Poll: Are you stuck in the past or are you into contemporary/modern music?

I drink soy milk.

 

A friend at work will always ask ..... Hey .... you listening to anybody who isn't Dead ?

 

Except if you were a woman, black, or gay.

 

Sorry for those...but I'm not either, so my personal reality is apart. But hey...I was a minority in Hawaii during that time. I got the wrath of some of the locals of which 2/3rds were NON Caucasian. I didn't let it bother me. Even got punched out, mildly, a few times surfing.

 

The 60s in Britain was ere cool , the 70s was not so good. Now I like it. Safer, much easier and amazingly cool. Not counting the right wing government who are trying so hard to spoil it all.

 

I wasn't quite sure how to vote. I just took a look at the albums I've added during the current decade. I was looking at three types of albums. Deluxe edition type things from known artists, new albums from known artists and albums released in that period from artists I've never previously had. Frankly I expected the second category I mentioned to dominate the additions in this decade but new albums from known artists did not. The deluxe editions were less than 5%. The dominant category was new artists at over 60% which kind of surprised me. The balance was new albums from known artists.

With regards to some of the current mastering decisions I indeed do not care for the extremely loud, compressed choices but there is still great music and performance there. There are instances because of that where I may not even listen to the entire album and that's sad but liking the music and liking the sound can be somewhat exclusive. Going in the other direction I love the music of Robert Johnson but don't appreciate the recording quality of those early works. In fact for me that holds true with most anything prior to the late 50's.

 

I dig a lot of new music. I collect a majority of classic rock/pop, but there is more and more new stuff entering the fold as well.

 

Both. There have been so many good albums released in the past few years that it feels like a renaissance for artistic, intelligent rock. Bands like Steven Wilson and Opeth have also fought back on the mastering front and have been releasing albums with DR11 values.

 

The new album by Thee Oh Sees is tremendous.

That's all I got for this thread at this time.

 

Well that just sounds horrible.

 

The noise and distortion were so much the point with Times New Roman -- live as well as on record -- that it seems to me that "better mastering" would be beside the point.

 

yeah....burgeoning populations and their desire for compression and density in many walks of life are horrible. Space and breathing room are virtuous aims and much tougher each and every day. Much harder to find those 'diamonds in the rough'....so to speak.

 

My problem is I know about new bands, I know there names, I read about them, I can keep up in the pub I just don't listen to them enough.

 

I commute daily by train to downtown Chicago for work each day. Union Station during morning rush hour is a sea of people so thick you couldn't even make a guess how many are within 100 feet.

I love it.

 

Well that's not really a problem, is it.

 

When doe the 'past' start? If someone likes a song from 2012 - is that in the past?

 

Yeah, I can't vote for any of the four options... they're too rigid/strident.

I like to think I have a toehold in contemporary music, but it's pretty thin these days. I recently synced the [new] spare iPod Classic that I bought last year. My old iPod hasn't been re-synced for two years after our computer crashed and I decided to take a break from computer:music interface.

So now I've got some fresh tunes in my pocket; my new iPod is mainly recent acquisitions and current obsessions. There are new albums and current bands on there, but truth be told, most of it is older stuff. Big blocks of albums by Willie Nelson, Bert Jansch/Pentangle, Muddy Waters, Eric Andersen, John Fahey, Billy Joe Shaver, Chuck Berry, the Everly Brothers... I only have a couple albums by each of those artists on my old iPod. And a lot of my new acquisitions are of "old" music too; the Harvey Mandell box, the Radio Birdman box, the last two Dylan bootleg series boxes... I guess Yo La Tengo is an "old" band by now.

I have my current favorites; Follakzoid, Ryley Walker, Steve Gunn, Hiss Golden Messenger, Vetiver, Zachary Cale, EZTV, Andrew Combs, Avi Buffalo, Beach House, Belle & Sebastian, Bill Calahan, Carolina Chocolate Drops (& solo), Circulatory System, D'Angelo, David Kilgour, Dum Dum Girls, Ex Hex, GOASTT, Goat, Holydrug Couple, Institute, Joan Shelly, Kendrick Lamar, Lilac Time, Meg Baird, Mikal Cronin, New Mendicants, Raveonettes, Reagenz, Soft Moon, Sturgill Simpson, War On Drugs, Warlocks, William Tyler, Wussy, Wymond Miles, 75 Dollar Bill...

Okay, I'm not completely stuck in THE PAST, but I'm guessing that I'm listening to less new music than ever before in my life, and that's depressing.

 

Interesting, but not surprising given the milieu, that you've tied aesthetic appreciation to sonic engineering. I didn't vote because the technical aspect of sound is a subordinate priority, but at 30, the majority of my listening is '65-'77; and a preponderance of this live.

I can't explain my deviancy and it's a puzzlement to friends, who seem - as I suspect were the majority in every preceding generation, at least while young - to be unquestioningly invested in the proposition that youth requires validation by fealty to some brand of contemporary music while largely eschewing the same from "before times". I call my favored period the Golden Age (of Rock, I guess) and as far as I can tell, the only thing strange to my peers is that I prefer music that was made by people who are now old or dead.

And while most wouldn't question the historical seminality of antiquated religious doctrines, nonmusical art (paintings, sculputre, architecture), or literature, the same respect isn't afforded - okay, I'm going to say it because I need a convenient and well-understood term - Classic Rock (sorry). But if study of those other fields yields any conclusion, it's that they've been populated by fertile periods of remarkable achievments that transcend their era of creation, which I think the 60s/70s naturally were for "rock", as the genre completed evolution from it's jazz-blues-swing-soul roots, solidified, then diversified (garage, beach, glam, punk, metal...) all in a crucible of novelty and unique social revolution (ie, call it the Don Draper journey). Anyway, it's what I like. Golf, too. And dogs. Well, Impellizari's pizza as well. And I don't own a cell phone, so I'm not sure what I have in common with anyone my age, let alone just about any member of the human race age 5 & up. WOOT! ) /peace, K

 

Maybe I should have said in any depth, the odd you tube so it seems you know what you are talking about, is when you think about it not really cool, man

 

I'm not an audiophile, so I'm not way too concerned about mastering. It's only when it's really bad - like the 2011 Nevermind remaster - that I have to seek out an older edition.

As for actual music, I like some modern bands (White Stripes, Black Keys, and an obscure UK band called The Old Border), but for the most part my musical love generally spans the rock 'n' roll and psychedelic rock of the '60s, the sharp edges of the late '70s (not specifically punk, but artists like the Clash and Elvis Costello who took old-style pop-rock and adapted it to the times with suitably dark overtones), and the pop-rock underground of the '80s (REM, Replacements, Waterboys, Nirvana). There are some exceptions, like Springsteen or CCR, who I love but I'm not a fan of other artists of that style, and then there's bizarre left-field entries like Black Sabbath or the Bambi Molesters or AC/DC or Chris Isaak that I can't figure out why I love 'em so much.

 

My musical education began in 1961 when I graduated from novelty records to Peter, Paul, and Mary. I spent many years working in record stores, so over the course of my life I got exposed to a lot of stuff. I love classical and jazz almost as much as I love rock & roll.

Frankly, I don't think there's been much extraordinary music in the last fifteen years. That goes for classical, jazz, and rock. Some of the old originals are still releasing great stuff, but I'm underwhelmed by the new music. For me the last great era of new rock was Television, Talking Heads, Patti Smith, etc., and that was a long time ago now.

I've become a Black Keys fan, but that's because Patrick Carney's dad and uncle are good friends of mine and so I gave the band extra chances. I don't think they're making extraordinary music, though.

We're just in a fallow period, I think. Young people, as always, are pretty happy with what's contemporary in their lives--but so were the folks who grew up on disco.

One of these days, there'll be a new New Wave and great stuff will come out of it. Hope I'm still around to enjoy it.

 

i feel like i just took the SATs

 

Oddly enough, if you were a gay black woman, the early 70s were awesome. It's like all those issues canceled each other out!