OK, everyone knows I like '70s/'80s Punk, that ‘my time’ was the New Wave era, that I like ‘Alternative’, and that I also include in my ‘likes’ Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, classic Blues, Classical, Novelty, and lots of others.
But Green Day popped up on the iPod, and I realised how old it is. Green Day, No Doubt, Sublime, The Presidents of the United States of America… I’m one of Those People. I’m an Oldies listener.
(OK, I do listen to new stuff on the radio. I just haven’t bought any and put it on my iPod.)
Well, you’re a lot more current than me. Mostly I listen to my tapes from the 60s and 70s, CDs purchased to replace LPs from the same era and converted to MP3s on my hard disk, and internet jazz, classical and country channels on iTunes and Rhapsody. I’m so out of touch with the contemporary music scene that I take an odd sort of pride in it.
I’ve gotten hooked on an “old time radio” podcast. Aside from some occasional political incorrectness, most of the stuff is pretty good. Does that count for “oldies”?
Well, the newest CD of theirs I have is Nimrod, which was released in 1997. They released a CD last year, so they’re still current. But still, their ‘hits’ are over a decade old. Wait, let me check something…
Yep, my Save Ferris CD is 12-1/2 years old too. TMBG’s Flood is 20 years old. sigh I’ve got to pay more attention to the radio, and get some new stuff.
I knew exactly where you were going with this the second I saw the title, for I too am in the same (old) boat with you, Johnny. I listen to KROQ (rock of the '80s!) every day at work.
Yep, I listened to KROQ all the time until I moved up here in '03. (Does Bean still live on Mercer Island? Maybe I should drive by his house! )
Nowadays I listen to KEXP, which usually has some good new stuff on it. (Although they have an annoying habit of playing sets of Rap, which I’m not all that into, and Funk and old stuff from the '80s. But current Alternative/College Rock artists do get airplay.)
In L.A., a good alternative to KROQ is KXLU. There’s a good station! But I worked behind the Orange Curtain, and I couldn’t pick up the signal there; so KROQ it was. My best fiend is living in South America now, and he listens to KXLU. Too bad our Internet connection at the office is so freakin’ slow, otherwise I’d be listening to it too. (Still, there are the telecommuting days and I have high-speed at home. )
My wife and I have 8 year old twins. We used to subject them to the Classic Alternative (70’s-80’s) of Fred on XM radio (when XM had the good programming instead of the crap that Sirius plays). She like to say that the kids were cool that they listened to the music that we liked.
I had to point out that the ‘oldies’ music that her parents subjected her to when she was a kid was just as old as the music that we are now subjecting ours to. It was an eye-opening moment for her.
We now subject the kids to new alternative music through AltNation on SiriusXM…they hate Madison too.
She also likes to point out that Zero7 that I listen to is worse than the 70’s Easy Listening music.
When I was a kid in the 80’s there was a revival of interest in the music of the 50’s. In truth, it was a surge in what had been an ongoing interest in the era, with Happy Days, Sha-na-na, Grease, ect. Well, it was heavily influential to me, and I still listen to that stuff today.
I have been witness to a gradual shift in the meaning of ‘oldies’ from 50’s and 60’s music to 70’s and 80’s music. If it’s now 80’s and 90’s, I didn’t witness this because I now have the ability to put together my own playlists thanks to new technologies.
But I recently had an epiphany similar to the OP’s: the 80’s are now as distant in the past as the 50’s had been when I was a kid.
You do realize Green Day came out with a new album about a year ago, right?
Although, it is somewhat depressing to create a new set of playlists for yet another decade. I imagine kids look at classic “Dookie” Green Day much in the same way we looked at Zeppelin and The Stones back in the 80s.
I don’t think it’s oldies unless it’s your oldies, the music you remember from some long-ago period of life. Usually it’s high school and or college. Any other old music you listen to simply makes you a person of remarkably eclectic and receptive, yet discerning, tastes.
The music of my college years is usually denoted today by either “classic rock” and/or “disco”. I can scarcely abide classic rock as it is usually presented today by automated playlists that omit all the good album cuts. I do like a lot of older rock from the sixties, particularly the early psychedelic stuff and so called “garage rock”. Even though I was really just a kid, I suppose I have to admit that they are “my” oldies as well, because I was musically aware pretty early on. For example, I remember really liking the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, even though I was only six. I’ve liked the Doors since I first heard them at age nine.
Besides that, I like a wide variety of older music, ranging from jazz vocals to various incarnations of blues. Blues and jazz, for that matter, is a common thread through much of my musical life.
To be fair to Greenday, I don’t think there’s been a whole lot of change in rock music generally since they’ve been around. Although we’re talking about a twenty-year stretch of time, as I’ve always maintained here, there’s no way you could compare it to the twenty years that ended in, say, 1970.
I guess I predominantly listen to oldies then! New bands I like are Clutch and Volbeat, but nobody beats Megadeth from back in the day! I haven’t gotten any of their newer albums because the last one I got sucked too much and broke my heart. (Dave M - how could you! And ditching the other Dave - I am freaking appalled!)
ETA: Once you start listening to jazz, you may find that you become receptive to any era of it; you may start off with Miles Davis and eventually find yourself liking Louis Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton.
I don’t know much about pop music after the Beatles broke up. I listen to music from the 60s, 50s, 40s, 30s, 20s, 10s, and earlier . . . plus classical, opera, operetta, etc.
Last spring my chorus did a concert of music from the 80s. Most of it I had never heard before. But I know music from the 1880s and 1780s.
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