Still searching for that feeling I had in 1972...

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Not me, obviously, I wasn't born.

Billy Dods sez on the dishonesty thread that music fans hear a couple of key records in their teens and spend the rest of their listening lives looking for 'that feeling' again.

Is this true for you? Isn't it a bit depressing if so? Does this idea work for anything apart from pop music?

(do not answer if you are a teen heh)

― Tom (Groke), Thursday, 21 November 2002 15:54 (twenty-three years ago)

The title quote is a misquote, I know.

― Tom (Groke), Thursday, 21 November 2002 16:06 (twenty-three years ago)

I believe it. Its true, there are some great albums you heard when you were younger that when you were "discovering" music made you feel amazing. Good albums that can make you feel that way now are few and far between. I guess maybe it had to do with the age you where when you heard them. I mean when I was seventeen and heard "Death of Cool" I was blow away it had everything I was searching for, love, loss....so on and so on. It felt like it was my life. PLus, all the teenie crushes and so on, sometimes the albums just went with your life back then. Same with "Down Colorful Hill" by Red House Painters in college. I was living this album. Depressed and sad, the album spoke to me it gave me that "feeling". In fact the album made me feel better. Now a days, its really hard to get that feeling from an Eminem or Christina Aguilera album, I just feel that a lot of the music that comes out now lacks any realism or soul. Now, music from the 50's and 60's, thats where the real soul and heart was.

― Chris V. (Chris V), Thursday, 21 November 2002 16:07 (twenty-three years ago)

at 13-16 i was listening to: nirvana, husker du, superchunk, etc etc.

so christ i hope not.

(of course at 11-12 i heard public enemy which totally fuXoRs my answer above, fits snugly with billy's theory and thoroughly depresses me.)

― jess (dubplatestyle), Thursday, 21 November 2002 16:07 (twenty-three years ago)

I was ten years old and I had just seen Belinda Carlisle.for the first time. And here was this woman unlike any other woman I had ever seen. It was then I realized that women were for me. It wasn?t until I was seventeen that women realized I was for them?.

― Chris V. (Chris V), Thursday, 21 November 2002 16:13 (twenty-three years ago)

If I hadn't felt *that* excitement at some point, why would I be a music fan (as opposed to a casual listener)?

― Tim (Tim), Thursday, 21 November 2002 16:14 (twenty-three years ago)

I'm not querying the big bang, Tim, just the heat death.

How's the states?

― Tom (Groke), Thursday, 21 November 2002 16:18 (twenty-three years ago)

The states are wonderful, I'm in all sorts of them.

So you're saying that BIlly means we search and gain only diminishing returns? Because I don't think that's right.

― Tim (Tim), Thursday, 21 November 2002 16:23 (twenty-three years ago)

I was going to start a thread based on this same topic, but I thought the idea came from the Bruce Springsteen thread. No matter. Anyway, the answer is yes, but it's too painful to elaborate. And it sure doesn't only go for music. What a drag it is getting old.

― Sean (Sean), Thursday, 21 November 2002 16:23 (twenty-three years ago)

I still get that feeling from music today. What I used to feel as an adolescent that I no longer feel is the self-righteous smugness that came from believeing that I had elite tastes in music. Not many kids my age in the midwest US were listening to Cabaret Voltaire, Depeche Mode, Dead Kennedys, etc.

― A. C. Aiken, Thursday, 21 November 2002 16:25 (twenty-three years ago)

I think it's pretty much true - the rushes I got from Double Barrel and Hot Love in 1971 are the reasons I'm here on ILX right now, and the reason that I still listen to and buy music today. I got the same feelings from Blockbuster in 1973, You to Me Are Everything in 1976, Le Freak in 1978, Love Action in 1981 etc.... it doesn't matter what the record is. I guess it's true that with every record I buy I'm *hoping* that I'll feel the same. Prolly last happened with Freak Like Me.

― Dr. C (Dr. C), Thursday, 21 November 2002 16:32 (twenty-three years ago)

I could best describe the feeling as 'I can't wait to tell my friends about THIS'

― Dr. C (Dr. C), Thursday, 21 November 2002 16:34 (twenty-three years ago)

I guess im lying, I do get feelings from music now, im just cranky. But I guess a lot of the stuff I listened to when I was younger had a more profound affect on me then with all the stuff I was going through. Music pulled me through a lot of ruts, it was my drug. Now, I do still get the feelings but they're not as strong as it was back then, except for certain songs.

― Chris V. (Chris V), Thursday, 21 November 2002 16:37 (twenty-three years ago)

I aspire to Dr. C's state but often find myself in Chris's. It's no secret that my Fave All Time Tune ever is eleven years old and that nothing's touched it since in my squelching brain, but I still do find things to enjoy and get intrigued by and even overplay. ;-) 'That feeling' happens as it does.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 21 November 2002 16:43 (twenty-three years ago)

True for me, I think - but I'd find it more depressing if I'd never had 'that feeling' in the first place.
The 'big bang' vs 'heat death' is only as valid as in other areas of emotional life - and there's something fundamentally puritanical and innocence-through-ignorance about it, like all that Ally McBeal 'first love = one true love' guff.
Making more informed judgements might not be seen as a loss of anything worth holding onto in the first place - but I'm still undecided.

(The 25th anniversary of that period is imminent for me actually - time to hit the drink, play the records/tapes, and celebrate the memory...)

― Snowy Mann (rdmanston), Thursday, 21 November 2002 16:48 (twenty-three years ago)

For me as long as there's stuff that's *new to me* that gives me the buzz I don't care when it was released. There's loads of stuff I missed along the way, and with everything ever being available now it's easy to find things.

The important thing for me is that I can still get the buzz somehow.

― Dr. C (Dr. C), Thursday, 21 November 2002 16:50 (twenty-three years ago)

I guess what I'm interested in - has anyone found new kinds of buzzes that are different from the initial buzz (whatever it was)? How have the satisfactions you get from music changed?

― Tom (Groke), Thursday, 21 November 2002 16:53 (twenty-three years ago)

Isn't that where drugs and drink come in? (seriously)

― Yancey (ystrickler), Thursday, 21 November 2002 16:57 (twenty-three years ago)

discovering rave @ 16-17 was certainly a different buzz than both my early pop luv and my early teenage indie luv. and essentially it led me down the straggly path i've been on to this day.

(but you could also make an argument that it's merely an extension of my love for jacked-up beats and weird, semi-dissonant noises that developed at 11-12 with p.e.)

ilm, of course, was a big new buzz too.

― jess (dubplatestyle), Thursday, 21 November 2002 16:57 (twenty-three years ago)

wow, I just got the feeling from Rupert Holmes "The Pina Colada Song"

― Chris V. (Chris V), Thursday, 21 November 2002 16:58 (twenty-three years ago)

Isn't the next step making music more of a social exercise? When I was a wee teen listening to music consisted of a walkman or locking myself in my room. But as I got older I started going to shows, raves and even playing in a band. I think that's a huge step, that really shifts perceptions.

― Yancey (ystrickler), Thursday, 21 November 2002 17:07 (twenty-three years ago)

AC I felt much the same - but if it can be proven by science to have been true I've always seen it as 'righteous' smugness, not 'self-righteous'. Maybe that stage of feeling 'different' is one of the things music should make you feel happy about, rather than only acting as a soundtrack for your social life or some 'lets all get together and feel alienated' deal.
('I can't wait to KEEP THIS TO MYSELF' is unfortunately an angle with a built-in self-destruct embitterment button given the nature of the enterprise.....)

― Snowy Mann (rdmanston), Thursday, 21 November 2002 17:08 (twenty-three years ago)

I think you diversify - I'd be hard pushed to think of any great lps I heard this year (lots of good stray mp3s tho), but I saw a number of fantastic films, discovered writers I never knew about, started studying again and fell in love. I think the mistake is to presume that you are always going find the buzz of the new in pop music. But I have no doubt that next year, or whenever, it'll start to intrigue me again.

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Thursday, 21 November 2002 17:08 (twenty-three years ago)

Fri*nds R*united to thread.

― Snowy Mann (rdmanston), Thursday, 21 November 2002 17:08 (twenty-three years ago)

How have the satisfactions you get from music changed?

They became less 'holistic' and metaphorical, less sort of 'gestalt', less a means of interpreting the world - they became fragmented, multidimensional, analytical, socially connected, and yes, compromised.

Trying to actually write music made me listen to it in a craftier way. I don't know whether this is ever undo-able - and can't remember whether there's any advantage to the earlier way of hearing.

Living in a culture where it has became more utilitarian and pervasive than ever has reduced my appreciation and 'respect' for the whole thing. (MIDI systems as train sets + 'You're never more than 12ft from a DJ')

The whole TV-isation of the process, and the 'pop/celebrity' aesthetic/magazine culture: more 80's fallout of Meaning through Fame & Money, the spin of personal identity through brand-identity, an inculcated feeling of relevance through telephone-vote control, gossip mag 'knowledge', 'cultural connectedness' through media awareness.....all feels like pollution.

Music still acts as a distraction, it does what it sez on the tin, it is part of a larger cultural pattern to decode, it is a perceptual sugar-lump, it is a formal/intellectual exercise, it is an emotional resonator - it can be all those things and can be a life-enhancing thing in any of those ways.......but it doesn't really 'mean' anything to me any more.

― Snowy Mann (rdmanston), Thursday, 21 November 2002 18:13 (twenty-three years ago)

Having recently rebought Flesh and Blood by Poison, I was happy that I still remembered all the words. Though, I have no great desire to feel like I did when I was 14.

I guess I do search for the exhilaration of a good guitar solo.

― jel -- (jel), Thursday, 21 November 2002 18:17 (twenty-three years ago)

its funny i was just thinking today about how much simon reynolds gets on my nerves with his desperate irelevant quest for the "new rave-punk". let it go, pops.

― bob zemko (bob), Thursday, 21 November 2002 18:37 (twenty-three years ago)

ok, sonny

― Old Man Reynolds (rdmanston), Thursday, 21 November 2002 18:49 (twenty-three years ago)

"Soon" is 12 years old, Ned. ;)

― Venga, Thursday, 21 November 2002 19:15 (twenty-three years ago)

Astounding!

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 21 November 2002 19:18 (twenty-three years ago)

I'm 43, and people have talked about this kind of thing for ages, and it clearly does happen to most, but so far not to me. About half of my favourite albums were released after I turned 30, and there is as much that I've been excited about this year, whether newly-discovered old records or brand new ones, as any year. I'm not sure how the quality of the feelings have changed, but I think the quantity is the same. I don't really understand why it does happen to most in music, as it seems less common in books, movies, art and so on. Maybe the significant difference is the communal feeling of music, of going to punk gigs or raves or whatever with your mates, of it being part of the mating ritual when you're young. That is a less significant part for me now, unsurprisingly, but the music itself is as exciting as ever.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Thursday, 21 November 2002 19:47 (twenty-three years ago)

the one book that gives me the feeling everytime i read it is. "Stay Here With Me" - Robert Olmstead. Just a great coming of age story.

― Chris V. (Chris V), Thursday, 21 November 2002 19:49 (twenty-three years ago)

Hahahahahaha I'm getting that feeling RIGHT NOW!!!!!!!!! But I've no money to buy cds so you all win. I really hope it never goes away, there is nothing more beautiful than sitting in my house on a Friday with my friends, drinking beer and knowing that when I flick the CD player to number 6 or whatever they'll pay some attention. Then the next week they'll ask what it is, then the next week they'll be like "PUT IT ON!!!!!". Collective enjoyment=classic.

― Ronan (Ronan), Thursday, 21 November 2002 19:53 (twenty-three years ago)

I thought this was goning to be a thread about Bob Seger's "Back In 72". Bob went back to an Independent label (Reprise) and does quite the smokin version of "Midnight Rider". I stll prefer the live version of "Turn The Page" on Live Bullet, if only for the crowd noises.

It would be comforting to know that I wasn't the only punk rocker in the 80's that would lie about not liking Led Zepplin and Rush...Speak up you fakers!!!!!

― brg30 (brg30), Friday, 22 November 2002 16:27 (twenty-three years ago)

Wasn't Reprise part of Warner Brothers by '72? I know the '60s Reprise, with the tri-color label, was owned or started by Frank Sinatra... or something.

― Sean (Sean), Friday, 22 November 2002 17:27 (twenty-three years ago)

''its funny i was just thinking today about how much simon reynolds gets on my nerves with his desperate irelevant quest for the "new rave-punk". let it go, pops.''

man its like your reading my mind here.

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Saturday, 23 November 2002 12:38 (twenty-three years ago)

to ans the question: I think when i bought joy division substance from the rec library the excitement came from the fact that the hi-fi that never got played (effectively a piece of furniture) was now being used fairly regurlarly. I never thought it would lead to this big rec collection and ultimately ILM and so on.

that 'feeling' doesn't happen to often and nor should it.

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Saturday, 23 November 2002 12:43 (twenty-three years ago)

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