Some interesting comments on my last post regarding my evolution as a music fan. First off, I would never list Belly as obscure and lame. I still have a crush on a red-haired Tanya Donnelly from the Feed the Tree video. And looking back at my 25 songs I would say that they fall mainly in the category of obscure but really good though I will have to admit that Freakwater has been described by music critics as sounding like cats being tortured and I completely see their point. But all in all I like the music on my Zune.
What is interesting though was the idea that my taste in music would grow more mainstream now that I am not in clubs any more. Well, I was never in dance clubs but I am out a lot less often and haven’t gone to a concert in a year and that has brought up an interesting point with me. I wouldn’t say that my taste in music has grown more mainstream in the past year. What in has become is very stagnant to the point that I am simply not buying much new music. For example, I still haven’t picked up the latest Wilco and Son Volt releases despite the fact that they are two of my favorite bands of all time and I do not go a week without listening to one of them.
Part of the reason that my music tastes have grown stagnant is entirely because I am not going to concerts and as a result am not exposed to opening acts. For every awful opening act that I have seen in my life (up to and including Tom Brosseau who I still wish I would have thrown a beer bottle at even though that sentiment has resulted in physical threats made against me the last time I mentioned it on the blog) I have encountered some amazing acts who I become huge fans of. From my 25 songs Carbon Leaf, The Frames, Anders Osborne and Richard Buckner were all opening acts on bills that I saw over the years and they all became some of my favorite artists. If it wasn’t for going to concerts I would never have heard of Carbon Leaf but they are now my best example of a young band with huge potential. Without stepping out into the live music scene you lose those discoveries.
(As to why I haven’t explored the music scene here it basically isn’t anywhere near as convenient as it was in KC. There half the shows I went to were within ten minutes of my apartment and the others were about an hour’s drive away in Lawrence, where it helped that I didn’t really care about the impression I gave when I came into work late the next morning after spending the previous night hanging out with college students. Now I do care and pretty much every band I like plays an hour (and a few states) away and it makes it a lot tougher. Plus, I am just getting too old to do forty concerts a year. My ears need a break.)
But concerts aren’t the only reason my musical tastes have stagnated. The traditional ways of finding out about new music have disappeared for me. We already knew that MTV and VH1 are useless in terms of discovering new music though I will give VH1 props for providing us with The Pick Up Artist and Daisy of Love. My biggest problem is that I am someone who also found bands by reading music magazines and they pretty much no longer exist. No Depression folded and Paste is barely surviving to the point that they had to ask their subscribers for donations. I own CDs from bands just because I liked their ad much less those that had a good writeup. It really was one of my entry points: read a review, maybe see the band or just take a flier on a disc.
That is another reason behind my music purchase slowdown: the death of the record store. Even Borders is doing away with the majority of its music section. There was nothing better than spending part of my day just roaming the aisles of a record store and looking to see if I found anything interesting. It was just how I spent my lazy afternoons. Now I don’t even know where an independent store is relative to where I live (compared to being able to walk to a few in KC) and that entire experience has disappeared.
Now I know that most people would just say “Well, why don’t you just buy your music online like everyone else?” But the strange thing is I really don’t like getting my music that way. Heck, I don’t even like reading the music mags online even though that is where they have all repositioned themselves. For me there just needs to be a physical component to the entire process. Music is something that you can hold in your hand; it is not something that is just bits sent across the ether. Plus, when you have access to a nearly infinite amount of music you have to wade through an awful lot of crap to find the good stuff. That is why I always talk about the curse of The Long Tail. We now have access to every single song ever recorded and as a result of infinite choice we buy nothing.
I doubt that my tastes will ever become mainstream. I just hope that I am able to recreate my niche as a discerning music consumer.
3 comments:
Thats a tough one. I grapple with that. Most of the time throw my hands in the air and say "if something was so unbelievably great, it would hit a level of cultural hegemony such as Nirvana and I would find it." I mean really, now that I started learning guitar chords, its clear that there hasn't been too much progress musically since The Stones, Beatles, Led Zeppelin, The Byrds, and Black Sabbath.
The one thing that has helped me at least bridge the gap slightly is the accessability to music provided by SiriusXM. They have a much much wider format than terrestrial and an array of options that even the most snobby snobs can get into. I'd say you would find yourself gravitating toward The Loft, or XMU (college radio), of the Coffee House station.
The other advantage is they do not pay advertisers so they do not adhere to the outdated formatting process which has shrunk terrestrial rotations to only a couple dozen songs (if that). I'm not really a Pandora guy but I swear by my XM and have it in two cars, two iphones, and on my computer. Call me a fan.
Chris,
Here is another reason why your musical tastes may continue to stagnate.
I read today that EMI will no longer sell music to independent record stores. This could be the final blow for the few remaining outlaws who battle itunes and the big boxes.
If you are under the age of 30 you may not care about the death of the indy record stores. But for us old timers there was something romantic about hanging out at the local record shop, debating who is good and who is overated, and picking up something new because you liked what your heard on the store's sound system.
Who would have guessed "High Fidelity" would become a period piece so quickly?
In the last two days I happen to have gone to two Borders stores and a Best Buy looking to pick up a few CDs. It is pretty pathetic. What used to be maybe 15-20 racks of CDs has gone down to maybe 4, and all of that is crap (not that I expected much out of those stores, but come on). The interesting thing is that they are not replacing that retail space with other products, it is dead space in the store. I really wonder what their profitability per square foot looks like.
Post a Comment