to give in terms of how you spend your limited free time, and with lots of folks seeking out new music is what goes away.

But the vast majority of people I know stopped ACTIVELY looking for new music shortly after college and just became satisfied with whatever the industry throws out at them. There's a reason American Idol is wildly popular - it's passive music marketing at it's finest. I'm not saying it's all horrible, but it's different than being a consumer of art vs. an appreciator of art.

it's funny jon and aerosmith yr comments kind of ring true in a related way to me--like when i was a kid my dad would play music loud every thursday night when my mom worked. he found new things here and there but was mostly concentrated on his faves of the past.

a couple years ago he went through an extended depressed/manic cycle, discovered burning cds, and got really into different music for the first time i could ever remember (mostly lots of slick 80s pop oddly enough). that whole phase has passed and i don't even know how much music he listens to these days but i have a feeling it's much, much less.

That is really interesting about psychological/physiological differences, underrated aerosmit albums I have loved. Do you know of any books, journal articles, etc, on the topic? I would really like to know more about that.

the problem is most of the new stuff I find doesn't scratch the itch, so a lot of the times I just wind up with my old music

I'm with you, mate.

(btw that's "oddly enough" since his alltime faves were band of gypsies and led zep 1 and 2)

aerosmith's point doesn't surprise me at all, would've guessed as much tbh. people often forget what slaves we are to our own biochemistry.

the brain & the body undergo all manner of changes with age

solved: geir has progeria

only had a 12-minute window in which to set his musical tastes for life

there was and will ever be only one steely dan, ya know?

altho I think there's also something to it in that modern western-capitalist culture has increasingly emphasized the segregation of generations when it comes to music ever since at least the jazz age - so much of music marketing is about niche demographics, and everyone knows kids have the most time/money to spend, so popular musical culture has increasingly revolved entirely around them. If older folks get tired of dealing with it, part of it is that it's constantly being made clear that they are not welcome - so much youth marketing is tied up in, like, generational/oppositional politics it's no surprise that as people get older they just say "ah, fuck it"

xp

flowers for hongroenon

Lady GaGa isn't being marketed to 40yo heteros, knowhutimean - in a lot of ways new music isn't MADE for old people. it's made by young people, written about by young people, bought by young people, the market continually demands a ferocious rate of turnover and always new new NEW stuff - you can see how this might be unapealling/uninviting to older folks

Shakey is correct, but again that's all about POPULAR musical culture. But there's a wealth of music in the underground scene for all generations if they make the effort and have a clue where to look for new music. Certainly stuff like Pandora or Last.fm has made it easier to find?

That is really interesting about psychological/physiological differences, underrated aerosmit albums I have loved. Do you know of any books, journal articles, etc, on the topic? I would really like to know more about that.

man I tried to google it but it's a hard subject to locate - the main study was 5-6 years ago I think? it went a ways to explaining how, whatever music you got really into when you were a late teen, that's always going to be the stuff that sounds best to you: that connects most strongly to your emotional centers. now, if your appreciation runs afield from "it reaches me emotionally," or if "I love this music" extends to areas other than "it hits me," then I think you get a sort of extension.

I will try to locate the key study, it sort of confirmed something everybody kind of already knows intuitively i.e. the music you loved most from 16-22 will always seem like the best music to you.

i think it has a lot to do with curiosity. some people maintain it about music (and fashion and other stuff deemed adolescent by people who don't care about it), and others don't.

also there is a possibility that those people never really cared about music; they cared about the feeling that their music gave them, which is essentially the intense emotion of adolescence, not the pleasure of enjoying music.

i have a lot of friends like this and we've been having the "i don't know why i don't like new stuff anymore" discussion for like 15 years. somehow i have managed to care about music while they haven't, but i am also not very attached to my teenage years and they sort of are.

Hey underrated aerosmith, that is ok. If you don't remember I will employ the aid of a reference librarian, the ppl that get paid to find obscure stuff.

so much of music marketing is about niche demographics, and everyone knows kids have the most time/money to spend, so popular musical culture has increasingly revolved entirely around them

This is pretty true but lately I wonder if this might be starting to undo itself - feels like the crowds for the (Pitchfork)-hip buzz bands I've seen lately have had a lot more 30+ folks than I would've seen a decade ago - well, now I'm 30 too, so maybe I am just wrong about where the real buzz is, but I've been wondering if the cool youth subculture aspect of live music (though not recorded yet, but maybe that will follow) is starting to fade

I don't have kids yet, but cohabiting has pretty much got rid of all my music listening time and I feel pretty out of touch lately.

(I had a bunch more thoughts on this when I started typing but they all pointed in different directions and it is well past my bedtime so I hope this conversation is still going in the morning, Britisher time)

I will try to locate the key study, it sort of confirmed something everybody kind of already knows intuitively i.e. the music you loved most from 16-22 will always seem like the best music to you.

y'know this is something my dad always used to say. The problem is, when I think about it applying to me, it isn't remotely true. So much stuff I LOVED from that period I don't listen to anymore and really have no desire to listen to (the Replacements, the Pogues, Nirvana, Mudhoney, Fugazi, etc.) It's not that I think this music is bad now or anything, I'm just done with it. I dunno why this is.

part of it is probably that I was a very unhappy guy from 16-22, so it's not like I wanna relive that era a lot or anything. lots of bad memories/associations.

Like I said on the other extant thread:

The only one of my tastes that genuinely induces raised eyebrows -- even among some critic buddies! -- is my love for pop. The subtext seems to be, "You're too old to listen to this" or "You can't possibly mean" that I listen to Miley Cyrus with genuine interest (they think I'm winking or something).

yeah of course music doesn't suck, these people are never right. music just gets better and better all the time.

When I was 15 I listened to grunge and jungle and thought my parents didn't like it because it was too fast and loud and too FUTURE for them to comprehend. It is bittersweet to get older and hear the radio and think "man this stuff is just lazy soulless copies of the music of my youth" and then realise that that is how your folks felt about your music: not a blast of impenetrable alien genius that would have required a fundamental rewiring of their minds, just tired and derivative

xpost

true, it only took us 300 years to get from bach to drake, imagine how awesome shit will be in another 300!

I'm doomed to love slipknot forever

i think it has a lot to do with curiosity. some people maintain it about music (and fashion and other stuff deemed adolescent by people who don't care about it), and others don't.

This rings true for me as well - I still love "adolescent" things like comic books - and I'm a fairly curious fellow. While it's true that nothing hits me the way post-punk did when I was 17, it's also true that I've expanded my tastes significantly since then. *shrug*

What if you generally ignore new music but seek out mainly "new old" music? Like the really obscure shit that gets re-released on Soul Jazz or gets championed by Mutant Sounds?

(Not a parent but this topic is pretty dear to me (and pretty much the only topic I can still post to ILM about) - I went from someone who downloaded/bought about 5 new songs per day* to someone who essentially wasn't that into music over the course of 12 months which maybe not co-incidentally were my first 12 months of Real Job and Real Partner? It was totally weird and noticable and unpleasant at the time)

*: I get that this is not much to some folks here! It was more than most people I knew though?

there's still time to come back from something like that ^^

...the notion that there's something "wrong" with this is a comical muso reactionary reflex imo; it feels to me like, among fellow music geeks, there's this idea that anything less than permanent ongoing engagement is some kind of personal failing.

I don't know I'd call it "reactionary." I guess at a certain age some people feel like they don't need to travel and explore the world, learn other cultures and languages, and try new foods. They might also accept erectile dysfunction as just another phase of their lives. To each their own, I guess.

I guess one reason it makes sense to talk about parent here is the Ewing-y point about the use of music - like, what more than anything changed that year was that I had no real functional need for it anymore - I didn't need it to court, I didn't need it to socialize, I no longer really needed to position myself in some grand sweep of popular culture (I needed to position myself vis-a-vis the other teachers and the other 51 residents of the village the school was in but I could do that by, like, not shaving?) - it is kind of painful to realise how much of what was 100% the central passion of my youth was so, y'know, functional?

xp :)

can't say what's gonna happen, not a parent just yet but if watching my lil' girl walk for the first time isn't more excited than MIA sample Suicide i'm gonna be a little disappointed

What if you generally ignore new music but seek out mainly "new old" music? Like the really obscure shit that gets re-released on Soul Jazz or gets championed by Mutant Sounds?

I still listen to a ton of music but yeah for me the split is like 75% old stuff that is new to me (via reissues or downloads or just diggin it to stuff I've never explored before) and maybe 25% is new music being made now. This has been the pattern with me for quite some time though, even as a teenager I was disproportionately drawn to stuff from the 60s and 70s

if watching my lil' girl walk for the first time isn't more excited than MIA sample Suicide i'm gonna be a little disappointed

^^^this

if you don't think yr kids are more important than music, you shouldn't be having kids imho

Well, true, but lots of novelists and musicians who were awful people, sadly, needed a marriage and children to exploit for their best work. Not a position I endorse.

I don't know I'd call it "reactionary." I guess at a certain age some people feel like they don't need to travel and explore the world, learn other cultures and languages, and try new foods. They might also accept erectile dysfunction as just another phase of their lives. To each their own, I guess.

there's a case to be made for all of these - to argue that the asked-and-answered question is "one must always be seeking new experiences" is, yes, a reactionary position imo

like, the person whose position is "rather than know all there is to know about one area, I must keep learning about many others" is properly called a dilettante, and few would consider that a flattering term

this happened to me after a couple years of doing weekly college radio shows, where I encountered new music faster than I could process and form opinions about it; playing whichever track from this random new sublime frequencies release had the coolest-sounding title got old after a while and so I pretty much stopped seeking out new stuff. but I'm always happy to listen to anything that crosses my path.

lol is dilettanteism (musical or otherwise) still considered a "bad" thing?

Shakey - my split is roughly the same as I seem to dig up post-punk nuggets and obscuro Aussie garage-punk bands annually but my ability to LOVE new music has diminished (but not extinguished). Part of it I attribute to simply having been exposed to that much more music by age 40 than age 20. Something that might've sounded fresh 20 years ago makes me think "that's a female-fronted Buzzcocks", which isn't bad just not something I'm going to fall in love with.

I'd rather be a dilettante than a reactionary, honestly.

Word.

btw if people because of how they're wired or whatever are going to tell me how much new music sucks, i don't really have a problem taking a "reactionary" position in return.

lol is dilettanteism (musical or otherwise) still considered a "bad" thing?

valid question! to me - actually, yeah, I gotta be honest - somebody who can't speak with authority about anything but can weigh in with a sort of enough-to-pass opinion isn't really somebody in whose opinion I'm interested; I would rather hear from people who've gone to the trouble to know what they're talking about. but I think we kinda live in a dilettante world, Google/Wikipedia rather settles the question, anybody who wants to know enough about anything to argue about it can copy & paste to their heart's content

but to my mind yeah a dilettante is a person who's not seriously engaged with anything = a dull person

btw if people because of how they're wired or whatever are going to tell me how much new music sucks, i don't really have a problem taking a "reactionary" position in return.

not clear as to why one needs any kind of reciprocal position tho

because one is having the discussion, i guess.

re: first point i would rather hear from people that know what they're talking about too! but i have minimal interest in projecting my opinion about many topics onto others--i'd only say i "speak with authority" on 2 or 3 topics and music isn't one--i love it, am constantly seeking out more, but would rather listen to the best afrofunk record than 10 3rd tier death metal records or whatever comparison you like. so i have no ish with dilettanteism being applied to me in some fields.

(btw yes i do have a rarely-used music tumblr and it is essentially written for my friends for whom the title of this thread is extremely applicable)

I don't mind "dilettantism" if it's part of a fox vs hedgehog continuum.

Maybe it takes being older to realize you can have new experiences with what you have. Otherwise, maybe people of a certain age, kids-having or not, are too busy traveling, eating new foods, learning other languages, having sex, etc., to worry about new music?

Either way, I have glimpsed the value of patience--you'll get into stuff when you get into it.

I have glimpsed the value of patience--you'll get into stuff when you get into it.

Preach on! Music will be there, waiting for you, when you're ready...

lol had to look that up alfred but i see what you mean

Maybe it takes being older to realize you can have new experiences with what you have.

sorta like a cross between madeleine-eating proust and john woo's phillip k. dick's PAYCHECK

I will try to locate the key study, it sort of confirmed something everybody kind of already knows intuitively i.e. the music you loved most from 16-22 will always seem like the best music to you.

We've had discussions of this before and I think that's far too sweeping. it's definitely not true in my case. In many ways I see my teen and early 20s taste as aberrations, with my pre-teen and 30s on taste as being more me. (This is not to say I like nothing from me teens and early 20s or that I don't continue to like some new music that builds on what I listened to then. But overall I don't think it's held up for me.) I have not really followed a normal developmental pattern though.

So I don't intuitively know this, but it may very well be true for most people.

alternately, yr teen/early 20s self might view your current self as an appalling sellout

anything is possible!

i feel this way about dubstep/wonky/purple fans

alternately, yr teen/early 20s self might view your current self as an appalling sellout

If my teenage self were to come back and tell me I'm a sellout it wouldn't be because of the music I listen to, it would be because I am not in jail for participating in anti-war civil disobedience or something of that sort.

And fuck him, because if anything I wish I had sold out more by putting more value on money.

my teenage self would tell me I sold out by not being dead yet and I gotta hand it to him, he's right

so true.

I'm still too close to my teenage self to have much perspective on this but I imagine any interaction with him would be Sad and Quiet

Sad and Quiet was like my bread and butter

... but man, did I ever listen to some fuckin' music!

I think that my teenage self would be incredibly fucking annoying to be around.

I just got a full time job and have been feeling lately like new music sucks. I blamed it on a weak start to 2010 but OMG IS THIS HAPPENING TO ME???

2010 has been great for new music, so . . . ?

you can trust me on this, because i'm old.

I'm 38, with a wife, 2 kids a mortgage and a buttload of bills. That hasn't stopped me from seeking out and enjoying new music. I don't feel like I'm too old to listen to Sleigh Bells, MIA or any other cool band. I've even willed myself into liking Animal Collective. I draw the line at Grizzly Bear though.

But I don't feel like what's coming out now is "my" music, the way I felt about Daydream Nation, Nevermind, Slanted & Enchanted and Loveless when they all came out.

And forget out live music. Seeing bands has pretty much gone out the window.

there's a wealth of music in the underground scene for all generations if they make the effort and have a clue where to look for new music

thing is, you're going to have a hell of a time making a moral argument for why it's important to expend effort in this particular direction, especially when the alternatives become things like "reading to your children"

one thing I think about often is that if you're someone who really likes music, there may come a point in your life where you already really love more songs and albums than you'd have time to listen to even once a year, or longer, and I imagine that at that point the burning desire to find, evaluate, and get into new things is going to fade, for some people. (I'm trying to imagine what it would be like to listen to your all-time favorite music on, say, a six-year loop, each one with this whole patina of sudden memories accreting around it)

the thing that keeps me from trending toward that is the fact that I don't get so much enjoyment from a lot of stuff I used to like -- and in a utilitarian sense it's hard to claim that's a good thing! I mean, do you realize how much time and money it would save if we could just continue liking everything as much as we always did? some people do, I think! they are richer than us and getting more exercise and learning new things!

I'm 38, with a wife, 2 kids a mortgage and a buttload of bills. That hasn't stopped me from seeking out and enjoying new music. I don't feel like I'm too old to listen to Sleigh Bells, MIA or any other cool band. I've even willed myself into liking Animal Collective. I draw the line at Grizzly Bear though.

But I don't feel like what's coming out now is "my" music, the way I felt about Daydream Nation, Nevermind, Slanted & Enchanted and Loveless when they all came out.

yeah this IIRC is what the study was about - not "you stop being interested in music," but you stop connecting to stuff that's new-to-you as strongly: your ability to classify something as "life-changing" dwindles, not to say dies out entirely. i.e., nothing that comes along after a certain age is likely to join your pantheon of Greatest Bands of All Time. to really control for this, you'd need to have some research subjects who were shielded from canonical stuff & then exposed to it after some targeted age: does a person who's never heard the Beatles really find them that mindblowing if his first exposure to them is in his mid-thirties? etc. experiments like this will necessarily involve almost inhuman cruelty, but I'll do anything for science.

I hardly listen to anything I already know I like, outside of classical music, by the way - I consider this part of the music collector sickness, & I'm OK with that

As a possible counterpoint to kornrulez6969's post, I'm 39, single, bill and mortgage free, etc., and still seek out new music and so forth -- or even more accurately, am assisted by the fact (which still bemuses me but at the same time is kinda what I wanted, after all) that I'll have a steady stream of new music sent to me due to my work, in combination with those things I search on my own. Yet the change I experienced is less one of thinking that new stuff isn't 'my' music -- not really the case, I find -- as it is a more general redirection towards a collage of other interests, some new and some dormant then reawakened in recent years. I think the biggest change can be measured simply by the fact that years ago I would never not have something playing in the background, where over time simple silence is its own reward. The mind redirects and the results can be surprising but just as satisfying. In turn, the volcanic impact of that first hearing of "Soon" may never be repeated for me, per underrated aerosmith's posts, but I'm glad I had it rather than never having had it at all.

so do ppl stop being interested in music because they don't "connect to it the same way" anymore? i mean i freely admit nothing will mean as much to me as shit i heard when i was 17 but that doesn't stop me from seeking new stuff i might just really, really like.

Not sure if this answers your question, but I was going back through my mp3 archives from 2003/2004, maybe the last period when I totally lived for music and I have hundreds of immaculately organized folders sorted by label, artist, genre, etc. Now if I ever do download music it just joins the unregulated clusterfuck in my "Home" folder. I sold of all my CDs (thousands of them) last year, bought a new turntable and have a tiny almost portable selection of LPs (all of them bought for cheap) that I play over and over, most of it far from "new" music. I still love music, I just don't have TIME to put WORK into hearing music anymore.

But I don't feel like what's coming out now is "my" music, the way I felt about Daydream Nation, Nevermind, Slanted & Enchanted and Loveless when they all came out.

(grizzly bear would suck no matter when u heard it, tho)

xxxpost -- ha -- I totally understand why not-listening-backwards goes with "collecting" -- like it's this impulse to keep absorbing and assimilating more stuff into your world, and having a physical record of it -- but it's also kinda funny and paradoxical: if someone doesn't go back to music they already know, they can save a lot of storage space by just digesting it and then tossing or selling it

I'm sure there's a relevant borges story but I can't decide which one it would be. maybe "the book of sand"?

adamrl this is for a different thread but it's really, really easy to hear new music these days

maybe, sure

But you know, it's all shit =D

that's more like it!

I quite like that DJ Sprinkles thing

anyway...

Haha but then I was also standing in Origami the other day and marvelling that they have re-released all the Mudhoney records on vinyl! I had to convince myself that I don't really NEED to buy Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge for a second time just because I loved it when I was 14 and haven't even thought about it for over a decade. I'm sure there's plenty of new music better than that record. What have I/we become?

It's just really not that important, the whole thing. That doesn't make for interesting discussion, but that's what I think. It matters very little. People need culture and art, but exactly "how much" and which particular cultural stuff is a very open question in my mind. There are lots of ways to live. If I'm going to wring my hands over something, it's going to be people's not doing more to inform themselves about current events/politics. That's what I feel actual pressure to spend more time on. Music is mostly for kicks and for therapy (a drug, in other words).

I like for at least some people to pay attention to music, because it's something that I pay attention to and that makes something to talk about and share, but important--nah.

I'm trying to imagine what it would be like to listen to your all-time favorite music on, say, a six-year loop

I'm kinda attempting to do this - I've got a full 160gb iPod and over the last 2 years I've listened to about 35% of it. I figure it's another 3 years before I've listened to everything once (according to my play stats - I've listened to all of it at some point). I must admit the thrill of queuing up some old favorite or why-have-I-played-that-in-two-years album crowds out my bands-to-check-out R&D activities.

Music also has this social currency ,for better or for worse, if you're part of a group of people who actively listen to and discuss new music, you're more likely to seek it out. Or maybe instead you're one of the two OLD dudes broing down over OLD jungle tunes on Youtube after everyone else has left the party/fallen asleep. uhhh....=/

lol admrl

so sad to me that jungle tunes -- a genre that hadn't been invented when i was growing up -- is for the OLD crowd.

so do ppl stop being interested in music because they don't "connect to it the same way" anymore? i mean i freely admit nothing will mean as much to me as shit i heard when i was 17 but that doesn't stop me from seeking new stuff i might just really, really like.

I think this is right - that people have a certain sort of experience of music that's so transformative & self-defining that when, after awhile, no music has provided them with that experience for some time, they conclude either that music isn't as good as it used to be or that since they aren't getting from music what they used, they've outgrown it. to me both of these are kinda weird responses - there isn't a single experience aesthetic or otherwise that will be experienced the same way throughout life - food, drink, work, social life, love, everything over time will meet different needs for the person who eats/drinks/works/hangs out/loves, etc. because the person and his needs are always changing, and so his relation to the things in his life/environment also change. some of us though, having had at some point catastrophic/traumatic/peak/life-changing experiences with music, or having somehow defined ourselves in relationship to to it, always include the pursuit of new musical experiences in our overall picture. I personally don't think it's right or wrong to do so or to not do so, or that a person is "missing" anything if they decide, instead, to put their focus elsewhere, any more than I think model trains are a better habit that philately, though when I was a kid, when people would say they didn't have a favorite band or weren't that into music, they might as well have been telling me that they were from Mars and that they had been born there to their parents, Mr & Mrs The Devil

^^^this stuff is creed for me, basically - always pursue, always evolve, always be raving about something to anyone who'll listen

like, for me, discovering Cardiacs was *the* moment of scales-from-eyes wonder and it hasn't been matched per se, but instead it's been amplified and reverberated by subsequent discoveries whose brilliance is manifested in a musical consciousness heavily shaped by Cardiacs but also a myriad other wondrous bands - and my knowledge that this consciousness is ever refining, ever improving, ever broadening makes me more and more confident in my instincts, and in the fact that each new discovery is to be treasured. it's a cumulative widening of the eyes.

Okay. What I'm all about:
1. Childrearing.
2. Already love more music than I can listen to and appreciate over a five-year span.
2a. The knowledge that, as I integrate more new music into my collection, the old stuff-- that I dearly love, and that is so much a part of me still-- will get listened to less and less. And I know I would miss it.
3. The fact that much of my spare time is spent playing in a covers band-- and our musical focus is to play the songs that please the crowds who are older than I am. (!)
4. (and perhaps most important) I listen to music too intently. I can't multitask when I listen to unfamiliar music, because my mind is totally focused on the music, learning it, teasing it out, getting to the bottom of it. Which means that I can't listen to new music when I'm at work, or when I'm talking to my spouse, or when I'm spending time with my child. Which means that the amount of time I can spend listening to new music is down about 90+% from when I was in my twenties (when I had both more time to focus on new music, and better ability to do same).

xxpost -- At one point I would have agreed with that but I now think it's far more key to balance the motion with reflection. The two work in tandem.

I touch on this same stuff here.

I think it's hard to replicate the kind of attachment-forming musical experiences you have when you're a teenager or in college. It may partly be a certain loss of romanticism as you get older. Like I remember smoking up and listening to Coltrane at the Village Vanguard for the first time, and reading the liner notes, and just thinking that it was all like some great cosmic statement or something, and forcing myself to focus intently on every chorus of Chasin the Trane and getting giddy about it. It's hard for me to imagine bringing that same kind of intensity to a new musical experience now.

Certain kinds of musical drugs also just lose potency after a while, like the surprise of a jarring prog rock change or the heaviness of a fuzzed out psych riff. I mean those things are still great, but when you've heard enough of them they stop giving you the same high.

Much of the new music that I'm exposed to sounds perfectly pleasant, which is not criticism, but also points up why it doesn't stay with me. The music that stays with you isn't "perfectly pleasant"--it's NECESSARY.

I believe my view is entirely because I'm old, and the psychic space that most new music would fill (for me) is already taken up by some other, older (not necessarily better) music.

41, wife, child, mortagage, bills. Pretty sure that a lot of what made music seem so magical and compelling in my 20's was the idea that it was going to open up on some other, more interesting and wonderful and possibly technicolor, world: that if I bought the right el release I'd suddenly find myself in Paris discussing film theory with some beautiful and famous music reviewer (because music reviewers all live glamorous lives). The realization that it pretty much doesn't probably puts a bit of a damper on things.

Still seek out new stuff (bless you Rhapsody), but much more interested in filling in gaps. Kind of crazy when you realize that you could probably spend a lifetime tracking down every worthwhile release from like May through June of 1983.

*the ultimate moment of scales-from-eyes wonder, was meant to be the stress there - I've had numerous Damascene overtakings

Oh, not that I don't interleave discovery with COPIOUS re-listens! All the time I'm going back, manically repeating something, luxuriating in a brilliance I know to be there. But I never stay still for too long, and I shift my phases.

Hurting - that's the great thing! I feel mature enough to truly know the music I listen to, to appreciate how it was made, why it was made and who made it - and also revel in it as mental stimulation. I'm also keenly aware I'll never hear all the good music ever made, so these jarring changes and heavy switch-ups and whatever elses will always leap out at me in different permutations, with different narrative imports. Anything that adds vocabulary and idiom is of worth.

This discussion is making me think one of the best quotes on music I've read -- Andrew Eldritch, at the beginning of a 'ten favorite albums ever' piece for Q almost two decades back, said before he ran through his list that he had barely listened to said albums for years and years, instead noting that in his case all he had to do was look at the sleeves and everything about them (and the times spent listening to them) would come back. This is mostly where I'm at now; the newest musical obsessions I have where I am actually listening to the music are quite new indeed, for me if not necessarily general for others.

Oh man, I would love to read that, for the quote & to see what Eldritch picked!

haven't read the thread but I've always suspected my biggest chunks of music consumption (retail, library, borrowing, dl) were when I was pretty much the most miserable.

been pretty happy lately so about once a month I dig deeper into my own collection and start weeding out what I'm not super stoked on. makes the ipod less of a chore to listen to, that is for sure.

Oh man, I would love to read that, for the quote & to see what Eldritch picked!

I can't seem to find my copy of that around and initial searching online turns up nothing, which honestly is surprising me quite a bit!

Lady GaGa isn't being marketed to 40yo heteros, knowhutimean - in a lot of ways new music isn't MADE for old people. it's made by young people, written about by young people, bought by young people, the market continually demands a ferocious rate of turnover and always new new NEW stuff - you can see how this might be unapealling/uninviting to older folks

That's much less true than it used to be i think: my parents were in their 40s during the '60s, and sneered at the Beatles/ Stones etc, and by the time i got into Bowie in my early teens they were just disgusted - it would have been impossible then for people their age to grasp what was going on, I think - whereas I'm 50 this year, and while I don't buy lots of new stuff, my daughter acquires stuff, I hear it, we talk about it in the same terms. Although she find a lot of what I like to be too 'out there' .....

And I still get into new things - although more new to me, even if recorded 50 years ago, than new new.

I'm sure there's a relevant borges story but I can't decide which one it would be.

it's the Library of Babel! the first time each of those librarians found a coherent text, it was probably life-changing. and then I think this thread has already identified all the types: the ones who keep searching for a master catalog, the ones who jump down the airshafts, the ones who decide it's all just random and what's the point ...

pretty much what everyone else has said to one degree or another minus the stuff about kids but especially the bits about too much out there and limited free time i have to split between competing interests and the "high" wearing off to some degree. the junkie phase is over now; hearing something Brand New and Kinda Good no longer does shit for me. but the stuff i've heard (and continue to hear) over the years that lingers, that "has staying power" for whatever reason, i find the experience deepens with each listen. which certainly helps with the process of weeding out shasta describes above.

(you'd think this would be complicated by the fact that i get paid to write about music but once i stopped thinking that i actually got paid to "keep up" with music (versus actually writing about it) things became much, much easier (however much this is actually true given how the writing-about-music economy actually works now).)

Much of the new music that I'm exposed to sounds perfectly pleasant, which is not criticism, but also points up why it doesn't stay with me. The music that stays with you isn't "perfectly pleasant"--it's NECESSARY.

I believe my view is entirely because I'm old, and the psychic space that most new music would fill (for me) is already taken up by some other, older (not necessarily better) music.

THIS. I think this is the best summary of what I've been feeling and trying to express, thanks Slim! I still have annual experiences which either point to "Where has THIS been all my life!" or just thrilling new bands. Not nearly as often as I used to, but it still happens and the yearning for that experience keeps me going.

Kind of crazy when you realize that you could probably spend a lifetime tracking down every worthwhile release from like May through June of 1983.

This too! I'm a post-punk junkie, I just keep mining that fertile territory and little nuggets keep appearing. But this perspective is true for anyone whose interest in a particular era runs deep - look at how many garage rock comps there are out there, with more each year!

all he had to do was look at the sleeves and everything about them (and the times spent listening to them) would come back.

Lastly, this BIG TIME. At my current rate of listening I may only pull out one of my all-time top 10 albums maybe ten more times in my lifetime, that's alright. It's playing randomly in my brain all the time.

all he had to do was look at the sleeves

What's a sleeve? lol

It seems like at some point discovering the years' hottest new album or best new band, or even hearing "great new music" from any era, seems to mean less, and maybe that's because the adolescent's lust for sensation and thrills starts to fade, or the pride in being on top of the music scene and knowing what's new and good doesn't mean as much, or even make sense, when you're older.

The law of diminishing returns am i rite

Brand New and Kinda Good no longer does shit for me

Goddamn I love you all. I can't have this conversation with more than a few people in real life, they just don't understand where I'm coming from.

OTOH I have found new musical thrills in understanding what it really means to need a certain maturity to appreciate certain music. I mean I used to think this was some kind of bullshit thing like swirling wine in your mouth and naming the fruits you taste. But then at a certain age you hear a certain Joni Mitchell or Steely Dan song and say "Yes! I get this!" and it's really an amazing comfort.

I dunno, I tend to have even less patience for a lot of mature work as such now.

33, married with a 3 month old daughter, full time job, part time music business and going back to school.

At this point my life feels like I have to shove 10 pounds of crap into a five pound bag. Oddly, I feel the opposite about finding new music. I hardly have time to listen to it, so when I can find a couple hours to listen to and organize records in my studio it feels like heaven.

The flip side of that is that I cannot engage with digital media, CD's or LP's for that matter. The only format I can really get into is the single. I don't have the time or attention span to engage with larger works. When I listen to music I usually just throw on a handful of sides and listen to them.

I also find myself not engaging in new music inside of my genre as much at the moment. I think that has more to do with me not having access to a decent physical record store that stocks what I am into at the moment. I still can't get my head around download stores or getting mp3 promos of new records. If it isn't on vinyl, it isn't real to me right now. Limiting myself to vinyl is the only way I can deal with the flood of music that is out there right now.

I did come across a huge collection of dance records from 1980 to about 1996 at a local store out here recently. It came from a distributor who went under and a closed used record shop in NYC, and the records sat in a warehouse for about 15 years. I bought about eight linear feet of this collection for about two dollars a record. I feel like it is going to take me about a year to know all of these records that I bought. It feels great to dig through these records and find a great track on one of the records. The thrill is definitely still there, I just wish there was more time in my day to chase that thrill.

There is no doubt in my mind that there is a lot of great music out there and there is more being made every day. I only wish I had time to engage with more of it. I am one of those people who really needs to spend a lot of time with a piece of music before I feel like can appreciate and enjoy all the nuances of a piece of music. My listening habits were never in line with the ipod music experience. Even when I was young I felt it was better to know a few records really well, I just wish there was more time to invest in entering other people's musical worlds.

I still can't get my head around download stores or getting mp3 promos of new records. If it isn't on vinyl, it isn't real to me right now. Limiting myself to vinyl is the only way I can deal with the flood of music that is out there right now.

You actually touch upon something that has been one of my best strategies for recent years, namely knowing where to draw limits -- or rather, knowing that limits drawn, however potentially arbitrary, are often necessary to create a context and space. Not that we haven't talked about it before on here on other threads, but I've tended to apply it broadly in various areas of culture, not just musically. It's a slight recognition on my part that a little caution prevents against going off a deep end.

i think it has a lot to do with curiosity. some people maintain it about music (and fashion and other stuff deemed adolescent by people who don't care about it), and others don't.

The fashion comparison is an interesting one to me.

Obv there are some people who go from being interested in fashion to actually not caring at all - fashion becomes

entirely

And then there's a lot of people whose interest in fashion gets channelled through very functional and accordingly restrictive (even staid) channels - e.g. if you're a guy who works professionally, it's likely that your thoughts about fashion as it applies to you become more heavily focused on suits, shirts, ties etc. You might still have strong ideas of what is stylish and what is not but the broader context is one of functionalism.

more generally what you see, even with casual fashion, is that for most people as they get older their taste stops changing so much. "Youth fashion" changes heaps, but the stuff that's marketed at the 30-50 bracket (male and female) changes very little, occasionally receiving the outer ripples of some big splash elsewhere but that's about it (e.g. the 30-50 hetero male bracket have almost entirely resisted the trend back towards skinny-leg jeans and pants). These people might still care about what they wear and about looking good, and may spend as much or more on their clothes than they did when they were young, but the notion of "keeping up" with trends stops mattering so much - indeed, these people might start to talk about (or at least agree with the idea of) certain styles being "timeless".

And of course there are lots of middle-aged people who do keep up with fashion pretty obsessively, who are the fashion equiv. of adults keeping up with the charts or with generalist music magazines or websites.

And people who keep up with a particular strand of changing taste while ignoring the rest (e.g. they jumped onto the trend towards fishermen's pants 8-10 years ago but have ignored the skinny jeans trend) - these are like people who follow jazz or folk or whatevs pretty closely and almost exclusively, go to live gigs etc.

And people who seem stuck in a fashion timewarp (you know the music equiv).

But the largest group I think fall within that "timeless" category.

The commonality on both sides of the equation is that the importance of taste comes down to two possible motivants:

1) your relationship to the object of taste; and

2) changes in your own life, regardless of their relationship to the object of taste; and

Taste never stops mattering, but the need to reform or develop your taste is most urgent when your personality/life in general is in upheaval (or at least development), as per (2) above.

If/When your persona firms up, e.g. "I am Tim who works at this job and lives in this suburb and am in a long term relationship with that person" then (2) starts to recede. Your taste at that point is likely only to continue to transform on a regular basis if the firmed-up-persona already and still considers the relationship to the object of taste to be a relatively central fact of yr existence. The jazz (or whatever) fan who still keeps up with developments in jazz but ignores the rest is someone to whom "keeping up with jazz" is important but "keeping up" in general is anything but.

The justifications for not keeping up are entirely subjective of course and it comes down to utility to one's own life and the way in which taste is received and judged socially. A 50 year old guy is likely to look better in a suit than in skinny jeans and a t-shirt featuring a photo of a young river phoenix, but this is basically a matter of social convention rather than expressive of some ultimate core "truth" about fashion.

It seems like at some point discovering the years' hottest new album or best new band, or even hearing "great new music" from any era, seems to mean less, and maybe that's because the adolescent's lust for sensation and thrills starts to fade, or the pride in being on top of the music scene and knowing what's new and good doesn't mean as much, or even make sense, when you're older.

The law of diminishing returns am i rite

― Cunga, Monday, June 28, 2010 10:00 PM (21 minutes ago) Bookmark

dunno, I find that the more I learn from an era makes the whole picture of music seem richer and more fleshed out. My love is 12" dance records from 1975 to today. The more I learn about those old records, the more I enjoy the whole spectrum of dance music. The tapestry of the music gets richer and richer the more I know.

That being said, I have spend the last six years in places where my interests in music had virtually no social value whatsoever. I had to be motivated by the reward of enriching my own inner world because there was no way I could discuss my interests without seeming either pretentious or just plain weird.

I think you can love music purely for it's own sake. That being said, I don't think that is the only valid way to listen to music. There is nothing wrong with using music as a badge for your place in youth culture. There is nothing wrong with outgrowing music. Life is a great big place, it isn't anyone's place to judge others when they arrive at different destinations in life with different priorities. Do people who are super into food look down on us because we obsess over bits of plastic rather than really good local organic food?

Oh ilx I just log off for a few hours and there's now 127 comments posted in less than six hours.

I'll give a cookie to anyone who has been reading the whole thread and can tell who has posted the most OTM comments so far.

The usual suspects.

I dunno if this resonates with anyone else, but TV got really good, and it's much, much easier now to find the good TV than the good almost-anything-else.

The social capital afforded by loving music really dropped off for me after high school. I don't think it was age---as soon as I went to college, everyone was into different things besides music & so it's been a pretty personal journey since. I don't have any other pop arty interests (no tv, no film) but I notice that those buy a lot more social capital in my peer groups, i.e. you can talk about Glee or The Wire with people, but if I want to talk about e.g. Taylor Swift then I'm outta luck. (Hence why I come here.)

If/When your persona firms up, e.g. "I am Tim who works at this job and lives in this suburb and am in a long term relationship with that person" then (2) starts to recede. Your taste at that point is likely only to continue to transform on a regular basis if the firmed-up-persona already and still considers the relationship to the object of taste to be a relatively central fact of yr existence.

Great post, Tim. I would call this some kind of "comfort zone". Of course, I - try to - fight against it. Of course it's inevitable at some point. But it seems very silly, very non critical to surrender too. Does not always work, and i always end up seeing at some point i'm fooling myself, or being intellectually dishonest. I think that anyone who - or try to - resists it really can be critical at some degree.

agree very much w/ tim's point, but i think the process can perhaps be at least slightly less dependent on psychological need, on how we conceptualize ourselves. i mean, i'm a 40+ music fan, and i know that a big part of what keeps me engaged w/ new music is my desire to feel current, up-to-date, "hip", or whatever. i can't deny that. the same impulse makes me wary of nostalgia & habit, so i refuse to spend too much of my time with the music i've loved the best and longest.

but there's also the fact that, for me, the rewards of music change over time. no music is infinitely capable of providing "that feeling". it gets played out, becomes weirdly dry and distant with time. that can't be avoided, but the more i engage with new music & culture, the more i find that my entire frame of reference changes and keeps changing. i absolutely LOVED early grunge & retro garage rock in the late 80s and early 90s, and i kept that love burning for quite a while. but over the past decade or so, it's started to fade. i still like the songs i used to like, but can't help viewing the musical choices involved differently. the cock-rock excess and bombastic production that seemed so funny and intuitively correct way back when now often strike me as foolish, unimaginative and dull. same goes for richer, less formally derivative music that i loved even more: the pixies, sonic youth, etc., though in different ways and to a lesser extent.

i have changed, and so the music changes, and in doing so, almost always seems to move away from me. as a result, i can only keep myself interested by finding new things to be interested in, and i love being interested, being excited. in this regard, feeding novel ideas into the system is crucial. novelty keeps my concept of musical reality off balance, forces it to constantly reorient itself. this allows me to continually experience a shock i find pleasurable, but it also keeps me from ever becoming too comfortable in relation to older stuff. my point being that my relationship to music has at least as much to do with the function and effect of music in my life as with defending my sense of the kind of person i am.

If you've grown up equating knowledge with self-worth, which is a natural enough defense mechanism for a lot of smart, awkward kids, it can be liberating to take some time off from keeping up with the new stuff. It's a way of saying you no longer feel like you have anything to prove. (Also, taking a break from increasing your breadth of knowledge gives you time to concentrate on depth.)

Tim is otm about the relationship between stability in your life/ persona and the development of your tastes, but I think I would take it further and say that the role of your tastes in the formation of your identity is only part of the equation. Barring a soporifically comfortable life, I think fear of becoming intellectually stagnant is just as powerful a motivator as the degree to which a person's tastes are part of their identity. Once you've established the habit of turning to music for intellectual stimulation and novelty, it seems likely that devoting all your energies to simply consolidating your tastes will eventually become unsatisfying, and you'll get restless and start craving newness.

Or at least I did, anyways. By the time I finished a lengthy consolidation period in my 20s (almost no new music for two years!), I was craving novelty, strangeness, and unfamiliarity, just as contenderizer describes above. Resolving the depth (consolidation of your established tastes) vs. breadth (familiarizing yourself with new things) problem is one of the most fun parts of being "a person who really loves music", really: seeking out new things without becoming a mere follower of trends, enjoying old things without becoming stuck in the past.

I guess my comparison with fashion can imply it's all in the mind and that all choices are arbitrary and meaningless.

but of course someone actually into fashion would really contest this.

my point being that my relationship to music has at least as much to do with the function and effect of music in my life as with defending my sense of the kind of person i am.

I guess the question is where does the first part of this sentence start and the second part finish? or vice versa. "who I am" and "the function and effect of music in my life" seem pretty inextricable to me.

I dunno, I think "music as something fun to talk about with other people" ≠ "music as a definition of who I am". Which is just to say that "the function and effect of music in my life" is a pretty broad category and includes "instrumental" functions such as promoting conversation (thought of as an end in itself).

i'm surprised so much of this thread has focused on our personal reactions to music, how a song can affect us individually, rather than the importance of general cultural awareness, whereby "keeping up with music" is basically the same as "keeping up with current affairs" (given that i am - we are - people ho take an interest in culture as a general thing, not just specific bits and pieces of it)

"Keeping up with current affairs" doesn't necessarily make a person more political or a deep thinker about the world and what's going on in it. It's quite possible to have a superficial pub quiz knowledge of current events, but even then what you're usually talking about is a very specific set of talking points covered by a limited number of media. I'd argue that even a reasonably diligent news junkie only has the most partial grasp of what's going on in the world. News is a selective snapshot I think, not a mirror into how most people are living their lives on any given day.

Likewise with your idea of keeping up with what's current in music, I think. There's too much going on to really be "keeping in touch" with anything other than a slice of what's maybe relevant to you and your social/cultural circle. But that's not the whole world, and a lot of the world will be more taken up with music that's old or music that's outside of the media altogether. Defining what's "now" in music seems a very subjective and sort of doomed task to me.

I agree that a certain kind of curmudgeonly back-turning on any modern culture is usually the mark of a reactionary idiot, but culture isn't events - culture can be thousands of years old and still maintain currency, because it's shaped by whoever's using it right now.

I hardly listen to anything I already know I like, outside of classical music, by the way - I consider this part of the music collector sickness, & I'm OK with that

Heh, even when I put on old stuff I know I like it's because I can barely remember what it sounded like - up to about age 17 stuff is pretty firmly imprinted on my brain, after that it is "oh, that was a good record I bought at the same time as 10 other ok-to-good records, now what the hell did it sound like?"

think I have a special musical amnesia (gave up on learning the guitar because if a song wasn't in my head I couldn't manage to play it at all) but still, for all I can remember of most albums I go back to, I may as well be back in the record shop picking them up unheard except for one track or the vague knowledge that someone once said they were a bit like someone else

i went through a phase about 5-10 years ago (i'm 35 now) where i rarely sought out new music because there was so much out there, i had some pathological fear of buying (or buying into) the "wrong thing." i eventually concluded that it was okay to admit ignorance, be a dilettante, and like what i found pleasurable, as opposed to thinking, "i am this kind of person, i should like this music and not like this other music."

i don't know if this unusual here, but most of my irl are musicians or involved in various music scenes in different ways, so listening to music, talking about music, and going to shows is a significant part of feeling socially "connected." i've lost track of how many times i've had similar conversations with people irl as i've had (or read) on ilx.

last week, i and two other friends, both in their mid-30s were trying to understand what chillwave is. In my social circle, there's a good faith effort to be aware of what's going on in more mainstream music culture, but it isn't a priority, because most of the attention is paid to people's own work and that of their friends and peers, and folks a few steps above or below in the cultural "ecosystem." So, it's okay to not know what chillwave is, and it's okay to express curiosity about it.

Hrrmmm. Wonder if it is very much hormonal during adolescence - then is my current "OMG, I want to hear MOAR AND MOAR NEW TYPES OF MUSIKS!!!" rush that I'm on equally hormonal, due to the menopause being in the post?

i would think that menopause, for most women, does not correlate with a need to hear new music.

New experiences, though - because it often gets bundled up with Empty Nest Syndrome, and that's when yr Stereotypical Woman takes up basket-weaving, dumps their husband and flies off to Greece and other such cliches. Because my chosen experiential preference is music, that's how I experience it, perhaps?

yeah, that's just what i was thinking - pursuing one's passions? Like when my mom hit menopause it was all about taking extended learning classes about modern European history at Stanford and taking frequent trips to France and trying as many different kinds of cheese as she could.

the research into musical taste & brain chemistry that aerosmith cites upthread is discussed at length in this fascinating book:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_JbTmZQDvs7Y/SEOE-3WI6sI/AAAAAAAAA8E/dGaenZ8m9mE/s320/this+is+your+brain+on+music+daniel+levitin.jpg

^^^^ I mean to read that, after reading Oliver Sacks Musicophilia.

On a personal level: I was going to say I stopped "seeking more music" a while ago but this isn't really true...its more the way I seek music has changed...I don't 'actively seek' in a way where I MUST hear xyz. And yet since I became more languid about this, I've heard more great new music than before. I wouldn't say my approach is passive exactly but I seem to hear the things I want to hear...a new thing opens the door to some other new things, but I don't feel like I'm chasing things, they just come

i'm surprised so much of this thread has focused on our personal reactions to music, how a song can affect us individually, rather than the importance of general cultural awareness, whereby "keeping up with music" is basically the same as "keeping up with current affairs" (given that i am - we are - people ho take an interest in culture as a general thing, not just specific bits and pieces of it)

― لوووووووووووووووووووول (lex pretend),

But yes on a wider level this has come somewhat at the expense of general cultural awareness. Was talking about this with a friend the other week...there was a period of time when I did this more...but at that time felt like there was an subconscious internal pressure to have an opinion on all these things when actually I didn't have much of an opinion on them at all...ended up hearing lots of things I neither liked nor disliked

xpost

Musicophilia is v. good too, more anecdotal/personal. Levitin zeros in on the questions raised here in great detail. research indicates that the brain uses music to encode all kinds of memory. studies suggest there is a point in late adolescence/early adulthood when our physical capacity for processing new music peaks (or begins to deteriorate...)*

*wildly inaccurate paraphrase

I'm happy to let other people curate 'new music' for me, so in a few years time I can revisit and explore the cream of the crop, as it were. That's what I've been doing anyway ever since I formed my 'taste' as such - going back to influences, to find what I missed, etc. Even looking backwards can open new doors.

In any case I already do it, to a greater or lesser extent, with books (I've got a shelf full of 'em, only a few 'new' when they were purchased), movies and television (DVD box sets ahoy), so why not music?

As you can tell, I don't really care too much for 'cultural awareness'; I find I absorb enough the web and TV that I can make a passing guess at what's happening, but I don't consider that integral to my own private experience.

That should be 'enough FROM the web'

"you must keep up with music just like current affairs"

this is like knowing the football scores so you can chat with people at work or w/e

don't keep up with contemporary dance/architecture/___________

too busy keeping up with stuff i want to keep up with

Fantastic thread.

I definitely identify with the idea that your window for seismic, life-changing experiences with music closes after a certain point. But I bet it has as much to do with brain chemistry as the realistic fact that as you get older, you become more familiar with various sounds and styles. I got excited about Pavement and Sonic Youth in high school, and Stereolab and Tortoise in college, because I had never really heard anything like these bands. And it was also exciting to think that there was so much else left to explore. Now that I'm in my 30s, there's still a ton of music I haven't heard, but I've heard enough that little really blows me away as an amazing new discovery. For better or worse, I'm more able to put it into context.

I feel like I've had two phases of being a serious music fan. When I was younger and interested in identity formation, I felt like part of seeking out music was in order to refine my tastes. So once I began to gravitate toward a certain set of sounds, I only really listened to those sounds for a while. I wanted to be able to point to very specific bands and say, "This. This is me."

After college, I self-consciously tried to expand out of this dead end, but it wasn't really until I discovered ILM at age 24 that I adopted my current mp3-collector dilettantist approach. The idea of being somewhat knowledgeable about a wide variety of music and genres appealed to the librarian-archivist in me, and the technological environment of the '00s made it more possible than ever. Make no mistake, this was still identity-driven to an extent: I took a fair amount of pride in my catholicism and in challenging friends who dared to dismiss entire musical genres. At the same time, I never felt like I had enough time or energy to really dig far beyond what I discovered on a handful of blogs or websites, and lately, I have even less. I'm still hearing far more than most people I know, but at this point I'm mostly just keeping up with new releases (which are easily downloadable) rather than going out of my way to investigate older stuff I haven't heard.

i still love music but ive become kinda jaded about it, both as i find most modern pop to just be forgettable, hip hop and R&B no longer do much for me, the last big thing i was into was grime. i also find i just have less time to really get into albums like before. and i generally hate listening on my ipod as i hate mp3s (though i still do it). this is all prob just because im getting older, dont want to be as obsessed with music as i used to be when it was EVERYTHING to me and i would spend most of my days thinking about it (i find im trying to read/find out more about other arts), and also as i cant really seem to find any way of making money from working with/in music like i used to, so im probably a bit pissed off/cynical from that pov. but the music itself just doesnt do it for me like it did. apart from a few things like uk funky etc. its actually a bit sad to me how i dont spend nearly as much time listening deeply to music like i used to. but i dont want to listen only to old stuff forever, and i dont want to hear most of the new stuff cos it often feels so inessential really. decent, nice, etc, but just not that vital.

I know a lot of people who do that, they usually have satellite radio or use their television or internet radio, which is more passive but it isn't necessarily "stop seeking more". People are busy, not all of them can have music in their offices either.

My brother loves music and has it on all the time but he would rather let someone else select music for him. Is this bad??

Of course it's not "bad". It's just the idea that one doesn't seek out art but rather accepts whatever art is pushed on them makes me sad... Having said that, I'm making a huge assumption that most people passively accept anything put in front of them and that's clearly not true.

Accepts whatever is pushed on them, or embraces the element of chance and engages without prejudice? You can use whatever phrase you like, it's about some inner logic of your own, not the act of listening.

Some people "accept whatever is pushed on them" because they just enjoy the social feeling of listening to a radio and knowing that its what a bunch of other people are out there listening to. That may not be on the forefront their mind, but its probably similar to the feeling of just having a TV on to keep you company.

It's a terrible phrase, I agree. Most people are not uncritical, either.

but many are.

My brother loves music and has it on all the time but he would rather let someone else select music for him. Is this bad??

i've heard the arguments for this but personally i find it completely incomprehensible. and i especially don't get how someone who claims to love music would let someone else select it ALL the time.

cos sometimes you wanna hear the radio to see if you hear anything you dont already know.

Personally I've gone through tons of phases in my taste, so much so that the shifts don't really seem all that seismic for the most part.

I remember one specific afternoon in eighth grade I was home alone after I had moved to a very small rural town and didn't have any new friends yet; I was watching MTV2 and I saw the videos for Daft Punk - One More Time and Radiohead - Pyramid Song. I wanted to know more so I got on the internet and discovered that I could read about any band I wanted and that opened up the floodgates. I'd always loved music, but on that day I suddenly became obsessed with reading about and discovering new music. It was a very personal thing and my social circle never really grew all that much so my tastes were pretty free to evolve as I became bored, rather than certain sounds becoming deeply tangled up with my persona, although the act of constantly discovering new music, and particularly always having something to put on that "felt right" for that moment or mood did become part of my identity. I devoured all different shades of punk along with various off-shoots of catchy rock-based music, then I discovered indie and post-punk, then I started delving into bits of electronica (Aphex Twin obv, Daft Punk, Ellen Allien, Basement Jaxx) and hip hop and grime.

In college I discovered ILM and parties, both of which presented a new way of engaging with music. I started gravitating towards things that worked well in a social context, DFA and such, and I fell in love with the sound of music with disco in its DNA. This led me to Get Physical and minimal house, and from there I've been forging through loosely disco-based music ever since(I define it that way because I find that when electronic dance music strays from the relatively slower tempos and regular beat of disco/house I tend to lose interest,) with detours into ambient, kraut, pop, hip hop, soul, afrobeat, etc. I haven't had any interest in aggressive rock music since high school, though, and looking back that feels like the least "me" thing I was ever into.

Sorry if that was a long, boring way of answering the thread question, but I feel like looking at the narrative and method of one's engagement with music goes a long way towards explaining why and how people stop feeling like music is all that vital to their life. I think the brain chemistry thing is part of it, but like Tim F said, it isn't specific to music really. I think people just come upon a certain definition of themselves and a habitual way of relating to the world and whether or not discovering new music is a part of that is somewhat incidental. Personally it would take too many words to tease out exactly why finding new music is still important to me, but a big part of it is that I'm just generally fascinated by how music can effect my perception of the world. I'm interested in how the combination of music and visuals (visuals being the world around me) makes me feel. Similar to how a movie soundtrack gives the audience cues for how to feel about a scene. It sounds weird, and maybe overly simplistic, but I love the effect of music and natural light together.

I remember one specific afternoon in eighth grade I was home alone after I had moved to a very small rural town and didn't have any new friends yet; I was watching MTV2 and I saw the videos for Daft Punk - One More Time and Radiohead - Pyramid Song. I wanted to know more so I got on the internet and discovered that I could read about any band I wanted and that opened up the floodgates.

Stories like this have been told before but I enjoy hearing them all the more now, since by default this was very different to my own experience and approach to discovering music. I will be interested to see how this shift continues to play out now with the eighth graders of today and how they're finding out and what that results in.

As others have said above, I'm still interested in hearing new music but it's likely to be new old music, i.e. old stuff that I haven't heard before rather than stuff being made today. My suspicion is that there is already enough music in the world and I'm not convinced that there is a need for any more.

Every time I vaguely think something like that the pieces get put together in a different way again.

also music is not produced in a vacuum, and i don't live in the 1970s, so ideally i'm always going to be looking for something that both comments on and reflects the culture of the moment, if only to help make sense of it. (it helps if it sounds good, too.)

I hate to argue nothing-new-under-the-sun, but I do think at some point you start to feel, if not that you've heard it all, at least that you've heard most of it before. I remember when I was getting into the Chicago Thrill Jockey type stuff for the first time I read negative reviews of Isotope 217 complaining that they sounded like watered-down 70s Miles Davis. At the time I thought the reviewers were a bunch of cranks, but I hadn't really fully delved into the 70s Miles catalog either. At this point I still think those reviewers were wrong, but I sort of understand where they were coming from. I'm increasingly skeptical of claims that a band is doing something genuinely fresh as I tend to be disappointed by those claims 99 times out of 100. A lot of new music, particularly in the indie vein, seems to do superficial sonic variations on a tired formula. Not to say that there isn't new music that sounds genuinely new. Dirty Projectors certainly sounded fresh to me, e.g. Occasionally new hip-hop sounds fresh to me.

I gotta admit I've never understood people like that. I have no clue why anyone would close their ears to new sounds.

new is not necessarily better. hip hop sounds like shit these days imho

I gotta admit I've never understood people like that. I have no clue why anyone would close their ears to new sounds.

― ImprovSpirit, Tuesday, June 29, 2010 12:16 PM Bookmark

Yeah. Probably better to just ignore an entire thread of insights into the phenomenon so we can go on feeling clever classless and free huh?

lex's brave efforts to soldier on under the delusion that paying attention to pop charts is somehow essential to maintaining a connection to other people/the larger social world never fails to amuse

its not that i think ive heard it before, i havent, but ive heard it better. lots of hip hop/pop/R&B sounds brand spanking new cos of the tech theyre using but it doesnt mean its not shit.

Hurting 2 should definitely enlighten us all as to what we feel. I had no idea I felt those things & I am definitely refreshed and uplifted by this knowledge.

I haven't read this whole thread so sorry if this is redundant but this is really just all about identity, right? Like a certain small group of people self-identify as being "really into music" and part of that identity is the idea that you keep up on all the new music and have something to say about all the new bands. But often people's identities change over time and they change so that there are things they consider more important to their lives and their self-conceptions than making the effort to listen to every single new band. My wife is like this, she loves music and sometimes she'll latch on to some new band I'm listening to but if left to her own devices she'd pretty much just listen to the Pixies and Throwing Muses and other stuff she liked in college. Over the past few years, she's been a lot more interested in getting pregnant and being a good mom, and I think her dominant identity right now is "mother to be" rather than "music fan," which seems healthy and normal. It's not really that unusual to change as a person over time.

Personally, I kinda quit paying attention to music around ten years ago when I started playing in my own bands and getting involved in the local music scene. Over that time I'v pretty much focused all my attention on local artists, CDr releases, 7"s, 3 or 4 gigs a week, etc. Some of my high school favorites I still keep track of (Flaming Lips for example) but I really haven't heard anything that interested me as much as something one of my friends made.

On that note, I can see if I ever have a kid or end up with a full-time job again, I'll probably slip away from those connections.

re: levitin's this is your brain on music, i'm a big fan of dumbed-down-for-masses books but in this case, I think it might be worth seeking out the primary sources --
I don't know if Levitin still teaches, but if you can get ahold of his course materials, they are a lot richer without being harder to digest.

Well, the reason I'm interested in the Levitin book is because I read the Sacks book (which was a lot of primary source type stuff) and found it almost too dense and technical in places. (And I'm a happy devourer of quite technical SCIENCE! books.) So I kinda want to read the dumbed down populist version as well.

the Levitin book is good if dry in spots.

i've definitely had periods of not being interested in any new music at all, but lately i've been genuinely enjoying "keeping up", and i that's due to 1) trying to finish a record over the past year made me feel like i had some sort of stake in what's going on, at least in certain niches, and 2) being discerning about the full-length records i actually listen to. it's easier than ever to check out one or two tracks from a band, but if i torrented everything just because it might be interesting i would go f'n insane from the media overload. i've really been enjoying getting one or two records a month that i'm pretty sure i'll be really into, and actually listening to them (like in high school, kinda).

I haven't read this whole thread so sorry if this is redundant but this is really just all about identity, right?

see i don't really agree w/this in the sense that you are talking about--music is v. personal for me, i really only listen to it while alone, almost never talk about it irl with my gf or anyone else, don't feel the need to "keep up" so i'm part of something or have something to say--it's p. much just a fulfilling hobby for me and something to do when i walk or drive somewhere. i guess if you ask ppl who know me they all know i have fucktons of records but i don't feel like my "identity" is tied up in that.

I kind of disliked the Levitin book? Seemed too basic.

there was a tapeop interview with Levitin that was pretty good -- and his college lectures were good as well, without being overly technical -- to the point that I wished he had released a compilation of things like that instead of the book.

...its also good to know that I was hallucinating when I read the thread, determining that there's likely as many reasons why this happens as there are people who fall into the trap.

Many become occupied with "life" & don't have the time and/or $ to explore for good new music or they lose interest during the "children's music" phase many go through trying to entertain the kids. Some stop caring & just listen to whatever is on the radio or TV & are highly unlikely to come across college stations that might hit'em with something new that catches their ear. Like any other facet of life, music is subject to fundamentalist attitudes & the closed-mindedness that goes along with it. Some prolly think they're staying current, like when an Allman Brothers fan listens to Gov't Mule even though the new generation may not be really offering anything 'new' in any real sense. Perhaps they hail from an era where it was a bit easier to tell where artistic lines were drawn: A Jerry Lee Lewis fan who hears someone described as 'rock & roll' in the late '50s. A record filed under 'punk' next to the Ramones LP you bought & loved. So, you go to the record emporium and buy a record with 'long-haired freaky people' on it like The Mothers of Invention or Black Oak Arkansas, only to find out that they play 'new age' or Bavarian wedding music & you become a bit gun-shy about experimentation. For some, despite appearances, music was never anything more than sonic room-spray anyway & the lack of true engagement becomes harder to conceal as time goes by... I'm sure I'm overlooking a myriad other possibilities.

I haven't read this whole thread so sorry if this is redundant but this is really just all about identity, right?

Yeah, this is maybe an obvious point but OTM. I think the period in which I was most passionate about keeping up with music was about five years ago, when I was getting the majority of my social and intellectual stimulation from music: listening to it, playing it, talking about it, writing about it. (I was in a band, I had a music blog, I wrote for a music website, I wasted time on three separate music message boards.) Being into music was simply a big part of who I was, more so than it was ever was before and after.

@ ImprovSpirit: I think you're painting a kind of simplistic picture of things, and one that certainly isn't going to apply to most ILM posters in any case. What I'm getting at is that I'm a person who would enthusiastically check out Bavarian Wedding Music, new age, or whatever, and yet I still find myself less enthusiastic about checking out new music than I was even five years ago. Yes, some of this is rejiggered priorities (I'm married and have chosen a fairly demanding career), and some of it is a bit of a thrill-is-gone feeling. But it's certainly not that "music was never anything more than sonic room-spray anyway & the lack of true engagement becomes harder to conceal as time goes by" -- in fact I think this is a pretty condescending thing to say about anyone who purports to enjoy music, as though anyone who hasn't trawled the Secret Museum of Mankind and the ESPDisk catalog is some kind of phony who doesn't "really" enjoy music.

jaymc: if you don't mind my asking, what changed?

see i don't really agree w/this in the sense that you are talking about--music is v. personal for me, i really only listen to it while alone, almost never talk about it irl with my gf or anyone else, don't feel the need to "keep up" so i'm part of something or have something to say--it's p. much just a fulfilling hobby for me and something to do when i walk or drive somewhere. i guess if you ask ppl who know me they all know i have fucktons of records but i don't feel like my "identity" is tied up in that.

― call all destroyer, Tuesday, June 29, 2010 12:57 PM (1 hour ago)

wait, but you obviously do "keep up" to some degree though?

yeah, i mean i "keep up" because i need new stuff to listen to, not because it validates my participation in culture or some such nonsense

got it

jaymc: if you don't mind my asking, what changed?

Do you mean what changed to get to that point, or what's changed since?

Being into music was simply a big part of who I was, more so than it was ever was before and after.

Just curious what changed to make music less a part of who you are.

I also must admit that I have not read this entire thread, but totally will when I have a spare hour. Lots of interesting insight on a phenomena I've noticed in a lot of my friends over the past 8 - 10 years.

I've never really felt bad about not being as into music as I was as a teen. At that point, I was dropping all expendable income (which was 100% of my income) on music. This decreased when I got to college, b/c I didn't have to pay for it as much (loldouble-deck cassettes and high speed dubbing) and then again with the proliferation of recordable digital music, and then with the internet and file sharing, etc. If I look at it, I probably get the same amount of new music as I did back then, but I've got so much more to do with my days that sitting pondering the lyrics of a new release for an hour is something I (unfortunately) cannot engage in.

Along with that, I try to not pigeon-hole myself and avoid whole areas of music. If I ever find myself doing so, my reaction is typically to seek out someone who is into that music, ask them for some recs, and do some listening, and I can invariably find something I enjoy about it. From this, I've sort of moved into a brain space where I don't feel bad about missing some music or not hearing some particular artist prior to my hearing them. In other words, if having heard a certain artist or album or track is taken as a sign of status by someone, it isn't by me. If the music is meant to come to my ears, it will, at some point.

NOW, all of this being said: Music is easily my favorite pastime, apart from the love act (digression, quickly avoided). Playing it, hearing it, discussing it . . . I cannot point to any other thing which has brought me so much joy, satisfaction and pure benefit to my life as much as music has. Its THIS last statement which keeps me constantly wanting to learn new music, hear new music, play new music, and I all-too-often find myself at the end of a week thinking "I haven't picked up my guitar in HOW LONG? CHRIST, why don't I just sell them and get a few new suits or something?" ( THIS WILL NEVER HAPPEN )

So, I guess the insistent voracity with which I previously acquired new music has been tempered by life, and this bears noting, because it is easily identified as my favorite thing, and I cannot think of my life without it. Therefore, I am reminded to check and see if there's something ELSE out there that I might like.

to that end, check out www.kusf.org for archives of some pretty great radio shows. At least one iLXor with whom I share parents is a dj there, and his show by itself has turned me on to some AMAZING stuff in the past six months. Big up!

Just curious what changed to make music less a part of who you are.

Well, I do still think it's a big part of me. But I'm not as consumed with it as I once was. Basically what happened: Got into a long-term relationship, became more invested in my day job, quit the band I was in, realized I wasn't cut out to write about music professionally, became interested in things like politics and TV shows and beer and crossword puzzles, etc. In some ways, I feel like music just happened to be the thing that I latched onto at a particular time in my life when I was looking to latch onto something.

yeah, that makes complete sense. I feel the same way, basically; I'm still really interested in music, but there are other things that I want to start paying more serious attention to, and doing that will make it so that I spend less time focused on music

Pretty much what happened over here.

@ Hurting 2: I didn't say you were one of those people, however I do think its a possibility that such people exist & it may contribute to an explanation of the overall issue. The theoretical person who got the Bavarian wedding music record had to play it (check it out) in order to find out it wasn't what he thought it was going to be. My point was that next time he/she is browsing, they may be less likely to experiment in any way & increasingly so as time goes by. I stand behind the possibility that such things could erode one's desire to experiment over time. My simplistic point was that its (ironically) extremely complex & I suspect there may be a relatively small number of people who have lost interest in music frequenting ILM in the first place. I have to say I do contend that people who have trawled the ESP Disk catalogue are more likely to be "really" into music than those who haven't, in very much the same way people people who are interested & curious enough to explore for obscure gems in ANY field would likely enjoy that field more. I don't see that as condescending. In fact it just sorta makes sense to me.

It's almost worth a separate thread: does bachelorhood affect consumption? As a single man I've more time to spend watching movies, reading, and listening to music than I would, presumably, if I had to share time with another guy; yet I don't have to worry about children or pleasing each other's families, so maybe my life won't change much?

(xxxp to myself:) (Which is not to say that it was totally arbitrary. I mean, I've always been into music, but becoming interested in lots of different kinds of music, as well as music criticism/discourse, was particularly useful for me in my mid-20s: as a subject for writing I wanted to engage in, as a social avenue, etc.)

i spend a lot less time on books, movies, and video games than i did before i was in my current relationship, but i mostly listen to music on the way to work and at work, so that hasn't been affected much.

It's almost worth a separate thread: does bachelorhood affect consumption? As a single man I've more time to spend watching movies, reading, and listening to music than I would, presumably, if I had to share time with another guy; yet I don't have to worry about children or pleasing each other's families, so maybe my life won't change much?

― Filmmaker, Author, Radio Host Stephen Baldwin (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, June 29, 2010 2:50 PM Bookmark

I'm sure this is the case unless you happen to find a partner who is both as into consuming culture as you are AND into consuming the same kind of culture. It can be as simple as the fact that if you live with someone, you're less likely to put on music that the other person doesn't like while doing the dishes, and simple things like that cut into the total amount of time you spend on music you like. I also find that listening to music around someone that I know is not as into it as I am lessens my own enjoyment of it - almost as though I partly hear it through their ears. On the flipside, however, I consume a lot more contemporary art than I used to, which is great in its own right.

almost as though I partly hear it through their ears

totally true

It's almost worth a separate thread: does bachelorhood affect consumption?

Certainly doesn't hurt.

Partly true – I can't enjoy the experience because I'm nervous watching them, and if they're interested in music their comments matter.

TS: subjecting significant other to unloved music via speakers vs. neglecting/ignoring significant other while wearing headphones

It's almost worth a separate thread: does bachelorhood affect consumption?

In my case, most definitely. Before I started dating my girlfriend, I would stay up until ungodly hours downloading stuff and drunkenly posting on ILM. I also used to go to sleep listening to music, and I teased my girlfriend, several months into our relationship, that I wasn't getting into as many ambient/electronic albums anymore because my ideal venue for listening to them was in bed. Of course, I still play music around the house a lot, and there are bands that we both like and listen to together, but she's by no means as much of a music-nerd as I am, so we end up also devoting time to things like cooking or watching TV (both of which I rarely engaged in when I was single).

Partly true – I can't enjoy the experience because I'm nervous watching them, and if they're interested in music their comments matter.

Tom Ewing's most recent Pitchfork column:

There's a kind of experience I think every music fan has had. I call it the "bad ears": It's a kind of one-on-one Wyatting, and it's what happens when the assumptions you make flip over and leave you the one vulnerable. It's when you're with a friend, and you play them some music you like and you want them to like too. They don't say anything. And suddenly you're hearing it with the bad ears: Every pretension, every flaw in the music becomes utterly obvious to you. The lines you thought were terrific are revealed as facile. The lines you thought were lovably dumb are chasms of embarrassment. The song ends. You want to vanish. And your friend smiles and says "Yeah, that was good," and then it's their turn.

you're less likely to put on music that the other person doesn't like while doing the dishes

^^^ or reading, or playing with the baby, or anything really. I have a night or two a month where after the family is asleep I have a couple beers, put on the headphones and either listen to old LPs/CDs, or (rarer) some new music I've acquired.

The rest of the time I probably have the Nat King Cole Trio on.

It's almost worth a separate thread: does bachelorhood affect consumption?

Totally. One hundred percent.

Not necessarily the AMOUNT of consumption, but the TYPE, for sure. When you are in a relationship with another person, and especially when you share living space with them, you cannot help but have your consumption patterns/amounts affected by that sharing.

I play a lot less video games than I used to. I also go to a lot less live shows than I used to. This begins to change tonight. TONIGHT, I SAY! well, at least with regards to music. Its going to be on all the time, from now on. Period.

Foot. Put. DOWN.

It's when you're with a friend, and you play them some music you like and you want them to like too. They don't say anything. And suddenly you're hearing it with the bad ears: Every pretension, every flaw in the music becomes utterly obvious to you. The lines you thought were terrific are revealed as facile. The lines you thought were lovably dumb are chasms of embarrassment.

Yes, this. And that in turn makes me think that ALL musical experience requires that you 'buy in' to a certain extent, like you have to allow yourself to get into a certain trance and the wrong influence breaks the trance.

Really? Is this a gender thing? If I'm doing the dishes, I'm gonna listen to whatever the fuck I want.

oh there's definitely things my wife will complain about having to listen to. Steely Dan, for example.

(otoh I complain whenever she makes me listen to AC/DC so it's all good)

a kid in the equation alters things even further - loads of hip hop is basically totally inappropriate for anyone under the age of like 14 or 15

xxpost

Heh, my wife too. She told me to save the Dan for Jack and Larry's wild night out at the Regal Beagle.

lololol

There's a kind of experience I think every music fan has had. I call it the "bad ears":

multiply x10 when it's your own music

I don't know if it's a "trance" so much that after the initial period of evaluation I get ever so slightly complacent, which is when a fresh pair of ears helps.

xxpost

multiply x10 when it's your own music

Part of why I love the new C4n4st4 album is that I get the simple pleasure of hearing something I wrote without the self-conscious anxiety of hearing something I played/recorded.

TS: subjecting significant other to unloved music via speakers vs. neglecting/ignoring significant other while wearing headphones

Why take sides? Do both!

Ok, well I do the latter when the Mrs is watching Oprah, and it's cool. When we're in a shared space with music playing I make sure it's something that she likes or at least is spouse-appropriate, i.e. The Fall is right out.

I count myself lucky that the wife digs the Fall, Beefheart, metal of all sorts (altho particularly Sabbath, 80s stuff, and drone metal), the Bee Gees, Kool Keith, etc. the list of stuff she hates to listen to is pretty short actually

re. bachelorhood/consumption of music: no significant change for me. Neither with fatherhood. My consumption of tv & film has been basically zero since what would become my marriage began, though, so I guess that's the tradeoff I made (and ffs that's not the usual "I don't own a tv" brag, I think).

xp haha the only album my wife has ever told me to turn off was Trout Mask Replica.

my wife won't stand for much twee indie shit - Belle & Sebastian elicits howls of derision

We do better if metal and jazz (aka "doobie doobie music") stay on the headphones.

xpost -- You should heed your wife's wisdom.

yeah my wife has very low jazz tolerance too, with a couple exceptions (Miles, some Sun Ra stuff, Alice Coltrane)

sorry to turn this thread into "things my wife likes" carry on

Anything overly guitar-wanky / prog, bar Hendrix, gets snorted at, and probably rightly so, by my wife. No Zep, no Floyd, definitely no Steely Dan.

I've read this thread with great interest and, unsurprisingly, with an awful lot of identification, especially with jaymc's posts.

Ooh, David Villa.

We bought a house and moved in together nearly three years ago, at exactly the same time as Stylus ceased publication, near enough. This was then followed by about 18 months of career he'll for me, which I only emerged from about 4 months ago properly. I now have a "serious" job that requires me to not piss about on the Internet all day or sit in a giant library basement in my own listening to whateverthefuck I want during the day. For about a year after house/Stylus I gave up on new music and was very down about that; now I've reached a kind of equilibrium, which I'm very, very happy with. I don't listen to as much music as I did five years ago, but I watch more films, more TV, I cook, I go on more bike rides, I did a charity run the other week - all stuff that, while I was being a music monster, i couldn't and wouldn't have ever done. And, bar a couple of small things, I'm the happiest I've probably ever been. Between us my wife and I have bought 20+ albums released this year. I think that's a good amount. Even when I was monstering my most, end of 2004" I was always concerned about getting value out of music, listening to it enough to not feel that it was... trivialized.

I remember a few years ago being really upset and disillusioned when Freaky Trigger started the parallel food and travel and art and sport blogs, as if Tom et al had somehow betrayed music... Or not music so much as... The purity of being a music fan. But, as has been mentioned, a lot of music fandom is about identity and my identity then was as a music journalist, pretty much. My day job was untaxing and low paid and I defined my achievements by what we were doing at Stylus, I guess. These days, well, I just gave up writing about music after Stylus, for various reasons.

One of them being that, right now, I'm watching the football with the sound down and listening to the Owen Pallett album and posting to ILM via an iPad on my lap. I haven't got the time now that I used to. I don't know how. My job still starts at 9 and finishes just after 5. I guess I make twompeople sandwiches each day, and cook dinner each day, and feed cats, and water tomato plants, and cycle to Sainsburys for breakfast cereal (with headphones on) (on the cycle path at least, not on the road!). I like to talk to my wife. I pretty much watched no television from 1998 when I went to university until 2007. Now i watch... Not a lot, but a lot more than none.

I don't feel any pressure to keep up anymore, but there is still a desire there. I've never been quite the voracious seeker of new sounds that other compatriots were - for me writing about music was always more about fathoming my own existing tastes or enthusing things than about discovery - and i guess that's an influence.

My new boss is an ex music writer too. We have very similar taste, and occasionally geek out about Four Tet or Can or whatever after meetings. We did a music quiz together the other week and took it super seriously (and won by some distance, thankfully!). We vaguely talked about getting a show together on the very local community radio station. I'd never have considered doing anything quite so fun when I was still a monster. I wonder why.

My ex complained that my music was all "boppy". My wife complains about "whiny guitars". (she's probably very much in line with a certain strain of ILM thought on that one).

xpost -- Hahah I like your random World Cup interruption there.

Em's got money on Villa being top scorer, on my advice. I'm invested here!

Another batchelor here. The hours I am able to indulge in listening to music are probably incredible to most people in a relationship - basically music is playing any moment I am awake and not at work.

Might be related to this: one of the best sensations I know is when you're just getting to know your next favourite new album, you can't quite consciously remember the songs yet but you wake up in the morning with snatches of them running through your mind.

Also I love to burn out a new favourite album, completely overplay it - because I know another one will be along soon. There's no shortage of music to fall in love with.

xxpost my wife and I have the same taste but she can't stand the Dan either. i think its a gal thang

oh there's definitely things my wife will complain about having to listen to. Steely Dan, for example.

― insert your favorite discriminatory practice here (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, June 29, 2010 1:24 PM

Aren't you the guy who said his wife tended to listen to her box set of The Police only when he wasn't around, or was that someone else?

How music has changed since I am in a long-term relationship: I still listen to it, seek out new stuff, with a proportionate amount of passion & energy. I just don't do as many obsessive things surrounding that hobby. So I used to make a mix CD every month of every song I liked from that month (it seemed nice to have some empirical token of I'm Really Listening), and whenever I had a spare moment I'd sit around writing lists in a notebook of songs I liked, or songs of X kind of theme, etc. Lists. Or I'd draw charts or graphs about songs. I realized the other day that I haven't done any of that stuff in a couple years. I don't think that makes me less into music, though.

Aren't you the guy who said his wife tended to listen to her box set of The Police only when he wasn't around, or was that someone else?

oh yeah AC/DC and the Police are perennial bones of contention between us tis true

I've been following this thread and meaning to post since yesterday...all the comments about relationships and musical first loves and only having so much time for everything also speak to my situation.

At the moment I'm not really seeking out any new music, but at the beginning of the year I went through a voracious phase of loading 20 albums at a time on Spotify and making financially irresponsible batch album purchases. I'm sure the desire will drift back but right now my spare thoughts are focused on planning my next camping trip or working out a better way of stopping the earwigs from eating my bean plants rather than hearing every album on Olde English Spelling Bee. I've been passionate about music for about 15 years now, it seems strange to think that there's a virtue in never shifting my focus to things I know less about. I have accumulated more musical knowledge over the years than is socially acceptable, but pretty much everyone on my street knows more about gardening than I do - suggesting I should put more energy into the latter than the former.

Another reason people tend to get less interested in new music---when you start discovering all these bands, everybody in them is much older and presumably much cooler than you are. Some of them are from another generation entirely like John Lennon/Bob Dylan.

But then as you get older, the bands become closer to your age. Then younger. It gets really depressing when the bands that are considered "old" are all made up of people fucking ten years younger than you are.

Ten years? Try twenty...or more.

i was pleasantly surprised to note that the bands who made my three favourite records of last year are all older than me (and i'm no spring chicken). i'm pretty sure that's coincidental..

Paul Weller is older than me, so everything's ok in 2010...