Is your taste in music quite isolating?

[Barking Spiders]

Do you ever feel kind of isolated if no one you know shares your taste in music?  In my case not only don't I know anyone in the real world who does - and that's out of a good 100+ people I know currently - seems there aren't many on BC who do either.  My previous missus was about as close as it got.  Such is the case I did use to go to gigs on my Jack Jones but without being able to share the experiences they weren't as enjoyable as if I'd gone with someone. Guess I could try and get into Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran, U2 or Metallica and see who turns up? I'm guessing most here - who are in bands anyway - don't feel the same?

[Grimalkin]

It's subjective but my musical tastes are very broad anyway, there is no one type, no one tribe...

[Nail Soup]

I'd have to say the same as you.

My tastes are not mega-obscure... it's stuff that gets regular plays on 6 Music.

But they are typically at venues with capacity of couple of hundred.

But just go on my own in general.

 

Mrs Soup is OK to come to some gigs that fall outside of my core tastes.... e.g .folk festival or a covers band of AC/DC and the like.

 

[Doctor J]

I can usually, but not always, find someone to come along. I have different friends for accompaniment to different genres, but definitely no-one else who'd go to all the different kinds of stuff I listen to. I don't mind going to gigs, alone, though. It's a little like going to the cinema. I want to concentrate on the band, so solo is ok.

[Saul Panzer]

Can't say I ever felt isolated by my tastes, I listen to stuff for my enjoyment and not to discuss it or go to gigs with mates.

There's usually a degree of tolerance with some people, it might not be their particular taste but they don't recoil at the sound of it same for me with their tastes.

 

For the more niche stuff the internet is there for like minded folks, no one I know in real life would get gachi music (tbh I don't but it amuses me), however some dark corners of the meme communities are into the "right version" of songs.

[stewblack]

It depends on who I'm with. Even the folk who hate my favourites and like stuff I can't stand will have some crossover with me.

Only go to gigs with one particular friend and we know where our tastes join and where they are poles apart.

 

[Cat Burrito]

I like a lot of very big artists (Bowie, Elvis, The Stones) but also a lot of very obscure artists. I've never really thought of it as isolating but I accept that in most circles I move in, the mention of a band I like would be met by "who?!" I'm fine with that but I do find myself getting increasingly frustrated with Alexa when it's clearly just been played and I am getting told that "I don't know that"

[skilamalink]

I go to gigs on my own and generally end up speaking to people there who have the same interest, love and passion for what is going on. If your local venues have regular gigs then you get to chat to them and sort of end up with gig friends. However I wouldn't trust any of them to hold my pint while I go for a slash.

Edited November 16, 2022 by skilamalink

[thodrik]

When you have an interest in doom metal and have two daughters under the age of 4, it is quite isolating to hear cries of 'not daddy's music!' when I reach for my phone in the vicinity of the bluetooth speaker in the kitchen.

 

However, in my daughters' defence, there are some truly banging My Little Pony tracks.

 

[Barking Spiders]

2 hours ago, Nail Soup said:

I'd have to say the same as you.

My tastes are not mega-obscure... it's stuff that gets regular plays on 6 Music.

But they are typically at venues with capacity of couple of hundred.

But just go on my own in general.

 

Mrs Soup is OK to come to some gigs that fall outside of my core tastes.... e.g .folk festival or a covers band of AC/DC and the like.

 

While I mostly listen to a broad range of 'electronica' ranging from full-on hard house and drum n' bass to ambient and world fusion I have a lot of stuff by German and Scandi producers that not even most Swedish, Norwegian and German speaking people are likely to know so what chance have I in Blighty? Ugress, Robag Wruhme and AES Dana anyone? 😁. Mrs Spiders loves Bluedot festival but she clearly didn't share my huge enjoyment of the likes of Leftfield, Orbital, Chemical Brothers, Groove Armada, 808 State and The Orb when they've been there in recent years. We'll go together to some stuff like ahem ... Coldplay..... On the other hand, for my part I had to suffer Download twice and Sonisphere 2014 and couldn't really share her delight at seeing Metallica and System of a Down.

[TheGreek]

Don't we, as musicians,  listen to more diverse stuff? 

 

I'm done with rock as a genre, especially the stuff that's drilled into your head by radio stations which is why I enjoy the "what are you listening to now " thread and many of the videos @bubinga5 posts. 

Opens my ears to new music and quite often my wallet to amazon. 

[Barking Spiders]

12 hours ago, TheGreek said:

Don't we, as musicians,  listen to more diverse stuff? 

 

I'm done with rock as a genre, especially the stuff that's drilled into your head by radio stations which is why I enjoy the "what are you listening to now " thread and many of the videos @bubinga5 posts. 

Opens my ears to new music and quite often my wallet to amazon. 

well, I don't call myself a musician 🙃. I'm most definitely a hobbyist. As I get older and time gets more filled up with other stuff I'm not bothered about looking for new sounds . If I come across some great band by chance that's another thing. I was done with classic rock and metal decades ago. To me, most rock coming out since the end of Grunge is moribund, with 99.999r% of bands I've heard just rehashing the same old riffs, solos, drum sounds and vocal styles of the 70s. To my ears, since the late 80s all the invention is coming out of leftfield electronica and hip hop. 

[RussFM]

I've been to a few gigs by myself this year. Not that I don't have friends with similar tastes, we just live hundreds of miles apart now. I'd rather go by myself than miss out. My wife used to go with me, but childcare costs more than the gig tickets these days.

[uk_lefty]

One of my "regrets" not that I want to have regrets at all, is not seeing Amy Winehouse in Nottingham Rock City 2004 for £15, because nobody would go with me. I already had the Frank album and had seen her on Jools Holland maybe but nobody I knew had heard of her and certainly wouldn't spend £15 on going to a gig. I just wish I'd gone on my own. 

 

Fast forward to the days of social media and a friend of mine who is recently divorced loves going to watch Frank Turner and through some form of social media they connect fans who go to gigs alone. So you go alone but end up in a big group. She's made some good friends out of that.

[BassTractor]

21 hours ago, Barking Spiders said:

Do you ever feel kind of isolated if no one you know shares your taste in music?

Not all the time, but sometimes indeed. 
Happily though, they never need to listen to "my" music as I'll normally be happy to listen to theirs.

From the early innerwebz I remember the Gentle Giant mailing list, and virtually each new list member wrote a first post along the lines of "I thought I was totally alone but then found the GG website and this mailing list ...  I am soooo happy right now!".
 

[BigRedX]

No. Most of my good friends are musicians with similar tastes to me, or at least enough crossover for us to like a significant amount of what the others like.

 

I've nearly always gone to gigs on my own. That way I don't have to feel bad if I want to leave early because the last band on turn out to be rubbish, and I can make sure I'm at the venue in time to catch all the support bands, unless I know already that I won't like them. It's always amazed me that some people deliberately don't go and see support bands simply because they only want to see the main band and haven't even bothered to find out what the other bands are like (something that is easier than ever to do these days).

 

I'm happy to listen to anything once, but equally there's a lot of music that I won't want to listen to a second time.

 

Which leads me on to my main bugbear - lots of people who meet me for the first time on discovering that play in a band seem to automatically assume that I must like any old crap when it comes to music - especially anything that is musical complex or requires technical virtuosity. They always seem quite non-plussed when I explain that I'm a composer first and a musician second, and I write mostly because I don't like a lot of music, and therefore the more I write the more music that I do like will exist.

[Japhet]

Moreso in the music I'd like to play but never get the chance. I get so tired of the same old stuff on every set list of just about every band I've played in, but the punters down the Dog & Duck never seem to tire of it.

[BigRedX]

32 minutes ago, Japhet said:

Moreso in the music I'd like to play but never get the chance. I get so tired of the same old stuff on every set list of just about every band I've played in, but the punters down the Dog & Duck never seem to tire of it.

 

So why do you do it? Is a significant source of your income?

 

I work in another creative area - print graphics - for my day job, and AFAIAC there, the client is king (or queen). But that's because they pay me. I will offer my opinions if asked, and if I really think the design route they want me to take is wrong, I'll politely suggest what I think is a better alternative. However unlike some of the designers I used to work with (before I went self-employed) I won't get upset if they ignore my advice. I'll happily take their money produce whatever they want. This is the closest I'll get to having moan about it.

 

However when it comes to music I only do what I want. Audiences/listeners can take it or leave it. Luckily I don't need to make a living out of playing or composing and most of the time enough people seem to like the music I write and perform for my bands to get gigs and sell CDs/records etc., but I have done gigs in the past where almost no-one turned up, and I do have a number of copies of CDs etc from old bands that are unlikely ever to sell, but none of that stops me from continuing to produce music irrespective of its popularity.

Edited November 17, 2022 by BigRedX

[Japhet]

7 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

 

So why do you do it? Is a significant source of your income?

 

I work in another creative area - print graphics - for my day job, and AFAIAC there, the client is king (or queen). But that's because they pay me. I will offer my opinions if asked, and if I really think the design route they want me to take is wrong, I'll politely suggest what I think is a better alternative. However unlike some of the designers I used to work with (before I went self-employed) I won't get upset if they ignore my advice. I'll happily take their money produce whatever they want. This is the closest I'll get to having moan about it.

 

However when it comes to music I only do what I want. Audiences/listeners can take it or leave it. Luckily I don't need to make a living out of playing or composing and most of the time enough people seem to like the music I write and perform for my bands to get gigs and sell CDs/records etc., but I have done gigs in the past where almost no-one turned up, and I do have a number of copies of CDs etc from old bands that are unlikely ever to sell, but none of that stops me from continuing to produce music irrespective of its popularity.

 

 

I do it because I like playing music, I enjoy the social aspects of gigging and it gets me out and about. I don't have to get what I want and it is also a small source of income. I also often say that it's the only time in my life when people have applauded, cheered, stomped their feet at something I've done, which is kinda nice.

[vantagepointrocks]

My taste in music was pretty much influenced by what my friends listened to in their late teens / early 20s. Thus I initially went to gigs with them. Then I got into bands in the genre of music I like, rock / metal, which meant a bigger circle of friends with similar tastes in music, and more people to attend gigs with.

 

But there has been times when I have ventured to gigs on my own, Status Quo was the band I struggled with the most over the year to get folk to come along with me. Though when I did manage to drag someone along they invariably did enjoy it.
 

[Mykesbass]

36 minutes ago, Japhet said:

 

 

I do it because I like playing music, I enjoy the social aspects of gigging and it gets me out and about. I don't have to get what I want and it is also a small source of income. I also often say that it's the only time in my life when people have applauded, cheered, stomped their feet at something I've done, which is kinda nice.

This and your previous post rings so true with me. The other problem I have is that I want to play different styles, so would ideally be in multiple bands, and that just isn't going to happen.

 

@BigRedXfully appreciate where you are coming from. I've admired your determination and your work (even bought a Terrortones CD) but what you have done requires a level of tenacity that I doubt many of us can muster!

[meterman]

Very few of my mates shared my tastes in music when I lived in the UK so I’d often go to gigs on my own. It would be the only way to see Brazilian artists I liked, if they ventured over, or South American artists, etc. Trying to get folks to come along to a cumbia or Latin gig was impossible, so things like that were usually solo missions. No point asking when you know you’re going to just get a blank expression. 
 

I rarely had the opportunity to play the exact kinds of music I liked either. Didn’t matter too much, but it probably won’t happen in the future either.
 

Now I’m out in the sticks in rural France I’ve seen just one gig in the two years I’ve been here, and that was by accident 😂 

 

Isn’t isolation brilliant?!!!

[Leonard Smalls]

3 hours ago, BigRedX said:

none of that stops me from continuing to produce music irrespective of its popularity.

This is my attitude as well - if you look at my output for the monthly composition challenge you'll see what I mean!

 

[BigRedX]

3 hours ago, Japhet said:

I do it because I like playing music, I enjoy the social aspects of gigging and it gets me out and about. I don't have to get what I want and it is also a small source of income. I also often say that it's the only time in my life when people have applauded, cheered, stomped their feet at something I've done, which is kinda nice.

 

Wouldn't you like to take chance playing some music you really like instead? If you like it other people might too...

 

I played in a typical classic rock covers band for a while. One of the guitarists was a good friend of mine and their set most comprised songs that I had enjoyed when I was first getting into music in the 70s. I ended up leaving because it simply wasn't enough fun and it actually sucked all the enjoyment out even listening to some of the songs we played. It also didn't help that the originals band that was in at the same time was doing more gigs, having more fun and even getting better paid.

[Japhet]

11 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

 

Wouldn't you like to take chance playing some music you really like instead? If you like it other people might too...

 

I played in a typical classic rock covers band for a while. One of the guitarists was a good friend of mine and their set most comprised songs that I had enjoyed when I was first getting into music in the 70s. I ended up leaving because it simply wasn't enough fun and it actually sucked all the enjoyment out even listening to some of the songs we played. It also didn't help that the originals band that was in at the same time was doing more gigs, having more fun and even getting better paid.

 

I guess I'm in the situation that I don't need gigs to get by, but a lot of others do. They want to play stuff that gets you plenty of gigs which narrows everything down a lot. For instance, if you're playing covers, there are plenty of artists that I love their stuff, but it's always the most obvious songs that get picked. If you're going to do a Free song, is it law that it has to be Alright Now? There are dozens of other Free songs I'd love to play, but never do. As for musical styles, I'd love to play some Latin stuff or some Jazz Funk, but that won't ever fill up the Dog and Duck on a Saturday night, or so I've been told for the past 25 years.