I simply don't like anything after the 70's

I never claimed that!

 

I thought it was a parody of Brett Ellis Easton.

 

"I simply don't like anything after the 70's"

Not even, The Empire Strikes Back ?!?

 

I've forced myself to enjoy music. It's like vegetables: you don't like it at first but then you realize it's good for you, you can see the subtly in its flavor, the texture grows on you, you eat it because it's the last thing in the fridge before payday and then - BAM! You ask for broccoli with every meal.

 

While I can't say I agree with that 100%, it's a pretty damn good analysis, IMHO.

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I just completed a project of transferring 30 oldies but goodies cassettes to CDs. Let me assure you that in the sixties some of worst songs were on the charts as well

 

I think it's quite natural to remember all the great stuff and forget all the rubbish, this happens with art, all sorts of things like a relationship with a lover. And this gets worse as time goes on. It gives a really distorted picture of the past, which would explain why some people say it was better 50 years ago or whatever.

 

thats a great point.

There's boatloads of albums I used to love when I was a teen in the 70s, that I havent heard in years. Sometimes out of curiosity I'll find one and put on the headphones and give it a new listen. Often I'm surprised at all the flaws I never heard before, and the less than spectacular songs, playing, etc

A lot of this can be attributed to the fact that I was very inexperienced musically when I first heard this stuff, I didnt know anything about music or playing in bands or performing or recording or anything like that.

30 years later I know a lot more than I did, and its impossible to listen the same way.

 

Relevant thoughts on the above few posts:

"Why is it that the past seems better than the present?

A possibility comes from research by Tory Higgins and Charles Stangor in a paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 1988. They point out that when people make judgments about things, they usually do it in relation to something else. For example, when they say that a concert is excellent, they mean that it is excellent compared to the concerts they have seen up to that point.

They argue that when people think back to events in the past, they remember the evaluation they gave that event, but not the reason for that evaluation. For example, thinking back to a concert attended in high school, they remember that they thought it was "excellent," but forget that the basis of the judgment was all the concerts that they had seen up to that point in high school. Had they seen that concert as an adult with a greater base of experience, they might not think the concert was so wonderful.

When we look back on events from our youth, we are likely to remember many things as being excellent, or awesome, or brilliant. We just forget how we decided on their excellence or brilliance. With a broader base of experience as an adult, it takes a lot for us to be truly awed. So, we decide that things must have been better when we were younger."

 

Or, maybe there was a lot more of the good and less of the bad, back then.

 

Doesn't hold water for things people may like a lot better that came along before they were even born, or before they were at all old enough to be aware of them. Were is "personal youth bias" there?

 

I was born in 1970, but I was still raised on classic rock from the 60s, including a heavy dose of the Beatles. They were before my time, but I still have a nostalgic attachment to them from my youth.

 

That's actually a good point. I was six years old in 1970. I don't remember the music of the 50s or the 60s first hand. Yet, I love those years better than any other when it comes to rock and roll. I love plenty of things after that too, right up to the present but, if I had to pick my favorite rock and roll decades, the 50s and 60s would be it.

 

Speaking as someone with a collection of music that goes back to the first millennium, that's an issue different and not necessarily related to avoiding the present. I know a lot of people who prefer to live in the past, dress as if it's another decade. I was a member of the San Francisco Early Music Society, a group dedicated to 'Historically Informed Performance Practice', antique and 'obsolete' instruments, a lot of Bach and Pre-Bach. I also know a lot of people who are musicians who play that sort of music, where older music is the central focus of their musical life. And some of them have an allergy to modern music, the bulk don't even think of the issue, a lot are turned on by new music they adore. Fact is, the quality of the music of the past is no reason to denigrate the music of the present, that's a false tautology. It does not follow that loving music of the past proves the deficiencies of the music of the present.

 

That's also a good point, although I didn't find most of my favorite 50s and 60s era music until well after my youth. I was in my mid to late 20s by the time I really started discovering it and am still finding things to this day that I've never heard before.

 

OK, but so much of the older stuff is considered historically golden because it's genuinely great -- not just because some people somewhere happen to feel all nostalgic about it.

 

No, what proves the deficiencies of the music of the present for me is that I don't think most of it that I hear is particularly good, nor of any lasting consequence.

 

For you.

 

You quoted me yourself. What part of when I wrote "for me" was not clear?

 

Just to present an opposing viewpoint, I've discovered a lot of music produced recently that will probably end up in my all-time favorite lists somewhere down the road.

 

As someone who's collected records for nearly 30 years and heard a lot of crap, I'd say that's really true of the music of any era. I think that, with experience and over a period of time, we simply get better at honing in on music we might like from the past. You have no idea the countless horrible 45s I've heard from the 50s and 60s over the years.

 

I'm not surprised, because we're all individuals.