The Great Divide: What was the first band that made you feel old? (so to speak)

What does make me feel old is realizing that a lot of bands released several classic albums well before anyone in the band were my age.

Also, when the new bands you start getting into all feature members who are significantly younger than yourself (and cite already-derivative bands ala Nirvana as influences), that made me feel pretty old. So be it.

("Getting old" for a UK indie boy = the point at which you realise that when you're 50 you're going to be more like your Dad than John Peel.)

Also what Oystein (sorry I'm too lazy to figure out the right way to get that first initial) said: I've always listened to a mix of genres since I was about 12. (I'm 38 now.) I largely gave up on new rock bands a long time ago, plus taste changes have chipped away at the list of older bands I still like.

I'm making this a little more black and white than it actually is. In 90's rock I do like the Boredoms (and am curious about what the Japanese have been doing with rock in general). I could see myself getting into some form of electronic dance music fused to rhythms and sounds from older dance traditions (esp. from Latin America or the Middle East), and I do like Cinematic Orchestra fairly well, and think I would like Jaga Jazzist, but still I can't think of many examples.

You make it sound like a bad thing!

Try asking here.

when i was a teenager there was a lot more rock or post-punk music around, but not all this dancing music. I do think the dancing music i hear sounds simpler and maybe dumber than the 5 chord rock music i used to like, songs with beginnings, middles, ends, but then that was the formula for back then right ? the breezy, non-cynical attitude of this newer music that's always sounded just like "easy listening" music to me and all seems to sound the same .. i remember that's what my parents said about the music they heard me listening to as well.
i've simply grown out of that fashionable target area marketeers' sights are on now, so i'm hardly surprised that i'm not moved by much modern music, but i don't think that Big Music's aims, targets or interests in exploiting teenagers' allowances have changed at all, and those teenagers have to be able to think what they're listening to is new and different to buy into it, just like every other generation, surely ?

whenever i turn on the radio and hear the new record of the week i go 'but that's been done before and better than that too' more often than not

I have a kind of reverse thing to this with bands like Brand New or Good Charlotte, who essentially answer the thread questiom for me: I have a fair idea of who they're trying to copy but it sounds so utterly diluted and strip-mined of attitude that I can't actually hear a comparison. Green Day could toil long and hard for years in a pit of foulness and still never come up with anything as insipid and useless as Good Charlotte, no matter how hard they tried.

I suppose this is probably preaching to the choir though, so I might mention when I heard the Get Up Kids properly for the first time (Four Minute Mile I think) and could not believe how something this dull and lifeless has achieved a cross-demographic popularity. Bleh.

But lots of stuff since has made me feel not old at all.

Korn. Who I still don't get.

Me neither. Salut, Chuck!

well, neither do even the biggest rock bands today command the same market share [of tickets and record sales] or media share [on radio/mtv most obviously]. hip hop does of course. and video games.

so the real point i think is that rock itself is feelin old. you're just a side effect, and wilco too.

seriously though, if you were 10 years younger there's a good chance you'd have even less patience with a POD single.

i'm the same age as you and also remember bettie serveert and men at work as good things. i refuse to let that old feeling stop me from listening to new music: it's not like we're talking about dating younger women we can't keep up with, or not understanding newfangled farm equipment.

also, to answer your question almost fairly, the first band that made me feel old was pil - when i stole a cassette of second edition at age 16, i felt like, hey, now i'm getting somewhere.

I think they just started saying that because they couldn't cope with having to keep seeing those looks of fear, pain and anguish on the faces of everyone over 30 who asked them why they'd called the album "1977"; confidently expecting to be told that it was something to do with punk; and received the reply "because that's the year we were born"!

This was before I realised that being, acting or feeling "old, "grown-up" or "mature" was vastly and hidelously over-rated, obviously.

If I'm honest, I think there may have been some unpleasant traces of "hey, look how sofistikated I am" self-congratulatory smugness associated with my first acquisition of "Kind Of Blue" too.

Recently 'though I'm more concerned that there may be traces of the precise opposite (something more along the lines of "yeah, look, nearly 41 and still got it!") associated with my purchases of things like the latest Liars / Outkast / Von Bondies....

don't worry. i think i did felt that way about "the best of split enz".

Actually I think nu-metal makes perefect sense to kids who weren't raised on 80's metal but whose first real exposure to music was things like Alice in Chans, Pearl Jam, and Nirvana. It's "heavy music" for kids who don't really understand the heavy metal their older siblings listened to. Unfortunaely this means it lacks the element of "fun" that 80's metal at its best had.

Dang.

I'd always thought of myself as someone who was on top of dance music, knew what was getting played in clubs, knew what would be big and what wouldn't.

Electroclash generally totally blindsided me - I did the whole "so? i-F did this years ago and what about techno bass anyhow?" thing and then watched it turn into a monster. Was kind of also about writing america off as a source of interesting new dance music...

Also massive snobbery towards anything new in Techno post-Rave from some places (net forums, bogstandard & conservative clubs) makes me think some mf's are ossifying from their age-derived prejudices.

Grime? And sort of what Alex in NYC said about Hip-Hop. I've never been a massive fan of the genre overall but it's odd, and yes slightly alienating to see it being so all-pervasive and dominating.

I'm just trying to stay as open-minded as I can, with some awareness of the passing of time, but no desperate attempts to 'get' music that wasn't ever created for my headspace.