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This thread was initially thought of as a reply to Samplaire's "damn" thread. But I thought, that it would be nice to have it seperate with another title. Here it goes:


Rediscovering an old love afair with a piece of music is a great joy. I am doing the same thing at the moment. I have lived for a year with awfull acoustics (we are talking 2 seconds flutter echo, perfectly parallel concrete walls ). I have now startet to add a great deal of rockwool to my room. It realy helps. I am not done yet, but by already now, my system sounds more focused and more dry. I had started to fear, that my stereo hearing was going down the drain, but now I can actually start to place stuff again.

I am not very skilled in normal "musicians hearing" - I have a hard time identifying note intervals. I have always been much more of a Hi-Fi listener. I hear the foot on the sustain pedal on a grand piano, when going to a piano concert (4 grand pianos), in a church. Now I am starting to get back my old joy of listening to my system, finding new details, and realy hearing, that a cymbal with needles does indeed have a lot of them - not just a big fuzz.

I am very happy about it

Immanuel

I've tried listening to music I used to listen to but it bores me. I get bored very easily after I have listened to music so many times, even if it is complex.

That's why I said "damn" - I haven't thought I would listen to the album any more but I loved it again

Sometimes things are more complex - I use to like Talk Talk and after No Doubt refreshed their hit I decided to buy it in original. So went to the shop and found the album boring... Then I looked at their "Spirit of Eden" which was a crap for me at the release date. Now I think it's their best album. And I have it

I can never get bored of listening to Herbie Hancock... limitless depth, jaw-dropping use of harmony.

There seems to be a point during the teenage years when people are sort of brainwashed by what they hear. This is the only explaination I can think of for the "Classic Rock" radio stations which play mainly the hits of the 60's and 70's. For some reason people are able to listen to the same songs year after year for the rest of their lives. When I walk into a grocery store and they are playing music from 30 years ago, I imagine that it is a reflection of the age of the management. Where I live, the age, race and nationality of the customers is so diverse, I hardly think that anyone wants to hear what they are playing on the grocery store and bank sound system. It would be funny if they played music from the 1920's but to me playing 70's music is just as ludicrous. This is meant to make people buy more? I only want to get the hell out of there as quickly as possible!

I think there is music you listen to because it inspires you, and music that brings things back to you. It is said that if you play music to Alzheimers patients, they link memories to music they know and often begin to recognize certain things again, for a brief while anyway. Often music triggers old emotions and memories in us that have long since been forgotten, and awakens the passions we had at the time.
Strangely I have a copy of 'Focus Live at the Rainbow' Musically it is brilliant, but I listened to it a lot during a troubled time in the 70's. So although I love it, it brings bad memories.
Someone older than me would love The Kinks for example, because of memories. even if they didn't like them at the time. So they would feel comfortable walking into a shop playing 'Lola' feeling safe. Personally I'd blow the shop up!!!!

What's wrong with enjoying music from all eras? Does new music have to render all previous music invalid? There's just as much trite crap being produced now as ever, and there always will be, it's the nature of commercial "pop" culture. If you grow up with this crap, you'll probably always have an association with it.

But there's also lots of brilliant songs from over 70 years of recording that never gets heard by masses of people because of contemporary "playlist" mentality.

I can stand a bit of Perry Como or Captain Beefheart or Coldcut or Howlin Wolf or Nat Cole or Roots or.. etc. As long as I don't hear the same songs all the time.

/dave

yeah,one probably shouldn't get hung up on the past,but to deny it is wrong as well.if a cut was ever really good,it should still be. if you've heard it a lot of times,why not listen to something new?

let's not get so dogmatic about it that nothing is enjoyable....

I agree. There are things to be learned from the past. In a way music is a bit like technolgy in that it is built on what has come before, but I do think we should go forward.

yes, and isn't it a matter of "growing up"? For the ear, the feeling etc.? And I prefer to have 32 bit, not 8. Is crispier.

If you've never heard a piece of music before then it is new to you, even if it was recorded in 1972. And I happen to love that old soul production sound, like may be an old Al Green album for example.
Braincell your comment is interesting because yes we should go forward. The problem is that we will like a track if we can relate to it in some way. That could mean anything from 'it sounds a bit like something else', to 'all my friends listen to it and I got to like it by osmosis'.With a thousand variables in between. It's like stepping stones, one foot on the new stone whilst the other is still planted on the old one. Then someone like Massive Attack or people using samples and digital technology goes and mixes all the stones up.

Ricardo, you steal words from my mouth

If you've never heard a piece of music before then it is new to you, even if it was recorded in 1972

My nephew (14) started music intrests when he was about 8. First it was a mainstream or almost rock like Offspring and now he listens to early Pink Floyd, King Crimson and lately asked me about Talking Heads - who listens to such music nowadays?

Someone older than me would love The Kinks for example, because of memories.

I react on Kinks music like a Pavlov's dog - I used to work at a classic rock radiostation so they (Kinks) bring me early '90s memories rather than '60s And I'm 34.

And yes, when I was 20 or even 17 I was moremusical purist. I had no respect for people buying those 'best of 'X0s' compilation albums because the albums seemed to me crap in comparison with regular group albums (which I thought had their soul and were often concept ones). Now the compilation albums don't make me angry and there are situations I like to listen to them (but still don't buy them! ).

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: samplaire on 2004-03-10 09:45 ]</font>

Children will listen to anything because they can often easily be manipulated by their much older parents. I was horrified when a friend of mine informed me that his daughter loves Madonna.

Shaping a young mind to listen to that type of music ought to qualify as child abuse!

ok, so now, YOU know good from evil?
And you know it well enough to have the selfconfidence to call it abuse, when some mother/father plays the msuic they like, when their children hear it?
I remember, you once made some strange comments about Hitler (or rather peoples relation to him). He too believed, that he knew, what was good and healthy music, and what was not.

Milions of people around the world have had joyfull moments when listening to Madonna. Still you call it abuse, when parrents expose this kind of music to their children.

The world is bigger braincell.

When millions of people do something, it doesn't make it right. What I am saying is that they have very bad taste in music and perpetuate it through their offspring. It doesn't mean they are total morons, just that they have an area of their brain that is somewhat retarded.

hi there - here's one
the 'Music' album is my absolute top favourite pop production of recent years.
I also do love a lot of her trashy 80s stuff...

She may have had strange moments, some foolish talk and misbehaviour like everyone else who considers to have 'lived' to a certain degree

But she developed her skills, set trends in production, tries to stay in good shape, probably achieved more for women's right than all politicians talk together and is accepted by kids who could be her grandchildren - pretty cool, I like that attitude of getting older

But reduced to the 'musical' facts, Braincell, what exactly makes you think her stuff is crap ?

cheers, Tom

On 2004-03-10 10:47, braincell wrote:
Children will listen to anything because they can often easily be manipulated by their much older parents. I

I generally agree with that. But my nephew example has nothing to do with it - my brother listens to pop and the nephew in his early childhood listened to the so called DiscoPolo (his grandparents listen to it) which was horrible! The term stands for a music played mainly on cheap synths, the words are very simple and the music established on wedding parties; extremly popular in the '90s - they selled millions of cds while pop artists had problems to sell 50 thousands...

I just don't like the use of the word manipulate here. Shure, parrents do shape their children durring raising, but the word manipulate does have a far more negative sound to me, than raising. As if the parrents are evil and are doing bad to their children. Realy, what is bad with playing music, that one likes, to ones children?

But maybe the reason, why we don't agree is, that I believe in good intensions, while you claim to base your opinions on cientifically tested proof. If you have any cientific proof, that supports you membership of "the music police (those people, who believe they have definite answers as to what is good and what is bad)", then I would like to see it. Untill then, I will stick to my impression, that you are a somewhat pesimistic and narrowminded person, who tries (probably with good intensions) to teach the world how to see things in his very own (negative) way.

I am sorry braincell, but I am kind of feed up with your (with few exceptions) everlasting doom preaching.

Things like Deep Purple Machine Head, were things I lasted at many years ago, that I don’t longer like. I could of course, seat down with a paint while having a nice conversation or something, but would never put a CD of those in my drive to expressly listen at it. This happens also with many, many other things… like Stravinsky. I still like Igor Stravisnsky, but I have listened his work too much. Some other classical composers are always there, and will always be, Beethoven is one of them.

Nevertheless, there are things I will always like, for instance, Pat Metheny group and all his related works, Jaco Pastorious, The Yellowjakets, etc., etc., etc., for no emotional reason but cos I love it and makes me groovy.

Other strong reason to listening to some old music is the meaning of the “words” in songs that mean something important to me.

On 2004-03-11 07:39, Immanuel wrote:
I just don't like the use of the word manipulate here. Shure, parrents do shape their children durring raising [...]

This word didn't sound brutal to me at first but now, after you focused on it, I realize it, too. I would rather call it "influences" not shaping in many cases. "Shaping" is more concious while "influencing" is rater passive, I mean parents listening to their beloved music don't shape, they rather influence their children. Uff, I hope you get what I want to say

_________________
Sir Sam Plaire Scopernicus

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: samplaire on 2004-03-12 09:24 ]</font>