Reading through the posts about NYE I noticed people talking about collective listening to things like “we decided to have a night in listening to Shaky’s latest and downing a carafe of Dubonnet”. Now I love my wife dearly but I would never put her through the tortture of putting a record on and getting her to listen to it with me. As a young teenager, this is fine – but even then I was never happy with the social pressure of immediately having to react to music.
I was once asked around to a workmate’s flat just so he could show me his Bang & Olufsen turntable – which was indeed very nice. But then he produced a freshly-bought copy of an REM LP and put it on – telling me to sit in a certain part of the couch to get the full benefit of the sound, After about 30 seconds, when I thought I was done, he made it very clear that – no – I had to stay to the end of the side. All the while, he studied my face for appreciative noises/nods. Of course, I had to stay for side 2 as well. Thank God it wasn’t Sandanista!
I just can’t get doing with that kind of thing. I am a very insular listener but also a respectful one. I might suggest something but it’s up to you to listen to it – if you want – in your own time. It occurs to me that I might the outlier here. Do you go to a friend’s house and listen to music?
I can’t help thinking that you are not alone in your solitary listening habits, after all, you are not a civilian.
The communal pleasure in listening to music was, for me and my ‘crowd’, a thing we enjoyed collectively from my early teens to early adulthood. In our teens we had little money and so yearned to share the experience with anyone lucky enough to have purchased a new LP. It also served to hone our musical preferences and establish ‘camps’ and ‘bands of brothers’.
It was probably in early adulthood when we became a little more financially independent that we started recommending LP’s to each other as opposed to ‘sharing’ and could perhaps afford to take a punt if something tickled our aural fancy – recommendations from trusted musos were particularly helpful and welcome in the ‘80’s when, in my opinion, there was so much shite about.
Now I enjoy listening to music as a solitary experience for primarily two reasons – I can play what the hell I like and I enjoy wallowing in the quality of the audio.
Plus, Mrs attackdog would get very upset and emotional if she had to endure John Martyn and Steely Dan most of the time.
and my Barry Manilow and Cliff Richard reckids. She doesn’t mind the more progressive Bay City Rollers stuff, though.
At last night’s new years we had a few friends round for drinks I resorted to the dreaded Spotify playlist rather than get raised eyebrows when the Tame Impala gets turned up after the first bottle had been downed. Actually it was a good playlist : A selection of the late David Mancuso’s loft sessions with a bit of everything thrown in but as 12:00 neared they asked for the Tele to be switched on and we watched Robbie Williams segue into fireworks.
Of course in the past I have turned up at new years parties with a bag of records as well as a bag full of booze and I realised a while ago that to the those friends now music just isn’t as important. Some of them will get a fix by doing a festival in the summer and the odd concert but will get more excited about Netflix schedules than album issues.
I’m lucky to have one mate who still djs occasionally (playing vinyl not a fecking MacBook) and once a month we will get together and play stuff we have come across. In his case it’s generally soul & funk reissues while I’ll throw in anything I fancy but we both leave generally finding something new. Last time it was Future Islands who I had totally missed.
Our wives take this as an opportunity to skidaddle to the pub and leave us to it and I might turn the volume up in the car on the way back but will be back to headphones and the Bluetooth speaker in the kitchen the next day.
Mainly listening on my own which is how I prefer it. My wife will listen to whatever I have on in the car but this is slightly censored as I know for example if I have Godspeed you black emperor!! on she will go bonkers. That’s reserved for my own privacy likewise Julian Cope and the Pogues neither of whom she can bear.
When we have friends around I have usually left the iPod on shuffle however on Friday night I put one of my playlists on and after our guests had left my wife complimented me on the music I played. She never does that. Result!!
I have a cunning plan. Assemble all your fave tracks on a compilation CD and take it on any holiday when you know you will spend extended periods in a hire car. Play the CD in the hire car. Tracks will become associated in all passengers’ brains with happy holiday trip times. Net result: you can now play all your favourites once you get back home again and they are guaranteed to invoke that, “Ooh, this reminds me of when we were in (holiday destination)” reaction.
Works too. Remember making a mixtape in 1986 for a lads’ and lasses’ weekend away in Devon. There were fourteen of us in three cars and that tape got swapped about a lot. It included seminal classics such as : Bruford – Beelezebub and TV Personalities – Part Time Punks. Years later tunes could still be hummed and lyrics remembered by rote.
Fun times.
Another solitary listener (sort of).
Whne younger, the buying, sharing and communal listening of new albums and singles was a “thing” – there was also a big trade in mix tapes.
As life trundles on, and work and family and stuff reduces this crowd mentality, listening on ones own becomes more common, and eventaully the norm.
The car radio is permannently on 6Music, and Mrs D will tolerate this for shorter trips, but anything over 30 miles entails a change to the radio station (and in fairness, rightly so).
Most listening now is done either when houseworking or washing-up (thanks to a tolerant Mrs D who knows the rules that domestic activities can only be completed with a soundtrack).
I do have every other Friday off work, so this is now a designated “listen to new stuff day”.
Last year, the communal listening thing was resurrected when my mate got a new vinyl edition of Brian Eno’s The Ship – it was a great evening listening to the album and discussing it (and whatever else the beer dictated), but I wouldn’t want to do it all the time
No. Unless they are trapped in the car with me driving.
One of my worst nightmares is being a passenger when the driver has terrible taste in music. That wouldn’t be you, if course!
I once got a lift from my friend from Perth to the far north of Scotland. for the first hour or so, the soundtrack was “Angry Machines” by Dio. It was quite a mismatch with the scenery. Has anyone driven the Amalfi coast while listening to King Diamond?
I listen to music & the radio all around the house & our two kids don’t know any different- it’s just always been that way. Our son is indifferent to all kinds of music but our daughter is into Richey Manic, The Smiths & plays piano so we’ve obviously influenced her music choices.
Interestingly, whereas I always listen out-loud to my music (through the surround sound speakers) & hardly ever through headphones, our daughter listens in the completely opposite way.
As a teen, I loved nothing more than shoving my massive speaker onto my bedroom windowsill to blast out G’n’R for the neighbours to “appreciate.” What a pain in the arse…
I love inflicting my taste on others, education I call it. Sadly, rarely well received, altho’ Dead Can dance got a big thumbs up during rummicubs tonight. Mind you, pity the Mrs Path, who didn’t dare tell me, till we were wed, that she couldn’t stand Jackie Leven.
(Thus the answer is that the car is my main listening post, driving alone to and from work.)
“I love inflicting my taste on others, education I call it.”… file under the AfterWiki entry on How To Win Friends and Influence People.
The monthly Glossop Record Club has a chosen theme and an elpee to match. Sometimes there is a vote to select from an offered list. The winning vinly is listened to in it’s entirety, sometimes just one side. The rule is to listen in silence with mobiles muted but there is often some gobshite who likes to initiate a conversation to much tutting from the clever people.
It also takes place in a public bar doesn’t it – albeit a very nice, very Left-wing bar with very Socialist beer prices – but there’s always a bit of pub background noise inevitably.
These tales of people having to listen to music in their cars makes me feel very sad. Puts me in mind of dear old Bobby Chariot…
Separated from me wife, sleeping in me Jag, on pills for me nerves. Let the laughter roll – or even begin
I remember with joy sitting down with my two best mates at the weekends, aged about 14 (so we hadn’t really discovered girls or drinking) when we had a free house. We had access to a decent hi-fi courtesy of one of our Dads and we would re-position the settee, turn off the lights and crank up “Close to the Edge” or some ELP and just listen. Simple pleasures and, of course that stuff stays with you a lifetime.
It’s always tempting to “educate” others about the great music you feel so strongly about, even when it’s done in the “how could you fail to love this” frame of mind, but I find it rarely elicits anything other than a “meh”. Whatever the reason, I’ve found less and less people over the years who feel even remotely like I do about music (this place excepted, of course) and the few who do seem to have very different taste to me anyway. There have been too many instances over the years of meticulously curated party mixes being dumped off the cassette deck for me to bother anymore. I still love doing it for special occasions but the lesson learnt has been that it will have to be the blandest of the bland to get past the noise police. My attitude will always be “well that’s not great but there will be another track in 3 ½ minutes so what the hell” but plenty of people don’t share that laissez faire approach.
Whatever attracted the GLW and I in the first place, it certainly wasn’t musical taste. With almost the entire history of recorded music to stream from she restricts herself to Coldplay, Adele, Take That or Andrea Bocelli on rotation so any enforced joint listening inevitably ends up being the radio. I had a few successes by stealth over the years as the Ainslets were growing up and they all do at least have very eclectic taste which I take as a personal victory.
We always had enough of a crossover of taste that playing music in the home when we are both there is mostly fine…but I do get the ‘what ARE we listening to…?’ question a fair bit when I go off piste. I also often get the ‘you are ALWAYS playing the Beatles/Beach Boys/Hendrix/Bowie….(insert multiple artists here)…’ kind of remark, so there is a middle ground somewhere between the reassuringly familiar and the sameold/sameold….somewhere!
A crisis occured last year when I retired (Mrs. T finished a couple of years ago) when I had a complaint that I was now ruining the peace and quiet..! Fortunately, nearly 40 years of compromising stood us in good stead!!
Remarks above remind me of that common experience we all have of listening to LPs with mates when we were in our teens – those records I still associate with friends from the 60s/70s which is lovely. Luckily, we have a couple who are still friends from that time…weekends are still spent listening to records at inappropriate volume and drinking irresponsibly!
Yes, I listen to music in my friend’s place.
I’m happy for him to put on whatever he wants, I find I’m more receptive to it in his presence – sometimes I’ve borrowed an LP from him and it hasn’t sounded as good in my house on my own.
This is an interesting subject. As a teenager in the 1970s I used to sit around friends’ houses listening to LPs. Bowie, King Crimson, Dylan, Cohen, Jethro Tull, Judy Collins, Cockney Rebel, Iggy, Pink Floyd, Yes, Stray, Lou Reed, Quo you name it really. The odd thing was that it didn’t matter really whether I liked it or not. I had one good mate (Nigel Baldchin – where are you now?) who loved Grand Funk Railroad. Now, I’ll politely understate my opinion of GFR and just say that I didn’t care for them a great deal. It didn’t really matter as we still had a great time drinking Nigel’s Dad’s appalling home brewed beer while he was at work. Nowadays, there is only a small percentage of my records that I would dare put on for friends. Why are so many people so intolerant of stuff new to them? Beats me.
One day about ten years ago I had a sobering experience when my wife revealed that she didn’t know how to work the CD player. Apparently It was only my daughter and i who ever put music on. I was genuinely deeply shocked. I really had been so blinkered that I never even noticed that I monopolised the choice of music in our house. I used to take my daughter to concerts and festivals (still do) and so we developed a shared love for acts that we had enjoyed (Arthur Lee, Jackie Leven, Laura Veirs, Hole, Arcade Fire, Patti Smith etc).
One August, we were stuck in traffic in Prince’s Street, Edinburgh during the Festival. I was playing Trout Mask Replica in the car so I wound down all the windows and turned the music up full. I was disappointed that the passers by only looked distraught. I ask you – what more can you do??
I like to get immersed in music, headphones on usually – late at night or maybe on a journey.
I don’t drive, but the GF does and on holidays in particularly there’s a playlist of stuff that we both like but in terms of my own listening I like to get into it and listen to things that I love but don’t feel the need to inflict it on anyone else.
If I play stuff out loud I start hearing it through other peoples ears, and it changes the context completely for me – sometimes for good – but some things are best left between me and my headphones.
Twas not always the case – in my early 20s I was the type to commandeer the stereo at parties and put bootlegs of SMiLE on…
I get together with a mate of mine most weekends and we usually gather around the decks and listen to stuff over a few beers and that’s always a joy.
I also like peace and quiet – notably we don’t have the TV on unless there is something being watched – definitely no rolling News (I loathe and avoid Pubs with TV News/Sport on). A lot to be said for a bit of hush.