Musical Youth?

pincushion · 04 Nov 2011

No, not the UK reggae band from 1979.

This post mainly applies to UK and USA citizens as their musical cultures have been so entwined for the last 6 or 7 decades but anyone is welcome to comment.

I was just wondering how the youth of today views music from the past - I suspect each generation sees what is contemporary to them as normal and the rest just dated even though they might still appreciate and listen to much of it. It seems odd to me now but music from before I was born - much of older and modern jazz for example - appeared to be so alien yet so exciting when discovered but it was probably recorded less than a decade or two before I was actually listening to it. Now I am still listening to much music from my youth which is several decades older than that.

Good music I suppose will always be listened to and today we have the advantage of having recordings from about the last hundred years so has this age thing just vanished or was it all just in my head? Do we just consign the music to different genres and periods, enjoy them and forget about anything else?

pincushion · 06 Nov 2011

This post was not just aimed at the present young but to all (my error) - whilst remembering their youth and their first exposure to music - perhaps that has put off people from commenting?

Lava King · 06 Nov 2011

Hmm...well, I'll jump in and try to put my thoughts into words

I remember being allowed to play my parents' records when I was about 8 years old (1970) and enjoyed equally Country and Western (as it was called then) and Rock and Roll.

Yep, Conway Twitty, Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash, The Doors, Cream, The Beatles and so on. Later on I shifted more towards Rock in all of its various incarnations but with emphasis on the harder stuff.

Oldies radio wasn't as popular then as it is now, but I do recall hearing Fifties Rock and Roll. I knew then that it was "old stuff" but I liked the majority of it.

My grandparents would watch The Lawrence Welk Show, that was probably the only music that I didn't care for.

As for the differences in the generations, I remember listening to my new Kiss album and my dad walking into my room and asking "how can you listen to that crap?" If I hear certain genres today, I think "how can they listen to that unmusical crap?"

I'm thinking that when my generation is in the old folks' home, we'll be head-bangin' away (maybe not energetically, but earnestly) instead of chillin' to the strains of Lawrence Welk.

pincushion · 07 Nov 2011

I was too young to fully enjoy the birth of Rock n' Roll but I did appreciate R & B here in the UK and went through the Prog Rock era happily buying all sorts of stuff - much of which I still listen to. I think 1965 - 1975 saw a great flowering of different music genres but not all were destined to survive. I was also quite a concert goer and really appreciated when the top bands from the US came over - Zappa, Mothers of Invention, Bob Dylan, Santana, Canned Heat, Jefferson Airplane etc. But I was also into modern jazz, folk, Irish music etc so I probably spread myself a little thinly rather than concentrating on one artist or genre.

I just wonder how others experience their music in general. :)

ps I had the pleasure of discovering the Doors in the 80's, having missed them when they around.