..... with Danny and you on this one......!

...50s and 60s.
If I listened to anything after 1970 I'd get a nose bleed, so I don't.

And I used to feel sad about that. But I don't anymore.

Watching Jools Holland is just enough for me as far as contemporary music goes.

At the moment I'm digging back into the back catalogue of various people - mostly soundtracks, but over the last couple of years it's all been about chart and new for me. For instance my most listened to album of the last two years has been Jamie T's album Kings And Queens, which I can safely say is going to be on my listening list for some time yet. Just like the albums I used to obsess over when I was younger.

...but not too much from the 50s - mainly jazz and calypso.

60s,70s,80s in spades; selective 90s, and very little thereafter. Nineties/noughties all a bit of a muddle - where has the time gone!

I fully understand the notion and, as far as listening to recorded music is concerned, there is probably enough available now to do me. It always annoys me to think that my favourite track may have been recorded 30 years ago and I haven't heard it yet!
The trouble is that I like to see bands live and preferably in small venues. To get the most out of that, cutting out new artists imposes severe restrictions. As a result of seeking out new music, I think my favourite albums from each of the last 3 or 4 years has been by an artist that I hadn't heard of at the start of the year.

but increasingly of late I do find myself saying -
"Ah, but that's just a rip off of Talking Heads, Furniture,
Wire..." usually to myself mind you.

... more that I'm frequently disappointed by it.

When I hear something new that appeals, I embrace it like I used to do back when I was kid.

that when I discover a "new" artist, they invariably sound like an old favourite.

A textbook example of this is Joe Bonamassa who I embraced a couple of years ago.

He's a brilliant young blues guitarist who has perfectly captured every nuance of Peter Green, Paul Kossoff, Rory Gallagher and early Eric Clapton.

I have got to the point that I believe music should find you, now. Having said that, some top tips from the Massive on Twitter recently: Jonsi and British Sea Power.

But I made myself try the John Grant album (on Spotify) - off after two and a half tracks. Maybe I'll 'get' the Decemberists this morning? Half a track - off.

On the other hand the new Teenage Fanclub record is delightful. I think I'm OK with new music by familiar artists, but lack the patience to 'discover' new music by artists new to me. I'm generally disappointed.

Unfamiliar 'old' stuff, though. I love it, usually. Especially 60s records... there's joy in them grooves.

album yesterday and concluded that, although it's an enjoyable lark, all the reviewers who praised it to high heaven had clearly never heard The Shadows- who did all that twanging stuff more effectively and tunefully forty years ago.

I think this is the problem. I happen to like guitar-based music and- even though I've wrestled against it for years- I've had to conclude, somewhat reluctantly and sadly, that all the best stuff has already been made and the only thing we have now is a 'version' of that glory which, in my experience ( even though I've searched in brave Bono-esque manner ) is not really all that meaningful or satisfying.

Sure, you can prefer any period of music you wish and if the vast majority of your listening comes from a certain timespan, then all the best to you.

However, to actually have no interest in hearing something new, to rule out the entire future of music, to say nothing as good will ever be made again sounds enormously short-sighted to me.

Those of you saying you don't listen to anything post-60s/70s/80s; did your parents have the same opinion about the 40s/50s? If they did, I bet you thought they were ridiculous for writing off future music and limiting themselves in such a way.

a long time ago. But when I discover a contemporary record that I really like, it is a special feeling. The last time that happened was with Here's the Tender Coming by The Unthanks, and it has become one of my very favourite albums.

I have no problem in listening almost exclusively to "old" because if it's good then the chances are it's going to sound timeless and "past, present or future" ceases to be important.

but it should be "Does anybody else in here feel the way Bargepole does". For Christ's sake, consistency man, consistency...

New or old as long as its good

Personally I would feel a part of my lifeforce was gone if I didn't get the thrill of new music - and in particular from something that was current

This week - new Decemberists (oh ok and three Moody Blues albums at £5 each from Fopp).

Track of the day so far though has to be this creative genius found from the bootiemashup comp referenced in another post

I like what I like. It does matter how old or young it is. Sometimes I get to like something I thought I did not like. It's not all black and white. For example, when I were a lad, in my early 20's to be precise, I used to be in a position where I was bombarded on a weekly basis with free records; mainly that weeks new singles from EMI, CBS, etc. To speed up the quality control I used to give them a quick spin and place them on 3 piles; good (keep), bad (sell) and indifferent (try them again later). Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights found it's way onto the indifferent pile until it started to get airplay and it quickly skipped over onto the good pile. I also got a pile for it when I flogged it many years later (demo copy!).

I was lucky enough to be invited down to watch a recording of Jools Holland last year with Sir R.Bisto. Great says I, it features Bryan Ferry & Midlake. Yet I came away knowing that Tinie Tempah & Jessie J had completely wiped the floor with them. Now I'm not going to go out and buy their records - I rarely do these days - but there are many legal ways in which I can listen to new, and indeed previously unheard old, to my heart's content. Thanks to the internet and the good people on here I can venture further afield than the usual UK & USA artists. The world is my lobster.

Always good new stuff out there, although it's often better to look in different places. There's little new rock music that turns me on (that phrase 'indie landfill' resonates), but over the past three or four years I've taken great pleasure in discovering Old Crow Medicine Show, Bellowhead, Aloe Blacc, Plan B, Rachid Taha and others. But still enjoy a lot of the back catalogue.

It just has to be good.

I mainly buy CDs from Fopp, now - so I'll buy whatever bargains look interesting. I've been buying records keenly for more than 30 years, so it's not surprising that some new bands sound like I've heard them before. I'm more likely to be knocked out by an Elvin Jones album now than I am to be knocked out by the "next great rock & roll" band. I would love to be transported by a new record in the way that The Ramones and The Cramps and many others did - but I'm not a teenager any more, and I am sure that is more of a factor than the records not being as powerful.

I don't mean this to be a dig at new bands - there's not much that has impressed me of late, that's all. So I'll keep getting my kicks by exploring music that is new to me - which in the last 10 years has included Louis Armstrong, Fairport Convention, Neu!, John Grant, The Unthanks and many others.

With so much great music that has gone before, why would anyone turn their nose up at "old stuff"?

Turn that racket down! Where's the tune? etc.

At one point Frank Sinatra appealed only to teenagers. Pop music is for young people. Maybe the charts at the moment are at their most vibrant since 1979, but we are not the right people to ask.

For me, I wouldn't care if there were no new songs. New bands, new singers - OK, fair enough. But the vast majority of them can't write a song that that will enter into public conciousness.

I think of myself as more of a music historian than anything else these days. I've been immersed in the music of New Orleans and South Louisiana for years now and I'm still finding great stuff that is new to me.

Listen to this one. It's a take on a great American journey (Route 66, Promised Land) only this is Route 90, from California to Louisiana. Sung by Clarence Garlow who was the first guy to use the word 'zydeco' in a hit record. Finding stuff like this means I just couldn't care less about the latest darlings.

but

No

I'm always after more stuff that's new to me. Some of it has just come out, some of it is old but unknown to me. I can't see that changing really.

...to be the other way around. My default, instinctive position is that many of the "old" acts are likely to be overrated and only enjoy their position as unassailable "classics" because a load of baby boomer rock critics and fans decided they were in the seventies and, like everything else from the boomer generation, have been successful in installing their opinions as received fact.

Fortunately, my default, instinctive position is frequently a load of old balls. There are tons of great old records out there. BUT there are roughly the same number of equally great records being released every year as there were in any other year gone by.

To ask whether people will be *listening* to them in twenty years is to miss the crucial point that music listenership is so fragmented now that *no* music acts will ever again attain the all-important double of universal critical adoration and globe-humping sales enjoyed by the likes of the Beatles, Bowie and Dylan. The market conditions that the big beasts benefited from were a 20-year blip which probably can never occur again.

That doesn't mean there's nothing around that's as *good*.

and more experienced (jaded). The shock of the new diminishes to be replaced by the recognition of the various sources informing,through a glass darkly,new performers.Those younger than ourselves are probably hearing for the first time many of these well worn musical cliches and so like us at a younger age are deriving the same excitement we once did upon hearing something for the first time.
I listen to old and new.My only criteria nowadays is I hope quality.I've just about given up expecting any artist new or old being able to surprise me. At 54 years of age I've heard one hell of a lot of music but I still find new music that excites and interests me. I hope I always will.

But in the last couple of months I have been listening to, and been very excited by -

Ray LaMontagne
Rodrigo y Gabriella
Brandon Flowers
KT Tunstall (rediscovered)_

Ok, so they're not exactly pushing back the boundaries, but it's hardly The Canterbury Scene, is it? Oh, forgot Lady Gaga. Who is brilliant. And challenging. And very talented. And has got nice legs. "D'oh!" on that last point, but you all get my drift.

letting things sink in a bit?

Roughly speaking, I would say it normally takes me around ten years to come round to anything "new". Ten years for good music to age properly and prove itself.

Have a look at the Pitchfork top 100 tracks of (insert year here), often supplied with links to download MP3s. I always start to get excited around september, anticipating a whole wodge of new 'new' to chew through. I don't like everything they choose, obviously, and often disagree with the choices of tracks taken from certain albums, and some of the more poppy stuff will never agree with me, but many of this years choices are fantastic. Artists that I have been impressed with and explored further this year include James Blake, Titus Andronicus, Perfume Genius, Caribou, even (gulp) Kanye West... it's also my window in to the hippier hoppier side of things which would otherwise just pass me by.

so that probably has a lot to do with his view.
I know that nothing new will be released that will make me want to put on my headphones and listen over and over and over again until I know it inside out in as short a space of time as possible, but then again I don't do a lot of things in the same way as I did when I was 15 (or 18 or 25), so why should this come as a surprise to me? But this thing called music has been enchanting me for as long as I can remember and although I keep expecting it to lose it's allure it just keeps on tugging at my sleeve, leading me forward.

At the moment I'm very excited at the prospect of new albums by The Decemberists, Joan As Police Woman, The Low Anthem, Iron & Wine, and PJ Harvey to name just a few that will be released in the first months of 2011.

While I type this I'm listening to an album I downloaded three days ago. It's called 'Under Steetlight Glow' by Heidi Spencer & The Rare Birds. Now, it's not doing anything that hasn't been done and I could easily dismiss it by saying her voice sounds like X, or the guitar sounds like Y, or the piano like Z, but I prefer to accept that it sounds lovely, is well written, arranged, played and produced, and right now it's exactly what I want to hear and I'm extremely grateful for that feeling and whilst Danny baker is, I'm sure very happy with his view, I feel sorry for him.

Heidi Spencer & The Rare Birds - Alibi

http://www.emusic.com/album/Heidi-Spencer-And-The-Rare-Birds-Under-Stree...

Finally, this has been an earworm for a few weeks now. It's by Adele. It sounds like songs that were recorded years ago. But so what? I love it.

Adele - Rolling In The Deep

by some new stuff by still listening to music radio from time to time. XFM with my boys if we're in the car, Absolute on my own, which I agree is mostly old but still digs out some new gems and of course having 15 year old twins they bring in plenty of new.

Still happier wallowing in familiarity but Plan B and the new improved Coral were two that gave me more pleasure than any last year. Must admit I'm still waiting to see what 2011 will bring but Two Door Cinema Club are the current front runners for me.

could have headlined Woodstock and indeed look like they've just woken up in a mud splattered tent (Midlake, Iron & Wine, M*mford) which bores me terribly,

But I'm finding lots of cool stuff, certainly it is derivative but I think that's because I've got 20 years on a lot of these bands. I hear tons of bands that sound like My Bloody Valentine or Cabaret Voltaire but I like hearing the ways in which bands take those influences and take them off in different directions (which is what bands have been doing since The HJHs were mashing up Motown and Chuck Berry).

I'm loving Factory Floor for example who are clearly evoking early New Order/Cabs/Throbbing Gristle but strip it back to bare bones and make it louder and sexier. You have to suspend the 'oh this sounds like' factor and listen to it for what it is (a tremendous racket)

reminds me of this brilliant sketch from Lee and Herring's Fist of Fun about an Amish offshoot who refused to be doing with anything after 1982:

While respecting all posters' right to do whatever the hell they want I can't help thinking a similar logic applies. I mean, you're not put off listening to derivative artists from the past like The Tremeloes, The Waterboys, The Ohio Players or Elvis Costello.
If you don't have the time or the enthusiasm to look for great new music, fair enough. But to complain the new stuff all sounds like old stuff is to forget almost all old stuff sounded like other old stuff already.

Is that he wouldn't touch any new music with a bargepole.

And what he meant was he never listens to:

Danny Baker has been trotting out that "never listen to new" schtick for a couple of decades now. I'd take it with a pinch of salt. Like most people who love music, if he hears something good, he's not going to wait until he's carbon dated it to decide if he actually likes it or not. Just one example: in the late 90s I was listening to him, probably on GLR (if it was still GLR) and he played a song by a new female singer he'd heard in the USA and was excited about. It was Madeleine Peyroux with Always A Use. And he was dead right. The song is below.

To me, the idea of closing my ears to new music is unthinkable. You just filter out the shite, as you did in every other decade in which you were listening to music. There will always be great songs being written; there will always be great voices emerging; there will always be great bands playing. If I'd given up being interested, I'd have deprived myself of the pleasure of seeing the Decemberists last year, one of the best gigs of my nearly thirty years of concert going. And some of the music I listen to most appeared in the last ten years.

I'll always be able to go back to Bowie, Kate Bush, Joni, Laura Nyro, Stevie Wonder, Richard Thompson, blah blah blah. I'll also always go back to the Decemberists, Gemma Hayes, Ben Christophers, and many others.

Don't care when it comes from as long as its good. And to say nothing new is good is the ramblings of a blinkered dullard. Its a judgement call and i'm making it

Although as the last "new" that Danny got excited about was Slipknot, maybe its for the best he doesn't carry on looking

there,s so much free music available it,s almost sinful not to explore new stuff. Even on the free compilation cds here, and in other mags, i find there,s always a couple of groups/artists worth investigating. I hope to God that the days of dragging out the same old albums are a long way off yet!

Everybody will have periods of preference, and they're usually likely to coincide with your teens/early twenties; the era in which one discovers music for themselves and generally forms the basis of their tastes. But to carry on with the assumption that there's no point in listening to the latest Band X because they sound like Band Y + Band Z is short-sighted, because, however much you think it's the case, no band or artist has ever been completely original, they've all taken influences from other sources. The only difference is, you're able to recognise these influence more because you're cultural awareness has increased. Maybe it's because I'm younger than most of you, and haven't reached that pivot yet, but I genuinely don't understand how you can dismiss new music purely on the basis that it reminds of you something else.

I'm one of those who's willing to let new music discover me, rather than go searching for it myself, but I'm young enough to be able to discover older music too, like Nick Cave, XTC, Housemartins, Neil Young, Dylan, HMHB, Pink Floyd et al.

I think I can say with a straight face that I never listen to anything in the modern pop genres. I play planet rock and the other classic rock channels quite a lot and I listen to internet rock radio when I'm typing here for example. That said, I buy a lot of new heavy rock stuff: The Answer, Alterbridge and those sorts of bands that appeal to the new classic metal fraterinity.

In the past couple of weeks I've spun:

Howling Wolf Greatest Hits (right now)
Joanne Shaw Taylor's latest album
The last Joe Bonamassa record
Bob Dylan Bootleg Vol 3 (the early stuff)
The Stones' Mick Taylor albums
The Black Country Communion record
Frank Marino and Mahogany Rush live

So a mixture of old and new there but its all great music from roughly the same place: variations of the blues and folk tradidtions.

It's a bit unfair on the new to put it up against the old - a comparison older bands didn't have to face to the same extent and at such a disadvantage. The thing with old is that there is now so much of it and at a certain age you have your favourites and there is enough more of it out there - other works by acts you already love and all the other related artists are enough to keep you going for the rest of your life so you don't need any more new acts. But that can apply for young folks too who also continually discover old classics and are hooked.

It seems obvious to me that for rock and pop the best was produced as the music developed into new areas - this is the case in every art form you care to mention. I very much agree with the recent podcast view that the guitar bass and drums format of rock has had it's day and hip hop took over as the revolutionary force. When David Hepworth wrote about 1971 he was talking about rock primarily as being at it's height - I'm not sure I would agree it was that year specifically but it was that period. This idea of rock includes soul artists so it's not all about white boys and guitars either.

The new music of today that still sounds fresh to me is electronic, dance and hip hop. I'm not as keen on this stuff as I am on my guitar based older records but I can't deny that that is where it's at now. I do occasionally hear examples of the music of now that excites me though. I can also enjoy a retro sounding record that evokes post punk, Motown or The Byrds say, but it's never really going to beat the originals. Once you know the originals you are only going to hear a copy of a style - and it doesn't matter whether you are 20 or 50. Yes the performers of the classic period of rock and pop did also follow others but the best combined influences that had not been brought together before. In the past there were the leaders and the followers, though great records could come from either source.

mountains of old cds and vinyl to turn to have an excuse for taking a limited interest in the new. But I wonder how much the widespread availability of almost everything will affect the relationship young musical adventurers will have with new artist still developing.
Don't laugh, but when I was a lad Dollar released a version of "I Want To Hold Your Hand" as a single, and I thought it was their own original song.
Had I been in a position when very young to zap everything straight to my hard drive on day one I might have been a lot more reluctant to give the time of day to much new music and especially, to persist with those bands who took a while to get their shit together.
I know people will say that "true talent will always out" but It's hard enough for new bands to make money from music these days without being greeted by wet eared kids adopting the pinched frowns of world weary cynics who have heard it all before.

Personally I think the 2000s were the best decade of recorded music ever.

But Three Of my favourite albums of all time were recorded last year so there is still good music being recorded today as good as ever. Not heard anything decent in 2011 yet though

which i guess it is...
my listening these days consists of floydpodcasts, early genesis shows, radiohead shows, smiths, wedding present, talk talk and Spotify.
The gist of this thread is precisely why I buy Word Magazine, to keep abreast of new stuff. it all gets a bit bewildering otherwise, and this from a 41 year old who used to read NME cover to cover every week (including adverts - who the hell was this Frankie Goes To Hollywood that was advertised every week for four weeks ?!)
I wouldn't have found The Decemberists otherwise.

I was in a bit of a grump about new bands until I stumbled upon an Auckland trio called Street Chant. They're young, gobby, funny, smart and certainly enjoy themselves when playing live. I'm on the wrong side of forty now but I happily joined the mosh-pit and made a dick of myself when I saw them play the other day.
If I was settling down for a bottle of red and a good cheese I'd prefer Tom Waits or John Martyn but to see three kids just out of their teens going mental onstage... well, it did the trick for me.

link to that! I love it, have played it about five times in a row now!