22

i am 41: aged 22 i liked whatever i.penman said

I'm 32, aged 22 my taste was changing a lot. I was getting into rave (Prodigy, Messiah, Acen) mixtapes by DJ Hype, Slipmat ... and was just one year away from discovering and falling for jungle.

But I was also falling out of love with a lot of genres and bands.

I still listened to a lot of hip-hop but was beginning to feel depressed by the increasing amount of gratuitous violence in the lyrics.

I listened to most varieties of techno. But was getting bored with the new Germanic "trance" sound.

I had been a big enthusiast for (often political) industrial bands like Consolidated, Meat Beat Manifesto and Nine Inch Nails. But was finding them either veering too much towards rock (electric guitars) or bland ambience.

Also, this was the age I lost my main musical fellow traveller. My friend from school and I, had been swapping tapes of everything from Jim Foetus to Coil to Propaganda to Hip Hop to techno. But inexplicably he didn't "get", and refused to listen to jungle. (He presumably was a victim of 22 syndrome, because he came round a couple of years later.)

For many people, I guess 22 is around the age they leave college, and lose free time, subsidized gigs at the student union, and a large number of student friends who want to swap tapes.

I am 41, aged 22 I only liked a narrower and narrower range of the things I had liked aged 19-21 and it took until my mid 20s before I opened up again to pretty much everything. I still like nearly everything.

Paradoxically, I was at my least 'influencable' stage. Though I usually disliked everything I. Penman said he liked - I even started to dislike things I thought I liked and then found out Penman liked them. The Mutant Disco album for instance is wonderful. But Penman's essay on the back 'This is recession ragtime...' still brings on one of my turns.

i am 22!! and tom is clearly wrong.

(oh btw gareth the clay machine gun was fucking excellent; will say more on relevant thread soon)

Alexander neatly illustrates the (drunken and generalised) point I was making - not that 22 is the worst age to appreciate new music but that it's a bad time to appreciate a new music movement or scene. Assuming that like most music fans you get heavily into music in your teens, you then spend several years building an identity for yourself in which music plays a huge part. In your late 20s and beyond a lot of people start hooking their identities on other things - careers, families, 'settling down'. Music is still hugely important but generally not in its identity-giving, tribal sense - this means that at 27 or so you can appreciate and love new musical scenes and movements while opting-out of personal involvement in them.

So 22 is the midpoint between these stages - you've built up a musical and self-identity based on certain things (the stuff you liked when you were 18-19, as Alexander says) - a new big thing is a big challenge to that, particularly if it's looking to replace or attack the stuff you liked. When I was 22 I'd been listening to indie music and the charts for years, suddenly Britpop was everywhere and indie music was in the charts and I didn't like it, I wasnt able for ages to appreciate the positive, energetic aspects. And Nigel Williamson - whose punk article sparked this - was 22 when the Pistols hit and had made lots of his aesthetic choices, he was exactly the wrong age to appreciate it.

As I've said loads on ILM (and other people have too, I'm sure the thought's not mine) - listening to rock isnt about challenging your parents, it's about challenging your big brother/sister. 22 is the age when we become, culturally, that big brother/sister.

Toby do you like the 'new rock'?

I finally stopped hating Radiohead at 22, at that age i was getting all the old music that i hadn't discovered in the past. It's got a lot better since.

I am female. Hence this doesn't apply to me. I have grate taste. Always have. Always will. I have selective memory as well.

what is the "new rock"? my flatmate went mad the other day and bought records by black rebel motorcycle club, soundtrack of our lives etc etc. we were listening to them last night and also to a byrds album and concluded that the byrds whipped them => if they are "new rock" then i am not v interested. i do like the white stripes though.

(if this is nothing like "new rock" then...oops).

What Nath said. Apart from the first bit obv.

Also I was 22 in 1987!!! So Tom's theory is clearly complete bollocks.

At 22 I was editing my school paper's entertainment section (despite an unique grasp on grammer and spelling, go figure) and running around getting high on marker fumes as MD at the campus radio station. Think it helps spending a few years in the country where there is no "scene", none, what so ever. There are people who enjoy music and make it to almost any musical show regardless of style and those who show up and help out just outta pure boredom. Until the recent explosion of relatively low cost internet the only way to gain an identity through music was to play Bluegrass music or stay awake late at night listening to Brave New Waves, both of which options are near religious experiences when you get out into the wasteland we tend to call the Maritimes. Generally people are more interested in if your French or English.
At 22 I was gaining more appriciation for labels like K and Kranky, Big Star, This Mortal Coil, Sigur Ros' Itchy Wooooooo single was mailed to me in exchange for a copy of F# A# (or was it Elevator To Hell's Parts 1-3) I mailed to Engerland, a lovely unsigned artist named Mirah played in town to at most 10 people alongside her touring partner Phil aka "The Microphones", A friend forced me to listen to Yo La Tengo and I finally enjoyed them, the millionth Dead Head made me listen to this one special concert from _____ city maaaaaaaaaaan and I still didnt like it, I still dont understand Radiohead's endearment to disgruntled university students and I think I was just getting into early punk and whatever came before (The Stooges, MC5, Love, The Dammed, VU...) due to a finding of a 4 lp collection surrounding Electra's early rock recordings.
Well that wasnt too long ago but I have trouble seperating my past five years, hell Im only 23 (a precious little while).
I guess I missed out on the music forming my identity, having already gotten into fights or just plain not liking most of the people who I should have formed some clique with. I can talk to people about music or problems with campus radio stations in Canada for hours and have done so, but generally my status has been more connected to what I studied in school.
Tech support have become mystic priests to some people. Fix a computer and your endowded with the holy powers of god. sheeesh. Can you tell I dont like fixing friends computers over ICQ?

I'm 22. I'm not sure how I appreciate new music. I didn't listen to much music at all in my teens, nothing really stuck. Most of my musical tastes have been developed after I hit the 2 decade mark. I think it's interesting though, by 22 year olds, do you mean people who are at around the age when they graduate from college, just entering the "real" world? I would guess that since a lot of 22's are at that stage in their life.

I however have been working in a soul sucking corporate job for the last 2 years, so I think I may have a different take on new music than some one who spent 4 years at a college or university.

I was 22 until one month and thirteen days ago. It was actually the first time in a long while that I got really interested in new mainstream rock music. I was also getting into a lot of new avant electronic music and getting exposed to new free improv. No, I'm quite sure this theory doesn't hold at all for me.

haha, @ 22 i was listening to r&b, radio hiphop, nu-pop and xenakis.

(much like today.)

with the hindsight of long those two years i can safely say that tom is king mentalist.

20-22 was when my longstanding love affair with indie miserablism began to BREAK DOWN. the notion of me listening to "sugary r&b nonsense" @ age 18 (or even 20) was beyond me. (nb: i was 22 in the year 2000, 20 in 98 during the timbaland/nu-pop ascendancy. this is not a coincidence i think.)

haha jess i had that development too only six years earlier

wow, i bet now you're so advanced you look like one of those outer limits aliens with the huge heads.

Was 22 in 1993...got into Suede and Seefeel, among other things. And why not?

I AM ALIEN HIPHOP

As I've said loads on ILM (and other people have too, I'm sure the thought's not mine) - listening to rock isnt about challenging your parents, it's about challenging your big brother/sister.
I didn't have a brother/sister. I was challenging my inner voices.
I have never really had periods in which I exclusively listened to a certain genre of music.

I'm 23. At about 20 I began to really like improv (and its connections with rock). This happened because I explored a lot of indie and was not satisfied with a lot of it.

But it was only full on last year (22), especially with more contemporary and 20th century classical composers like xenakis/feldman/dumitrescu. I don't if that qualifies as a 'scene' though. Also got more braxton/taylor but its prob because I had more money in the bank account.

I am 32 and 22 was the start of GRUNGE. Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Chili Peppers, all that stuff -- also PE and the Beastie Boys, which wasn't exactly new. I do know that I never ever listen to the stuff that was new then now. Except that first Mazzy Star album, sometimes.

What's up with every drunken observation Tom makes now gets its own thread? Can't you guys finish these coversations at the pub?

My words are as precious thread-jewels.

90% of threads the UK people start are pub conversations, Mark. Gareth's just polite enough to give credit (or wants to shift the blame).

yes, this thread is obviously no "name this rush song?" or "PROLAPSE: classic or dud."

The new (as in relatively current releases) stuff I can most clearly remember listening to at 22 were Psychic TV and Public Enemy. I finally had copies of some Joy Division, Velvet Underground, Throbbing Gristle material, so I was doing a lot of catching up with that. Listening to other stuff too, but like the bands mentioned above, not necessariy new. Jon Hassel. Fripp & Eno.

I'm 24. From late '99 through late 2000 I was huge into the Chemical Brothers' Surrender, Kid Koala's Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and the Handsome Boy Modeling School thing. NO THIS DOES NOT PROVE THE THEORY, SHUT UP. Besides, my musical tastes were a lot worse five years earlier, when I thought The Wall was a great album.

There was probably some non-indie stuff that I'm forgetting. Guns n Roses? Samantha Fox? Not sure of the dates.

Flaming Lips have a song called "When Yer 22." One lyric goes:

Sound is so cute when you're 22
When you're 22

I'll be 22 next month, and I think my tastes have been expanding and shifting as of late, in no small part due to this board I'm sure. Still, I can't take emo; it provokes near-physical sickness in me. But my sister likes a lot of it, and she's only 4 1/2 years younger than me. Maybe Tom's theory should be revised as 22 being the age when the Generation Gap begins to take hold. But hell, emo's been around for a while, and I used to have some Sunny Day CDs (still have one of them) or whatever. I know this: two years ago, I wouldn't have been caught dead claiming to like a Linkin Park song (or whatever), but now I do so with ease.

Maybe Tom's theory should be revised as 22 being the age when the Generation Gap begins to take hold.

I'll buy that, sorta explains where my head was at then.

I'm 40 and at 22 I liked the Fall, Prince, Joan Jett, the Buzzcocks, and the Kinks. And I got to go see The Gun Club, Minutemen, Black Flag, and Redd Kross all the time. It was a good age to appreciate new music.

i am 34. aged 22 i was listening into my bloody valentine 'isn't anything' + 'soon', spacemen 3's 'playing with fire', pixies 'doolittle', young gods, public enemy, dinosaur jr's 'Just like Heaven', cocteau twins, stone roses (spike island was a high point), 808 state, the beloved's 'the sun rising', happy monday's 'bummed' + stuff I'm less keen on now like lush + ride.

Seems to me that at that nadir between musical obsessions is when one would be most appreciative of something new because a) you're completely burnt out on your previous favorite genre and now looking outside it. And b) you haven't leapt into your next obsession thereby your ears are still theoretically uncommitted and open. (This argument is very thin.) (Also I think people like to shape these theories to fit their own ego i.e. "people named Byron who are 26 have the best taste in music!")

I am 7 days away from being 22. In 7 days, I will stop listening to first gen Warp artists (autechre, Plaid), Kranky artists (Low, Labradford), not-quite Kranky (Mogwai), ex-4AD (Cocteaus, though they wouldn't be "new" would they?), preeminent indie Sleater Kinney (the girls seem to be getting a lot of *ahem* lip on ILM lately), and first gen trip hoppers (Portishead). I will listen instead to second gen/rate trip hop (MORcheeba, K&D, etc), Aphex Twin only, that cool BT chap, DJ Shadow, &c.

When I was a teenager I didn't have many records so I spent a lot of time listening to the radio. I was exposed to an extremely wide range of music. I was very open-minded towards anything I hadn't heard before.

By the time I was 22 I had amassed a fairly large music collection and along the way my tastes had narrowed a great deal. I was now interested only in "experimental" and "alternative" music. Previously I had had a healthy attitude towards popular culture , but now I was listening to "culture-jamming" music and reading joyless books such as "File Under Popular" by Chris Cutler. I was also obsessed with noisy music in the tradition of "Sister Ray" such as the works of Glenn Branca.

Eventually I got bored with all that unpleasant music. When I was 23 I started listening to dance music and began to go out clubbing. I started to enjoy lots of different kinds of music again. Now I'm 30 and I'm still interested in hearing new types of music.

me = 22

Going to ignore this cheap attempt to freak me out. Try harder.

22 = post metal

22 = 18 = 69

Do you really want us to try Kate?

i'm 39. when i was 22 i useta think "i'm too old to care about this shit". things changed. but not that much.

i said oh my & uh boo hoo

Julio is 23!I am in shock, I thought you and yoda were battling it out to end your days, 23 well well check out the brain on Julio.

When I was 22, it was a very good year. It was a very good year for cowpunks. And chart-topping gender benders. I pretty much liked everything Dan Regan liked (thought I didn't get to see Redd Kross all the time!) plus Shannon and C-Bank and whatever else they were playing in NYC clubs. I think I was just starting to get sick of REM the first time. I probably didn't have as much time for "challenging"/"difficult" records, I was a sucker for all the Smash Hits favorites. Boy George ruled the pop world and I was pretty happy about it. Though I was still crazy about the Birthday Party.

I don't know, I liked everything, same as always except for my brief flirtation with that dumbass punk rock Stalinism for a few months in '77. I'm still feeling ashamed about that. I'm 40.

cowpunk!!

Hee haw.

when i was about 21 or 22 this guy a bit older than me looked thru my records & went, oh i've seen this happen to lots of ppl's record collections, the rock stuff's being replaced by jazz, & like 'cause he was being smug & patronising about it i started getting back into dumm rock.

(just to explain what i meant about me thinking 'i'm too old for this shit')

I wish I had a friend like that when I was 12 or 13. Only he'd be making fun of my Poco and Marshall Tucker albums. I guess cowpunk was inevitable.

Hey Duane, I never told you about the Steve McDonald Group show! He sang half the songs while shaking a tambourine, played bass the other half. Was very fey and charismatic. The band's a bit, well, not as cool as Robert Hecker-era Redd Kross and the brother dynamic was missing , but big deal, I loved it. Most of the songs are great, I think he and Jeff write them, although Jeff's not in the band. He encored with the Stone Temple Pilots song "Big Bang Baby", introducing it as "Steve MacDonald channeling Scott Weiland channeling Jeff McDonald." He did one other show last weekend, covered Kim Fowley's "Motorboat", my favorite song ever.

I saw Elvis Costello and Cait Riordan at Amoeba Records today, if anyone cares. Elvis suggested my friend Andrew buy an Ethiopian compilation.

I'm off to El Coyote, wheeeeeee.

tom made that comment on my 22nd birthday... makes me weary of what i will listening to in the next 12 months...

his position is musical likes are entrenched by this point and a changes in the music scene is difficult to deal with?

personally, i feel my listening choices have matured substantially in the last 6 months... as jess says "when my longstanding love affair with indie miserablism began to BREAK DOWN"

i think i'm more capable now of enjoying new music of any kind than in the past, when my attitude for years has been "theres no good new music any more blah blah blah"... so maybe theres a point in our lives when we cannot appreciate new music but why put a specific year on it?

My take on the end of tribalism (which Tom put sagely): I'm 22 with a bullet, and I'll be unpleasantly surprised if this isn't my best musical year ever. When the nadir arrives, when the music that made you isn't doing it anymore, at first you don't change your ways because you don't want to give up on something that gave you so much pleasure. Maybe the average age for this is 22 but for me it hit prematurely at 19, a terrible year for the alt-pop and NZ jangle to which I'd dedicated the previous half-decade. I was trying to return to my hip-hop roots, but it wasn't working, mostly because I was listening to Dre.

At this stage bad, neutral or good things can happen. Bad: defection to MOR. Neutral: Mojoism. Good: A new, improved musical mindset. The problem is how to get this mindset. Of course, I think I have a pretty good one, and maybe I was lucky: For me 19 was pre-Internet, pre-Napster. If I had these resources at my disposal, I might've spent all my time in a fruitless search for decent alt-pop and then given new music in disgust. But I didn't, so I was forced to admit the stuff didn't cut it anymore. Only then did I get my Net connection, and with the resultant exposure to good criticism, I was prepared to open my ears.

So there isn't an age where you have to shut off to new things, or if there is, it's way older than 22. If music doesn't move you anymore, then change genres by all means, but realise this requires a change in thinking s well. Or you could start reading novels.