Music and petrifaction

[hrj]

I confess: I am one of those people whose musical tastes petrifed at some point in my early 20s. I'd never been a really big buyer of popular music albums -- I own a few dozen LPs, my cassette collection is primarily filk, and I somehow entirely skipped the stage of owning a dedicated CD player. Then I got an iPod back about four years ago and, combined with access to cheap used CDs at Rasputins and the like, I started seriously building my collection in a systematic way for the first time in my life. And what I'm hunting down and buying is the music of my youth. Not all of it is stuff I actually preferred in my youth, but it's the music that stuck in my brain as part of the soundtrack of my life. And it's pretty much all '60s, '70s, and just barely a smidge of '80s, with a solid underlayer of classical and renaissance.

It isn't that I don't think there's any newer music that's good. Part of it is that there was a period in my life when I listed to radio stations playing contemporary styles a lot, and then I shifted my listening habits. 95% of my radio listening for the last decade and more has been NPR (we'll get back to this point), I work in environments that don't include background music as a rule, and the couple of friends who were likely to drag me off to concerts of groups I wasn't familiar with yet moved off to other parts of the country. So newer music didn't work its way into my consciousness as the soundtrack for anything. And, after all, there's so much catching up to do on the artists I already know I like.

All of this is leading up to NPR, Terry Gross, Fresh Air and why it's so odd that I'm Googling for album listings and pencilling a note on my calendar for a date in late April. You see, on Monday's show, she was interviewing this guy from a band called "The Decemberists" and for the first time in ages I have this urge to go buy albums from a band I'd never heard of a week ago and think seriously about going to hear them when they're in SF. Maybe it was the mention that a reviewer had called them "hyper-literate" and accused them of only wanting English majors for fans. Maybe it was the serious discussion of getting the grammar right when writing pastiches of traditional murder ballads. Maybe it was the concept of a "progressive rock" band singing intelligible, literate songs about fairy wives. This isn't a review: fergoodnessakes I haven't listed to more than a few snippets of any given song. But my faith is renewed that maybe there have been some bands recording in the last two decades that are worth checking out after all.

Comments

[aryanhwy.livejournal.com]

My musical tastes for much of my life were cemeted in the music my parents listened to in college (early to mid 70's), as that's what I grew up on. That still makes up the bulk of my music collection (got most of the albums by Kansas, Moody Blues, Strawbs, Simon & Garfunkel, Jethro Tull), but after meeting Joel my taste has expanded some. Some groups I'd recommend (both because of musicality and because of interesting/clever lyrics) are Subterranea, Death Cab for Cutie, Postal Service, Radiohead, and Firewater.

As for the Decemberists, the name rings a bell; I think I came across them recently (in a movie soundtrack?) and thinking "Hey, I really like that!"

[baronessv.livejournal.com]

The Decemberists are by far one of my favorite current bands, and I think everyone should love them. Definitely acquire their newest release the Crane Wife and work your way backwards through their catalog. Especially if you can find a copy of the Tain, which is based loosely on the Irish mythological epic Táin Bó Cúailnge.

[broider-barones.livejournal.com]

presume you have seen their my space blog with downloads http://www.myspace.com/thedecemberists

My taste in music is very eclectic. When I met Will he introduced me to Dead Can Dance - they are popular with a number of more discerning SCA/Ren folk which will be obvious when you listen to their music. I'm currently on a classical bent having recently attended an Itzak Perlman concert.

[xrian.livejournal.com]

I think my musical taste "petrified" in my 20s too -- but in my case it's stranded me with a liking for some rather odd music, much of which no one else I hang out with can stand for more than 30 seconds. (At least, not the more extreme bits of it.)

That would be folk-dance music: not the folk-dance music of my parents' generation, which is overwhelmingly Western European and sentimental, but the folk-dance music of my generation, which is mostly Eastern European and especially Balkan -- Croatian, Bulgarian, Hungarian, and the like. These all tend to share tonal and rhythmic systems that are definitely NOT anything like what we all learn in music school. (Dances in 7/8, 5/4, or 19/8, anyone?)

There are prettified versions (clarinet, accordion, etc.) produced under State-sponsored "folk revivals" back when the "State" was Communist, but there are also "village" versions, whose instruments include bagpipes and similar screechy things. I actually like both, within limits.

Of course, I DO also like a lot of classical, medieval and Renaissance music, although I start to lose interest rather quickly for anything more recent than Handel, and I really don't like Mozart. After that, it's pretty spotty: I've found quite a few things I like but I can't detect any rhyme or reason to which ones.

[anotheranon.livejournal.com]

Our local NPR station has some very good music shows ("Thistle and Shamrock" for Celtic/folk, "Hot Jazz Saturday Night" for big band/swing type stuff), but when I tune in during the day I'm really surprised at how good their "bumper" (in between show segment) music can be.

Let me know if the Decembrists are worth looking at - I too have fallen into the "nothing after [date]" pit!

[loup_noir]

It took time for me to decide I liked the Decemberists. A lot of my Flist adores them and I arranged a trade with an Irish friend wherein I sent her Decemberist CDs and she sent me some trad stuff we couldn't find in the States. I ripped copies and have listened to a few of the cuts. Hey, I bought them.

I love all sorts of music, current and past. I fervently hope never to become ossified in my musical tastes. There's a ton of brilliant new work to go with the old.

Dead Can Dance, the Mediaeval Baebes, Annborg Lien, Vasen, the Peatbog Faeries, Schooglenifty, Flook, Paul Mounssey, the late Martin Bennet, Loreena McKennit, and a buncha others I'd be happy to introduce you to are among the artists I would gladly pick up an album on spec. Now, if I could read Russian, there'd be a lot more as I have a sick fondness for Russian pop.

[hrj.livejournal.com]

Well, ok, I was exaggerating a bit about not trying out much new music. I picked up a Mediaeval Baebes CD after hearing them at the Winnipeg Folk Festival one year (and then was given a couple more as presents) -- I enjoy them as passive listening, but they don't work as well for me for active listening (e.g., road-trip music, gym music). I think it's the arrangements getting in the way of following the lyrics. I've tried some Loreena McKennit but breathy ethereal sopranos just don't do anything for me. On the rock side, I've added a bit of Melissa Etheridge to my library. I tend to be very lyrics-oriented, so I want the lyrics to be intelligible, intelligent, and interesting. I find soprano voices harder to understand, and if the arrangements obscure the lyrics then it doesn't matter much what they are. And I like strong melodic lines without a heavy overlay of percussion. Pounding percussion just makes me depressed and tense. I'm very opinionated in my musical tastes.