Here I am, drawing my pension, having a good time, a child of the 50′s, yet my i-pod/i-tunes is largely filled with new material. My CD/LP collection contains a vast array of old albums and compilations, and while they are occasionally dragged out for a listen prompted by something or other, my prime hunger for new recordings. So where to hear them?
With Jools off air, there are no music programmes on TV. I can’t be *rs*d to sit through a chat show just to hear a new track performed, and I don’t listen to music radio, Jonathan Ross on Saturday morning excepted. That said, I’m never short of new music to enjoy. Where are the stimuli? Firstly there’s the undying affection for the pop end of Nashville and I get enough email invites to keep me up-to-date there. Then there are the cover mount CD’s with The Word (brilliant) and American version Paste (more esoteric). Rarely a month goes by without something on the Word CD prompting a full album purchase (CD or download depending on whether I really want the accompanying booklet or not, and B0n Iver is just one artist “discovered” via Paste.
There’s the weekly i-Tunes freebie, which, once down (or up – what’s the difference?) loaded, prompts a purchase, though usually not until it’s come round on the random play a few times. And lastly there are today’s music writers whose enthusing in the national media that crosses my radar, can prompt interest. Oh, and not to forget your children, who are also a good stimulus
What’s the point of this post? Just to reassure those of a certain age and not immersed in the minutiae of the latest Leonard Cohen reissue or Band box set, that it’s not that difficult to expose yourself to enough new music to not only maintain that childhood enthusiasm, but to hold your head up around the family dining table.
And who are the artists getting me going at the moment? That’s an admission in itself, for another day!
4 Responses to So how do you hear new music?
6Music is worth a listen. Some of the DJs are predictable pillocks, but the music policy is pretty sound. Otherwise, it’s my nephews and niece who keep me up to date with stuff. And I’d rather listen to LCD Soundsystem than any amount of regurgitated alt.whatever tripe. If I want to listen to Hank Williams, I’ll listen to Hank Williams; otherwise I’d rather hear something which at least attempts something newish.
David Hughes, I salute you. It’s people like you who remind me why most people my age irritate the funk out of me. They’ve lost interest not just in new music but in new anything. For some reason they seem to get satisfaction out of listening to their own record collections being played at them by Radio 2.
But, returning to topic, like Mark P I get my best input from the young – my kids Joie and Will. They’re forever pointing me at things the record companies haven’t sent me (and believe me I do appreciate the privileged position I’m in of being sent free music daily).
I have not consciously listened to pop radio for decades. I think i stopped in the early 70s because i already knew then that I wouldn’t hear what I wanted to hear on the radio. My major source, even in the sixties when I lived in Edinburgh, was the music press. I’d read the reviews, check the American reports and then head for the record shop to see what I could a)find and b) afford.
There was a group of us (hello Stuart Cruikshank, Brian Hogg, Nic Datnell, Ernie Whiteoak) who, every Saturday morning, would be in Bruce’s on Rose Street, and then drift to another one near the ABC Cinema whose name escapes me and by the afternoon we’d be in the Record Exchange on South Clark Street.
There was no danger that I’d hear the Velvet Underground or Buffalo Springfield or Terry Riley or The Zodiac Cosmic Sounds (ha!) or The Sonics or Moondog on the radio. (Peel excepted)
Now I check anything my kids recommend, listen avidly to the stuff I’m sent by the record companies and find things serendipitously on the internet when I’m searching for other things. (Isn’t that the title of a John Lennon song?)
I’ve also learned not to worry if I miss stuff at the start. If it’s good enough to endure I’ll almost certainly encounter it in time. And, hell, even if i don’t what’s the loss? There’s no shortage of good new things to hear.
Just heard Bat For Lashes for the first time this morning. I’ll be checking that out again. And I saw Just Jack on E4 Music. I had no idea he was popular enough to be on the telly. And Get Cape Wear Cape Fly being consulted as a pundit on anger on that late night arts review thingy with Thirsty Work.
There’s more music about, it’s more accessible and it’s not being dictated to us by Smashie, Nicey and their oily ilk, or by Top Of The Pops which, please god, nobody ever brings back.
For the record, I also make regular Best Of CDs for the car. My current one entitled “Songs 2009-ish” includes Bitter:Sweet, Kanye West (2), Broadcast 2000, Maria Taylor (2), MC Lars & YTCracker, Gaslight Anthem, Malajube (2), Killers, Laura Marling, M.Ward, Alphabeat, It Hugs Back, Ting Tings and Gomez. (Plus Lush’s version of Magnetic Fields’ I Have The Moon, which I rediscovered the other day when I was putting my Lush albums onto my iPod). Fabulous. There isn’t time to listen to all the good stuff now. Isn’t that wonderful?
Delighted to have struck a chord here!There’s no music kick better than hearing a song for the first time (even though millions may have heard it before you), getting that tingle and being unable to resist the urge to play it again, and again! And you’re both right – it’s the kids who keep you in touch…and it’s good that all three of us have relations who haven’t written us off and music no-hopers.
Do your kids really want you to be listening to the same stuff as they do?
For new music I generally read an effusive review, check out a track or two on their My Space page (or similar), then decide that I can safely forget all about it.
I’ve long come to accept that I’m never again going to be as excited as I was when I first heard, for example, Horses, The Ramones, Marquee Moon, or The Cramps, let alone the 60s music (and the 50s that inspired it)that was my first love (“and it will be my last” as that horrible song went). It’s now more likely that I’ll find something I like from before I was born than from the new century. As Dylan said on his wonderful Theme Time Radio Hour when one of his fictitious listeners enquired as to why he plays so much old music – “there’s more of it”.
Having said that, the odd new act still permeates my consciousness, even on Later with Jools Holland, which usually makes every act appear as dull as ditchwater, I did enjoy Dengue Fever (although credit should go to Charlie Gillett’s World Service radio show, where I heard them first).