Do you miss the critical mindset of youth?

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listening to ol' momus' Tender Pervert for the first time in a few months i happen across 'the charm of innocence' and recall robin mentioning it being an important song for him, for reasons i don't recall. And I start thinking about the music i loved when i was maybe 13 years old. I remember astonishing enthusiasm and confidence in the critical superiority of the music. I had the Prodigy's 'Music for the jilted generation' but my favourite album was oasis' 'definitely maybe'.
I then start to thinking about how the Manic Street Preachers seem so very disposed toward nostailgia for an invented age of working class unity and popular socialism ("The gap that grows between our lives / the gap our parents never had"). And how their latest album, on which they address culb-friendly individuals as "braindead motherfuckers", the thing that truly made it a wretched album was it being fashioned on "the music of our youth." On their inability to shift.

It leads me to remember how the mass of the music i grew up with is quite terrible. Perhaps I'm mixing it in too heavily with my memories of being a miseryguts teen, perhaps it's my absolute incapacity to remain in the same mindset for too long.
But I think this is the main explanation; is our discipline, informed criticism of modern popular music, just too concerned with youth? Is there justifiable cause to reject youth culture on the grounds of it's position as the base of todays capitalism? Do I just not want to be a commodity fetisth? Are teenagers, on the most part, quite stupid? Or am I ust too old at 20?

― matthew james, Monday, 6 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

The Manics' rejection of current club-heads indeed is tied to a wishful recollection of what music used to mean, or rather what society used to be. On the other hand, I think that, tied as it is to their entire ethos, it suits their music well, regardless of being wrong. The absolute objective aesthetic judgement is disgarded in their work, er.. the pretense to that judgement is disgarded, that is, leaving them as the current musical exemplars of a particular form of political subjectivity which can be quite appealing.

― Sterling Clover, Monday, 6 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

It does tie in very well with their music. But they make generally bad music, and I have no interest in grown men using grown men's language to express 14-year old socialism. That's my question; is youth, or the pretence to youth, the exaggerated enthusiasm (& contempt for tastes not your own) a destructive force in creativiy and consumption? I appear to be weighting the question unfairly. Just trying to empnasise this isn't a question about the manics, i think.

― matthew james, Monday, 6 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I think the production of great art often requires a sort of willful blinkered blindness, b/c there's quite a bit that can be distilled into a song, but still there are limits and if they aren't respected, the thing dissolves like Elvis Costello's Spike

― Sterling Clover, Monday, 6 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

It's too late/early (4:14AM) to make an intelligent point, but all I have to say for now is that teenagers, or rather being under 18, sucks. Certainly for me, everything's got much better since I turned 20. The music press' fetish for the teenage years is something which aggravates me, like being umpteen years old = great music taste. That's bollocks - all the teenagers I know (not including ILM/E contributors) have SHIT taste in records, except my brother cos he steals mine. Twenty-somethings RULE!

― DG, Monday, 6 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I am firmly in the belief *now* that as you age your musical taste improves. It's probably come from listening to more jazz, etc. where the average player age is in his 30s and 40s, but I think one of the things that teenage music fans develop is the notion that since yer heros are also the youth and pop music is all about the freshness and infallability of youth and the march of musical "progress," that if your taste changes you've some how "sold out." And of course this is something the industry, to one degree or another, exploits. Frankly, I'd be a little worried if I as performer or lister at age 30 was performing/listening to music which was, as Coil's John Balance neatly put it, "alieviating teenage angst." Unfortunately, the problem is that pop/rock music offers very few "outs" for artists who make their names in their 20s except bland AOR adult-contempo or the NPR snoozer-songwriter circuit.

― Jess, Monday, 6 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Except yr. taste is better in yr. teens in the sense that music still feels like it is full of possibility, that it can change the world. Music means more to you, and being right about music means everything.

― Sterling Clover, Monday, 6 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Oh, I dunno...I think quite a few jazz musicians (back in the 60s at least) felt music could change the world...in their 40s...I think there's a distinct difference between becoming more discriminating and becoming complacent.

― Jess, Tuesday, 7 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Sterling Clover, you are too young to be talking this way. Please wait until you're over 25.

matthew james, you seem to think that the music you are listening to now is The Best Music In The World, so you are very young at 20.

Jess, maybe you are onto a difference between pop music and jazz.

Sorry for being presumptuous.

― youn, Tuesday, 7 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Music is best when it thinks it can change something, because it convinces me that maybe it can, if only for a quarter of an instant. Rejecting other music isn't a very good choice for a listner, but a fairly necessary one for the artist.

― Sterling Clover, Tuesday, 7 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

matthew james, you seem to think that the music you are listening to now is The Best Music In The World, so you are very young at 20.

Not at all. I I was saying that back whenever it was the best music in the world, now it's whatever music i've chosen. I find myself enthusiastic about aging in a world where most music never ages beyond 16.

― matthew james, Tuesday, 7 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

i think live-wise, music is better as a youngster - i seemed to have more energy, more time to suspend disbelief, more faith, but as far as quality goes (and I was talking to someone about this today) as a reviewer/critic, now music seems to be continually surprising - and this goes in both directions - just when you think in can't get worse it does eg hamster dance, big brother theme, and it gets better - tigers remixes, bran van 3000, magnetic fields, shellac, mark kozalek etc...it's like food I guess, food doesn't get worse or better, in general, though there are great (macaroni cheese in packets) and crap (brussel sprouts for all seasons), your tastes change.

― Geoff, Tuesday, 7 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I think most of that youthful certainty that Your Music Is Best emerges from the naive assumption that you've heard everything -- or at least know what everything sounds like. Add that to the fact that your tastes haven't had an opportunity to change -- i.e., you don't see how your appreciation of something can be relative -- and you have a recipe for blind jingoistic devotion.

And much as a lot of the bands I've loved over the past decade are accused of being record-collectors and influence-peddlers more so than musicians, I think that's been a healthy thing, overall, in terms of teaching certain fan contingents that they actually do enjoy music from a range of genres. I'm perfectly willing to admit that it was my backtracking from things like Stereolab and Sean O'Hagan to things like Faust, Jobim, or Gainsbourg -- and from there to France Gall or Baden Powell -- that led me to think of records from any genre or period as equally likely to please me.

But there is something a bit scary about realizing that Your Genre or Your Music are not necessarily all that will appeal to you. Suddenly there's ten times more record store to comb through, a much higher chance of buying something you'll deeply regret, and the weird angst that comes from knowing that you'll never be able to get a grip on all of the music that you might, theoretically, love. It's a tough transition from knowing everything about something to realizing you know nothing about everything.

― Nitsuh, Tuesday, 7 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Nitsuh's last paragraph - excatly as I feel about music now. Now my teenage blinkers have been lifted the world of music seems both a more terrifying and exhilarating place.

― DG, Tuesday, 7 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I think it was Lao Tzu who said: To be truly wise is to realize the extent of one's ignorance.

― turner, Tuesday, 7 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Well, sure, but I know plenty of wise men who don't ROCK!!!!!!!!!!!!

― Sterling Clover, Tuesday, 7 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

That's what scares me, Sterling. My past couple of years have been about expansion, basically -- casting around through different genres and time periods and trying to get a feel for them -- and I think this plays into my earlier question about what the Next Thing might be. Because as of right now, I sit down to work on a song, and I find myself with a few ideas and the horrifying sense that I could take them in any one of a thousand directions but have absolutely no preference for one direction over another. What I'd probably enjoy most, at this point, is taking one song and recording 10 different versions of it.

I'm just hoping that the coming years will see either me or someone else somehow synthesizing all of those overwhelming influences into something new and interesting.

― Nitsuh, Tuesday, 7 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I'm 16 and quite busy testing out everything I can. I don't listen to much of what's on the radio because I'm a pretentious little snot, so that probably makes me quite stupid.

― Lyra, Tuesday, 7 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

The vessel is shattered... we are ecstatic kabbalists, hunting for the next Sefirot in the repetition of the beat, the hum of the machine, the cry of the synth. And the qlippoth? The shells of the dead? Why, dad-rock of course.

― Sterling Clover, Tuesday, 7 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Zimzum does not mean the concentration of God at a point, but his retreat away from a point...

― mark s, Tuesday, 7 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Also a guitarist with Marilyn Manson. Who represents a point god has certainly retreated from.

― Sterling Clover, Tuesday, 7 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Ha! S.Clover revealed as mere pre- manufactured P.Bateman ecstatic kabbalist: a REAL ecsta-kab would hv written "MM: who IS a point god has certainly retreated from..."

― mark s, Tuesday, 7 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

The vessel is shattered

Really? He seemed fine at the Carfax/Devant gig on Saturday.

This poor quality joke - for which I both apologise yet feel contractually obliged to make - rests on the fact that the singer in Devant/Carfax is called The Vessel. (See also: Five killed in plane crash/Bid to save 500 jobs in car factory etc)

But any way, I agree with what Nitsuh was saying. When you're a teenager, there is this kind of idea that music is like a noisy sticker album and that one day you'll complete it. But when you get older, you realise that you'll never complete it ever. So, just like a proper sticker album then.

Really, music's much more like a fractal or one of those dodgy pyramid schemes, where whenever you buy a CD, you discover about 5 more you want to buy. Or something. I'm not sure what I mean but I know I'm right - hey, look! I am still a kid after all

― jamesmichaelward, Tuesday, 7 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Curses, foiled again! Curse you, mark! Curse you and your cursed reverse-pedantry!

*shuffles off to desolate wastelands of outer Manchea*

― Sterling Clover, Tuesday, 7 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

i agree that teenagers suck. i should know -- my high school was full of them. 10-year-olds are much wiser. i generally think the world would be a better place if more people stood by their grade 5/6 convictions. (i think i listened to slippery when wet twice today. i underrated it before.) things do get a little bit better once you hit legal drinking age though.

"anyway, what unites the best 70s/80s/90s bubblegum songs is feel, sound, and words. by 'feel,' i'm talking playful and unschooled, the more kindergarten-worthy the better, with a whitebread gentleness and purity that's the gentle underside of the violence that's supposedly at the heart of 'street' music but mostly is just a load of crap. the tunes only last a couple of minutes, during which time their stolen hooks make you pound your steering wheel real hard. fast tempos are common, ditto for high-register (like they haven't changed yet) vocals, with even higher surf/beatles-type background harmonies; fuzztone riffs and drum thunder are encouraged, but only if they conceal a confectionary centre. lyrics are either of the playpen- bound ga-goo-ga-ga variety, or something only slightly more mature: about parents or cars or rock-as-religion or (usually) boy-girl predicaments free of adult neuroses: playing footsie, having crushes, going steady. all the most exciting things in the world until some imbecile tells you they're corny and you should only care about carnal knowledge, at which point it is my belief that you have started to stop living and begun to die."

-- chuck eddy, the accidental evolution of rock'n'roll

― sundar subramanian, Tuesday, 7 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I was saying that back whenever it was the best music in the world, now it's whatever music i've chosen. I find myself enthusiastic about aging in a world where most music never ages beyond 16.

matthew, sorry my elliptical comment didn't make this clear, but what you're saying is what I meant: you haven't been overtaken by nostalgia yet; whatever you're listening to at the moment is what you're most excited about. I think your attitude is characteristic of youth. And it's nothing to be apologetic about either (although I don't think it necessarily goes along with rejecting the past - but then I did the same).

― youn, Wednesday, 8 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

it just struck me how eddy's description of bubblegum is about identical to reynolds' description of 80s indie-pop, which was reacting against bubblegum.

― sundar subramanian, Wednesday, 8 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Was indiepop reacting against bubblegum? I remember reading some sort of Sarah-Records-related manifesto that stated the exact opposite. Can't quote it right now, but I'm pretty sure that Sarah was all for the 3-minute pop nugget as much as they were the freedom of the punk rock.

I'll come back later & answer the posted question properly.

― David Raposa, Wednesday, 8 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

all for an idealized concept of the 3-minute pop nugget rooted in a nostalgia for 60s guitar pop (and perceived innocence and idealism of the 60s). in opposition to the actual bubblegum music of their own time, seen as cynical, commercial, etc.

― sundar subramanian, Wednesday, 8 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

70s Punk - esp NY punk (Tekevision, T.Heads, Blondie, Ramones) - idealised eg The 1910 Fruitgum Company... ie not just 60s guitar-pop, but, erm, "Pre-manufactured P.Bateman" 60s bubblegum.

― mark s, Wednesday, 8 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

The Ramones even had an album produced by Phil Spector, right? That just about sez it all... I believe this was one of S. Reynolds main points in his much-debated rant about NYC punk, that it was a reactionary move that no one in the UK punk/post punk/new pop scene would "stoop" to.

― Jess, Thursday, 9 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

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