I'm Eighteen

Pixies Counting Crows Syd Barrett Paul Simon The Verve Pipe Remy Zero KRS-One Braid Cornershop

I was 19 last week, and this year, god, I've been mostly listening to Roots Manuva, The Smiths (who I discovered only this Summer and fell in love with), the new Radiohead albums, Ed Harcourt, Oscar Peterson, Low, too much chillout stuff (Bent/Zero7/Dusted), Rae and Christian, Sparklehorse, and Public Enemy. Not namedropping, just looking at some of the stuff I've _really_ liked over the past year.

What would I want to be listening to when asked what i'd want to be listening to when I was 18 in future? No idea. Most of what I did. But I might feel embarassed about actual enjoyment of Five singles.

t.

Funny; I didn't mention any of them, but I really dig that stuff, too.

Play the Beach Boys and Britney -- set a good example.

When I was 18 (such a long time ago!) I was listening mostly to UK Garage, R&B, bounce hip hop, krautrock and first and second wave Chicago house, and prior to that it was jungle, post-punk, synth pop, IDM and post-rock. I still like all this stuff, of course. Pop is naturally the constant.

The great thing about being 18/19 is that there's an exciting aspect to music's newness. Especially with UK Garage in the second half of '99 and throughout 2000, I felt like I'd found a musical movement that as a young person I could "rally around" - our expected approach to music, presumably - and use as a banner for my youth (ie. this is why I'm glad to be alive and young right now). Which is made exceedingly difficult when every rock critic yawns and talks about the good old days, be it '68, '78 or '88.

The bad thing about being 18/19 is that you're coming to everything with much less of a historical appreciation than others have. Often I'll here something and think "wow, that's really innovative/different/unique" and only realise much later that it's been done to death for the past decade. The quandary is that I can either devote my energies and funds to catching up and gaining that historical perspective, or keeping abreast of all the amazing things that are coming out now. It's probably obvious which one I invariably choose.

When I dance, it's mainly to house b/c my boyfriend likes it too, and all the garage nights here have died in the arse. I occasionally like dancing at hip hop/R&B nights but I tend to really dislike the audience (sort of an Australian equivalent of what the garage scene is like in the UK?). I check in on jungle every so often. I'd like to get into the techno scene (which is v. big here) a bit more because the experiences I've had with it were really enjoyable. Sadly though I don't go out nearly as much as I did last year - am I getting OLD?!?!

Well, I may have named some non-standard bands, but I _do_ like a lot of trendy stuff. For the most part, I like them for purely aesthetic reasons -- not much intellectualization, they just sound good to me. But at the same time, I think a lot of these bands have intellectually interesting qualities that are totally ignored by some people due to their own generational prejudice. IOW, I'm not saying these bands are great, but I can still argue that they're better than you think:

I'll soften the blow with some more non-standard bands I listen to:

Bjork Microphones Pavement Autechre Superchunk "Texas is the reason" Ryan Dismemberment Plan Adams Boredoms Ex-Girl various Elephant 6 bands and various super-obscure prog bands, many foreign...

Okay, these are the very standard mainstream bands I listen to:

Orgy Creed Staind Deftones Pearl Jam Alice In Chains P.O.D Metallica a little bit of Korn, IOW I listen to a lot of these power-chord bands that are looked down on by a lot of people, and other bands that are more "respected."

I know a lot of these bands I'll grow out of -- some of them I already have... like Creed, I thought they were like Sliced Bread, but it's probably been months since I last listened and I have no real urge to listen again. But at the same time, I think many of these bands _do_ have strong merits that are unfairly ignored. I'll still never get what anybody sees in N'Sync or Britney.

When I was 18 I liked much the same stuff as I do now (it is, of course, a given that tastes will undulate slightly through even days, let alone years) if anything I was even more of an obscurist than I am now. But I had a much larger superiority complex.

I was 18. Most 18 year olds hadn't heard of any of the music I was listening to, I must be so much cooler, right? Most 18 year olds weren't in bands or running record labels or any of that, so I must be so much better than them, right? Most 18 year olds weren't down the pub drinking with minor indie popstars, so I Am So Cool, Right?

The answer, of course, is that I was an insufferable cuntstack of musical geekdom and deserved to be shot repeatedly in the head, and indeed most likely still am. Lost the superiority complex, though, because after all, I am no longer 18.

Sad, maybe, to some look down on me from present time, but I had graduated from all things punk and speed metal and rebellious thanks to something called LSD. It was 10 years later that I found a reappreciation of sorts for stuff like Celtic Frost, Slayer and Megadeth, not to mention Fang, GG Allin and Mentors. I have been into the Ramones in a vague way since I was 12 or so. Big Black, Dr. Know, Black Flag, X, and the Sex Pistols are "things" I identify with but would rarely listen to for the last decade or so. 18 and life to go. 18 and life sweet jesus (darlin'?). 18 and life to goo-woah! Never was into Skid Row or Alice Cooper, but I remember Guns N' Roses like it was yesterday. Shocking that I was in, like, 8th grade when it first came out. Dude, 8th grade. Fuck's sake.

as for me, i'd probably be listening to the same diet as when i was 18 - indie rock, hiphop (although more radio-friendly stuff than the underground which was my diet at the time), but probably *less* dance music (mostly becuz i doubt i'd be into garage as much as i was into jungle.)

hmmm...here's another side question...to all of those past 18 (20?)...if you were currently 18, what do you think your tastes would mutate into five or ten years down the road based on what's popular now?...would you still have found the more esoteric, out of reach as a teenager stuff you listen to now?...would it be completely different?...(i ask this only becuz of my jungle-statement above...being drawn into "dance" music through the hiphop/jamaica/roughneck/rude-bwoy angle eventually led me down a path that could appreciate hi-nrg and old skool disco...something - given the current state of dance - i couldn't imagine happening if i was a 16 yr. old [which was when i first heard hardcore/jungle] discovering garridge.)

So, a music that fed on and into a sensiblity which constantly muttered: "Ha! You mere puny ants — I see all and know all. Nothing good not a trap; mere fun never enough..." You know the name of Timbaland's old band, Surrounded By Idiots: that was my unspoken secret motto at 18, grown-ups and fellow teens alike, all fools who didn't know they were born.

Or rather, didn't know they were dead. I'm quite a lot less strange now than I was then (I think).

Ans to question = I don't know.

although, i think that "surrounded by idiots" is something which hasn't gone away much (or at all)...but what you filtered through first gen punkety rockety and i filtered through (albiet coming late to the party via alt-rock explosion) sst bands and the like is merely focused towards bands like, say, tool today? bands which have come up in the wake of *my* youth which can provide that "you are all different and angry and beautiful and ugly" vibe but still pack stadiums? i suppose the main crux of the question = obv. the things you listen to in your youte obviously lead you - in some round about way or not - to the things you listen to as an adult which weren't apparent to you as an adult. i dunno what turned you on to, african music say, mark, but i would assume it follows some sort of geneology from yer teen listening habits, in the same way that in its own highly circular way, rave cultcha led me to xenakis and king tubby...i suppose the question, for spock, was my roundabout way of trying to suss out - for all of those who are now past 18 or 20 - what listening to the pop or indie or dance of today would lead us to tomorrow...like a kid who listens to warp rekkids now, is obviously going to be more xposed to, say, mille plateaux and eventually...phil niblock? (everything revolves around jim o'rourke anyway.) than i was in 1993-5. but there obviously have to be things which the pop of today is going to lead kids to, either in the past or future, which we wouldnt have had such easy links to? (perhaps? both of these posts written while very tired, so perhaps i'm just talkin out my ass?)

should be "apparent to you as a TEEN" obv.

Because, when I analyze the heavy stuff I used to listen to, I can't say the subject matter was that much better than the shit Fred Durst whines about. But, then, I'll think about the amount of melody even the heavier bands had and I'll then I realize that nu metal is just talentless, overproduced shit which is devoid of any real emotion. In my day, Metallica and Megadeth weren't a corporate entity. They were something brand new, a mix-up of the music they were influenced by, created by living in shitty apartments with no real future except to rock. They were signed to small labels like Combat and Megaforce before bigger labels snatched them up. And, they sang some stupid ass lyrics for damn sure, but somehow they seem a little less phony. But, I'm probably wrong there, too.

Anyway, the shit I listened to back then, I'd probably compare it to the indie pop stuff that's coming out now, rather than the hard rock shit because it seemed like it was a true musical vision of an individual or a group of individuals who wanted to be different or else there was no point in playing music. Also, I didn't only listen to those silly metal bands. In fact, by 18, I was over that sort of stuff for the most part. I was about 2 or 3 years into indie/experimental, whatever that is.

I don't think it is: everything has just changed too much. I thought of that a lot when I was 18 (rather more recently than you), how different things would have been had I been 20 years older, even though to me, then, you were just a journalist's name.

My taste at 18 were, on the whole, dreadful. I thought the Black Star album was as great as late 90s hip-hop got, and that "... Baby One More Time" was pretty forgettable. But my transition is FT / ILM for you!

My tastes then, kinda like now, were a mish-mash. Not to sound snotty, but I did the punk/college radio thing three years before and in 1988 hardcore was dead. That's a long way of saying that for goodly portions of that year I was listening to a lot of classic rock (Floyd, Zeppelin, Who, Ziggy-era Bowie) and the more mainstream college radio stuff (like the Smiths, Elvis Costello, the Replacements, the Pixies, the Cure). Then I went off to college that fall and got my first taste of thrash metal and developed a liking for Sabbath (my thing for death metal and grindcore came a year later) and I was the first kid in my hometown to get into Public Enemy and buy this C.D. from this rap group from L.A. that was being monitered by the F.B.I. (N.W.A.). (For the curious, my Zappa thing developed later than that, around '91/'92 when he was still alive and talking about running for President).

I also have to echo Nude Spock's comments about Metallica and the general crappiness of nu-metal. And I don't think it's an age thing ... it's definitely a quality thing (that is, I can appreciate the Deftones and Tool [are they nu-metal?] and disregard about 99.9% of the rest of it). The slickness and industrial sheen of nu-metal aside, though, I think one might be able to say the same about an awful lot of eighties hardcore (a lot of which is just as puerile and juvenile, maybe even more so, than anything Fred Durst or Jonathan Davis have come up with to date). Maybe that's old-fogey perspective :-p

"I'm 17, and I listen to Radiohead, Alice Coltrane, Olivier Messiaen, Bjork, Lali Puna, Autechre, Phonem, Talking Heads, Thirteenth Floor Elevators, Massive Attack, Scott Walker, Pita, Fennesz, Elvis Costello, Charlie Mingus, Portishead, Jim O'Rourke, Kraftwerk, Isan, Low, Faust, Can, Maryanne Amacher, Foehn, Sun Ra, DJ Shadow, Tom Waits, Sonic Youth, Talk Talk, The Smiths, Harry Nilsson, Arovane, Kristin Hersh, Throwing Muses, The Pixies, The Ink Spots, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, The Fall, Krzyzstof Penderecki, Aphex Twin, Neutral Milk Hotel, Louis Armstrong, Ennio Morricone, Broadcast, Alfred Schnittke, Neu!, Jeff Buckley, Oval, Clinic, John Coltrane, Bud Powell, Miles Davis, Serge Gainsbourg, Magazine, Morton Subotnick, Charles Ives, Madredeus, The Boredoms, Schoenberg, Berg..."

geoff - you may go back to being scared of the future.

All of you, did you have some kind of older brother or sister or cousin who shepherded you to all this good music? Or perhaps it's the interweb which was still a novelty when I turned 18?

I was vaguely aware of some indie rock and other things when I was 18 but I was absolutely indifferent to them. I still listened to some "modern rock" (remember that doleful catchphrase?) as a holdover from my New Wave-obsessed preadolescence but for some reason or another I was mostly listening if I recall correctly, to '60s soul. I used to make fun of WNUR, which I'd tune into late at night when I couldn't sleep.

When I showed up at the college radio station (a different one) I was mostly clueless. I still defined my tastes to some extent in opposition to whatever was hip, but that was increasingly becoming untenable. There was a lot of BS'ing and a lot of blank stares (both on my part) when I started at the station.

Frankly I still don't have much interest in indie rock or its many subgenres. I've yet to discover a genre of music that is very Now and which galvanizes my taste. I've always felt a bit like a dilettante when what I really want to be is an expert. Can someone stick up for dilettantism and make me feel better?

Anyways, I'm impressed that you all could have been so confident and eclectic in your tastes at such a young age.

Genius/Gza & other Wu-Tang, Fishbone, Neil Young, Tom Waits, Luscious Jackson, Beck, Tool, Bjork, Beastie Boys, Jimi Hendrix, Tribe Called Quest, Cake, Soul Coughing, They Might Be Giants, Primus, Rusted Root, Ben Folds Five, Tori Amos, Youssou N'Dour, Peter Gabriel, Digable Planets, Spearhead...pretty all-over the place.

If I was 18 today, I'm certain I would be annoyingly hardcore into System of a Down. At 24, I dig 'em quite well, but not with the intensity I probably would have at that stage in my development.

Was there an odd pocket of your parents' record collection that picqued your interest? Something playing in the background at a record store?

But I guess the more relevant point is that you were attuned to whatever moments there were that might have led you in the direction of that wonderful music--some people might have ignored them. I know I had enough opportunities and passed them up.

Michelangelo, I liked your Nelly write up for the Reader.

My parents had no record collection. My mom had the Beatles and a few soundtracks.

Before I was 10 I mainly listened to The Beatles and the classical station here in Chicago. I picked up a lot of my love of music from the classical station. I remember being transfixed by Transfigured Night by Schoenberg, among other things.

The first song I ever remember being really grabbed by was Human Behaviour by Björk when I was 9. Debut became the first CD I ever bought. Some of the first albums to form my record collection were by Portishead, Sonic Youth, Tori Amos, and Tricky... They were all actually being played on the radio a bit at the time, and those were the artists I picked up on. Even though grunge was the mainstay of alt-rock radio, I never got into it.

Save for the mornings when I listen to WBEZ, I mostly listen to WFMT. The announcers are so sober that it gives me the momentarily illusion that all is right and sane in the world.

"Human Behaviour by Björk when I was 9" = I am old.

all that changed after a couple of years later (now I'm 23).

but then again iw as into dead kennedys, black flag and ramones when i was 13

Also, two other things that oddly shaped my taste were tapes of Ray Lynch's Deep Breakfast and Kate Bush's Aspects of the Sensual World that I can't remember how I obtained for the life of me.

Whatever, mahn. After the Merzbow show we were lighting up joints and riding around in a car listening to "Just Can't Get Enough." Serious.

I live in a world where noone but noone is into nu metal.

I still listen to all of that now, just not as frequently.

it was a quest for "honest" music, the original, the first to the ideas, the academic truth of the "new" "culture" -- the "cynically marketed college rock" was to be purged in favour of the real art -- "free the art from the imperialists and the bourgeousie" is how they'd have said it elsewhere -- self-appointed young radicals serious in the post-punk search for art music as opposed to entertainment music

and so everyone else is an idiot to such callow single-minded youths -- an "academically acceptable" ideology probably easily attributable to the insecurity and alienation i felt, at odds with most of the 'straights' at university -- and post-punk was still quite new or difficult/offensive to other students (a 'straight' pop music fan would argue that Ian Curtis "couldn't sing", providing extra outsider correctness to the joy division world view which suited us so well)

many people unconnected with the radio station except as listeners were still quite concerned with 'correctness' -- 'politically sound' was the (pc) expression of the day, usually murmered with deliberate emphasis on the obvious phoni-ness of such categorisations -- but the style of music playing was probably more important in a fashion sense than it is today -- in the mid-80s there was little room for levity in selection of the correct music and the correct clothes -- looking back now it seems to have been so serious as to have been a bit sad, and i guess goths took that joyless seriousness of teenage angst music to its next more visible level of serious fashion

I've been listening tonight to Swans, The Olivia Tremor Control, Joni Mitchell, Victory at Sea and Anasarca; I don't know if that says anything about the state of anything at all.

Not much changed from when I was seventeen, as far as 'what it's like listening to music.' It's kind of lame because everyone my age is listening to fucking Bright Eyes, The White Stripes or Eminem.

And if I was 18 or a bit younger I would really dig Thursday.

ahahaha!
I was there.

when I was 18 I moved to NYC and was heavily into Sentridoh, Shrimper, GBV, Codeine, and was just starting to get into Siltbreeze. Back then Kim's Underground had all the latest noise releases on display up front.