When I were a nipper...

Over the last few years I've watched many.... OK, most.... of my (formerly) music-loving contemporaries disappear over the edge of the precipice grumbling that "most of the music's being produced these days is crap, not like in was in my day....".

It's very easy to do - I know I've teetered on the brink and had to pull myself back a few times myself.

What it's so easy to forget is that most of the music being produced has always been crap; the thing that tends to diminish as we get older is the enthusiasm to keep digging through the crap to find the pearls.

There's certainly plenty of dance and hip hop stuff about that I enjoy - but I'm not at all sure that most of the kids in my neighbourhood would even recognise most of it as coming from the same genre as the stuff they listen to; any more than the vast majority of the stuff they listen to holds any appeal for me.

If I take off the rose tinted spectacles of nostalgia for a second 'though, actually pretty much the same was true 25 years too!

Most people didn't "get" "The Velvet Underground & Nico" in 1967 and most of them never will; most people didn't "get" "Unknown Pleasures" in 1979 and most of them never will....

I don't think the defining difference between those who get either or both of those albums is so much to do with their age or the generation they come from but to do with ther willingness to actually listen.

well, that's partially it, but even the 67 v.u. listeners kinda knew what they were getting into, right? i think my bigger point is that insofar as i believe in 'listening without prejudice', then without some idea of individual context, i think that idea's as well represented by "hot in herre" as it is by that record with the banana on the front.

I really don't know - I certainly don't think they would have known then to the extent that anyone would be likely to today.

".... insofar as i believe in 'listening without prejudice', then without some idea of individual context, i think that idea's as well represented by "hot in herre" as it is by that record with the banana on the front."

I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at here Mitch.... without any sort of contextualisation nothing would be mundane and everything would be ground-breakingly innovative wouldn't it?

If we didn't eventually tire of continually hearing "the mama heartbeat" we might never venture out of the womb....

I suspect that it's only really the people who have ventured far enough from the mainstream to be "into" "cultish" bands like VU and Joy Division might even be aware that we're "still within the same cultural paradigm when it comes to popular music".

I think to all intents and purposes what our parents called "The Generation Gap" is just as wide as it ever was - and that most people (whichever side of the divide they're on) would positively resent any suggestion to the contrary!

But that *is* important. The change in how music can be available is so radically different now that it should be recognized as such. And Walter Benjamin to thread.

Listening to difficult etc. music in 2003 is as hard as it ever was (look at the recent egg-on-face comedown of Reynolds, K-Punk etc. when they actually listened to Blemish rather than make sarky wish-Sylvian-was-still-glam comments).

But then fundamentally it is all about how you choose to listen. Is Life For Rent a more "innovative" record than Get Rich Or Die Tryin'? As Lester Bowie says at the end of "Jazz Death?": "That all depends on what you know."

I think this does make any music that is radically different to everything an individual has previously been exposed to "'hard to get'" and that those people who do make that effort genuinely are "'more open to the infinite possibilities of music' or whatever".

Allied to this in my mind is the belief that most people don't actually actively "listen" to music; they just (passively) "hear" it; and they resent anything that's so alien from the sounds they've been hearing all their life that it provokes them into listening.

I agree entirely.

However, this doesn't necessarily mean that specific pieces of music ("The Velvet Underground & Nico" and "Unknown Pleasures" for example?) are necessarily as hard to listen to as they once were.

(plus of course, on the "difficult music"/Wire/Resonance side, your average 17-year-old isn't going to be able to afford £40 for that Coil box set or John Zorn's Complete Masada Vols 1-928 for £199)

ned: i never meant to suggest that their hasn't been a huge change in how music is consumed (see my first point), just that if you had to read a shittily photocopied zine while sucking off a she-male to get a copy of your favourite record in 1967 and now all you have to do is download p2p software, you weren't a realer music fan back then. i don't think that you only encounter newness when venturing from the mainstream, or that the people that do are the only ones that are aware/thinking about music.

listening to 'difficult' music is a lifestyle choice. i am unclear about what is challenging about that

people who like challenging or difficult music want difficult music, i dont see where the difficulty comes in, they are already prepared for it, or what they think it will be. someone who buys ayler wants ayler as much as someone who wants elastica wants elastica

or to put it another way, does like ayler mean you are more open to difficult and challenging music, or does it simply mean you are mroe open to albert ayler records?

and i don't think that i buy the "hearing/listening" distinction, and even if i did, i'd say that it was impossible to tell if someone was a hearer or a listener by examining his/her record collection.

(and "their" in my post = "there". pedantry, yes, but it was bugging me.)

well did ayler get good distribution in '64 (I'm not saying it would have sold a lot more but it doesn't that bcz it didn't sell that ppl didn't gte it).

I agree - but I do think it's far more likely.

"or that the people that do are the only ones that are aware/thinking about music."

I agree - but I do think it's far more likely.

Marcello, isn't the average 17 year old far more interested in buying the music (s)he keeps hearing on the TV and radio because it's specifically targeted at 17 year olds

Take a look at a lot of the music that Kerrang/ NME / Rock Sound etc and Radio 1 Rock Show push towards to teenagers.

e.g your typical British rock teenager luvs the band "Funeral for a Friend" - but how many threads/ mentions on ILM?

This would explain why nearly all the 17-25 year olds who sent Room On Fire to #2 this week aren't going to get, say, HoboSapiens because the latter's been done by this daft old bloke gurning about behind a keyboard on Jools Holland.

Again I would argue that this problem is peculiar to white consumers. Black kids buying Obie Trice or Ludacris aren't weeping tears about how it's all gone downhill since the good ole days of "Double Dutch Bus."

(actually, me making this an explicitedly anti/pro-pop thing is prob a bad idea but oh well, i'll take my cheap shots when i get the chance.)

Is it really true though that 17 year olds won't listen to VU? I listened to VU & Nico at 17, by which time it was already 14 years old. Unless the musical climate changes very radically, I think VU/Joy Division will always have a constituency among certain types of 17 year olds. Which was sort of my original point.

shit, nobody told me jurassic 5 were white guys!

I figure we can either get bogged down in political correctness and spend all our time checking every word we use and every word everyone else uses for evidence of potential bias on the grounds of race, creed, colour, nationality, sex, disability, gender re-assignment sexual orientation or musical preferences; and derail the discussion immediately we think we've found one; or we can just accept generalisations for what they are and progress the discussion.

Or, to put it another way, I think your assumption is unjustified and entirely popist.

(NB: saying that "use other words please" is a cliche is itself a cliche)

No, just blatantly rockist.

>>>No, just blatantly rockist.

No, just shorthand for "not only do I disagree with you, but I'd like to demonize your position a little while I'm at it." The whole question of "getting" music is actually an interesting one, I think! -and whether one's favorite choons are the ones you "got" immediately or the ones that put you off at first, and so on. I think the pure-popist position is "if it doesn't appeal on first listen, it's not so good" but I think that pure popist is likely a strawman.

the very basis of my point is that ayler is not difficult music, but the usage of the word 'get' in this context implies that it is. if i accept the usage of 'get' then i am accepting the argument it underpins. or, are all the people who dont like ayler people who merely havent 'got' it? this strikes me as overly dismissive, and isnt something i am particularly comfortable with

Same goes for any classic records really, at least that was my experience. There is less identity, in the sense that you value it at that age, in classic records which are already bona fide works of genius.

I don't "get" it (well, not yet anyway) but I am intrigued enough and feel challenged enough to want to persevere with it.

I love The Clash and Flaming Lips and I'm not saying there's nothing there to "get" but I do think thery're much easier to "get" - and I think it's perfectly possible to enjoy them without necessarily "getting" them.

I donlt think the same can be said of Albert Ayler.

I had fun aged 17, just to a really rubbish soundtrack. I don't think listening to 'Atliens' (which, as a scrupulous MM/NME reader, todally passed me by) would have made it funner.

Yes but surely the reason people aren't aware of it is because it's obscure / inaccessible in terms of exposure because no radio stations play this music - and the reason no radio stations play this music is because it's difficult!

Well, at 23 maybe I'm old -- but I was listening to VU at 17, and it felt a bit cliched even then. (Although my parents weren't listening to the VU in the late Sixties or thereafter.) I think their fans are older than 17 -- they were on Front Row last week.

When I was seventeen we had wank like 'Urban Hymns'. It doesn't matter a damn.

It was a very good year...

Do you really see the two as contradictory or even mutually exclusive?

Ben Nevis is a difficult mountain to climb (or so I am led to believe by my mountain-climbing friends).

People who enjoy climbing mountains and have climbed Ben Nevis or other similar mountains before will enjoy climbing it because it is difficult and thais gives them a sense of achievment; however at the same time they will find it easier than they would have done if they'd never attempted to climb a mountain before.

Other people will think climbing mountains is a fuckin' stupid thing to be doing and that they'd rather relax on the sofa in front of the fire with a good book about philosophy or quadratic equations than risk catching a cold or breaking their legs or their necks climbing a bloody mountain.

also, anyone saying seventeen year olds aren't a big market for canonical rock albums is being a bit silly.

yes, but they miss the view! (presuming that there is a decent one from the top of b nevis)

anyway, 'cos thom west asked:

WHEN I WERE SIXTEEN WE HAD PROPER SONGS WITH PROPER TUNES AT NUMBER ONE LIKE "THEME FROM M*A*S*H* (SUICIDE IS PAINLESS)" AND "THE WINNER TAKES IT ALL"!

This is how the BBC divide music up at present:

Radio 1: contemporary youth popular music [e.g pop /dance/ hip hop/ rock/ urban]: commonly nothing older than 5 years recognised.
I Xtra: contemporary urban/ black music
Radio 2: MOR traditional melodic music
Radio 3: mostly classical with token limited slots for jazz/ world and eclectic wire stuff/ late junction/ mixing it
6 Music: 60s/70s/80s/90s and now rock/popular music mostly from the Mojo/ Uncut canon - more obscure/ extreme/ radical/ instrumental areas - neglected/ ignored - therefore re-inforcing the established sense of rock critical canon that favours song oriented music

Yes but surely the reason people aren't aware of it is because it's obscure / inaccessible in terms of exposure because no radio stations play this music - and the reason no radio stations play this music is because it's difficult!

this could also be down to other factors [lack of knowledge/ bias/ inability to do research] as well - for instance music in the following music areas are ignored/neglected /under represented by the BBC or at best given token coverage by the BBC:

ambient/space music, dub, avant/ free jazz + improv, goth/darkwave, IDM/experimental electronics, industrial music, krautrock, extreme metal ala Terrorizer magazine, progressive/art rock + jazz fusion/rock, post-rock, electro/detroit techno/tech-house/old skool rap/early house ..plus experimental areas of modern composition/ contemporary classical.

...the same goes for commercial radio - and it's toothless tiger the Radio Authority

Jazz FM - doesn't play creative/challenging jazz - instead smooth jazz and classic soul
Kiss FM - set up as a dance music station - now plays pop dance and urban lite most of the day
XFM - doesn't play particularly alternative music, most of is boring trad songs based rock

maybe the BBC / or the Radio Authority - should set up a Radio Experimental type station

i think it's an interesting question to pinpoint where the willingness to stick with music that you don't immediately like comes from, especially as a young teenager, and especially when the music has been recommended by people 'in the know.' as a tendency i don't know if it's rockist or not (is it 'yay, repect for past achievement' or 'boo, kill your parents man'?), but it's very un-pop and anti short-term pleasure.

i was dismayed when i put in Marquee Moon the first time at 17 maybe 15 or 16; the guitars were thin and the dude sounded like the violent femmes, oh no!! but since i'd paid for it i had to give it an 'effort.' and, more importantly, since i'd never seen a bad word written about it anywhere (and it was one of Those Names that's dropped as an aside or used as a yardstick more than written about directly) i figure it was my problem for not liking it.

i'd say it's protestantism but then i say that about everything.

This is a very important point as it exposes the fundamental rockism inherent in the very assumption that underlies most accusations of rockism.

re: tom e's post, and "non-rock media i suspect don't do this": a hip-hop fan of my acquaintance told me i should go and buy the issue of (i think) The Source, with their 20/50/100 greatest albums ever list, i think so i could develop the sort of true appreciation for Ready To Die that he has

I think the willingness to stick with music I don't immediately like comes from not being able to afford other music to listen to in the meantime, most often

In what way?

... they played 'Wonderwall' about three times an hour, and in full on the Sunday chart show. The very next day...'

The mid-nineties blew. I want my youth back.

Climbing mountains is obviously a skill, I can race someone up a mountain and get some idea of who is more skilled, there is no musical equivalent of this.

(xpost: we were.)

reading is a better analogy (but may not get us anywhere)

"i got more out of the book" "i got more out of climbing the mountain" "i got more out of the record"

The attempt to infer any sort of value judgments are entirely your own.

Your use of the word "skill" is clearly an emotive one as it implies some inherent sort of usefulness, the application of a value judgment the validity of which you will note I was actually at great pains to question within my analogy.

Your use of the word "race" even suggests some form of competition and consequently a concept of "winning", a concept which you will again note I was positively attempting to ridicule.

Nevertheless, I'd still be prepared to bet a tenner that if you put Marcello and Julio in a room with H. and Thom.s mothers and played them Sun-Ra's "Astro Black", the boys would "get it" first because they've simply got more experience of listening to that sort of stuff and wouldn't spend the first half an hour with their hands clamped over their ears begging you to take it off!

in other news, arsenal fans appreciate bergkamp goal quicker than elderly priests in montreal

I don't think anyone's suggesting that chart positions are a de facto measure of the artistic worth of the act responsible (although they may be a measure of their financial worth - and that is an entirely objective measure!).

Enrique = not me. I never had anything like fun at 17; the only records I listened to, believe it or not, were "Wu-Tang Forever", Company Flow's "Funcrusher Plus" and Momus' "Ping Pong". I suppose I might want my youth back if I thought that going through endless days of personal stress to an accompaniment of pop music cast in the terms of pre-pop socio-cultural divisions was worthwhile or enjoyable, but somehow I think that will be a long time in coming ...