sorry
Woot! I’m extra necro lame! Metal!
Pretty much here. I wonder if it helps that I don’t have kids. I feel like kids make you older. I’m only 39, but I love my old music and I love the new music, too.
I still look for new music in my general sphere of musical interest. On the other hand, whether or not I’ll “mature” out of my music, I’ve certainly matured past the point of judging other people’s music and deciding that they’re all lame or uncreative or don’t have enough space in their brain for my awesome taste so they’re forced to listen to junk.
Seriously? I thought that’s the sort of shit you leave behind when you get your high school diploma and join the grown-up world.
I’m staring down 60 and I still get as excited about new music as I did in the 1970s. I’m a musician, which may be part of the reason, but it certainly doesn’t account for all of it. I’ve got a very catholic music collection, containing everything but rap/hip hop because I just can’t get past its underlying violence and misogynism.
I’m not sure that my tastes have changed much over the years, unless it has been to embrace more genres as they came along. I gravitate to talent, wherever I find it, so there is always something or someone new that interests me. I appreciate musical innovation. It’s been ages since I’ve heard anything other than formula playlists on the radio, but back in the day when radio broke out the new music, I can remember being so struck by a sound I had never heard before that I’d pull off to the side of the road while driving, just so I could really listen to it.
I do know exactly what you mean, though, by people getting set in their musical ways as they get older. Whenever a formerly-great group comes to town, invariably someone asks me if I’d like to go. They know I like music and am of a certain age. But my reply is always the same. I saw the Stones (i.e.) in 1972. What can the present day group offer me that transcends what I heard back then at the peak of their powers? I’m not knocking nostalgia - I have a Monkee’s Best Of CD and I sometimes pull it out and relive grade school. But when I go to a concert these days, I want to see someone new, at the height of their powers and creativity. I turned down an invitation to go see U2, but I jumped all over the chance to see Hozier. American Authors, and Pinback last year. And I prefer to experience the old guard musicians via their recordings these days.
I don’t think your tastes have to atrophy unless you let them. There is plenty of exciting music being made out there right this minute. The best part, for me, about shuffle capacity on music players is the chance to hear music back-to-back that I would never have thought would be compatible. It’s made me look at some of the older music in a very different way, hearing it before or after a brand new act that was influenced by what the older group did. Very cool.