The Afterword

Musings on the byways of popular culture

Menu

Navigation

You are here: Home / Forum / Music – what is it good for?

Music – what is it good for?

by 161 Comments

I know most (97.57%?) of you lot listen to lots and lots of music. Bri tells me “Music no longer plays an important part in my life” – I wouldn’t go as far as that but I can definitely proclaim despite being retired with lots and lots of free time, I play less music compared to any period in the past fifty (sixty?) years.
Lana del Ray is the only “new” music that excites me, apart from that it’s whatever takes my fancy. A bit of Ella Fitzgerald or Bob Marley or A Tribe Called Quest. Some days that means I listen to no music at all. No music at all.
Anybody else similarly afflicted? Maybe we can do Therapy together?

0

Comments

  2. Varies. Most days have it on if not necessarily sitting and listening intently. One of the reasons i have always insisted in having records turntable cd players and discs in whatever lounge room. Despite the vast catalogue , some poxy little youtube device is too easy to ignore.
    If I ingest some weed ,( not very often) I sit and concentrate on what is playing.
    I wonder how many of us have / had that direct connection -weed / focus on music. When on the booze, music was the backdrop to socialising.
    Having said that I gave just poured an early evening whisky and some Stanley Turrentine jazz will be on the turntable.

    • I find my poxy little YouTube device (less insultingly known as a stereo pair of Sonos Play:5s) impossible to ignore. They’re always ready and waiting. I play music through them constantly (except when instructed to turn it off by the mem). Same same with the little Ruarks on my desktop.

  3. No TV in the house. No other people in the house, nor their conflicting tastes or demands on the airwaves. So, filling almost every waking hour at home, it’s music, music, music. And I still love it and still get new thrills from it, and old stuff can astonish me with how fresh it is.
    Coming new to performing over the last ten years has added an extra level, hearing stuff that I might not have noticed otherwise.
    So, no therapy required here, thanks.

  5. I can recognise that. If nothing else, there are so many other things competing for my attention: books, housework, films, laundry, TV programmes, birdwatching….

    But every so often a gem comes along that stops me in my tracks. Like this track yesterday. Space Age Bachelor Pad Music from Indonesia!

    All thanks to the KCRW radio station in California. They send out a mail every week with 5 tracks that their fans might enjoy. They then add these tracks to an ever-acumulating Spotify playlist.

    Admit it! The very last thing you would expect is to find me raving enthusiastically about a retro combo from Surabaya.

  6. I mentioned this take on it by Richard Thompson on another thread here.
    It was a talk at Bradford Literature Festival (with a couple of songs) but he said he felt there was too much music about and he would listen to for example an aria by Maria Callas in the morning and would be ‘full’ for the day.
    I find I listen to less music these days.

  7. I don’t listen all day but I do listen everyday. Mostly from around 11:30 – 17:30. Those times aren’t set in stone and I will often play music throughout the evening. Obviously I’m not concentrating on the music 100% all the time but I like to have it on.

    Yes there are some days when I don’t feel like listening but I go and put on a CD or LP and you know what? I suddenly feel much better.

    Music still plays a large part in my life and will continue to do so.

  8. I too listen to less music than I used to. But it’s not an affliction, it’s a normal reaction to oversaturation. There is indeed too much music about lately. It has lost some of it’s relevance in our society as a result. It used to be somewhat of a treat to hear music outside of your own home.

    Unless it’s unnecessarily loud I can tune out the wall-to-wall music that goes along with retail experiences these days.

    I’m currently listening mostly to my backlog of podcasts and recorded radio shows at home. I say listening, but quite often it’s background noise while reading or sleeping or trying to get to sleep. I might have a quick blast of favourite YouTube clips in the evening.

    Last night I streamed/downloaded an 8-old-album set by jazz trumpeter Blue Mitchell, but I slept through about half of it.

    I almost never have music on in my car or listen to music on my phone.

    Went to a free-entry singer-songwriter thing on Friday night at a local tapas bar I’d never previously visited. That was good and it seems likely to be a regular monthly thing.
    Tonight as usual I’ll be going to the Elephant Inn in North Finchley for one of their twice-monthly live jazz sessions. No other gigs planned for the next couple of weeks.

      • Monsieur Harkonnen is exaggerating of course.
        None in August.
        Two in September
        none in October
        Three in November

        That might be added to but only if small venues, inexpensive gigs assome of the pricing these days is a joke along with many other things.

      • Added another (free) one last night for the 28th, so that means I’m out every night that weekend.
        Last night’s was probably the best Jazz At The Elephant gig of the year. Paul Booth on tenor & soprano saxes, Ross Stanley on Hammond (a proper one with Leslie speaker & bass pedal set), Chris Allard on guitar and usual suspects Jeremy Shoham (alto & soprano saxes) and Rick Finlay (drums). They were recreating Michael Brecker’s “Time Is Of The Essence” and did a fantastic job.

        View post on imgur.com

  9. Music was my first love, and it will be my last. Music of the future, and music of the past. To live without my music would be impossible to do. In this world of troubles, my music pulls me through.

    • Fellow writes pomes!

      Actually the right answer is that one should not listen to music every single day. And without an appreciation of silence there is no real appreciation of music at all. So there.

      • Well, I’m sorry Baron, but I think the stroker is absolutely right.

        I didn’t appreciate silence until I had kids, and I now listen to much less music than 20 years ago. But I make proper time for what I do listen to, even if it is for only half an hour.

        The more background music (aka noise) I hear, the less I appreciate it. What I do hear nowadays is in the foreground. Appointment listening, I think they call it.

        • So people who don’t appreciate silence are unable to appreciate music, once again utter bollocks.

          I didn’t say you cannot appreciate silence, @chinstroker said those who cannot appreciate silence have no real appreciation of music. Why do some people think their opinion is the opinion of everyone else?

          I have, as previously stated been unable to appreciate silence for many years, does that mean I have “no real appreciation” of music? The first line of your comment Steve is ignorant, just as stroker’s comment is.

            • I think the silence thing is bollocks, too. Quiet is good. I relish the quiet of my deck life: birdsong, rain on leaves, distant dogs barking, that kind of thing. You know – ambient background for a radio play. Groovy. Silence? Don’t experience that much. And I wouldn’t think you have to appreciate it before you can appreciate music. Similarly, an appreciation of noise, conversation, tinnitus, whatever, isn’t going to help you appreciate music. And “appointment listening”? Is that what “they” call it now? Oh dear.
              I stand with the Baron on this, and we shouldn’t get too bothered about the way he expresses himself. Be a dull old world if ectect.

              • Well, the technical definition of silence is very difficult to acheive in practice, as nobody lives in an anaechoic chamber. But a big yes to what is known as the ‘natural environment’ – birdsong, my neighbours calling their cats in, kids playing on trampolines, etc. The bloke next door revving his twin-exhaust penis substitute? Not so much.

                What I do take exception to is the Baron tagging an infrequent poster with aggressive language – a model of how to drive people away. If we were in the pub, I’d have gone for a slash by now, snuck out of the back door and left him ranting to himself, while I clamber over empty barrels to make my escape.

                And ‘appointment listening’? I have a full-time job and a family who tolerate my company but not my musical tastes, so I have to make time in the day where I can listen in private.

                • Well said, Steve.
                  ps one of the reasons I don’t listen to much music today is…. retirement. When I was working most of my music was played in the car. Nowadays we are both at home. One disapproving look from Lady W or “It’s a bit loud, isn’t it?” and the off button is pushed.

                  • It’s that dratted FPO. But then you get some me time. At last! Oh, but what to choose? You sit paralysed in indecision. Finally you pick an old favourite. No, that won’t do. Ah, there’s the key in the door. Music? Who needs it?

                  • Still, “appointment listening”? How have we all managed to get this far without needing this horrible phrase? One (grammar) listens to music as and when, as always. It doesn’t make an appointment with one, nor one with it.

                    “Sweetheart dearest, are you coming with me to Poundland after lunch? I want to buy a cruet set.”
                    (studies agenda) “Hmm. I see I have an appointment with a Depeche Mode CD at two thirty, so it looks like a no for that one, honey bunny!”
                    (goodnaturedly) “Men!!”

                  • I don’t invent these awful phrases, HP, I just inhabit the corporate world (during office hours) where they are used.

                    “When Mrs F is in the bath” would be more accurate.

                  • Spot on Lodey – time was when we had music on a lot of the time, but Mrs. T’s tolerance levels seem to have changed. When I first retired she complained because she had got used to ‘peace and quiet’ during the day, whereas I was fully enjoying my freedom to explore the nether regions of my collection. We now have a negotiated settlement, but some music is out of bounds if she is in.

                    Oddly, it seems that sport on TV…and anything to do with wars and conflicts…and Lucy Worsley….history docos in general…sweary comedies…also are annoying apparently.

                    It’s me obviously.

              • Wasn’t this the point that John Cage was trying to make with 4 33 – that there is no such thing as silence. The original performance was in a small hall in the countryside and so during the piece the audience would have heard a lot of natural sounds from outside. I suppose it might also have been some Zen sort of statement that organised sound, music, is not superior to unorganised sound.

                • In the silence thoughts began to come. What have I done with my life? Where are we headed? The world is burning, is war coming? What is that recurring pain in my abdomen? Do I want to know? What is wrong with me overthinking everything? For God’s sake put the music back on. A Spotify playlist, anything. I don’t care if it’s not CD quality. Sings, oh mother I can feel the soil falling over my head. Ah, that’s better. What an opening couplet!

                  • I have worked in an anechoic chamber before and it is… unnerving. You can hear your own heart pounding, the blood pumping round your body (my ears whoosh, a bit like low-level tinnitis), the lack of aural clues to your surrounding space makes you lose your balance – you barely know which was is up. And that’s with the lights on, darkness is even worse.

                    Inside, opposite the door, was a small section of kitchen worktop to put equipment on. It had a big dirty mark along the edge, made by many hands, as people used it to steady themselves when the door closed.

                  • My wife is partially deaf and even when we’re relaxing poolside on our spacious and elegantly appointed deck I can play what I like. She doesn’t have a clue who The Electric Prunes are and she’s all the better for it.

                    You guys, eh?

                  • Wazzat? Erm.
                    *blinks*
                    *shakes head*
                    Ah – HP! Take a pew. take a dip. The water’s lovely.

                    Diddley, calm down. The terror will pass, like the thoughts. There’s nothing to fear but fear itself.

            • “Impolite in public” of course you are correct @fentonsteve, but I also find when someone makes smarmy knowitall comments that are wrong a nd out of order I too find that to be “Impolite in public”, of course I’m not referring to yourself.

              However by agreeing with what @chinstroker said I think you should read again my two posts but ignore the “Impolite in public” bits for which I apologise. 🥸

  10. It’s one of the great conundrums of life that now practically all music is so readily available there are fewer magic moments listening to it all compared to the ‘old days’ when music was often difficult to get hold of.

  11. Rarely a day goes by, even, if as often as not, it is work (a review) rather than pleasure. Aka new. Which then might need counterbalancing with listening to some old.

  12. Probably listen to 10% of what I used to. But my 16 yr old daughter plays music 5 to 6 hours a day (or more). So I think it’s more to do with age than changes in how we listen to music in general

    • Although I still listen to a lot of music I agree with what you say @dai. I now have lots of spare time and that allows me to be able to listen to music for as long as I wish. However it’s not just the pleasure of listening that I get from doing so, I also find it very therapeutic for the mind. Pity it doesn’t work as well on my physical being.

  13. Still adore music but it’s perhaps not as essential to me as it once was. As people have said on this thread, ‘over saturation’ and ‘accessibility’ has played its part in the decline. As for new music, very little appeals to me now because the music hard drive in my head is stuck and wishes to not progress anymore. This happened around 2005. I put on 6Music to hear the latest and either think the new music is boring and hook free or I’ve simply heard it all before. Occasionally, I’ll like something new the DJ will play but more often or not, it’s because it sounds like something from the past. The other thing that changed my listening habits are podcasts and audiobooks. I’d rather listen to Hepworth and Ellen bang on about old records then actually listen to the old records. It ain’t right.

  14. Still listen to something most days, but the “thrill of the hunt” has dimmed as music is more available. I may have more disposable income than younger years, but the desire to take a punt on stuff is less.
    I did a quick fag packet calculation and find that only about 20% of purchases have been NewNew. Most stuff is new stuff by artists I already know, gap filling, and NewOld (ie stuff I missed first time round).
    Still enjoy finding, listening, and reading about music.
    Unlike my wife, daughters, and other friends who either hear music as background with no real interest or are content with liking what they like

  15. My favourite thing to do is put music on random play and listen without looking to see who is playing or what the track is. Amazingly enough, it often seems to match my mood in ways I hadn’t expected, and can unleash quite interesting free associations in my head.

    Tracks I know already I hear somewhat afresh, partly due to the unusual intro from the previous song or outro to the next (the John Peel effect).

    I do get that music ennuie described in the OP. Like books on my shelves, there is far more out there that I have never listened to or will ever listen to than there is that I have – a mountain. But music should be fun, never a chore – there’s always the hope that something new will capture me in a way that makes me want to dig deep into their catalogue.

    Given the mountain of music, one of the best climbing aids is to take guidance from others – there was at least one excellent track on each of the three in the Desire (non-)CD swap subset I was in, and I’ve just listened to the Nick Drake tribute album on YouTube, accompanied by Retropath’s fine and detailed review (I’m sure that wasn’t a chore) – I think I liked Time of No Reply most, though I haven’t heard all the songs yet.

    There’s an extra incentive for me this week and next – my family are away, so I can listen on loudspeakers (without earbuds) for the first time in months. There’s nothing like the deep timbre of Leonard Cohen purring out of the bottom of the cabinet as his foxy backing singers harmonize at the other end of the sound register (“Because of”).

      • Here here! wise words, Sal!

        “But music should be fun, never a chore – there’s always the hope that something new will capture me in a way that makes me want to dig deep into their catalogue.”

        I thought @Jazzjet hit the nail on the head too.

        “It’s one of the great conundrums of life that now practically all music is so readily available there are fewer magic moments listening to it all compared to the ‘old days’ when music was often difficult to get hold of.”

        If one lives in a big city where there are excellent gigs almost every week, one gets very blasé about live music. If you live in the heart of the countryside, those occasional opportunities to enjoy a live show are a big treat.

    • Much as I love the GLW, I do love it when she’s away for a few days. Music on loud and just sit and listen, watch a film in the afternoon if i want !

      Always nice that she comes back, mind you

  16. I have an ennui for NEW music, but I think my love for RE-listening to my favourite OLD music has never really dimmed (just ebbed and flowed a bit) over the years. I do still listen every day, probably the same 10 or so albums at any one time from a slowly revolving cast, but I still listen and I can’t imagine life without my records and CDs.

    My passion for some other things – I think films most of all – has diminished a fair bit over the years. I used to be an insatiable film-watcher, hoovering up movies and buying DVDs pretty much weekly, but now I watch much less than I used to. Maybe the strength of music is that it can be a background activity. I can play music in the background while I work (not all must, just some) but I haven’t really found a way to watch films while I work.

  17. I listen to more AND less music than ever before.
    More music in the sense that the radio is on non stop at work every day, and I can neither choose what to listen to nor turn it off.
    Less music in the sense that when I come home from work I never listen to music anymore, as I crave silence after the repetition of new and old hits on commercial radio all day long. I’ll listen to music on my days off, but usually only when I’m cooking and/or washing up, so not for very long.
    But when I buy a new album I’ll listen to it intensely for a short period of time, on repeat, to get to know it. And if I like it I’ll put it in my “kitchen-pile” for those cooking sessions!

    • Yes, same here.

      I can’t imagine life without music. Working from home and living alone, I need music on as often as possible as background noise, and I also sit and listen to it properly whenever I can.

      That said, my interest in new popular music is very low indeed. The artists I like that are still releasing new material (as opposed to re-releases, remasters, etc.) are all very niche and far from household names, and I can’t recall the last time I bought an album that was in the charts. I recently watched the Capital FM Summer Ball to try to get an idea of what’s popular these days, and found it execrable apart from the now 50-something Kylie, who was, of course, brilliant – and her new song, Padam Padam, is a thing of wonder.

      But my love for older acts is undimmed, and I seem to be buying an awful lot of box sets lately. Ten CDs of Hawkwind, you say? Yes, please. Stevie Nicks’ collected works? Thank you very much. The latest from whoever is No 1 in the charts? I wouldn’t know them if they were sat with me now.

  19. The quote from Richard Thompson earlier in the thread about being full for the day after hearing one piece of glorious music struck a chord with me. I rarely listen to music at home nowadays, although my wife sometimes puts Radio3 on. Instead, we go to lots of live performances, and we in that we are fortunate to live near somewhere where there are a lot to choose from, albeit primarily classical,in all its variety.. In that sense, I suppose its no different to how many people enjoyed music for centuries,

  20. I find music has a way of filling the little gaps in life. In the background while you work, on headphones during the bits of a commute where you can’t read, overheard in a bar, etc.

    I don’t think I ever sit down and studiously listen to it as a single point of focus in my day to day life, because I’m generally multi-tasking. But nevertheless it does frequently still stop me in my tracks. Not just new music either, sometimes I’ll hear something I’ve not listened to in ages and either fall in love with it all over again, or gain a new appreciation. I can remember a couple of years ago hearing Always On My Mind by the Pet Shop Boys for the first time in a while and becoming absolutely obsessed with the rising note that kicks in just after the second chorus. I’ve known that song for 30+ years, but I heard it as new and then listened to it a hundred times just trying to wrap my head around that little bit of magic.

    I do get what people mean when they say something has been lost with streaming. The intensity that came with having to really work to lay hands on music could sometimes lend it an extra oomph. I haven’t actually bought a record or CD since about 2011, and sometimes I do miss the feeling of record shopping. But then it’s swings and roundabouts, because I think I actually listen to more now than I did before – I certainly find it easier to explore new stuff, because the gap between thinking “I should check that out” and actually checking it out is a button press these days, and because mates will Whatsapp me links to new music.

    What has definitely changed in recent years is my relationship with live music, and particularly post-lockdown. I always enjoyed, rather than really loved, gigs previously, but now something has shifted and I find myself far more moved by the experience than once I did. I think it’s partly a sense of gratitude to be out in a crowd, listening to music, and partly that – for whatever reason – these days I am much more conscious of the energy in the audience, and that shared emotion (be it joy, sorrow, wonder, anger) is really powerful once you plug into it. And when I stand there, plugged in, I feel overwhelmingly lucky, because 2020 taught me that these moments are enormous gift, rather than some sort of inevitable right, and that sharing an experience can amplify it.

    Sometimes I read these threads and I wonder whether at some stage I’ll experience what so many on here seem to – that ennui and lack of interest in new music. But as of the time of writing I really can’t see it happening; every year I hear new stuff that properly blows me away, exactly the same as it did when I was a teenager. A lot of that music isn’t really Afterword-friendly, but someone (apologies – I can’t recall who) posted this on the blog a few months back and I cannot tell you how many times I’ve listened to it, how beautiful I think it is, or how much it has enriched my life.

    There have been two moments in my life where a piece of music has properly tilted my entire world on its axis, and sent me off in an entire different direction. The first was when I was 24, sat on the banks of the River Plate and contemplating what proper adulthood might look like. Something in Sam Cooke’s voice helped me to find a peace and certainty I hadn’t known since childhood, and I drew on that feeling for years. The second time, I was 43 years old and simply blown away by Fred Again, to the point that it felt like it sort of course-corrected me. I get tingles thinking about both those moments, and I will remember them the rest of my life, because they have been so preposterously additive to my time on this planet.

    There’s a sense that every time I listen to music, I know there’s a chance I might experience another of those moments. That they weren’t limited to my youth, that they could come from unexpected places, and that they hit like a lightning bolt when they do. I cannot ever imagine slowing down on listening to music when there might yet be further lightning bolts to be had.

    • “The second time, I was 43 years old and simply blown away by Fred Again, to the point that it felt like it sort of course-corrected me. ” – I like that. I’ve never got your fascination with Fred Again (I don’t see it AT ALL, so I don’t think it’s really for me), but what you’ve said there about being “course-corrected” pretty much describes how I felt when the second Avalanches album Wildflower came out in 2016 (funnily enough, also when I was 43… spooky). It brought me back to how much I used to love beat/ hip-hop/ sample-based music when I was younger, and got me into making music again.

      • That show permanently shifted something in me emotionally. I can’t even really put it into words no matter how hard I try – I just came away from it with a completely different perspective on things.

        The impact of that music was specific to the live setting. If I’d listened to the record at home it wouldn’t have hit like that, but it was one of the first times I’d been in a properly large crowd post-lockdown, and it was music that seemed to be to be addressing in a fairly head-on fashion what everyone in attendance had recently gone through.

        In that regard, it was a little bit like listening to Etta James sing I’d Rather Go Blind amidst a crowd of people all of whom had recently had their hearts broken. And I really wasn’t ready for that.

        That’s the power that music has; to help us understand others and ourselves a little better, to put us in one another’s shoes, to uplift, to bring us together, to heal, to let you face down pain and to shower you in joy. You simply have to choose to keep letting it in.

        If you had told me in 2019 I would have a big life epiphany to live House music in 2022 I’d never have believed you. But it happened. And who the hell knows what else could happen in years to come. Personally, I’m hoping that I have my next come-to-Jesus moment to Dwarf Metal.

    • I recognise bits of both this and the Afterword Ennui, as it must now legally be referred to. Much of my own private listening is a case of old favourites – my enormous running playlist is the main vector for music in my life – but where I get the joy and thrill of the new is through my daughters’ relationship with it. They’re 15 and 17 and both deeply in love with music. 17 is, naturally, a Taylor Swift superfan and has found a lot of what she loves through digging into Tay Tay’s influences and enthusiasms, and taking offshoots from there. 15 is more eclectic and reminds me a lot of Bill and Ted’s daughters in “Face the Music” – she’s constantly surprising me by what she knows, the connections she makes. She’s a belting drummer, too, whereas 17 (who’s perhaps more naturally musical) never really enjoyed her instrumental lessons, and was allowed perfectly happily to drop them.

      I never tried to “educate” my kids in my tastes. (Quite honestly, confession time: I judge people who do that quite harshly: it seems to speak to “my child as vicarious avatar of ME” parenting approaches which I like not one bit.) They naturally heard fair chunks of what I love when it was my turn with the playlist on car journeys etc, but as soon as they were old enough for their own iPod Touches and then phones, I assumed they weren’t really absorbing from me, and quite right too. But it turns out they did, a bit, or discovered things coincidentally which I also love, and sharing those with them is a great joy. Similarly, without them I doubt I’d have come to enjoy Taylor Swift, Phoebe Bridgers, boygenius, Lana, Frank Ocean and loads more as much as I do.

      So many of my happiest musical memories involve them. Taking turns on my shoulders watching Grimes at Latitude. The summer before last, with Norman Fucking Rockwell on repeat as we drove through a sweltering summer day and then a warm Welsh evening to reach a holiday cottage. Singing along like twats to ABBA, Fleetwood Mac and Patti Smith while driving to my folks’ house. Watching the Wham! documentary together. Things to treasure, which the music will always anchor for me: when I hear those tunes, I’ll think of those moments, forever.

      So my relationship with music isn’t so much of a personal fandom thing any more. It’s changed, but I like this better than any of the youthful stuff I used to define myself by. More and more, I think we can touch real beauty, certain types of it, only with and through others.

      • Delightful post, hp – though I do wonder at the choice of names (sorry – terrible dadjoke).

        My daughters, 12 and 9, have their own mp3 players which I help to load with tunes as they discover them – most recently from the German kids equivalent of the X-factor (Dein Song). Terrible rubbish, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. On holiday last week, the youngest, who has a habit of starting a conversation with “Do you like…” has joined me in singing Madonna’s Music as a call and response singsong which she initiates (much to the earworm hating annoyance of her older sister – which in part is why she does it):

        “Do you like?” “Wiggle Wiggle”
        “Do you like?” “Wiggle Wiggle”
        “Do you like? Mu-sic” “Makes the people”
        “Come together Mu-sic” “mix the bourgeoisie and the rebel”
        “Hey Mr. DJ” “put a record on”
        “I wanna dance” “with my baby”

        I must say – I love it that they enjoy music their way – frugging out or dancing balletically to anything that takes their fancy. It is the most glorious thing.

      • This is lovely stuff.

        I really agree with the last sentence. I guess it all depends on what kind of person you are; for the more introverted among us, music is probably a more personal/solitary pursuit (and nothing wrong with that). But I think what I learned in lockdown is that I’m first and foremost a people person – not that this was in much doubt beforehand – and that I’m best served by following that impulse.

        The fandom stuff has definitely long since burned away. I don’t have a CD collection any more, or shelves of carefully selected music that define me (that Father John Misty lyric; “Now I’ve got a lifetime to obsessively accrue/a small nation of meaningful objects/they’ve got to represent me too”). That was for the phase of my life when I was still trying to figure out who the hell I was, and considered that pursuit a serious endeavour indeed.

        More recently, I’ve come to the view that there is no “me” to discover. “Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself”, as George Bernard Shaw said, and I think that creation should be a pretty fluid process, with no end goal in sight. So much of what I thought I “knew” about myself has down the years proved to be illusory, or negotiable. And that’s particularly true of music. These days, I don’t think there’s a band or act I’d ever rule out enjoying, if I can just find the right entry point. And by entry point, I typically mean: company.

        Mostly I just feel like I no longer care whether music is good. I just care what I can get from it, and how I can share it with other people. Because that’s where the best stuff is, for me. Like you say; those moments singing along in the car with your kids (for me: Wetsuit by The Vaccines, every time we arrive at a surfable beach), or hugging your mates, or sharing excitement with others when the perfect song comes on in the pub or restaurant you’re in. I like all that stuff way better than when I used to tut because my mates liked Reef instead of Sonic Youth. I’m not that serious a proposition, ultimately. Neither is life.

        • Yeah. I really do think caring whether pop music is “good” is for the birds and – past a certain age – even a bit embarrassing! I think one of the last people I’d ever want to be is someone who thinks they’re in a position to sneer, even inwardly, at pop on the basis of its quality. Ultimately there probably are two kinds of pop music: the type where melody is important (which tends to be musically pretty simple) and the type that’s groove-based (which kinda even more so). Imagine feeling in a position to act or feel lofty about any of it. It’s about how it makes you feel.

          Some part of me still kneejerks to judgement when I hear something I don’t like, but I can fairly easily move past that to “not for me; probably my loss”. Thank god.

          • I think there is a debate to be had about this question of good and bad music on, the one hand, and genre on the other. For example when one hears something like “I Can only listen to classical; everything else just sounds like noise.” (An actual example). I doubt whether many of us though would regard all music of one genre as being good and all of another as being bad.

            Judgements of good and bad in matters of taste are one of the things that define the human I think. The trouble is that we suffer from our own aesthetic theories (or tribalisms or ego trips) that tend to lead us towards whole genres and away from others. The only cure for that seems to be to refine our criteria for good and bad that is not about genre.

            For example why do Abba sound better today tan most other pop of the 70s and 80s? And if we didn’t have any criteria to explain this, then all criticisms would be meaningless, wouldn’t they?

            I’m still working on my own prejudice against folk music. I’m bound to find a folk artist eventually that I can say is good …

            • Yeah I’m not even really saying all pop is of the same quality – just that I don’t care! It seems unseemly and boring to get too into the weeds on the question. It all comes out in the wash, in any case. We’re rapidly approaching a point at which someone will look as mad for saying ABBA are shite as, er, I probably do when I deny the godhead of the Beatles for the fiftieth time (though in my defence, I don’t say the Beatles were bad: just that I generally can’t stick em and people talk a lot of illiterate shite about them).

              Quality ultimately will out. Although they’re hardly to be compared, Lay All Your Love On Me will probably be as firmly in the canon in 200 years as Mozart’s clarinet quintet is now. Nobody in their right mind says Mozart’s shite: just perhaps, god help them, that they hear nothing in him that hits home. But then, a 1760s dodger would say that.

    • @bingolittle, it was I who posted William Prince and I am extremely pleased to find another who appreciates William Prince, who is playing a short UK tour in November.

  23. To put things into an historic perspective, I’m going to cross-thread for a moment from the football songs thread. A mere 150 years ago this whole discussion would seem like something from a science fiction novel.

    In 1877 Edison’s tinfoil phonograph was very exciting news.

    Jane Austen, Attila the Hun, Hildegard of Bingen, Walter Raleigh, Charlotte Bronte, Oliver Cromwell, the Bronte Sisters, Boticelli: all these countless generations who never had the joy of a record collection or a Spotify playlist.

    And I suspect many of the stick-in-the-muds from the past would not have approved . Recorded music is the devil’s work.

    Turn up with a Walkman at the Spanish Inquisition and they’d have burnt you at the stake in a jiffy.

  24. Spotify made me try things I wouldn”t have otherwise tried and gigs make me appreciate acts even if I’m not going to start listening to their record, as can documentaries. I feel less inclined to dismiss the music others listen to as a result. I think I’m more open to music I haven’t heard before and less judgemental. I think I’m better off as a result, more able to receive and appreciate. It’s probably a better experience as a listener than the one I had as a young person.

  25. I suspect that many of us, like Diddley, have become far more broad-minded and open in our musical tastes than our younger selves.

    But let’s not be too hard on those teenage caterpillars who were to become the glorious butterflies that fly round the AW Garden today. Deciding which kind of music you liked was such an important statement about who you were.

    In my case: Beardy blokes with long hair, guitars, fuzz pedals and an ice machine. Counter-culture heroes who were sticking it to The Man.

    Out Demons Out!

    • It’s not about my tastes as much as what I think about what I don’t like, or think I don’t like. I saw a concert with Coldplay on youtube from South America, maybe Brazil. A properly filmed show. The audience were so happy and excited, so thrilled. It was joyous. Coldplay had started doing more dance music on their records. It was moving to see the effect they were having, but the old stuff was just as well received. How can one be resentful or annoyed by the idea of Coldplay when they can move people in that way that is moving to see. It just seems rather ridiculous and mean spirited. Youtube is of course another way music can hit you and change your perspective. I can’t get i-player but I could see selections from Glastonbury on youtube. It’s a great thing.

      • “Ridiculous and mean spirited!” That’s very true.

        As Sal comments, the scribblers at the NME were not the best mentors when it came to being curious and open-minded in one’s musical interests.

        • Re NME – that’s putting it mildly, KFD! They lost me as a customer when all my favourite bands were “consigned to the void” and I was ridiculed for liking them. I trust that they felt the pinch when my 25p went elsewhere…

        • To be fair to Danny Baker he went in another direction to an extent. It may have been partly about being a contrarian but I remember his single of the week choices, nominating disco records. Sheila B. Devotion’s sublime Spacer was one such and a heads up I was grateful for. Also the paper’s year end lists showed a degree of open-mindedness and range of taste to be fair. It wasn’t all year zero Stalinism.

          • But which period of NME? I stopped reading it around 1980* wen I lost interest. Before that it used to be great fun. And what more would a young person want from a pop mag?

            *The dreaded 80s curse.

            • Same here really – it was when it got hectoring and too up itself – and too political regarding what one should and shouldn’t listen to – also I found myself on the wrong side of an artificial construct which they had erected.

              So I also stopped buying it around then.

                  • I was in that target audience as well, (I thought I’d died and gone to heaven when they did the suicide issue (ok, maybe tmi, poor taste – but it was a benchmark of the cultural credibility of the institution, not to say monolith that was the ‘En’ ‘Em’ ‘Eee’). I was so sold. I judged books by the cover. And such well-posed, thousand yard stare, angular body postures, and paisley, muted grey/khaki, back combed/Byrd-fringe, Chelsea/army booted covers they were. Who needed to listen to the actual music, when you could absorb it through images and hyperbollock newsprint?

                    What a vapid d fantasy. But jolly good fun.

                    • Sal’s post above – NME in a nutshell…

                      …I detested the NME at that point; and everything it stood for…I was the anti-Sal.

      • Off on an iplayer tangent, I know there was criticism of the Beeb’s telly coverage of Glastonbury. But I watched some of Pulp at the IoW festival on Sky Arts and it was so bad (technical-wise) that I turned it off and deleted the recording. Be thankful for what you’ve got, and all that.

    • What’s happened to me then? I think I’m a lot more judgemental in my taste now I’m older. I’m not broad minded at all, and I really have to struggle to see the value in bad music, erm, I mean ‘music I don’t personally like’. I think I’m beyond hope😁

      • This is the question we have all been asking.

        The cry goes up; “What has become of young Cowslip? And furthermore, what shall hence become of him?”

        Queries to trouble even the most somnolent of consciences. Troubling times indeed.

  26. I find myself reading about music or listening to podcasts about music – specifically this – https://500songs.com/ – more than listening to the music itself. Since working from home I do much less travelling in the car which was always where most of my music listening was done. Like others here, I have a nice music system (vinyl and cd) at home which I enjoy, but cannot use it unless the rest of the family goes out.

  28. As I’m getting older I’m listening to more and more jazz, generally from the hard bop era onwards, including a fair amount of free jazz and electric era Miles etc

    The problem I have is that I find it too intense to listen to on headphones but putting it on speakers inevitably leads to immediate backlash from the wife and kids.

  29. I listen to just as music now as I ever have.

    It’s playing at work; it automatically connects to the car; I listen when I’m making dinner, and out walking the dog, and going to the gym, and when I’m in the shower.

    The funny thing is, I actually like silence and the sounds of nature. But if I have other noises around, I find music helps me concentrate.

  30. Some comments have been removed from this thread.

    Can we please make a point that we shouldn’t need to be saying on The Afterword but while everyone is free to make a comment and argue their case when they disagree with someone else’s point of view, no one wants to see personal attacks or even just plain rudeness here.

    If you can’t make a point without either or both of the above then don’t make it at all. Further, it’s not QUITE like being in the pub with your mates and you don’t know other people’s sensitivities so err on the side of caution and politeness. You simply can’t judge how another member will react to criticism or how harshly they might feel it.

    Just be cautious in how you spar with others. No one is being singled out for now but we will act if “bantz” starts to look even remotely like over-stepping the good natured boundaries the site has fought hard to maintain.

    Your ever-helpful Mod Team

Leave a Reply