by MM i mean you have either stopped bothering to keep up to date, or you keep up to date, but no longer like much new music, or you just only listen to old music and get no thrills from the new stuff. or you might listen to new stuff and think its all brilliant, almost as a way to convince yourself that youre still young, youre still in touch, and that youre not getting old (though when you start to think everything new is brilliant, and that theres nothing wrong with modern music, its almost a dead cert that you are just old).

various posters on here talk about not 'living' hip hop like they used to, and theres been various discussions about the lesson being a board of old timers, so i wonder who here feels theyve gone through that inevitable period that everyone must go through, where they feel a disconnect with modern music, which must hurt in a way for anyone who previously was obsessed with music.

im sort of in the latter camp - i still keep up to date, and there are quite a lot of things i like or find interesting (though its usually with some qualification, like i love ariel pinks before today but wonder if its just cos it reminds me of rock music that was out when i was younger!), but the last time i really felt i was really in sync with modern music and really felt passionate about it as a whole was the mid-00s when i was almost unconditionally positive about grime and dubstep and related stuff. i dont know if its that music has dropped the ball in a way, that modern popular music has kinda run out of steam as a *whole* (theres still good stuff being made obv) or that the modern concept of whats 'good' is totally out of sync with my own, or if its just me, that i have different priorities now.

or yknow, that im just getting old.

*shrug*

Certain forms of music like hip-hop and hardcore punk I'm sure noone ages 18 to 28 can make that I would want to hear. I just don't respect anyone in that age group to make hip-hop or hardcore punk that I would want to hear. I suppose the usual attitudes that are associated with those two styles of music wouldn't appeal to me coming from people ages 18 to 28 years old-or younger. I suppose I could like hip-hop or hardcore punk from youngsters if the artists seemed very weird or creative or strange but that by definition is very uncommon.

Older music is really doing it for me: from Nat King Cole to late 90's - esp. 70's.

The strange thing is I got kind of drawn into pop listening to MGMT's "kids" and "electric feel" and Nelly Furtado's "Say it right" and Rihanna's "disturbia" and songs like that on the bus on the radio (walkman) in my last years in NYC before moving to Georgia (I spent most of my life in NYC) and now modern pop music seems to be my connection to NYC so a good portion of my music listening (esp. when driving) is listening to modern pop - to keep that NYC feel I had listening to the pop songs on the bus in NYC a few years ago.

As much as I like a good portion of the modern pop music I'm listening to, I am getting the feel that it's kind of desperate for a 40 year old to be listening to pop, but then I realize I'm not just liking any pop song, it has to have some quality.

I still listen to music that is just right for me like Henry Threadgill and Zooid and I can still be drawn into new music through channel surfing and hearing stuff I like on college radio (they got some serious college radio stations in Georgia) like FLT RSK:

http://flightrisk.bandcamp.com/album/people-and-places


and Sun Araw - Crete

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBWe3pxGFw8


And I suppose jazz-fusion is the music that is most right exactly for me at my age, but besides Jean-Paul Bourelly and Dave Fiuczynski, I'm out of the loop for current jazz-fusion artists.

I think there's quite a difference between people who

a) only listen to the music they grew up on with a minimal interst in hearing music that's new to *them*

b) people who are still actively checking for music they haven't heard before.

Whether that music is contemporary or old is IMO less important than a lot of people claim; myanmar folk-music is just as "new" to me as dubstep, regardless of how old it is simply because I haven't really listened to it...

If you are talking specifically about contemporary music, I think it's only natural that it's more difficult to find stuff that blows you away with age. After all, much of the appeal of contemporary music is that it sounds fresh and the older and more jaded you get and the more music you hear, it becomes increasingly difficult to experience music as "fresh". The differences between the old and new (and they always exist; even the most derivative and retro-stuff generally contain at least some elements that dates it to ''now'') becomes more irrelevant and insignificant.

For example, I remember that you (or4 howisya. Or both) felt that Flying Lotus and those guys reminded you of 90's Trip-Hop and IDM, only slightly more Hip-Hop and post-Dilla. However, for someone younger, that very detail may actually be highly significant and if you were younger and less jaded, it might have been significant for you as well...

Basically, a lot of people have a tendency to use the music that blew them away when they were less experienced and knowledgeable as some sort of golden standard, conveniently ignoring that people then were saying the same stuff about that music: "It's just X but a little mixed with Y, nothing new really".

Shit, I remember an old interview with Keith Richards when he was asked about his feelings about Hip-Hop and he said that he heard Last Poets do that stuff 20 years ago and that it wasn't original in the slightest. It's easy to say that he was wrong but if you think about it, he probably just heard some guy talking rhytmically to "beat-based" music and the differences in production-style and flow were probably irrelevant to him; it's very much in the eye of the behearer and the older you get and the more music you hear, old *and* new, the more difficult it will be to assign too much significance to subtle or even unsubtle changes in sound.

However, I DO wish that some new music would alienate me on some grandpa shit like "this isn't even music, it's just noise" the same way people were alienated by rock'n'roll or Hip-Hop or even jazz. However, that never happens, if anything, popular music just seems to get blander and more "MOR".

Actually, maybe that is the new grandpa-attitude; instead of complaining about how abrasive and "unmusical" it sounds, you complain about how watered-down and bland it is, LOL!

EDIT:Of course, there's also the type of music-fan that with age assign *too* much significance to subtle things on some "No, the hi-hat is too loud in the mix, that's not how it should sound..."-shit. However, that's more the purist, I'm referring more to the "open-minded" eclectic who's constantly searching for new shit...

>I think there's quite a difference between people who
>
>a) only listen to the music they grew up on with a minimal
>interst in hearing music that's new to *them*
>
>b) people who are still actively checking for music they
>haven't heard before.

im still checking for new music but im less enthused about it, maybe out of jadedness, but also as i dont really know what i like anymore lol. i seem to be so much less judgemental that i find theres so much more that i like or am okay with that it makes it hard to choose what i really want to listen to now (plus i think i need to be more open minded for the years when i was a lot more limited.) then theres also the things i never really cared that much for and only listened to peripherally in the 90s which im now going back to to listen in more depth (even things like big beat! lol). this might be cos i grew up in the 90s, but also theres certain things about 90s sonics i like a lot that have dissapeared largely due to digital production. 94 is up there with 67, 87 and 55 imo.

The bluegrass and folk sections are pretty darn attractive to me these days.

~Austin

http://austintayeshus.blogspot.com
http://www.last.fm/user/Austintayeshus
http://twitter.com/Austintayeshus

bottom line with me is simple

you are going to always have songs and yet only a handful of acts that represent said time and era.

now i love old school 3 times more for various reasons, however i'll check out whats up and give my take.

I still keep my ears open to a select few, but overall, I'm content searching for old music(which there's a whole lot of them I'm still stumbling on to this day).

Its a blessing in disguise really, because I found passion in music I don't see discussed in the boards I go to, or listen to the radio, such as Arabic music. Eversince I came to Qatar, I discovered the music of Saudi artist Mohammed Abdu, and I was hooked since then, don't understand much of the lyric, but the music and the sentiments conveyed in the singing I absolutely identified with.