and I'm in the same boat mate. All new music sounds reminiscent of something I've heard before - and I don't want to listen to new music by old stagers - it's irrelevant. Plus, I've played to death the albums that I love the most (and don't want to listen to them either). PLEASE HELP.

in pop music anymore. No fast-moving underground which can distress the media and I suspect this is because of the web. Of course it's a tragic irony that, whilst it's never been easier to get heard, it's never mattered so little to so many.

Develop an interst in Jazz/Classical/Exotic foreign music. Any one of these will open up a broad enough range of new music that the workshop, shed etc can remain safely untouched until you're safely 6 feet under.

There's an interesting book called "I iPod Therefore I Am" by Dylan Jones. In a chapter about jazz he said that he felt he had the rock and pop waterfront covered. Sure, there was always going to be music that passed him by and old albums to re-discover etc, but for the most part he had it covered. I'm feeling that now. His solution was to dive into jazz which is a whole new world. I can't follow him as I don't like jazz.

I used to buy about three CDs a week. I'm now down to about one every two weeks. Suddenly I find myself walking out of Fopp empty handed. I used to buy stuff I had no real interest in but now I don't bother.

I would see a CD on the cheap such as a Cheap Tricks Best Of. I know I have no interest in it but it's £3 and I might regret it later if I don't. So I buy it and listen to once in a distracted bored way. Then I rip it and stick it on my iPod. The CD will go into a drawer where it will sit unplayed for at least three years. Four songs will pop up on shuffle each year. It's debatable if I'll be happy to hear them when they do. I also seriously doubt one day it will suddenly click and I'll become a Cheap Trick fan. I'm destined to go to my grave with complete indifference to that band. I can feel it to the very core of my being.

I bought John Martyn's One World album recently. It's not even going to make it onto my iPod.

Why do I not own After The Gold Rush after all these years? Because I have no interest in it. Why do I not own a single CD by Mott The Hoople? Because I can't even begin to imagine ever giving a toss about them ever. Those missing Depeche Mode/Warren Zevon/Elvis Costello/ZZ Top/Van Halen/Bruce Springsteen/Neil Young albums? If I don't have the album by now then it's usually because I have no interest in it. If I was I would have bought them by now. These are holes in my collection that I'm happy to leave as I know they're not very good, or at least not for me.

Genesis is the perfect example of this. I adore the 3CD Platinum Collection but I don't like the albums I have such as Foxtrot. I put off buying more albums because I always assumed that new remasters were on the horizon. I walked away from buying them all for £3 each (£5 for Lamb) in Fopp a few years ago. Then the 2CD remasters turned up in 2008. I waited for the price to drop to £5 which is what I think they're worth. Eventually in 2009 they were released as 1CD editions. I've waited about four years and now Fopp have Selling England By The Pound etc remastered for £5.

I looked at them and walked away after about ten seconds of conflict. I didn't care. I don't believe Genesis are a good albums band (I wasn't there when they were released and I don't think their albums have dated one tenth as well as Pink Floyd etc). In the past I would have just bought them all but now I can't bring myself to do it.

My music collection feels oddly done, finished. A few extra additions but nothing major is going to impact it any time soon.

As for new music? New rock music is pretty weak in my opinion. The only decent new rock band that I can even think of is Gaslight Anthem and they're nothing great.

New pop is very robust at the moment. La Roux, Saturdays, Those Dancing Days, Little Boots, Lady Gaga etc are pretty good, at least for a few songs each. Pop is doing very well at the moment. So that suggests the addition of about five or six new pop albums each year.

and griping about the music at Glastonbury all weekend. I completely empathise. I'm off to take woodland walks and watch DVDs. Pop music has had its day.

Music doesn't get 'better' or 'worse' over time, people just get older.

People were saying the same around the time of Bach.

Is definitely a dying pastime, Amazon have sucked any romance out of the whole business and the likelihood of finding anything in HMV diminishes with each visit. However this isn't the same at all as not being interested in new music. Spotify and emusic have made the music I listen to far more wide-ranging than even ten years ago, and let's not underestimate the continued power of live music (Doves earlier this year for one) to make us feel a sense of urgency about hearing a new album. And if I can find a copy for less than about £20 then I do feel that a copy of World of Twist's Quality Street would enhance what I already have...

What has changed is what is 'new'. I was (shame on me) listening to early Hawkwind last night on Spotify and damn fine it sounded. New to me.

probably around 1990/91. I stopped listening to pop/rock almost completely for no apparent reason, I just seemed to find it unsatisfying. So I starting listening to, mainly, classical music, and did so for 10 years or more, during which time I purchased almost no pop/rock music at all, subscribed to Gramophone, only went to classical concerts and bought some truly weird and wonderful classical/contemporary stuff. But then, suddenly, I started listening to pop/rock again and my enjoyment of it returned - don't know why this happened, but clearly the break did me good.

Most rock is written by people in their teens or twenties who are facing the problems of that time of life: how to fit in to society, not having a place, and so on. And that's what they sing about. It's hard to care that much about most of it once you have made a life that you're somewhat happy with. When I hear Morrissey (an extreme example, granted) today, I just think, "Why don't you see a therapist?"

Another possibility is that you might be feeling a little "meh" in general. Have you also gone off novels, movies, TV, etc -- even the good stuff?

I still get excited about new stuff from established & new artists as I always did. Right now I am dying to hear the new Wilco & Levon Helm albums. I probably don't get as much satisfaction from owning them as I did as a lad but the expectation still leads me on. As John Peel used to say you keep trying because another Teenage Kicks might come along any moment.

out of a sense of 'duty' but I know it'll never be as good as his work with The Band.

(sorry for sounding so negative :-))

Have you tried the recent Randy Newman, Ry Cooder or Madness albums? All as good as anything they've ever done, and all genuinely worth owning and playing.

You can listen here.

http://music-mix.ew.com/2009/06/levon-helm-electric-dirt-full-stream.htm...

And no, it isn't as good as the old.

I do like listening to different versions of old. So I like the CSN demos, Bruce's Christic recordings or Beatles demos, Neil shifting Hurricane to a pump organ, acoustic versions of electric stuff (Prefab Sprout). And I like some of the 'different' tracks on new CDs. On Bruce's I love the big pop ballads 'This Lfe' and 'Kingdom of Days' (but I'm not sure about Outlaw Pete!).

There are two main things that keep me trying to discover new artists. One is that I just like hearing new stuff that I haven't heard before and I appreciate that that may well mean finding a copy of an artist from the 50's that was previously unknown to me - I loved the recent Hank Williams box set of unearthed recordings. The second is that I like live music and I don't like seeing it in a hangar. If I can find a quality artist that plays in a tiny venue then I'm a happy man. Over the last 18 months I've made even more effort in this line and I've listened to over 70 albums by people that I've never heard albums by before, as a result I've seen three of them (Carrie Rodriguez, Ingrid Michaelson, Chatham County Line) in small venues and really enjoyed the evening - when I get the chance I'll be seeing more but patience is a virtue.
I must admit that I was quite excited to read yesterday that Brendan Benson has a new album out very soon (it's been a long wait) and hopefully that'll mean a rare (these days) solo tour to sell it.

The everything sounds like Tangerine Dream / Wreckless Eric (are you sure) and i'm working my way through the Miles Davis Prestige years is the give away.

Looking at Glasto on the telly probably isnt the best way to enjoy it but I thought Bruce was fantastic and there must have been thousands there who had never seen him before will think it was the best gig of their lives. OK it wasnt the Hammersmith Odeon in 1975 but so what?

As for new bands I would say that Arcade Fire stand up with the best of any era and I'm also eagerly waiting for the new Wilco to arrive.

I agree with the general premise, but you need to open your mind. Tinariwen are ploughing the rock groove in a totally original way.
The answer is out there if you go looking. The three most anticipated release for me recently have been by Baaba Maaal, Amadou & Mariam and Tinariwen's, on the shelves today.

Just as exciting as 'the old stuff'...Then there is their back catalogues, the you hear a bit of Ali Farka Toure and of you go........

"all recorded music has run its course"

bill drummond.
the 17.

http://www.the17.org/

seems like this book should be on your xmas wish list as its a very similar line of thought.

i have days like this, but some deft digging in the archives, and i'm back on track (todays pick me up : the three johns)

mark e/ireallylovemusic

that the tone of the blog was rock snob like - everything sounds like something obscure and half remembered (Tangerine Dream) or Wreckless Eric. Then the writer says he is now heading back in time exploring something 'cool' because everything today is beneath contempt. I havent a clue what Prestige Miles Davis sounds like, I only have Kind of Blue which i like. Why not admit youre a rock snob - nothing wrong with it.

I wondered if this isnt all brought on by Glasto. A lot of the comments on the blogs were either all the new stuff is laughable or the old farts should give up. Probably both unfair. I didnt particularly like a lot of the new bands but they all seemed to go down well and none of them sounded like Tangerine Dream or Wreckless Eric to me. And like it or not in years to come people are going to say - I was there when Bruce Springsteen played Glasto.It will be their Hammersmith Odeon 1975.

After 30 odd years of listening to quite a variety of music, but all pretty much rock-pop based, I just couldn't find anything that I really wanted to listen to. So, i've spent the last six months immersed in the classics, with the result that I have an endless vista of new, beautiful and challenging music opening up in front of me, which would take 3 or 4 lifetimes to be bored by. And the bonus is, that when I do put on, say, the first two Roxy Music albums, they sound fantastic again -it's win win!

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. (Obviously you've covered this area yourself!)

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

I have to agree with the original thread and say I don't want to listen to the same old.I go to the little record store around the corner and sit and talk to the owners about what's new, what they are liking at the moment, and listening to the names of bands I have read about in Word.I then purchase a couple of cd's or vinyl and enjoy my new music.The new/good pop is out there, you haven't listened/found it yet.

No big gestures. Nothing drastic. I let all my music magazine subscriptions expire. If you find yourself buying the next issue, that's fine. I stopped record shopping. I read a lot of library books, in silence, instead. I gave my ears a rest.

When it's important to one's self-image to know what's good, and who's going to be good, it's a big step to let go. We are more than our record collections.

And then, over time, I began to work out which music I missed, that is to say, like. And what it is that I like about that music. I could even feel excited about music again, the way I used to.

I hope you finish your book. You've supported lots of musicians in their need to express themselves. You should treat yourself. Perhaps your ennui is the sound of the rest of your brain demanding its chance to shine.

Anyway, a quiz. What is the connection between Sir Edward Elgar and Hawkwind?

Did he write Silver Machine ...

Nimrod was a Silver Machine!

that's my antidote.

don't worry you'll never hear it :)

going to go all sigur ros on myself.

Good to watch sun come up or watch it set. Good with a cup of tea, glass of wine or whatever.

Variations on a single riff. One album - just four tracks.

Just like the Dead really...

Give it a whirl here

http://open.spotify.com/album/1HdMHBOEeJEIvif6DuTbzj

I'm in my mid-50s and still finding numerous great records to play on my radio show The Curve Ball every week. And believe me, I bore easily. Chances are you won't have heard of most of the artists featured (check out the latest playlists here http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=7390739...)but anyone who warms to musicians who plough their own furrows regardless of fashion or commercialism should find plenty to enjoy. From the past, I tend to champion real one-offs like Robert Wyatt, Van Dyke Parks, Roy Harper, etc. But there are plenty of present-day counterparts out there (most of them inexplicably ignored by the mainstream media) if you know where to look. And I do. Honest. And one more thing, if you associate modern genre-busting music with noise, feedback, distortion or tuneless blokes earnestly belabouring an acoustic guitar, all of the above are banned. If it don't got a toon, it don't make the cut. Give us a try - Tuesdays, 9-11pm www.wcrfm.com. And please don't be put off by the name - I wasn't consulted.

...but it's rare that I'm blown away and have the modern equivalent of loving something so much that it doesn't leave my turntable for weeks and weeks (as I did with the Specials, the Clash, the Ramones, etc.).

Tony Parsons wrote a column in GQ a few years ago about how he continues to pickup music by new bands hoping to relive the experience of hearing bands from his youth for the first time. And how that's probably not going to happen. But, that doesn't keep him from trying. At least I think that's how he ended the article as it's been awhile since I read it. No matter, it's how I approach new music. I try and stay as informed as possible and pick up the things that I feel I might like. Most of it is good, but not fantastic, and every now and then I'm amazed. The Bon Iver album is a good example.

I buy more cd's now than ever before and it is quite rare that I get a complete clunker. However the number of REALLY good ones does diminish. The next problem then is affording the good ones the attention they deserve as I continue on my quest to fill all available space in the house with cd's. This was perfectly highlighted this week - Sheevemaster posted a clip of a Chieftains song with Brenda Fricker - it was atmospheric, haunting and very lovely. When Sheeve told me what cd it came from in response to my enquiry I was somewhat embarrassed to realise that album has been in my collection for a number of years. I obviously passed it by before as I can clearly recall most of the other tracks on the album. Is it more a case of sensory overload?

Found this on the "eclectic" section of ITunes radio stations and have got into a lot of great stuff, new & old.... Happy Hunting!

Buy a new CD - anything vaguely interesting released recently - and listen to only this disc for a couple of weeks. If you get tired of it, don't listen to anything, or at worst put the radio on.

That's probably what it was like when we were kids first getting into music. Buying something was an event. The money invested meant that we had to make it pay.

I find that when you give almost any half-decent record some time and attention, it rewards you.

When was the last time I bought a 'current' CD? Probably Weller's last album, and that's because I automatically buy his stuff. Spotify has saved me a fortune. To be honest I was in the position that a few others have mentioned of buying stuff for the sake of buying sometimes, with no real burning need to hear whatever the album was.

Now I listen to the new stuff on Spotify. If I really like something I'll download it from emusic.com, or iTunes. I rarely go out and buy the CD.

And to be honest the new stuff that really grabs me is few and far between. Maybe one or two tracks a month on the Word CD inspire me to investigate further.

I too find myself excavating the past. Obscure 1960's US garage bands and UK pop-sike as well as old Southern Soul. I find that one band will lead to another and so on. Everything really has been done before.

Unless it is exclusives from band websites. I still have this obsession with owning the physical product. There is no logic to it either from a space point of view or from an economic point of view. Most of my mates think I am nuts but c'est la vie.

Has helped me get through my work this morning.

Loads of it on Spotify - especially all the stuff from Italian films I've never even heard of. And, of course, Once Upon a Time in America is the greatest film score ever written

But it's not an easy thing to find it.

I thought my musical tastes were quite broad until I started buying this mag, but now I realise that I haven't even scratched the surface of what is stored out there on CD, vinyl and digital thingies.

It's just that you don't actually need to actively go looking for the stuff anymore - I find that (in my case) a couple of hours listening to Last.fm will usually throw up something worth investigating further, and that in itself may lead to new discoveries. Clem Snide and Smog are just two bands now a couple of quid richer after such a chance discovery on my part.

As for the vast majority of stuff played on the radio or the myriad of satellite music channels, I'm of the same opinion as the thread-starter; it does nothing for me and is indistinguishable from the next one along.

Having said that, it may well be just an age thing. I was talking to a 24-year old colleague the other week at a party and a 1980's-era pop track came on - I forget which one, but it was hugely popular at the time and merited a bookmark in my memory. When I asked him if this song meant anything to him, he just shrugged his shoulders and said no. I'm only 43, but it appears I've crossed the generational divide.

which is something I am guilty of not doing. In this environment of instant entertainment it is easy to get distracted. Occasionally I don't and it pays dividends. A case in point is the new Steve Earle album Townes. On first listen I found it to be decidedly average. I listened to it on several other occasions and each time its charms grew. I now think it is one of the better albums of the year however I guess that reinforces the argument with it being a covers album.

... with the ennui expressed but to bastardise a familiar expression 'he who is tired of music is tired of life'. There is in fact very little new under the sun - only so many ways notes and sounds can be combined.

As someone with an extensive Jazz collection, I have to say that an awful lot of jazz records sound remarkably similar to one another - it's why fusion and free jazz developed - they had run out of other ideas. By the end of his life Miles Davis had pretty much given up on the genre.

All I can say is that those moments when the sun is shining and a piece of music rises up and takes your breath away - however rare - are worth waiting for.

Since subscribing to the Word magazine and really enjoying the CD of great but often lesser known artists, I have made a conscious decision to ignore the big artists and their inflated concert ticket prices and go for the other end of the spectrum.

So I am off to see Duke and the King next week and the Felice Brothers in October - both under £20 per ticket.

Also I'm getting into folk music and have seen Seth Lakeman and Cara Dillon already this year. So refreshing to see real people not celebrities with inflated egos live.

Finally - if its free - download and listen. Amazon, 7digital and NME plus many artist sites have free tracks to download. You find real gems here and this often leads onto listening to the album/seeing them live.

One thing I've learned is you dismiss musicians, bands, genres at your peril. Having been brought up on Dylan and Miles Davis, and taken a self-selected side-turning through John Martyn, Elvis Costello, US punk (Husker Du, Sonic Youth), Kevin Coyne and Tom Waits, I have given up being amazed at what is still out there to be discovered. My brother did me a tape of Elvis Presley (who I thought I hated) a few years back - I now have about 30 albums. Two years ago, I got Zevon's Excitable Boy for Father's Day - I now have everything he's released plus about 30 CDs of live stuff downloaded off the internet. A friend lent me The Last Shadow Puppets (" I hate the Arctic Monkeys" I said, although hadn't really heard them). I've since bought both Monkeys LPs and picked up all the singles (extra tracks ahoy!) And that's not to mention finally "getting" Neil Young after all these years, and going out and picking up all of his LPs. Phew!

(or ten things which have reaffrimed my faith this year)

the felice brothers
alela dianne
caribou
bonnie prince billie's new one (country and western?)
kasabian's new one
mercury rev's 'snowlake midnight'
bert jansch (who knew?)
the whispertown 2000
flying lotus
mogwai (never, ever heard them til a coupla months back - yey for spotify)
sybarite
the new low album

oh, that's twelve.

anyway, there's enough diversity there for anyone.

listen to all of them - they're pretty much all on spotify so it won't cost you any money.

if you don't like any of them, then you're right.

music is dead for you.

just don;t expect that shiver up the spine thing.

or at least not as often as you'd like.

i reckon the chemicals that do that to us when we listen to music all get pretty much used up sometime around thirty, and only leak out once in a while under extreme circumsatnces from then on.

Re: The Beatles Twickenham Sessions - this site has a quite fetching 'Yamaha organ' version of Two of Us playing in the background...

http://www.maccafan.net/Gallery/GetBackRehearsals/Twickenham.htm

http://www.myspace.com/hrtoad

I guess the clue's in the title. I buy the magazine and read this blog at least as much for features and posts about other aspects of media, culture and society as about music. I empathise with your somewhat jaded outlook. It's like listening to The Beatles - after a while you can only truly 'hear' them through stumbling over a little heard track like And Your Bird Can Sing or Hey Bulldog, or even, as in your case, a bootleg. Maybe Bill Drummond's idea of a period of total music deprivation has some merit.

Good discussion, I particularly liked it branching off into the lunatic asylum/Elgar/Hawkwind bit. Not going to the pub any more I miss these rambling threads. Has any one been led up a blind alley musically? I was downloading This Mortal Coil track when I happened to read they had covered a song by a band called Pearls before Swine, whom the reviewer raved about. I feverishly downloaded a track, "the Jeweler" by said band and found it to be utter dogshit. Not being put off by this even, I tried again, with "Images of April." Ditto. I work in a small office with 2 blokes 10-15 years younger than me and their album "collection" consists of "Sam's Town" by the Killers, Babyshambles and The Foo Fighters. These they have played in more or less constant rotation for the last 3 and a half years. If I hear the introduction now to "Sam's Town" my fists clench and I start having what appears to be a panic attack. My tastes are wide and varied and I thank God for that. Heavens, when I used to wait for the next Bowie album to come out in the 70's I would play the grooves off of it before lending it out, but in my own bedroom. However, I realise that this must have inflicted the same pain on my parents that I am currently suffering. Repetitive eardrum syndrome, a musical version of the Chinese water torture, or a goose being force fed until it's liver explodes. Ergo: I am turning into my Father. Oh, and I fuckin' hate "Bonkers" by bleedin Dizzy Rascal as well. Shove that in yer lugs and smoke it. God bless variety.