How my music tastes have changed

Subject: How my music tastes have changed
From: Rustic Rebel
Date: 05 Dec 02 - 06:13 PM

There was a thread on here a couple days ago (I can't find it now) that asked to list songs of my youth to songs that I like now, that made me think about how much my taste in music changed.
I had always liked folk, even when I was younger, but rock and roll was pretty much my center. I always loved the more obscure music like and muscicians like- Firesign theater, David Bromberg, Muldaur, Riopelle,Spirit, just to name a few. I find that,that in me, hasn't changed because I still listen to musicians that aren't real well know, and I listen to public radio where I can hear them, but now I have the Blues in me.
It has become my choice in music. I listen and play the blues more than any other type of music. I do a lot of blues festivals. I just love this type of music,and now I am even finding that I am getting into jazz a little bit more.
What is it that makes a persons tastes change? Age? More culture with age? I don't know I am just pondering this a little.
Anyone else see these changes in themselves?
Peace, Rustic
P.S. I still attend a huge rock fest every year, so I haven't lost it completely! Also I forgot to mention one of my favorite bands from then and now I still love Steely Dan's music.

Subject: RE: How my music tastes have changed
From: NicoleC
Date: 05 Dec 02 - 07:39 PM

I think it's partially me, but also the quality of music being made. Quite frankly, 99% of the rock that's being marketted today is just... boring. On the opposite end, bluegrass is experiencing a revival and more great artists that couldn't get ANY exposure just a few years ago are being produced.

There's nothing quite like a Sunday afternoon, a mug of ale and a great live blues band. But on CD... I'll usually pass.

Subject: RE: How my music tastes have changed
From: Bobert
Date: 05 Dec 02 - 07:57 PM

Yo Rustic: I'm with you on blues. I listened to and played white folk music and rock forever and then three years ago, having gotten totally bored with it, signed up fir a week of "blues guitar" with my main man, Sparky Rucker, and he get the basics into me and I've been a changed musican ever since. Sure, I can still do the old stuff, one of which is on the Mudcat CD series, but I'm playin and lovin'... the blues.

Good thread..

Bobert

Subject: RE: How my music tastes have changed
From: dorareever
Date: 05 Dec 02 - 07:58 PM

Some punk songs I liked and now I don't like much anymore.But the real good punk stuff like the Sex Pistols and the Clash is still there.
Greatness can't be forgotten.

Subject: RE: How my music tastes have changed
From: open mike
Date: 05 Dec 02 - 10:22 PM

I wouldn't want to spend an entire weekend at a strictly
bluegrass festival, but at a place where some of what is
played is bluegrass and a healthy mix of other genre that
is the way to go...not so much into jazz or blues though,
and i used to play classical in school orchestra but am
so glad i discovered fiddle tunes which i prefer over
violin any day--but there is beauty in it all....
except for maybe heavy metal punk and rap and even then
it probably there i just don't listen enough to find it..

Subject: RE: How my music tastes have changed
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 05 Dec 02 - 10:26 PM

Real good question, Rustic: I was the one who started that thread... Two Top Tens. This would be a great companion thread. It makes me stop and think if there are any common qualities in the music that really moved me as a teenager that still move me now at 67. Those qualities are probably what determines what still sounds exciting to me from my teenage years, and what has lost it's ability to move me.

What do Buddy Holly, Carl Perkins, rhythm and blues soul, boogie woogie, rock and roll, blues and black gospel have in common. That's an easy one, and I still love all of it. It's two things for me... rhythm and emotion. Why will I throw a Ray Charles CD in my machine, but not a Beatles CD, even though I have most of their stuff and still love it. It's the rhythm and the emotion. The Beatles had both, but somehow, Ray Charles, Chuck Berry or Buddy Holly still move me more. I don't think it's nostalgia alone, because in honesty my teenage years were pretty depressing. I'd just as soon not have some of those memories revived. Why did Nirvana hit me, when their songs were almost unintelligible, the lyrics were often stupid and I really couldn't identify with a lot of the topics that were important to Curt Cobain. The rhythm and the emotion. The first folk song that really blew me away was Rock Island line. If Lonnie Donegan had anything, it was rhythm and emotion. And of course, much of the rhythm and emotion in rhtyhm and blues and soul came out of black Gospel. No surprise that it does something to me, too.

And then there's the emotion of the slow dance... In The Still Of The Night, or most waltzes do something to me. That's probably why I loved a lot of the popular music of the 40's, and all the rhythm and Blues stuff. Play me Smoke Gets In Your Eyes by the Platters, and it chokes me up (not the smoke) every time. Or Twilight Time.

Factoring folk music and jazz into this equation becomes more difficult. I listened to and loved a lot of jazz and the folk that I heard, in my teenage years and my twenties. I liked the story telling in folk music, which parallels my love of reading. And I always liked energy. Don't tell anyone, but I start to doze when someone does a long ballad, unless they become so immersed in the song that I can become part of their experience. There's a whole range of folk music that I find too respectful, and just not fun.
Kinda musty and emotionless. Scholarly or revererential don't turn me on. In jazz, I liked the warmth of a saxophone, or the boldness of a trumpet, and the walking bass. I could never get in to atonal jazz, or jazz that didn't have some emotion in it.

As I type this, I can see the connection between all of those kinds of music... throw in a ton of folk music that I do like (mostly traditional) and blues, and you pretty much have my music collection.

It's no jump for Bobert from Buddy Holly to Buddy Guy. We like a lot of the same stuff, because I suspect that he responds to rhythm, energy and emotion. Being the mountain man that he is. Corn liker and all that.

So, what about you Rebel? What has held your music together, even though it has changed? What do you hear in jazz now, that you hear in blues?

I'd sure like to hear what you have to say..

Jerry

Subject: RE: How my music tastes have changed
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 05 Dec 02 - 10:33 PM

My tastes have changed, but the change is in terms of sound quality, not musical genre. When I was younger, I disliked any really "impure" sound. I didn't like organ, saxophone or fiddle. These are all instruments that wobble quite a bit around a central pitch.

Now I like organ and fiddle. I still can't take the saxophone, however.

Subject: RE: How my music tastes have changed
From: Lepus Rex
Date: 05 Dec 02 - 11:20 PM

Listening: Well, when I was very little, I liked Kenny Rogers. Sick, yes. Then I moved on to goofy singer/songwriter-type stuff. Then, when I was 13, I started listening only to metal. Not the big-hair-look-at-my-crotch stuff, but everything from old NWOBHM bands to thrash.

After high school, my interest in most metal waned, and after a brief period of confusion, I started listening to indie and punk type stuff, and traditional and tradition-based East Asian music. I listened to Irish folk stuff for a brief time, but then it became really, really popular and cheesy, so I lost interest. A couple of years passed, and I was still listening to the previous stuff, plus Nordic and Slavic folk, and, especially, trad. music from Central Asia (and surrounding, culturally related areas), which is still where my favourite music comes from.

Not much changed for a few years, until... I think it was the re-issue of Dock Boggs' old recordings. That got me interested in American folk music, which I had always completely ignored. I started listening to (mostly acoustic, "pre-war") blues at about the same time. So, again, most of the above, and branching out in all the natural directions. Which just about brings me up to the present...

So, I guess my musical tastes haven't "changed" much since I was a kid (except for Kenny Rogers), but I've just accumulated more and more "tastes." Which makes buying the cds I want more expensive, dammit.

Oh, and playing: Well, I only really play the Jew's harp, and I haven't been doing that for long. I mostly (try to) play Tatar, Bashkir, Kazakh, etc. folk songs. But once I get a dombra, I'll branch out into... oh, same stuff.

---Lepus Rex

Subject: RE: How my music tastes have changed
From: Rustic Rebel
Date: 06 Dec 02 - 01:44 PM

Lepus, yes I guess I can say the same thing there, that I still do like the music I used to listen to and I have branched out of the one type of music I listened to as a youth but now, to try and answer your question Jerry;
What has held my music together is, I learned to listen to the music, which is probably the reason for my taste changes. I believe there is more emotion involved in blues and jazz music.
Any music without the emotion just doesn't intrest me anymore. And my passion for the music has held it together. Now I have learned to take apart the music and I hear every note of every instrument I tune into. It's the movement and the rhythms and the musicians feelings that they put into their music. For those reasons I find the blues suits my attitude. Makes me feel better.
And that is now another step into jazz for me, because I can still hear the basic blues there, the elements of jazz are exciting.The improvisation and rhythms. I just find an emotional force in both blues and jazz these days.
It's an art form I hope to develop more into my music.
It is such a kick for me to find such beauty and emotion and passion in music.
Peace, Rustic

Subject: RE: How my music tastes have changed
From: chip a
Date: 06 Dec 02 - 04:18 PM

When I was first listening to radio in the early fifties(!) it was the first stirrings of rock and roll that got me. And got me it did! That stuff reached all the way down into my soul and took me prisoner. The stuff I was listening was very raw, emotional and it was music I could FEEL. I discovered country at about the same time and I'd slip my radio under the covers at night so as not to get busted for being awake and tune in the far away stations that played it. WWVA in Wheeling W.Va. and I don't remember what else. During the folk scare and blues revival I found some of the same qualities in new (to me) kinds of sound and I was in love all over again. By the early seventies I found myself in the Ga. mountains and heard real old time banjo for the first time. I've played one ever since.
I still love all the music I ever loved. I keep adding new things to the list but the old stuff doesn't go away. Now I want to hear a little more Cajun!
The common thread for me is the same as Jerry, I guess. Emotion & rythm. Just add Little Richard, Howlin' Wolf And Aretha and you got my attention. But Old Time has become my passion for many years now.
I think music stirs us on so many levels. I think music can make inner connections in us that we need made.
: ),
Chip