On Changing Tastes
I’m not sure what happened, but I think I suddenly like 70s-era Rolling Stones. Early 80s, too.
I never really responded to them in the past, other than the hits. They were just too “loose” sounding. Lots of good hooks, and every song was rooted in a good idea, but the execution was rough. It left me feeling like the songs were half-baked, whereas I gravitated more towards recordings that sounded pristine and ultra-polished. And I guess that summary of them hasn’t changed for me. But for some reason, these last couple months, that same loose sound is speaking to me. Friends have joked this is because I’m getting old, but I don’t think that’s far off the mark. Something about those recordings sound exhausted and almost desperate. That’s not exactly how I feel, but there is something relatable there vis-à-vis aging.
And if that weren’t enough, I took on Bob Dylan’s whole catalog as well. Another artist I’d been hits-only fan of. It wasn’t as revelatory as my Stones kick, but there were lots of gems, and it’s been fascinating to hear the songs I was familiar with in the context of their respective albums. Listening as his sound changed over the years, through his born-again period (what!?), and the on-and-off-boarding of collaborators like Mark Knopfler. Somewhere on the East Coast, my old friend (and Dylan enthusiast) Jen must be feeling vindicated.
So yeah, EXTRA! EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT! Bob Dylan and The Rolling Stones are actually pretty good. You heard it here first.
In the past, when tackling bands like The Beatles for the first time, I’d keep tabs on which songs stood out as my favorites, what surprises I found, etc. I wish I’d done that for Dylan and the Stones. C’est la vie. (Though I will call out “Sway” as one I’d never heard and has stuck with me for weeks now.)
It’s harder to find new music these days (or perhaps at this age). New bands don’t speak to me as often as they did say ten years ago. I suppose that’s natural. In response to the usual groans and complaints from the older crowd about the Coachella lineup, Aaron Axelsen (who would know) pointed out that if he kept booking the nostalgia acts that we all want to see, 1) no new bands would get a chance to break through and 2) it’d be harder to attract new, young fans. Makes sense of course. The times, they are a-changin’, after all. Popscene isn’t for me anymore, at least not primarily.
In the last several years, there haven’t been many “new” bands that have really rocked my socks. I think my favorite discoveries of the past decade were probably Parenthetical Girls, The National, and The Drums. Speaking of The National, that reminds me… good advice that we should both take: watch opening bands. If you’re like me, you typically try to time it so you show up just in time for the headliner. I’ve been burned by this before, such as when I skipped a little opener called The National at an R.E.M. show back in 2008. Little did I know that five or six years later, they’d become one of my favorite bands. More recently, I’ve caught some openers in SoCal that moved me to buy a lot of their music. Some even eclipse the headliner. Jail Weddings blew me away… sort of Talking Heads meets girl group. (Their new album release party is tomorrow night, and I’ll be there!) Ed Schrader’s Music Beat was another unexpected winner. It would’ve been a shame if I’d missed these bands as I might never have run across them again.
So yeah, try to see opening bands. Just another of a million things older people have told me as I was coming up, which I did not believe, and which turned out to be 100% true.
That’s new bands… as for old bands, I’m in the process of going through and selling and donating even more books and CDs. I can’t remember if I did most of that after I stopped blogging before, but in any event, I’m cutting even deeper this time around. I find myself putting a lot of old Smiths and Morrissey books in the donate pile. These tomes I used to hoard and pore over for This Charming Band. Not that I don’t still love The Smiths and all, but I don’t feel the need to maintain an expertise there anymore. The other night at an Alain Whyte show, I saw some fans (among them a certain old rival tribute singer) flailing around and miming the words to the few Morrissey covers Alain did. I can remember a time when that felt like my community, but years on and from the outside now, that fanaticism struck me as sorta silly. In fairness, I am inordinately gruff as of late. Nonetheless, these changing tastes, I wish I could say it’s a categorical evolution or maturation, but I think it’s just different. Not better or worse. Just different.
“The things you love are as stupid as the things you hate and are easily interchangeable.”
— Taxi Driver Wisdom
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