Does anyone here ever listen to music?
It may sound like a facetious question to ask on a website peopled by music fanatics but it's a genuine one. Because it's occured to me that I don't .
I phoned my father-in-law yesterday to alert him to the fact that Mad Men, that series which the BBC has been trailing since about Bonfire Night, was finally getting under starters orders on BBC4. He used to work in the advertising business, in roughly the same era in which the show is set, so I thought he might be interested in it.
The reason I had to remind him it was on is that whereas his daughter and I, when settling down for the evening, automatically curl up in front of the telly and watch whatever's on - sometimes having to resort to the Dave channel - he spends his evenings listening to music.
He's a jazz buff and sits in his armchair, with his headphones on, listening to jazz. And not doing anything else.
Now I listen to music quite a lot, but always as a background to doing something else - driving, cooking, eating, socialising, reading, baiting Guardian readers on the Word website etc. But I never just sit down and simply listen to music. Do other people?
Missed Mad Men by the way because my wife, like most women I know, fancies the pants off Laurence Fox and wanted to watch Lewis. Any good?
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That sounds like me -
- apart from the bit about baiting Guardian readers, me being a Guardian buyer for 20 years!
I listen to 99% of my music these days on the ipod while out and about. Might put on a CD over dinner, but that's about it.
It's odd, but I find myself doing two things at once a lot. I'm typing this as I watch Local Hero on Film 4 (truly a great film).
Your father-in-law sounds just like my Dad, if you substitute jazz for classical. Maybe it's a generation thing?
Multi tasking
While my wife is out I am typing this and reading things here whilst listening to 6 music (or it might be CD) and TV is on sound turned down, generally using up precious resources. I don't usually have music on so much when am not alone. Too hard to decide what we both want to hear maybe. Actually I find the time I am listening most intently is when walking from Park and Ride to office and MP3 is on - even though music is competing with bus engines, pedestrian crossing bleeps, bird song and the like. Don't really just sit and listen at home unless maybe something new I bought that is particularly special. Even then probably wouldn't get through a whole album, 3 tracks perhaps?
I
don't use headphones unless Girl Oeuf insists, but yes, I do spend a good chunk of my evenings;
1. Trawling through collection for obscure snippet of melody that wormed its way into the cranium earlier in the day and now HAS to be heard in full.
2. Accommodating wherever said track takes me; 'Oh, I used to listen to that when I was listening to..., now, where did I put it?' etc.
This has been, and will doubtless continue to be, a source of annoyance for GO, who doesn't (yet) understand the full nature of the luurve.
I'd like to spend more time doing it, of course, but as you say, life gets in the way.
Inclined to agree with Johan; could well be generational, and I just can't face the TV. It's so demanding.
Unlike a lot of posters here...
...I have very few demands on my time. No job; no spouse or children. Also I'm not in great health and sometimes I have no choice other than to lie down for a while. As a consequence I do actively listen to a lot of music.
This morning the house was empty. There was a great deal of noise coming from the building work going on next door. It seemed perfectly reasonable to play Ritual de lo Habitual by Jane's Addiction at a volume beyond what would ordinarily be acceptable. 50 minutes later, when the dust had settled, I felt energised. I've listened to that album countless times over the years, but I still really enjoyed hearing it again.
A record collection is like anything else you own. To get the best out of it you have to invest time and attention. Otherwise it's just a load of stuff taking up shelf-space or cluttering a hard drive.
Its a dirty job, but someones got to do it!
Nice post, backwards, which sums up the burden. It needs work: revisit the old, research the new and so on. Time is the enemy, however. I end up with my 45 minutes driving to work, morning and evening, w/e cooking time and whenever Mrs Path is out, to feed my habit. Takes a while to catch up on the new stuff necessitated by the recommendations of you guys, but I get there in the end. This is why I wallow, at all other times, in the shuffle mode: the nooks and crannies of the collection seldom fail to surprise and uplift.
Telly? Can't be bothered. Radio? When there's nowt else available.
Exactly the same.....................
Retropath 2, my listening habits are almost exactly the same as yours. My main listening is the one hour in the morning and one hour on the evening on the bus to and from work. I cook most evenings and my i-pod speaker dock gets a hammering whilst i'm chopping, marinading and stirring. My wife thinks music is a background experience whereas I actually like to sit quietly and listen to music. After 10 years plus of being together listening to music together has never reached an happy medium and therefore I don't listen to music in the evenings. Like yourself I use a hell of a lot of the shuffle mode on my i-pod. I've got just over 13,000 songs on there and it makes my day when an obscure b-side or album track which you would never of thought of comes on in random. Whenever I buy a new album I always take the time to listen to it fully at least twice. Then it becomes 10/12 tracks on the ipod unless it really blew me away and becomes a constant until the NEXT thing that blows me away.
Recent iPod convert
I've only recently got an iPod and I'm currently experiencing the joys of rediscovering the music collection as I steadily make my way through the CD shelves. It's also got me converting old cassettes to digital so that they can go on there and there's a USB turntable that I was given for Christmas which is about to get a serious workout. I've recently started walking to and from work so this is my particular music time of the day. iPod Shuffle is a particular favourite at the moment and keeps throwing up forgotten or overlooked album tracks - for example, on the way to work today, "Forever" by Goldfrapp, off 'Black Cherry' - very fine album which got a thorough listening to when it came out but memories of it tend to be of the best known tracks and "Forever" isn't necessarily one of them.
Mad Men
Mad Men is a terrific series - stick with it. A trivial historical point that got me on it, was how much everybody smoked and ALL THE TIME! I grew up in the 70s and both my parents smoked - mother still does - so it was hardly a revelation to me [ it's depicting events only 10 years before I was born] but modern TV seems to have so erased the dreaded cancer stick from our screens that smoking scenes are now almost shocking.
Oh and no I very rarely JUST listen to music. I have it on in the car, while at work and whilst pottering about on the internet. Though sometime a track will come on that grabs you by various bits of your anatomy and demands your full and undivided.
Stayed up well past my
Stayed up well past my bedtime to watch the re-run of Mad Men and I've put down a deposit and booked myself in for the long haul.
I only have two major regrets in life. The first is that I took up smoking and have still not managed to kick the daft habit that will no doubt afford me an early appointment with the Grim Reaper. The second is that I've never had the kind of proper grown-up job that involves wearing a smart suit with a shirt (plus cufflinks) and tie. I'd probably have hated the job, but loved the clothes. There are many things about the modern world that I love, but many that I don't. And one of them is how middle-aged men, given half the chance, dress like slovenly teenagers. When I was growing up the only middle-aged men I knew dressed up in their Sunday best (suit, tie, hat) to go to church, then repaired to the pub to get rat-arsed. That's the way to live. Doesn't happen anymore. I blame it on the boogie.
Mad Men
I saw the whole run of Mad Men as it aired in the States last summer (via the 'net). It will have its ups and downs, but don't lose heart. Keep with it, and it will reward you. Overall, it is a piece of mature television -- laced with irony, humour and bitterness -- the like of which we rarely see from the other side of the Atlantic. (I gather The Wire and The Sopranos are similarly good, but I am not so keen on the subject matter of those.)
Glengarry Glen Ross with shinier suits
As for The Wire's subject matter, it's not actually cops or drugs or crime or anything you're probably assuming. It's simply the contemporary city, with each season focusing on one aspect of it - the underclass, industrial decline, political reform, education and the media. Give it a shot. A man who's tired of Baltimore is tired of life.
(Heads-up for Wireheads: Season 4 is out on DVD in the UK on Monday, yo.)