The love of new old music.

As much as I still listen to and love the great classic rock my friends and I all listened to growing up, I find I get a bigger kick out of listening to recently discovered, "new", old music that I hadn't previously heard before. Growing up in Oklahoma, I never heard more then two Thin Lizzy songs occasionally played on the radio and didn't have any friends who had the tapes/CD's of any of their stuff. Once I finally discovered the full incredible Thin Lizzy catalog as an adult, I felt like a kid in a candy store with so much wonderful music to discover and absorb. Deep Purple is another example. Sure, I had heard smoke on the Water and Woman from Tokyo, but that's it. What a great discovery as an adult getting into all that classic Deep Purple from In Rock through Come Taste The Band. This music is around 40 years old but "new" to me and certainly a better listen then modern day rock music IMHO. I had maybe heard All The Young Dudes a couple times growing up but had no idea how great of a band Mott The Hoople were. I had barely heard of the band Mott The Hoople so imagine then excitement of my discovering that great catalog as an adult. My latest "new" old music discovery is T-Rex. Sure, I had heard Bang a Gong growing up, but that's it. I discovered the great run of albums from Electric Warrior to Tanx a few years ago but had read the later albums weren't worth checking out. Those later T-Rex albums (all of them after Tanx) have been a wonderful discovery. I still love Led Zeppelin to use that band as an example, but I have been listening to them essentially my whole life. Recently I get more enjoyment out of listening to all this great new old music. I could go on with more examples but you get the idea. Anyone else have this experience. Who are your recent discoveries?

 

I go back and forth all the time. I don't take music history for granted, it's a privilege to live in a period of recordings with my interest in music. For hundreds of years people like me had to go to the opera or something to hear music. They did not have a stereo. It's fun to discover old music. Always loved it. I'd rather do that than to listen to new music I don't like.

 

Thanks to Columbia Records/CDs , it was really easy to introduce more great bands to my repertoire, like Thin Lizzy!

And the advent of the iPod made it easy to have all those great bands at my fingertips and more importantly keep adding gems that I hadn’t heard or had forgotten about.

I love new old music...

 

I'm discovering new old music all the time. Lately I've been buying lots of second tier southern rock, artists that have never been popular here in Germany and that I have never heard before. Artists like The Marshal Tucker Band, Outlaws and Rossington Collins Band, great stuff.

 

This would make sense if one were referring to artists a little more unknown than freakin' Thin Lizzy, Deep Purple, Mott The Hoople and T. Rex. These are bands that any rock music fan should be discovering before they hit high school IMO.

 

One of the advantages of streaming is exactly this...one can go back on catalogs of either newer artists or ones long disbanded. Recent examples for me would be Jon Foreman and the EP's he had been releasing many years back. His recent effort pushed me back to the older ones which was a nice discovery.

Cheap blind buys sometimes pay off, for example been enjoying The Spinto Band which was a 50 cent CD blind buy a few years back (I liked the cover). I let it languish for a while but when I finally got around to it, was very enjoyable.

 

As a jazz fan I am constantly discovering artists or albums I've never seen or heard of, even today with many decades of listening and collecting behind me. The same is true to a small extent in other genres but jazz contines to deliver surprises beyond my expectations.

 

All the time, and I'm 58. I was too poor in my youth to buy everything even from my favorite musicians, so imagine what I missed back then... Sure this was the days where everybody was into music, and friends always lent you their own purchases. But even they didn't own everything...

If you are lucky enough to have a couple of thrift stores in your neighborhood and you're into vinyl, you're all set to catch up!

 

Oh, my. Don't tell a "Southern" rock fan that Marshall Tucker and the Outlaws were second tier bands. If you want some other stuff. Look up Charlie Daniels, Blackfoot, Henry Paul Band, Molly Hatchet, Ozark Mountain Daredevils, Pure Prairie League etc. None of these I would consider anything but top notch great music.

 

I'd have agreed with this once but I only really discovered ELO last year at 41 years old. There's always somebody who passes you by for some reason. A good thing too. It's great to find a new 'old' major act to get into.

 

I get what the OP was referring to, though. There are a lot of artists out there where I haven't really gotten past the "hits" or whatever was popular on the AOR stations when I was younger. I probably don't know the vast majority of Deep Purple's or Mott the Hoople's catalog, for example.

 

There are hundreds of things considered essential in rock. All of those things are influenced by a host of other essential, formative things, and so on. It's a huge endlessly branching family tree of stuff you "need" to hear. To listen to them all by high school would be to have a very surface-deep, superficial appreciation of them, I think. I grew up hearing Thin Lizzy and Deep Purple since I was a toddler, T Rex I didn't get around to until my 20s (other than "Get it On"). We all grow up in a different cultural context.

 

Yea, I know these are not exactly obscure bands. You have to keep in mind that there was no internet with you tube to play full songs/albums or even online music retailers where you could play 30 samples to see if you liked the music. I either bought the tape/CD because I knew several songs from the radio/MTV that I liked or a buddy had it and I liked the music. I didn't have enough money growing up to purchase stuff blind hoping I would like it.

 

The past year?

The Damned and Dr. Feelgood.

 

I was only talking about the popularity of these artists, not the quality of their music. Here in Germany older folks might know the Allmans and everybody knows "Sweet Home Alabama" but personally I don't know anybody who knows The Outlaws. I agree that they are great. That goes for Marshall Tucker Band too.
I already have most albums by Molly Hatchet and Blackfoot. Have ordered Charlie Daniels. Will check out your other recommendations.

 

I listened to and liked ELO's big hits back in the 70s, but it's only last year, at the ripe old age of 49, that I bought their 11-CD classic album collection and discovered the deep album cuts. I'm now a big fan of No Answer (Wow - I never knew they ever sounded anything like this!) and Out of the Blue in particular.

 

New old music is the only music I seek out these days. Thanks to a steady diet of classic rock radio early on, there's lots of gaps to fill. Jazz, blues, soul, r&b, reggae, punk. Even mega-popular rock bands like The Rolling Stones have so many "deep cuts" that never received any radio play to discover (i.e. the majority of Exile). Nothing against new music, it's just easier for me to work backwards from reference points that I'm familiar with.

 

Other than the radio I only listen to and buy old music. This week I picked up Tyrone Davis, Devo, The Young-Holt Trio, Brook Benton, Roy Orbison, Dr Buzzard's Original Savannah Band and a couple VA comps. There is lots of great old music out there to discover.

I also snagged this.

 

Check out Grinderswitch. Real Southern boys.
They were part of the Allman Bros, MTB, Outlaws family of bands.

 

My most recent old "new" band is Steamhammer.
There is so much music out there. I am constantly looking for new stuff to listen to. It is not hard to find on the Internet. Always nice to find a no name band that I like because it is then easy to find old records or CD on the cheap.

 

Those albums have been a revelation! I've been collecting up the 70s UK coloured vinyl pressings. Harvest pressings of first two and then On The Third Day (clear), Eldorado (yellow), Face The Music (green), A New World Record (red) and the blue vinyl Out of the Blue. They sound magnificent. I only need the yellow Eldorado. At the moment I lose interest after these. I could go for the later albums in future though.

 

1970's era Scorpions is another great example. I grew up with with MTV era Scorpions which I loved and still enjoy but I was clueless as to their earlier stuff. I even like their funky debut Lonesome Crow with a very young Michael Schenker before the amazing Uli Jon Roth joined the group for the rest of the bands 70's output. I think this band was at their best in the 1970's IMHO.

 

Since you're investigating southern rock, I would recommend this Ozark Mountain Daredevils compilation. These guys were great!

Ozark Mountain Daredevils - Time Warp: The Very Best Of - Amazon.com Music »

 

Great band. In particular, their last album Speech has always been a big favorite of mine.

 

Over the years it's become an abiding pleasure for me to discover vintage artists into whose catalog I never delved before: Electric Flag, Mountain, John Mayall...one of the great aspects of CD era is the archiving or works we'd never heard before...