Who is 'old' and still looks our for new music?

[operative451]

Cos yeah - its come up, someone younger than me going 'I don't like modern music' when i suggest grunge or 'stuff from the 90s', and then later stating 'rock is dying on its {bottom}'. Um...

I'm fortycoughhackmumble and went back to radio1 from BBC6 after then seemed to have forgotten that its the 21st century and we've all heard the Clash, a lot of times.  And i like it! New stuff, new ideas, new sounds. Yes, even autotune, its the same disruptor as synths or fuzz, its just a new way of making sound.  And there's loads of 'Rock' out there that's new and evolving but this ain't your mum's rock'n'roll, daddio...

[bassbiscuits]

I listen out for new music all the time - but as with music at any time in history, there's good stuff and less good stuff.

If you take the last five years say as 'new', then off the top of my head I've bought stuff by Rival Sons, the Virginmarys, Jain, Laura Marling and Ginger Wildheart for starters.

Also been going backwards too tho, and getting into 70s and 80s stuff like John Martyn, Hothouse Flowers and The The.

 

 

 

[The59Sound]

Dub Step was a fad that happened ten years ago... so if you hear it now it's either an old song or way past it's sell by date.

Code Orange, Beartooth, Deafheaven, Greta Van Fleet - loads of great rock music still out there. Just don't look out for it on Radio 1 or *gulp* Radio 2. 

[PaulWarning]

I very rarely check out new music these days, I always said I'd never get like the old fogey's who were always saying "the music's not as good as in my day" but here I am, sort of, I do occasionally stumble across a new song I like but you know what? it always reminds me of an old song I like, so I just think I've got about 5000 tracks on my music player, that's enough for me.

I know I could be missing out on something I really like but I just can't be bothered to wade through all the stuff I don't anymore

 

[Lozz196]

A bit of a strange one this, I like to listen to new bands, but in the genre - punk - that I`m familiar with.

On the punk scene we do have a fair few nostalgia merchants who will only listen to/watch their fave band from 40 years back, and will ignore the support acts but that`s their choice, I wouldn`t slate them for it but they really could find some great new music if they were a bit more open-minded. I only got into my fave band, Booze & Glory by accident, didn`t know any of the bands on the stages at Rebellion on eve, stuck my head in all the rooms, heard B&G and that was it, instant fave current band.

[Geek99]

I'm just too busy - I don't stop from the moment I get out of bed until I get back in. It takes time to find new music and I don'f have it. Maybe thats why people stop listening to new music; they have other distracting stuff to deal with. 

[Shambo]

I'm into my mid fourties now and I'm still on the lookout for new music, but I don't actively pursue it like I did in my youth.

This is mainly because, over the last ten years or so, I've found it increasingly difficult to keep the company of self absorbed musicians or their sycophantic enablers.

I started drawing again a few years ago, and found the company of people who express themselves artistically in ways other than playing music, to be a breath of fresh air. Generally they seem on the whole much more humble and tolerable. Sometimes, you have to convince them to even show you their creative endeavours to begin with. Imagine that! Then, you might even have an actual, honest a god, two way conversation with them about their work... 'mazin'

[Cat Burrito]

Even when I was young I tended to listen to older acts from the 50s - 70s (I grew up in the 80s and 90s). However, the last album I got was by a new band "The Interrupters". Not my usual thing but I just thought it was good. When I go through my collection (I don't stream, I like to own) there are plenty of brand new rockabilly bands from Europe who feature heavily and plenty of acts who are current and tour - so new bands with an older format. I wouldn't claim to be "down wiv da kids" but I like to keep an open mind. That said when people say "this lot are great, they sound like *names band*" I do kinda think, why not just listen to the original?

[Cato]

I always listen to Radio One in the car. Every now and then I hear something I really like.

This one has turned into a bit of ear worm recently  (but then it is getting a lot of airplay) and I'll probably listen to his album at some point.

Radio 1 is a lot more diverse now than it ever was when I was a kid. They cover a lot more genres nowadays than the manufactured chart pap which defined the station in the 80s and 90s.

I suspect today's yoof have less restrictive listening habits than my generation did. 

[Japhet]

My definition of new music is 'music I haven't heard yet', which could be something brand new or something written 150 years ago.

[leftybassman392]

To some degree it's what speaks to you. A working musician should be open to any and all music that passes their ears IMHO (although if you've played for the last 30 years in a Bill Haley tribute band I can see how there might be an issue...).

Example: the young African/Caribbean family (early thirties or thereabouts with a couple of very small kids) who live in the house just the other side of our back fence had a barbie the other day. 4 hours or so of Rap. Not my style, but I didn't have a problem with it - in fact it provided an interestingly different backdrop while mowing the lawn, which is normally a pretty tedious affair. I could hear that it was well executed and well produced: it just didn't speak to me is all.

I'm 65 in case it's important for anybody to know.

[toneknob]

I am a massively old 40-blahblah and go to a lot more jazz these days. New every time!

 

[Jack]

There's plenty of really good stuff happening now. It's the same as old basses, old cars, old actors and old novelists: there's always a high ratio of dross:great but over time we discard the dross and only keep listening to the greats. I'm sorry, but old cars were rubbish. It's easy to look back on classic Astons and Jags and think old cars were great, but the truth is just that those are the only ones worth remembering. Very few people bothered to preserve the Datsun, Austin, British Leyland, etc misery mobiles. Says the man with a vintage Land Rover.

 

Walk Off The Earth

Red Fang

Dorje

Vulfpeck

 

Edited August 22, 2018 by Jack

[bassbiscuits]

1 hour ago, Shambo said:

I'm into my mid fourties now and I'm still on the lookout for new music, but I don't actively pursue it like I did in my youth.

This is mainly because, over the last ten years or so, I've found it increasingly difficult to keep the company of self absorbed musicians or their sycophantic enablers.

I started drawing again a few years ago, and found the company of people who express themselves artistically in ways other than playing music, to be a breath of fresh air. Generally they seem on the whole much more humble and tolerable. Sometimes, you have to convince them to even show you their creative endeavours to begin with. Imagine that! Then, you might even have an actual, honest a god, two way conversation with them about their work... 'mazin'

I'm the same sort of age as you, and also got back into drawing recently at evening classes etc. Really opened my mind to the hugely different approaches people take to the same thing, and as you say, the general ego-free creativity going on. Also fed into my approach to music too - experimenting with ideas, keeping things simple rather than adding more and more, and trying stuff for the joy of exploring rather than focusing just on the end result.

[PaulWarning]

1 hour ago, Lozz196 said:

A bit of a strange one this, I like to listen to new bands, but in the genre - punk - that I`m familiar with.

On the punk scene we do have a fair few nostalgia merchants who will only listen to/watch their fave band from 40 years back, and will ignore the support acts but that`s their choice, I wouldn`t slate them for it but they really could find some great new music if they were a bit more open-minded. I only got into my fave band, Booze & Glory by accident, didn`t know any of the bands on the stages at Rebellion on eve, stuck my head in all the rooms, heard B&G and that was it, instant fave current band.

just listened to Booze and Glory and I can see why you'd like them, well worth a listen, the lyrics lack a bit of finesse for me, I have the same trouble with Dirt Box Disco, but like you say it's all very familiar, but that's what happens when you get a bit older even if you like some newly recorded music it's not that new. 

I like the other track on here Isaac Gracie, but it does remind me of the Vaccines

[Cato]

Just now, PaulWarning said:

 

I like the other track on here Isaac Gracie, but it does remind me of the Vaccines

I know what you mean, but I also get really strong Roy Orbison vibes from the vocal which really raises the song above the rest of the current crop for me.

[Leonard Smalls]

I'm always up for new music - anything well-played and/or interesting gets the thumbs up from me...Today I've been listening to Idles, Rolo Tomassi, Magma and Hiromi's SonicBloom.

And I'm over 50, but rarely listen to Radio 1; in common with my younger brethren I often discover new (to me!) stuff via the internet or through the medium of modern dance 😜

[Lozz196]

40 minutes ago, PaulWarning said:

just listened to Booze and Glory and I can see why you'd like them, well worth a listen, the lyrics lack a bit of finesse for me, I have the same trouble with Dirt Box Disco, but like you say it's all very familiar, but that's what happens when you get a bit older even if you like some newly recorded music it's not that new. 

Yes I know what you mean Paul, B&Gs lyrics are even described by themselves in one of their songs as not too smart. But in their last album, Chapter IV they`ve progressed and take on a greater depth - mainly staying away from singing about football, skinheads and drinking, funny that. I`m not sure if DBDs lyrics have much meaning at all, as I`m generally yelling along with them with a silly grin on my face - as I will be this Fri/Sat/Sun as we have gigs with them on those nights.

[Roger2611]

I am constantly listening to new music, it gives me great comfort that great music doesn't cease to be made just because I have grown up, discoveries in recent years would include MGMT, Mystery Jets, Idles and Parquet Courts amongst many others

[operative451]

2 hours ago, The59Sound said:

Dub Step was a fad that happened ten years ago... so if you hear it now it's either an old song or way past it's sell by date.

Code Orange, Beartooth, Deafheaven, Greta Van Fleet - loads of great rock music still out there. Just don't look out for it on Radio 1 or *gulp* Radio 2. 

To some people i have run into, grunge was a fad that happened about 10 years ago..

[martthebass]

Sorry - think I'm falling into the 'it was better in my day'.  I'm not stupid enough to believe that is necessarily the case I just think that the ways in which music is now accessed is not aligned with my lifestyle.  In the 'olden' days, my access was via weekly doses of The Tube and TOTP which were great music magazine programmes and obviously via Radio 1 and the like.  When I scan the multitude of channels on Sky I find a lot of very samey 'chart' programmes and retrospectives of the 80s/90s etc which don't really grip me.  I also find a lot of 'chart stuff' on commercial radio to be instantly forgettable and could have been written (and performed) by computers - which I find ironic because I really loved early 80s electronica.

So, my conclusion:  I'm officially old and will continue to listen to the likes of Joy Division, Japan, Cabaret Voltaire..........

[operative451]

Interesting answers, thanks!  And this appears to have turned into a 'find interesting music' thread! Even better...

I recently listened to the radio one rock show by accident and was quite surprised to find it was still mostly music by four generic white blokes, one who is shouting about how upset he is about something.  One thing with the more mainstream stuff, there are a lot of women and a lot of people of colour, often in the same band. And my personal Metal Of Choice is the Nightwish/Within Temptation/Epica stuff; aka Four generic white blokes, a female opera singer and an orchestra/load of synths pretending to be an orchestra. 

One of my favourite recent finds has been PostModern Jukebox who do jazzy versions of current songs, so go figure..!

[Monkey Steve]

Always on the lookout for new bands, both "new" as in recent and "new" as in I haven't heard it before.  I have mates who are the opposite - don't want to see the support band if they've never heard of them, would rather arrive late at the festival rather than see a band they've not heard of.  Seems like a wasted opportunity to me.

Don't listen to music radio, don't tend to look at YouTube, so mostly I'll get into new stuff by seeing a new band at a gig or festival, or from reading something about them that interests me.  Also I'll Soundhound anything that I like the sound of that's being played behind the action on a TV show - got into Hilltop Hoods from a track off of State Of The Art that was on Grimm, the final Gil Scott Heron album from a track on Elementary. 

Spent a good deal of time in the New Blood tent at Bloodstock the other week (highlight was Crawlblind, I think...my phone had stopped working so that's who should have been on at the time the band I liked was playing, based on checking the app when i got home) and following last year's festival i got CDs from bands that were on the second stage when I went in there to get a beer and I ended up listening to their whole set:  The Courtesans, Masses of Molasses and Florence Black (not what you're expecting from the name) - all excellent in completely different ways.

In the "new to me" category I got the whole Turbonegro back catalogue after seeing them at Download this year (and would recommend Apocalypse Dudes as my pick).  Amazon Marketplace, where you can usually get a CD for a few pence plus p&p is my go to resource for checking out bands with a few releases under their belt that I've missed - 30 years of of Turbonegro releases = £50.

 

Edited August 22, 2018 by Monkey Steve

[FinnDave]

I haven't listened to any recent music for a long time. It's not that I think music was better back in the day, just that I like the stuff I grew up with, which was never 'pop' music, but mainly psychedelic rock. And that's what I still listen to, and do listen to new (to me ) recordings of long-ago Grateful Dead gigs, which is also the music I perform.

I was never one to listen to the radio or follow the charts, that always seemed more a part of the fashion industry than having mush to do with music.

Incidentally, I played in a Nightwish/Within Temptation cover band last year, until I realised that I was having real trouble learning the songs because they were so alien to my usual taste. I think I was only asked to join because I used to live in the same small Finnish town as Tarja Turunen!

[Earbrass]

I listen to, go to see, and also buy a lot of new music - almost all of it Nordic folk and folk-rock, which I only really discovered in the past decade or so. When it comes to rock, I stick almost entirely to the pre-punk stuff I grew up with. I never listen to music radio.