- think of the plight of the reviewer who has to listen to hundreds of different new tracks every week: it's SO easy to get completely snowblind and blasé.

The answer is A Change Is As Good As A Rest.

Not just a change of genre from e.g. rock to country but a complete shift to something radically different: listen to some Steve Reich, or pure ambient music, or Bach cantatas, or free jazz, or minimal techno - or best of all listen to some complete non-music like field recordings of the sea and wildlife.

Or change the context you listen in: go to a gig of a band you've never heard of and remind yourself what live music is about, give up using headphones for a while and only listen out loud (headphone fatigue is a particular malaise these days), download a DJ set that blends music in ways you've never heard before etc etc.

Me personally, I listen to these albums, which basically sound like the rumble of distant tube trains. Cleans out the ears!

that I spend more time searching record stores and hunting down records and trawling on-line music blog sites downloading old stuff than I do actually listening to the music.

It was a good point, I hadn't really thought about it but I seem to have got into the "chase is better than the catch" habit.

Once upon a time, maybe about 1981, I somehow felt (pimply youth that I was) that the music scene was just dull, dull, dull.

So I went to my local record library and starting messing about. So for the first six months of the year I listened mainly to soul and reggae. Then 1981 , all of a sudden seemed to be awash with new interesting albums and all was well.

Until 1982, when it seems a bit flat again, so this time I had a jazz thing going , and again caught up with stuff in the second half of the year.

This went on for a another couple of years, moving through the sections in the library and seeking out radio shows/magazines/etc to match, until one year in the mid-1980s when the second half of The Year In Rock seemed as uninspiring as the first, but by this time I was away.

So, when I get one of those "I Have Heard All This Stuff Before" humours, I find it does to to take a sabbatical, It may taking a punt on Son House or Stravinsky , Ligeti or Listening Books, or if you are feeling really saucy have a rummage in The Wire - the magazine, not the show - but go awol from Rock's Rich Pageant (says he, prejudging your collection....) for a while and recharge the batteries.

And (point two) , go to more gigs. It could be the local school doing My Fair Lady, but go to more gigs ! I find Live Music doesn't pall so much as the recorded stuff, as long I don't see too many Skinny White Boys With Guitars in any given period.

Part of the problem is that I only have a small percentage of my music on my iTunes, so I end up hearing the same stuff over and over again.

I know there's stuff on my shelves I haven't listened to in months, if not years, but I can't remember exactly what it is I haven't listened to, if that makes sense.

I also feel as if I have a relatively broad music taste, so the random function often throws up classical, followed by jazz, then pop, soul, a bit of reggae, dance, then folk and rock.

OK, so I'm never going to cover off all musical genres, but sometimes I want to feel as if there's something out there I've completely missed that will totally change my view of music again.

I also think that's where radio falls down. If a radio station truly had a truly broad playlist, then you could turn on and hear something you'd never heard before or at least something you hadn't heard in ages, but sadly that rarely happens.

However, I will give a congratulatory nod to Dermot O'Leary, who on Saturday played something from Dennis Wilson's Pacific Ocean Blue. I'd heard a lot about it, but never heard it and was hooked instantly. It's on its way to me, as I type. Quite excited, actually.

not all the time, obviously. But it's far too easy to skip a track, change a channel if something doesn't grab you. I think there might be something to sitting down, immersing yourself and listening closely.

in everything - music, food, you name it.

It blows my mind. Seriously.

I've said it before - I'll say it again

It will cleanse your spirit - as well as your musical palate

At some point towards the end of the 90s I realised that I hadn't heard much new that I liked. Friends were still going out to see new bands and raving about them and I was thinking "heard it".

So I started listening to more jazz, and to other music I had missed out on (including Dylan) : I decided that "new to me" was as valid as "new". I also realised that a lot of "new" music sounded too obviously derivative. I could hear the join, as it were.

Friends still go out to see bands all over, have seen bands like The Strokes go from playing to 100 people to wherever they are now, and still love the thrill of seeing a new band. I'm less keen on that now.

I still enjoy music, and still enjoy hearing well-known bands that I had missed (either through my own prejudices or being wrapped up in different music at the time).

The last thing I heard that blew me away was Mulatu Astatke - his album in the Ethiopiques series. I enjoyed the new Kid Congo album, but I know it's not going to change the world. I enjoyed the Wooden Shjips album a lot, too. But most of all in the last year I've enjoyed listening to Jimmy Reed, The Ramones, Elvis, The Fleshtones, Alice Coltrane, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Ray Charles, Steely Dan : the "home comforts".

Through the nudges from readers on this place, I have found to my surprise that I like Fairport Convention, and that the Grateful Dead aren't all 50 minute psychedelic jams - so there's 2 more for me to explore.

Try free jazz (if you haven't already) - Albert Ayler or Ornette Coleman will re-calibrate your ears!

(Above comment c&p'd from a similar discussion started by Stimpy at :
http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/content/have-i-had-my-fill-pop-music#comme... : there may be some more ideas there of interest, too)

Discover a new genre.

I recommend listening to trip hop or post rock. That should keep you going for the next year.

I've recently taken to listening to a lot of Black Metal. After a while of not being able to put my finger on why I was drawn to it, I've come up with the theory that it reminds me of being 14 again:

- the music is unfamiliar
- the music is a bit scary
- you've no idea who these guys are or what they do in their spare time
- you've no idea what's good or bad
- you don't know the relationship between different bands or parts of the scene
- you don't know about different sub-genres or different nationalities' take on the music, etc

Basically it's a whole new musical continent to explore, in the same way that practically the entire world of music was your oyster when you were in your teens.

Hanging around in good record shops also has the possibility of getting you to hear something unexpectedly good by someone you're not familiar with (on the shop's own music system).

Every so often I have to take myself out of the rock/soul world and immerse myself in the experimental/noise/black metal world. I see it as almost cleansing of the pallete/ears, after I come back suitably refreshed.

Thelonious Monk - Brilliant Corners
Frank Zappa - One Size Fits All or Hot Rats
Joni Mitchell - Hissing of Summer Lawns
Elvis Costello - Armed Forces
Talking Heads 77
Ravel/Debussy string quartets
Keith Jarrett -The Koln Concert
XTC - Skylarking

The 'new genre' idea is interesting.
Two years ago I decided to throw myself into the 50's (from a British perspective) and to really listen to all the stuff that would have been knocking around for the teenage Beatles and Stones.
I mean 'really' listen to it, i.e. collecting the stuff mainly on vinyl, which is incidentally remarkably cheap to do, and playing a single, EP or LP over and over again, usually while cooking.
I find it a far more satisfying way of listening to music and it explains the zeal shown by the likes of Jeff Beck, Keith Richard and Paul McCartney when interviewers talk to them about Gene Vincent or Johnny Burnette or Little Richard rather than their rather tired and well worn comments on 'Sgt. Pepper's' or Carnaby Street.
I now completely get that (I know Little Richard's singles inside out!). Now I'd like to trim my collection to about 50 45s, 50 LPs and 100 CDs, the latest of which would probably be 'Please Please Me'.
I've seen the future, and it's Billy Fury.