09 December 2021

Not My Generation Not My Music

I'm borderline irritated scrolling past the gushing fangrrly squeals about that Peter Jackson Beatle doc.

While I can appreciate the impact they had on popular music, it was long before my time.

So was Elvis.

While they both had a great deal of influence on music, their direct influence was about spent by the time I could buy music.

And I didn't spend my money on The Beatles or Elvis.

Thus, I don't really care about a documentary about a band which had split up long before.  A split which took them five years to announce.

Elvis was dead (yes he was) before I started buying my own music.

What amuses me is that many of the artists I was into were contemporaries of both.

Much to my father's despair, I got into punk and not the blues.

Much to my mother's relief, I enjoyed country made before 1982.

Disco never bothered me, but I didn't buy any.

I was doing AC/DC, Metallica, Megadeth, Floyd, Muddy, Howling Wolf, Bach and Strauss in the late 80's.

Lately I'm doing everything.  Former friend Anglave referred to my music collection as "song whiplash" when it was set to random.

But not a single Beatles song except what's archived for The Boy from that movie Yesterday.

Unsettling is my discovery that I like some kinds of jazz.  A format I'd previously thought I hated, but I have discovered that I merely disliked a couple of popular forms of it.  Forms the Hipsters snootily told me I HAD to like if I were to like music at all.

I don't care for growl metal, but I increasingly appreciate metal in Swedish and Mexican Spanish.

What do you listen to?

11 comments:

  1. Station I play most on Pandora is based on the music of Kim Richey, an "Americana" artist based out of Ohio. All of the artists on that particular channel are women - - by my own choice, I prefer female vocalists over male vocalists. All of the ladies are in the rock/folk/blues/pop tradition that used to be called simply "rock." Others of the ladies are Tift Merritt, Neko Case, Lucy Kaplansky, Emily Jane White, Cat Power, and She Keeps Bees.

    I'm a huge Mike Oldfield fan. The man is a musical genius, both as a composer and a multi-instrumentalist. He's a killer guitar player on both acoustic and electric guitars.

    Past these I am all over the map. Can't listen to classic rock or blues any more, burned out on them long ago. I like classical and particularly medieval/renaissance music. I like Celtic but have preferences for solo fiddle tunes and button accordion stuff. No pop or rap/hip-hop or metal. Lately I've been exploring early European folk music, which often was the root of classical music.

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  2. I like some of the Beatles. But I like Grand Funk Railroad and Three Dog Night more. Then there's ELO, and Herb Albert and the Tijuana Brass and Bach and medieval music and bagpipes and even, yes, some jazz as long as it's not free-form 'masturbation' jazz where every instrument gets 2-3 minutes to play with itself. Not a lot of European-based music I don't like.

    Like Japanese and Korean music, but not Chinese. Vietnamese is far superior to Chinese, too.

    Mongolian music, both traditional and the HUU.

    Not into Native American music. Boring and bland. Stupid flutes and mumble mumble, whoooo...

    Big Band, Ragtime, Opera, some musicals (not CATS, burn them) and some musical theater.

    There's pretty much good in almost all genres. Except formal Chinese music and gangsta rap and, well, really, most rap. Though I do enjoy Weird Al's "Amish Paradise."

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  3. Judging from your music taste, probably older than you (58 soon to be one more soon). I started with KISS before they went Glam. Then Ted Nugent, Aerosmith, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, BOC, AC/DC, SRV. Pretty much standard 70's era rock 'n roll. As I got older, more sedate music. Eagles, John Hiatt (love his music !) Gypsy Kings, Counting Crows.

    But now I have to be in the mood to listen. I've heard it so many times, before, I can play it in my head. And my truck radio has a talk radio station on most of the time unless they are playing relaying 'sportsing' going on is where I turn it off. More bands but you get the gist I think. Never been a walkabout on headphones player, situational awareness is too important to allow that distraction.

    jrg

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  4. I really can't get into jazz.

    I like blues, but jazz just sounds like music made by technically brilliant musicians who can't remember the melody.

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    Replies
    1. I will track down some of the names I've been listening to and liking.

      Your objection is exactly my objection, and it turns out that's just a small, but hipster supported, portion of jazz.

      What got me to cast wider into looking into jazz was an article talking about how Pink Floyd is to Jazz as Rock is to Blues. That seems to be true, but you have to dump "the greats" of jazz to see it.

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    2. I also don't particularly like what I think you are talking about, which I call "artsy jazz". But I think I dislike "smooth jazz" like Kenny G more than that. It is the sonic equivalent of syrup. Not pure maple syrup either, the stuff that is mostly high fructose corn syrup with some caramel color and artificial flavor added.

      Delete
  5. I am the era (born 1950) and have no love of the Beatles self indulgence and over praised pop sludge.

    What I have been addicted to for the last 2 years is a genre called female fronte4d symphonic metal, metal music with operatic style vocals. Examples of bands are: Nightwish, Therion, Epica, After Forever, Xandria, and Visions of Atlantis. Huge amounts of the music is available on you tube, including some great concerts.
    Outside of those, a couple of other bands in other genres, Faun-dark folk, Mono Inc -goth, and Wagakki -rocked up traditional Japanese music with traditional instruments mixed with modern ones.

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  6. Google up "Brown Sabbath" if you want proof that Hispanics can love metal.

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    Replies
    1. Latinos love metal, I used to work with a guy in Mexico who went to Scandinavia on vacation because he was so into metal. Also the Colombian cycling blogger I followed had a link to his brother's speed metal podcast.
      Of course the dark side is the same cultures produced reggaeton.
      My current favorite band is The Hu, Mongolian heavy metal, courtesy of Larry Correia

      Delete

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