I remember saying on this board many years ago that music is by far the most personal of all the creative outlets of entertainment we are exposed to or participate in...movies, TV, etc no one gets quite so enamored or pissed off about any of those as music.
I've seen and still see a lot of people who like one or two types of music and think everything else is crap, and I generally have no time for that sort of thinking. Go like whatever you like.
I'm not sure I could explain my tastes or interests without a history, so I'll try and make this short and summarized..
When I grew up, my parents were European and had just moved to the US 2 years before I was born. There was no particular kind of music they tried to get me to like. Nor was there as much of the type of kids music that so many parents try to safely ween their kids on today. My dad bought 45s and LPs at yard sales...he really didn't know what he was buying, he only listened to classical music. I also would listen to the radio consistently. There was a 50s revival going on spurred by Happy Days and Grease, and I had a lot of those 45s too. I also had rock, Motown, and some weird experimental stuff. I listened to whatever I liked. Variety shows were common, I got to see who I had been hearing in many cases. I saw James Brown in a performance from the 1960s and I was amazed.
Despite listening to many genres I realized I was liking some of the more "offbeat" stuff. Strange electronic sounds from a really experimental era in the late 70s and early 80s. Devo competed for time with Queen at school. I loved both. This was new wave, and I realized in the early 80s I had missed out on the punk rock revolution in the 70s in England that new wave grew out of. The Clash had so many styles wrapped up in one..I don't think I could not have loved them. If it was "weird" I probably liked it. Still, a lot of what I listened to was "pop".
By the mid 80s, firmly in my teens I recall just feeling tired of a lot of the videos (still the rage) and music I was hearing. By then, my sister had a tape player and we didn't have to use the big stereo system in the living room. We recorded radio shows like Rock Over London. In 1985 I was listening to rap (I first heard rap in the late 70s and loved it), soul and hip hop much more than my sister but we were on the same page with her obsession over English bands. To this day she never remembers listening to Afrika Bambaataa.
By 1986-87 I started listening to college radio. The sounds I liked earlier on started to meld. Hip Hop beats, punk, new wave..I discovered a band named New Order existed(and that they used to be Joy Division, which I had liked..and my current avatar), they put together beats from the streets to rock guitars, and cool bass lines and had been doing so for some time. It all sounded so fresh and new. Artists/DJs saw music as amorphous sonic clay that could be molded. Arrangements could change. Remixes became common. Some of them even broke through on American radio. Like MARRS's Pump up the Volume. 120 minutes finally brought college radio, electronic music, and "alternative" or post-modern as they liked to call it to MTV.
Most of my friends liked the wave of hair bands and the usual pop music. I suppose it's because I come from a more rural area in NJ, not the metropolitan area. Very few had even an inkling what I was listening to. For 3 years I worked at a screen-printing company. We had contracts for major artists. I would bring my tapes to work and play early Ministry, NIN, Happy Mondays, etc. Most didn't know what to make of it, some liked it. Some I even exchanged tapes with...mostly surfers and cyclists. I'll never forget being shocked at printing Cure concert t-shirts.
By the 90s I was a music
snob. I thought pop music was a dinosaur lyrically and musically. Electronica as it's called now, satisfied my need for musical creativity, and the softer, simpler college radio tunes were the more thoughtful lyricists of the day. I caught on to acid house(wishing I had lived in England at the height of it), and thought that and industrial(combining electronics with heavy beats and guitars) were poised to take over popular music all over the world..and then Grunge happened.
Two things changed..one Grunge eventually brought all "alternative" music to the forefront, so after a few years, it was no longer "alternative". It also gave me mixed feelings. I thought it was basically British punk produced by American hicks and garage bands. Music became more splintered. People had very particular tastes and had more access to satisfy them. Ska had a mini-revival, and I loved that.
Electronica was still popular and becoming moreso with DJs taking the forefront, their names would now sell concert tickets, but you'd never hear them on grunge or "rock" stations. Despite it's reach, Grunge faded pretty quickly..by 97-98 alternative rock became more mainstream...college radio today still plays a lot of fairly mainstream music.
As these things generally happen, rock music is cyclical. Despite bursts of change (late 60s, late 70s-early 80s, early 90s) pop music rose to the forefront again. Some I liked, some not though I didn't spend and inordinate amount of time looking for it. From the late 90s into the 2000s boy bands spread like wildfire. Rap became more popular. Country music went mainstream. Pop stars were now manufactured on TV show contests. During that period I listened mostly to Electronic music as well as nostalgia music, mostly from the 80s. I won an MP3 player in an online music contest. No one had any idea what an MP3 player was in 1999. I could hold maybe 15-20 songs at a time and it was a wonder for the gym. Of course unlimited access to every kind of music went on to change music with the Ipod a few years later.
In 2004 I got married. My wife, the sweet soul she is, loves lots of emotional love songs and generally listened to a lot of pop. She loves songs from when she grew up (she's older than me) but is not attached to them, she has no problem looking for the newest music. She likes modern, less twangy country music. We even shared quite a few favorites from the 70s.
In my late 30s I found myself listening to more pop again. I guess I mellowed a bit. I lost most if not all my musical "snobbiness". No doubt some of it is due to my wife and what we share musically. She's surprised I know lyrics from songs from the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s. I can pin down
any song from the 1980s to within 2 years of release on Spotify without looking it up and the 70s to within 3 years. I lost some of my ambivalence to grunge and rock tunes from the 90s. I actually like a lot of singles from the 90s and early 2000s that I did listen to, if not fully appreciate at the time. Chris Cornell is all over my Spotify.
It's probably easier to say what I dislike. These days I dislike country music in general, though just recently my wife played me some that I can stand and doesn't sound too much like country music.
When traveling in certain states, I have to put the radio off-limits because every station is country music. I've listened to discordant, non-melodic music in my time, but I can't stand death-metal or in fact most metal. I don't find it creative. I liked rap for a long time, I can still listen to some tracks that have rap in them, but I almost never listen to full rap songs. It's kind of sad for me as i used to be supportive of it. Like I said earlier, these are just personal preferences, I really don't make judgements on what people listen to now, I'm fine with what anyone likes to listen to, it's really very personal for most.
So I wanted to post two things, one a short 10 minute clip on the making of a milestone track from New Order called "Confusion" from PBS's "The History of Rock n Roll", "The Perfect Beat" chapter, and how it came to be for some context. It starts at
2:15.
The song I'll post is New Order's "Everything's Gone Green". When I heard the layered, ethereal, and technological sound and the plaintive guitars I remember being carried away by it. I never took any drugs for that kind of music and for the best examples, you never need any. Despite the beat, and danceable tune, it's a very sad song..which was kind of a trademark of theirs. There's a version with a video, but I don't think the visuals are interesting and they detract from the song, so I'll post the 1987 Substance CD version.
I've read every single post here so far. Finding it very interesting.
RAMA
)
That song right there. NIN's version is about angst. Cash's version is about PAIN.
