Music & Me
Now Playing: Tones Of Home By Blind Melon
Topic: History
A Wise person told me once that most people like the music they heard when they were teenagers & shut the door to new music/experiences sometime in their early twenties but that a true music lover will listen to new music for many years past the 'norm'

Annother wise person took me to task when I was a teenager because although it was 1984 & I was just 15 years old I was mostly listening to Led Zeppelin, AC/DC & the Who. (among others) & he was of the opinion that I should've been leaving those old bands behind for the 'new thing' Personally at the time I didn't much care for most of the popular music I was seeing on mtv at the time, I didn't like Madonna or ABC or Duran Duran- I liked Def Leppard & the Pretenders etc. though & I must say Mtv was a lot better at keeping a balance between different genres of music back then than they do now.
I have always listened to a wide range of music. (As long as it's Rock) I'm equally comfortable listening to Del Shannon, The Beatles, The Cars, Guns & Roses or Audioslave (my current favorite new band) & I like most everything in between.
As I get older I see what the first person meant though. Many of my friends are only into the stuff they listened to as teenagers (most notably Black Sabbath & Metallica)
Others only like music that reminds them of the past & only want to listen when they're alterd in one way or annother.
Or they've changed completely & listen to only Country music or Rap now & have no use for what they would have killed or died for 10 years ago.
I know only a few people who're still checking out new stuff. Besides my kids that is.
My biggest frustration is that there's not enough time to listen to everything I want to hear & that so much stuff gets left behind. If I hadn't invested in Cinderella's Cd Long Cold Winter I'd probably have forgotten all about 'Bad Seamstress Blues' which was never that popular but I loved it. & of course 'Coming Home' was one of Lois' Fathers & my 'songs'
That brings me to one of my favorite things about music. It's abillity to transport me right back to where I was when I first heard the song. I used to (even at 15- when I had time for such things) write down the mental links I had with certain songs. I would love to sit down & do that again. But where to start? Putting all my favorite songs from my cd collection in the windows media player has been interesting in that way, I found I have some odd glitch in mine which does not save every song's name to the song so I have to go back & type them all in along with rate the song & set up play lists. So as a result I'm hearing at least part of every song I loaded in. For instance right now I'm listening to 'Unskinny Bop' by Poison & remebering in 1990 driving 200+ miles with my mother, grandmother & Lois (she was 6 months old) I did most of the driving as I didn't have a car of my own & missed driving one & My Mother was tired (she always is tired- she's the type who gets out of bed, sits down to have her first cup of coffee & when you ask her how she is this morning she says 'tired' right off the bat) So I drove the whole way & back again. I played the radio the whole way, disregarding the fact that both my mother & grandmother are jazz fans & do not care for rock at all.... That song must have played 10 times over the 4 hour drive & I sang along each time. (nowadays I shudder at the mental picture- but at the time I didn't care.)
Then there's the Whole catergorizing factor that the media player adds. I set up my own names for my playlists but for heavens sake, the auto populated ones? who put this stuff in here? Does anyone actually put songs under the classification "songs I hate?" I mean, why waste the hard drive space for songs you hate? I know, purists will load a whole cd to preserve the integrity of the cd. the heck with that, I want to be able to use the shuffle feature & know that every song that plays I've given at least 3 stars rating because I didn't waste any space on songs I don't like.
Now that I've been naming songs for a few days (I alternate between loading more songs & naming the ones loaded in already) I'm finding that arranging the play lists by decade just isn't working. it's ok for the 60's & 70's because I don't have a LOT of music from those decades (they're mostly on album if I have it & I'm a long way from being able to afford the technology to transfer albums to the computer) but the 80's, how can you have u2 & guns & roses in the same genre? they just don't go together. But since I like them both I have them in the same space. I can already see that I'm going to have to go back through once every song has it's name & then reclassify. This is the sort of thing I used to love to do. (once again, when I was a homeschooled teenager with WAY too much time on my hands)
Of course, I always, when new music comes out, or I begin a project like this, ordering my music in a 'reasoned' way. Wonder what my brother would think. Frozen in time at age 16 like he is it's hard to apply his ideas & attitudes to the world today. The internet was largely unknown in 1989 when he died. He was hardcore to the end though, so I suppose he would've been against the whole thing. He was so caught up in his own labels that he called my listening to anything less hard than say, Metallica. (who, I might add, I don't care for much, having had them shoved down my throat by my brother & every guy I ever dated or even hung around with but Doug- who was too old for that particular music-) Selling out. He then turned on Metallica when they put out the video for 'one' because they had said they would never do videos & then they bowed to pressure & did it anyway (I'm sure he was rolling in his grave during the 'Enter Sandman' phase - which, incedentally is nearly the only song I ever liked by them - 'King Nothing' being annother & of course that Thin Lizzy song- 'Whiskey in a Jar' but that's because I liked the original & the imagery in the song)I can't imagine what he would think of the way music is now though. He'd probably Hate most of it- curmudgeon that he was.