Gaining musical appreciation of unfamiliar genres

As a child, I was exposed to most types of music out there for the 60s and 70s. If I didn't get it in the home from records, radio or TV, I got it from the radio in the car, or at friends houses. But, I didn't hear everything, and usually, when I did finally hear unfamiliar music, I immediately shut it out for one reason or another. Now, I try to keep a more open mind towards unfamiliar music than I did in my teenage years and in my twenties. If something doesn't hit me today, it might a year later.

I'm very slowly coming around to reggae. I'll never be a big fan of it, but I am developing a new appreciation for it. For most of my life, I absolutely detested country music, and bought into all the stereotypes that went with it. Now that I better understand the history of it, and it's relationship to R&B, my first music in life, I appreciate a lot of it. I also realize that I have been enjoying country music all my life, even if it wasn't considered country. I love Patsy Cline, Johnny Cash, and a few others. I grew up with the "country sucks" mindset from my peers, and all the while, we were digging the Eagles and Linda Rondstat.

I still can't quite tolerate traditional opera, though.

What kinds of music were you once unfamiliar with, or once disliked/hated, and have finally come to at least appreciate over the years? What motivated your change of mind if you once hated something? And, if you once disliked it, what was it that kept you from liking it?

 

I guess for me it was Jazz. When I was about eighteen I got a job in a record store and the guys there played a lot of Jazz. This was like '73 and they played a lot of CTI stuff. It just didn't grab me and I think the reason why is that I never found the hook.

The stuff that I was weaned on as a kid in the mid sixties all was very catchy. This was mostly Top 40 but really solid stuff; Beatles, Stones, Beach Boys and especially Motown. You heard those songs once and they immediately grabbed you. I just never really felt the same about say Bob James or Deodato (remember him?!).

I guess it wasn't until I got hipped to MIles and John Coltrane that the jazz sound opened up for me. I especially remember that "In A Silent Way" and "My Favorite Things" really opened my ears. I like to think they have stayed open.

The other thing I remember is that around the time of The Concert For Bangla Desh the underground radio station here played a lot of sitar music. For me it just never happened. Still hasn't. I mean I like it in a pop song and totally respect the players but I just remember seemingly interminable Indian Music songs on the radio when I wanted to hear "Whipping Post.

Good thread
Best-
Norm

 

Hey, I thought you went to bed!

Deodato? Last time I knew, he produced Kool & The Gang's excellent comeback album "Ladies Night" in 1979.

 

Oh I got up cause the baby cried so I logged on to try and catch the Prixie Show and saw your compelling thread.



Cheers-
Norm

 

I always think it's sad to find people only listening to what they heard in high school and college. I don't think people should necessarily outgrow their adolescent favorites, but it seems like they should have encountered or embraced something beyond Van Halen (for him) or niche-marketed Awesome Eighties radio programming (for her).

A perusal of the CDs at a high school chum's house usually reveals the same record/cassette collection you would have found in their bedroom twenty years ago, with maybe a copy of the O BROTHER WHERE ART THOU soundtrack or COME AWAY WITH ME thrown in. The only cache of new music in the house is the illegally downloaded files on their kid's PC.

Maybe between their kids, the leaky basement, and their lawsuit against the neighbor's privacy fence, they simply don't have time. Or maybe for them, like a lot of people, music isn't music in and of itself, but the soundtrack to important milestones and events: their first sexual encounter, the all-night paper that resulted in a grad school recommendation from a previously apathetic professor, the night their parents told them they were separating. Their lives don't have these huge emotional ebbs and swells anymore, and they don't need music to celebrate or endure the ch-ch-ch-changes. Now it merely generates vague nostalgia during chores.

But what about the real music fanatic at your alma mater? The guy who carried his low-numbered copy of THE WHITE ALBUM -- "Actually, THE BEATLES," as he reminded you more than once -- to school with him until it was dog-eared, taped the photos inside his locker, and analyzed their lyrics for an A.P. English assignment? He should have a pretty awesome record collection by now. Let's check it out.

He's got all the Fab's CDs, of course, even the allegedly superior Japanese issues purchased at a premium price, the Mobile Fidelity needle drops from eBay, several audiophile vinyl incarnations for whenever he gets his turntable working again, and dozens upon dozens of bootlegged session reels, outtakes, and outfakes. He even picked up some 8-tracks at a garage sale for the hell of it, and from a roadside flea market, a couple weird cassettes with Chinese or Korean writing on them that feature hilarious almost-but-not-quite soundalikes.

Any new music there? And by "new," I mean anything other than what he was listening to in high school? There's a copy of the Gin Blossoms's debut, but that's in his kid's car, he thinks. His wife gave him a copy of FORTY LICKS for Christmas -- it still has the bin strip across the top. No Otis Redding? No Aretha Franklin? No Fela? Not even Bob Marley? No KIND OF BLUE? No IN A SILENT WAY? No GOLDBERG VARIATIONS? No, no, no, and who's that? He made his choice some time ago, and he's sticking to it.

 

Good topic Grant. I've been listening to/collecting/watching in concert/generally experiencing music for 25 years - starting off with late 70s post-punk and new wave stuff - and one of the things I've learned is that I've often come to love stuff that at one time I've either had no interest whatsoever, or actively disliked. Country and folk music, slow torchy ballads, 60s/70s soul, gospel.... when the time's right, it just clicks into place. Bob Dylan's an example of an artist I just didn't 'get' - I once borrowed a friend's 'Highway 61 revisited' LP having read all about it and I hated it, I thought it was just meaningless overrated crap; I would have been amazed at the amount of time, money and energy I've since devoted to that one record, getting mono LPs, CDs, bootlegs of live and studio outtake vesrions of the songs, etc etc etc...
No matter how varied I like to think my musical tastes are, it's always just the tip of the iceberg - I've barely dipped my toe into the waters of 'world' music, for example, and classical is still a trip into the unknown. But there's more than enough 'new' genres to keep me going for as long as my ears hold out - long may it continue!

 

Just a mini-rant on that topic: I feel that FM radio pretty much panders to that kind of mindset. Our local classic rocker does play some special programs occasionally, but their bread and butter is mainly the 70's rock they played as DJs back in the 70's. It's like they live in a time capsule. Our Oldies station is Motown ad nauseum; the programmers seem to think that is ALL people want to hear, and push it way too hard IMHO. Unfortunately radio programming these days is all about how different songs "test" in different markets, and since so many listeners are stuck in their own private time bubble, that's what radio plays.

I like to think most of us here have very broad musical tastes...one of the reasons we hang out here I feel.

 

I've listened to all kinds. Thing is, I had a very different start to music listening which, I think, helped me recognize good compositions and performing artists regardless of the type of music they play.

I grew up listening to 60's-era A&M and RCA records, instrumental music in general, a little bit of jazz, and a few Latin recordings. My mother occasionally bought me a 45RPM pop single she thought was neat (although I don't know what she was thinking when she got me "Something Stupid" by Frank and Nancy Sinatra ), but I didn't really get into current popular music until my cousin brought over the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, which got me hooked on 12" singles and disco. And, being in the jazz big band in junior high school and high school opened me up to that kind of music. Then it all ballooned from there. My radio listening from about 1977 to 1984 really shaped what I listened to: WLBS was the disco station that turned to dance/funk/R&B, and WJZZ played jazz from all eras.

When CDs came along, I finally started getting into rock. I had a few albums by then (I had all of the A&M Styx recordings, for instance, and The Police), but I didn't get into that "headache rock" (as my friends called it ) like Led Zep until the mid 80's. I was buying CDs just to buy CDs, and picking up discs by artists I'd heard of but never really listened to. By the end of the 90's I was a fan of Led Zep, Ozzy and Black Sabbath and quite a few others I'd never have touched 20 years prior.

When the latest country/pop boom came along in the very early 90's (fueled very much by Garth Brooks' success, IMHO), I got a few of those. Yes they were a bit formulaic, but a lot of the so-called "established" artists today were just releasing their first and second albums back then. Today I don't buy into it, but I do find interest today in a band like BR549 that is contemporary yet still clings to traditional country music at the core. That and I'm appreciating older country artists like Marty Robbins and even Willie Nelson.

After that phase passed, I tuned into 89X, an alternative rock station from Windsor, Ontario. So I was soon buying that kind of music, and still am a fan of some of the bands to this day. That's about as far away from the Herb Alpert and Henry Mancini I grew up with, I think! Although this 90's alternative phase sort of grew out of the recordings I'd bought on IRS Records over the years.

My most recent fad is neo-rockabilly or psychobilly. I'd liked the type of music the Stray Cats were making, and finally in the past year or so have acted on it by getting discs by Lee Rocker (an original Stray Cat), Rev. Horton Heat, and others. I'm even getting a taste for older rockabilly. I get a feeling it may be one of my "next big things".

I do have a classical appreciation, but again, I played in symphonic bands in high school and branched out my classical interests from there.

There are few types of music (or performing) I can't stomach...for the most part, if it's any Top 40 music from the past 10-15 years or so, or rap, I tune right out. I keep thinking I'm turning into my parents and disliking music my kids like...which may be partially true, but my musical sense hears poorly-written music, poorly performed, and it just doesn't interest me.

I will admit that up through my high school years I was very phobic about music I wasn't familiar with. But these days I'm willing to try almost anything new.

 

Shamless BUMP!

 

Probably country and bluegrass (REAL country! Not "new country"). I've grown to appreciate people like Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, Alison Krauss, Bela Fleck.....and people like Dolly Parton for her songwriting and musical skills. Rap/hip hop is still a bit hard for me to appreciate, although Outkast seem to be challenging the the genre rather than riding it's coat-tails....and I love the Beastie Boys.