Entertainment For Lively Minds
Being passionate about music vs just enjoying it
The other day I was driving my 17 yr old son to school and he put on a CD of a Mendelssohn string quartet (we're talking "classical music" here).
He kept interrupting saying "listen to this bit" and "here's my favourite part" etc, the same way I used to with my favourite songs/records.
Then he asked the killer question "don't you like it Dad?" to which I replied "yes I'm enjoying it".
Which I was, I just wasn't so passionate about it as he was.
So what I'm thinking is, for us older folks, and there's a few of us here who are worried that we can't get as excited as we used to about music - maybe that's OK. Maybe it's just about "enjoying" at this stage of our lives, rather than thinking something new is not worthwhile because "we've heard it before" or "well The (insert band name here) did it all back in 1969".
Realising this has given me a whole new lease of life as regards "new" music - a new recording doesn't have to knock me out the way "Strawberry Fields Forever" did, because (probably) music is not going to have that effect on me again. I'll just enjoy whatever I like about it and accept (with relief) that it doesn't have to change the world.
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Yeah, "passion" is over-used
A thing goes on, I think, where people banging on about being passionate about x, y and z make a lot of us feel we're somehow lacking in not feeling passionate about anything much.
The worst example I come across is in work, where job applicants are expected to be "passionate about business change". This is crass business-speak on a number of levels, typically from people who call fancy computers 'sexy bits of kit': If you think you're passionate about business change, and you find computers sexy, you've forgotten what passion and sex are.
Me, I can feel suddenly and strongly moved, quite out of the blue, by music from now, from my early days of listening and from centuries ago. It doesn't make me then rave about it, listen to it 24/7, go out and buy loads more from the same artist/composer, splash out on merchandise or believe that the artist is God, so I wouldn't call it 'passion'. It'll do for me though.
Is it passion?
I was like that in my teens. I was constantly trying to get family and friends to be excited about bands / records I liked.
I can recall trying to make my elder sister pay attention to the Manic Street Preachers on Later*...and her saying 'if I say I like it will you leave me alone?' It isn't passion, it's about trying to seek validation, to strengthen your burgeoning identity.
When we get older, we tend to be more comfortable in ourselves and can therefore enjoy music without seeking reinforcement.
* - Yes, surprisingly she still talks to me.
A mate in his 50s still does this
You go round to his house and he's discovered some artist: He puts the track on dead loud, won't let you speak while it's playing, and stares at you throughout for a reaction.
Next time I'll try Torres's sister's 'if I say I like it will you leave me alone?'.
It might just be me, but I'm very unlikely to enjoy anything that's forced on me like that. More often I'll hear the tail end of something on the radio, or hear a snatch of something in a shop, go home and google the snippets of lyric I can get, locate the track and enjoy the feeling that I've discovered it myself.
Try being passionate about Supertramp...
and see how far it gets you.
Yes
Was talking to MrsDrJ about this last night as I was wittering on about the new Spoon album and how excited I was about it coming out. We ended up talking about how excited you used to get going home to listen to a new record. You're right when you say that as you get older it doesn't happen as much anymore, but there are more things vying for your time: Family, jobs, commitments. The current ease of accessibility to music also changes things, but there is loads of music I'm enjoying at the mo.
However when you do get that feeling of excitement from music, it's still the best in the world...
My theory of people who buy a lot of records/ingest a lot of music is that they are constantly looking for a hit that replicates the feeling they got from some early record they bought. For me, I'm on a quest to replicate the joy I got as a nine year old from Billy Joel's An Innocent Man album.
But if I could just let you all know about Spoon... Transference out Jan 18th, new single listenable to here... http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120830261 Spoon!
Tell me more about Spoon
I downloaded Ga Ga Ga Ga from eMusic a few months ago because I heard The Underdog on TV and really liked it, but I haven't listened to the album all that much. Should I give it some more time? What about their other stuff?
Don't get me started!
It is reasonable to go through their catalogue backwards. They really have changed from their first album, Telephono, which I never gave a huge amount of airtime too as they seemed in the thrall of the Pixies. Album number two, A Series of Sneaks, is better but not fully essential. Everything after that though I think is fried gold. From there on in they kept on paring everything back in their sound to the essentials.
I would give Gax5 a bit more airtime. What do I love about the record? It is lean and taut, no flab at all. Take opening track, Don't Make Me A Target, there isn't an unnecessary note played on that yet the arrangement of the song's sections is so dynamic and fluid. The album, when heard from the next room sounds like a good college rock record, but when listened to they have an amazing knack for using the studio: the snippets of conversation, false stops and starts, background noises, pianos sounding like pianos, drums sounding like drums... Plus the most important thing of all: Tunes! Glorious tunes!
I got on board with the previous record, Gimme Fiction, and the first three tracks on that (Beast & Dragon Adored, Monsieur Valentine & I Turn My Camera On) are a pretty fair synopsis of the Spoon cannon, so you could buy those tracks off iTunes, focus on them, see what you think.
If you get into Fiction and Ga and like them then albums three and four, Girls Can Tell and Kill The Moonlight are no risk. The former is where Spoon really display that sparce, confident sound that they do so well like on the opener Everything Hits At Once. Kill the Moonlight was where they started to get famous and there's a ton of good stuff on it, it has the "hit" That's The Way We Get By which was on a compilation for The OC.
What I love about them is that 14 years in, on the eve of their seventh album, they are bigger than ever: Slowly building, picking up people like me one by one. Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga hit the US top ten and it'll be great to see Transference do better, especially as it hits in the new release tundra of January. I don't know if you live in Spotify-land but only Fiction and Ga are in their catalogue along with a few compilationy stuff, but here's a playlist anyway... it's not a best of, but shows the things Spoon does well...
http://open.spotify.com/user/jasongrayson/playlist/5JzgQDUcg5JLDE6CvJ0gK...
Seriously, I haven't felt this way about a band since the 90s. I love them. Going to see them in Camden in February and can't wait. They're great live.
Here's my Spoon thread from a few weeks back...
http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/content/spoon
Ta muchly!
Thanks very much for the info - I will go home and list to Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga tonight! Sadly, Spotify is not available down here in NZ, but I do have some iTunes credits available if I need to investigate further!
I obviously missed your previous thread - must be sometihng to do with the time difference, as I would definitely have taken notice.
True ..
"Constantly looking for a hit that replicates the feeling they got from some early record ..."
It's generally all about what soundtracked the years 13-20, whether you were excited about having your whole life in front of you, or trudging slowly over wet sand, feeling the angst. Those songs are a shotcut back that allows you to tap into the time when you cared most about 'things'. I can rationalise this and agrgee with the OP that it would be better to accept that you will never feel like that about music again ... but I cannot quite give up on the receding possibility of getting that hit one last time.
"getting that hit one last time"
Well put. But yes it's as you say a receding possibility and like a receding hairline there ain't much you can do about it.
I find I quite like sharing vicariously in my kids' discovery of new music, smiling inwardly as I kind of feel envious but also proud of them for finding out something that was important for me.
Now to give this months Word CD a listen in the hope of liking something so much I want to go out and buy the album and work out the chords and tell all my mates etc etc
Much of the above...
And teenagers are notoriously hormonal, no? Everything is life or death at that age. And quite right too. All part of the formation of identity. Which is not to suggest that people (alright men) who remain totally obsessive about music, to the exclusion of all else, are experiencing arrested development.
Good band Arrested Develoment, I'm especially fond of their fourth album, you really need to check out track six, it was produced by...
Speech?
.
That's the fella...
:-)