Musical milestone ponderings

Tomasino wrote a really nice phlog entry[1] describing how major

milestones in his life tend to induce shifts in the musical genres he

appreciates. I can't say a similar things happens for me, but his

post has prompted me to write up some music-related stuff that I've

been meaning to phlog about for a long, long time.

Ignoring an early childhood stage where my musical tastes were

influenced primarily by the music that was available in my house by

virtue of my parents having bought the physical media (and I'm

dismissing this period of my life for the sake of this post, but

that's perhaps not fair because even if nothing else has really stuck,

I still really, really love Hawkwind thanks to my Dad), my life,

musically, has consisted pretty much of two distinct phases.

From highschool until around the time I turned thirty, I was a

metalhead. Mostly, but not exclusively, power metal. During most of

this period I dressed predominantly in black, wore a lot of band

tshirts, went to concerts when I could (which was mostly during the

time I lived in the US, because nobody comes to Australia, and when

they do they don't come to Adelaide), and was generally fairly into

it. I had very narrow taste, but wasn't bothered by that at all,

and it took a long time for me to start showing signs of getting

bored of it. But I inevitably did. Slowly and in fits and starts I

have shifted into mostly listening to electronic music - again, with

very narrow tastes within that genre, skewed heavily toward vintage,

seemingly only able to tolerate modern electronic music in its very

chilled out, ambient, down tempo forms.. I think I'm already getting

tired of it and honestly I've felt like I'm in a bit of a musical rut

for a while now. I'm ready for something really new, but I just don't

know what. Feel free to hit me up with random suggestions.

But what I want to talk about is how very different the ways I

appreciated power metal and chilled out electronic music are. I'm not

sure how much of the difference to ascribe to fundamental differences

in the music itself, how much to the means with which I've listened to

them, and how much to, well, just me.

During my metal phase, the primary means by which music got into my

life was via albums on CD. I bought them one at a time, accumulating

my collection in discrete chunks. When I got a new album, I listened

to just that album, over and over again, for a little while at least.

As a result of this approach, I felt like I really knew my music

library. I generally had at least a rough idea of which album any

particular song came from, and I knew at least roughly where that

album stood, chronologically, in relation to the bands other albums.

I was able to track changes in bands' sound over time.

In stark contrast, the primary vehicle for getting electronic music

into my life has been internet streaming radio. SomaFM's Groove Salad

was the initial hook, with aNONradio eventually helping to cement

things. As such, I haven't assimilated this music in individual

chunks of related tracks, consciously chosen from other candidate

chunks. The entire genre is just a thing that I turn on when I want

it, and there it is. Streaming, undifferentiated, like water from a

tap. When talented DJs like cev (check out his excellent Movement

Through Thought show on aNONradio, Fridays at 0600 UTC) mix a set

together the transitions between tracks are seamless. I'm not even

consciously aware that what I'm listening to has discrete units like

tracks. I've listened to Groove Salad for many years now, and their

playlist is not large. It's rare for me to hear something on there

that I don't remember having heard before. And yet, if you asked me

to name three artists or three track titles from the entire station, I

couldn't do it to save my life. No matter how much I enjoy the music,

I don't really feel like I can identify as a serious fan when I have

essentially no context for any of it.

I think I'm ready to have the first kind of relationship to a musical

genre again. I could try to get back into metal again - I have no

doubt that I've missed a lot of good new stuff by old favourite

artists in recent years - but, well, it's hard to get excited about

that because it's not new. And I could try to actually get into

my electronic music "properly". But, at the risk of upsetting some

folk, I do actually think that even if I stopped streaming and started

listening in an album-oriented fashion, I'd struggle with this because

at some level, well, it kind of does all sound more or less the

same, doesn't it?

[1] gopher://gopher.black:70/1/phlog/20190816-music-as-milestone