Who needs new music?

If I may share a private note from Chuck Eddy last year that is actually a good statement on this feeling -- he mentioned that in his experience it seems many people, especially those who have been music freaks since teenagerdom or before, hit a bit of a wall around their early thirties, where after some time you then decide, consciously or not, whether to keep on pursuing things or to be content with what you have. I think this is true in many ways, if not necessarily focused on age, and covering not merely music but books, movies, many things.

I've spoken before regarding my disenchantment with always having to keep up with 'the new thing' and how apparently not to do is a sign of having failed somehow -- a sign of self-pressure more than anything else, to be sure, but something which I think is still corrosive and these days reflects the true impossibility OF keeping up with everything.

At this stage, I hear a lot of random new stuff I like, a lot of random new stuff I hate, and ignore quite a bit of other things. It's the simplest approach to a complex situation.

I also seem to download less than before.

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OT friggin' M. I've finally stopped trying to be a with-it indie rocker over the past couple of years, and giving myself more room to either a) be content with familiar things or b) seek out older material that I didn't hear or appreciate the first time around. I still like the charge I get of hearing some new band blow me away, but I'm utterly relieved to have extricated myself from being a slave to ONLY new stuff.

When I went on my store-credit binge I mentioned in a previous thread, I ended up picking out about one-third new stuff, one-third newly-released CD versions of cherished old recordings, and one-third old stuff I hadn't heard before. I think that's a healthy mix for someone pushing 40.

As someone who's spent an increasing amount of time on songwriting over the years, I've found myself experiencing a similar disinterest in being constantly aware of newly popular music. It might seem overly egotistic to say that I've spent most of my listening time with my own (and my partners') creations, but when I think about the reason I became interested in writing, I realise that it was mostly due to wanting to make up for the lack of "the kind of music i wanted to hear". So the music we make has become our own 'comfort music', but also fills the role of "new and exciting", because we can constantly be the ones to provide that (at least, we've been able to so far!). Its kind of a wacky but nice situation; we get to play the role of the admired and the admirers.

this sounds a bit schizo, but I'm wondering if anyone else has experienced it.

Recently I've had my curiousity re-aroused. I've been buying more CDs, going to more shows, and just starting to plug back into music in general. The MP3 blogs have played a huge part in this.

So my point, if there is one, is that "comfort music" is something I dip in and out of, knowing that it will be there for me when I need it.

I can't really imagine not wanting to hear things I haven't heard before, whether they're actually new or not.

That said, I'm currently listening to If I Should Fall From Grace With God, which I just finally got on CD after having the vinyl for 17 years, and it sounds real good.

ouch. yes.

But so does the suicide of Ian MacDonald.

I am now 40 and have to admit that the vast majority of music to which I listen for pleasure (as opposed to music I'm paid to listen to/review) comes from the past. I have the increasingly inescapable feeling (and this is an indirect response to the question Matthew Weiner asked me on the "Revolution in the Head" thread) that for me music ended when Laura died. As far as new music is concerned, I am naturally inclined towards music which is melancholy in nature and speaks of past lives and/or renewed life. I have not felt much urge to dance - in any sense of the word - in the last three years.

On KRDTHM I certainly no longer feel any pressure to "keep up" as I have to admit being out of sympathy with much of what constitutes music in 2004.

Yet were Laura still here - and this is the major handicap of my writing/story, that you are not/cannot hear what she has/had to say about all this - we'd certainly still be down Uptown Records, chasing down 12-inch eski white labels. We would have had no problems with Annie, or even Big and Rich. We would still be in the thick of things; Laura - who was a gazillion times hipper, smarter and wiser than me, and also an infinitely better writer - would have revelled in it, even (especially!) if we'd gone on to have a child.

But all that is of course presupposing a false "we." And I am aware that what happened to IMac may one day soon happen to me - that, tired of life, choosing the easy option of "music is finished," this will mean that life, no longer consisting of a series of significant discoveries, will therefore no longer be worth having. So in a sense I have to "keep up" in order to keep alive.

As I've said dozens of times, it all comes down to an aesthetic preference: To me, 70's music just plain SOUNDS better. Dunno why, but something happened to recording techniques around '81 or so. Too much reverb (or is it delay?), clattery snare drums mixed way too loudly, just a general digital frostiness. If something (literally) new appeals to me, I can overlook all that, but I shouldn't have to.

Finally, I feel vaguely guilty and humbled by knowing fuckall about house/ambient/trip hop or whatever it calls itself, because up till about 1988 I was on top of everything - practically knew it all, or thought I did.

What people did or did not think 150 years ago is hardly relevant to this issue. You got hung for stealing a loaf of bread/the Brontes in their tiny feet could walk from Haworth Parsonage to Top Withens every morning before lunch. Perhaps minds 150 years ago were harder in both good and bad ways; who can say?

I'm not sure if I have anything else to live for besides music.

i need a regular fix of new music, otherwise i become restless and irritable. i'm never happy with the cd's currently in my collection - i always have dozens lined up for purchase. so yes, i need to hear new music, but that music may not be "new" to everyone else.

'do classical music fans play 'keep up' as much as pop fans? doesn't seem likely'

what do you mean by 'keep up' steve? - there are a ton of composers working today, there are lots of shows and performances (though not so much of more contemporary music).

The audience for classical maybe smaller (especially for post-war classical, which is the type of classical stuff I mostly listen to) the numbers are smaller but there is a dissection (judging from the threads I read on ilx) - I never kept up with release dates on any genre bcz i never buy records on the day of release but I'm on the lookout for composers to listen to and gigs to go to as well.