So, I've been fooling around with the Itunes Genius. And for a cat like me who is totally out of the music-loop, it's a God-send. Music used to be such a collective experience for me. I have specific memories of hearing "Verbal Intercourse" in the efficiency on 14th and Euclid I shared with my older brother. I can see the weed-smoke, and the NBA Live flickering on the screen. And then I can remember the next day, hopping the shuttle to campus, and debating with half of Howard over Nas's verse. Everyone was banging that joint.
But as I get older, music becomes a kind of singular pursuit. Usually it's just me and Kenyatta, and half the stuff we're into feels so obscure. Excepting TVOTR, we don't even know people who listen to this sort of thing. Anyway, as it happens I was listening to TVOTR the other day, and scrolling through the reccommendations. It's wierd thing advancing through your 30s. You end up rocking out with your lady and your kid, listening to shit like this. It's a long way from Mondawmin Mall.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
Copyright © 2009 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
I was always something of a music ignoramus (popular, classical, jazz, you name it) but I was starting to branch out a little in the couple of years before we had a kid. But a lot of that wasn't social at all, it was just me sitting at the computer with headphones on--something I don't really do any more now that I've got a toddler. There just isn't time to keep up with anything that isn't children's music (on the other hand, that's a whole other universe I'm learning about). Maybe it changes when she gets a little older.
14th & Euclid, eh? You were neighbors with Andrew Sullivan...
I had that wrong. It was 15th. It was a lot different then.
Ok I have a confession to make. Im one of those hardcore hip hop/R and B/old school heads who might every once in a while catch some top 40s pop stuff but thats very rare for me. As I said the other day I had not a clue who Sigur Ros was and evidently that makes me quite out of the loop. But I lived in New York for a year and the place where I worked played Bare Naked Ladies almost on a loop. At first it was like fingernails on a chalkboard. But as time went on I actually looked forward to hearing it. Now I have a downlow addiction to their music. I don't know what it is but their music was just catch as all hell and funny to me. Especially that whole "If I had a million dollars"
I am so ashamed.
It hurts don't it man?
Haha, then we were neighbors if you lived there 8 years ago. Great neighborhood.
Here's the thing I hate about iTunes Genius and similar programs such as Pandora: You download one guilty pleasure or let it play one bad song and the damn thing assumes those are your tastes.
For example, the other night I was using Pandora's service on my iPhone. I had spent a couple of weeks building a decent radio station catered around true alternative from the late 70s & early 80s (Pandora sends you songs which you then rate. The station then sends you similar music based on those ratings). The other night, I set down my iPhone and forgot to turn off Pandora so it kept playing all night. At some point, Pandora thought I must like "Journey" and started sending me their stuff. Since I was not around to give it the truly awful rating it deserves, Pandora now thinks I like "Journey" - no matter how many times I vote it down. Worse yet, it also sends me Steve Tyler's solo work along with Supertramp, Night Ranger and a whole host of musical crimes against humanity.
iTunes Genius does similar things to me. You download ONE guilty pleasure...
Other than that, the service kicks ass.
There was an NPR piece early in the year about musical habits. Apparently we are much less willing to try new music past the age of 35. Since then I have been on a little personal mission to be an exception.
I've been digging the Genius function too, especially for playlists that suit my mood at the time.
@sgwhiteinfla
Don't be ashamed, my friend. Not liking something because it's popular is logically equivalent to liking something because it's popular. Either way, you're letting the mob make your choices. So listen to what you want and screw everyone else.
Except for Celine Dion, that woman is bat-shit crazy lame.
I've never used Itunes Genius, but it sounds like it mainly compiles playlists from your existing library. I recommend checking out Pandora to find new music. Type in an artist or song and it uses some sort of magical algorithm to create a radio station with very similar songs. Plus, the songs are free.
The ossification of one's musical tastes is more than made up for by the rewards of growing older with a wife and son who love you.
I used to use Pandora with promiscuity...but now, im a bitter ex-user who wishes death and decay on the whole project! damn those licensing constraints!!
Genius is good for those moments when you're up for a certain style but not an album by a single artist, but I've noticed that certain songs on my iPod pop up on those lists for the weirdest reasons. For instance, if I choose any song from the 80s--even a country song, it seems--"She's a Beauty" from The Tubes or "Your Love" from The Outfield is almost guaranteed to show up on the list. Why I have those songs on my iPod is another story we won't get into right now.
In general, I still like to leave my iPod on party shuffle, but that's because I like the jarring sensation I get when I suddenly jump from Tom Waits to Ozomatli to Ornette Coleman. Keeps the day lively.
So true, "Your Love" from The Outfield is constantly showing up in my play list!
Like I said; you download ONE guilty pleasure...
In the 80's, I watched the Big Chill and one of the bitter relics from the 60's made a comment about how no good music came out past 1970 (or there about). At the time, I remember thinking what a dick he was. As I have aged, I have had to fight off that temptation whenever I turn on a Top 40 station or hear Nickelback.
But then I turn on an 80's station and instead of hearing the Cure, Milli Vanilli or New Kids are on. It's not that music changed that drastically, I am just old
My mood largely dictates what album gets played these days. But when I was younger, seems I went through phases. In high school it was punk rock and Zeppelin (I was in love with Robert Plant), in college it was Blues and Jazz, and in my twenties I discovered Wilco (totally awesome band) and that triggered a curiosity of new bands, and I listened to everything under the sun. I have to admit my curiosity has waned in my 30s, but occasionally I'll find myself spending hours at the store listening to one new album after the next. This post is making me want to go today to do that very thing...maybe I will!
Shalom Y'all,
I'm 53 and still listen to vinyl as much as I do digital.
My students -- grades 6-12 -- keep me honest when it comes to music. One of the questions I ask them at the beginning of the school year is to share their theme song with me.
I take the list and burn a CD of their songs.
Listening to these CDs teaches me a great deal about my students and helps to stop me from embarrassing myself by sputtering that back in my day musicians knew how to write songs.
B'shalom,
Jeff Hess
tnh
get yourself on the western art music trail. start with a complete beethoven piano sonatas set (barenboim recording from the 60s available for $50 on amazon right now), then you've taken care of your 40s too.
blog remains a TOB
Within a couple of years, three at most, the youngest member of your household will be choosing his own music, and you can hitch a ride.
The key thing is letting a lot of it be in "your" space. On the good speakers, not just the earbuds. On the big TV in front of the big couch (or the big space on the floor where the couch would be if you had one), rather than the small spare tucked off in a corner.
You'll still think a lot of it's dumb noise, and he'll still think you're in a rut. But while you're mocking each other, some of the music will get a chance to sink into your aged cells.
Good -- I feel totally cool. Okkervil River and TVOTR are the top two cds in my rotation right now. I'm like everybody else (and I like it)!
The entire Cuban Link record = the D Train up to high school. Debating it = the handball court in the schoolyard, and two friends' apartments in the Village, along with one of their rooftops.
Dude, this track has zero bump at all. I mean that in the broadest sense possible. You are losing it!!!! =)
Gabe,
You know anything about the band? I don't have any insights on them at all. I especially like the cat rocking the baritone.
Ta-Nehisi:
I guess I know a little bit about them. The newest cd is sort of a companion to a cd they released last year(?). (I applaud bands that put out multiple, short-ish albums rather than 16 songs/75 minute cds. I'm an old LP guy and I think bands need to be good editors.)
By the way, I'm a dad and husband. My 15-mo old baby loves my music. Just this weekend, she went over to the stereo (still an old school component system in our house), pointed to the record player and began dancing. This was her way of telling me "let's get this party started", and I obliged happily by playing one of her favorites: Raffi (which is actually damn good).
The last mainstream "alternative" (pardon the oxymoron) band I heard that really turned my crank was Nirvana. Since then, the musical streams that sustained me through my youth have failed me. So I went back to prewar blues and jazz, and found a gold mine of music that will keep me discovering new things until I'm older and greyer.
I'm making tentative steps into hiphop as well. Like Black Star, NWA not so much. But I'm keeping out of the rut that was waiting for me.
If you like this record, definitely check out their release from last year, The Stage Names. As has been said, this song is from the companion record, but The Stage Names is even better.
Man, Only built for Cuban linx. I taped(!) that of my uncle back when I was, oh, 15 or so. On the tape, it cut of in the middle of Verbal Intercourse, so I heard that track twice every time i listened to the album. Nas at his best. First Wu-track with a non-Wu rapper.
Okkervil River is awesome live... and in my opinion a couple of their more poetic songs are as follows:
A Stone
Plus Ones
For eons, the marketing of music was assisted by race and genre. At least here in the states. Rarely did R&B stations play The Style Council, Lewis Taylor, or Jamaraqui. They're not soulful? Obviously Justin Timberlake has carved a niche. But for years Michael McDonald and Phil Collins only received black radio play courtesy of Patti Labelle and Phillip Bailey respectively.
Why else was Eminem afforded rock radio space and his black mega producer was not?
The color of music is obviously more gray now than ever. This may be more of a reason than age to why some life-long hip-hop apologists are just turning the corner to Sigur Ros, Alpha, Stone Roses, their former front-man Ian Brown, Cat Power, Damien Rice, Spoon, Ibrahim Ferrer, Keren Ann, or Fiona Apple for that matter.
Taste in music originates in your community.
That's why black kids reared in the stale forest of the suburbs or predominately white communities possess an affinity for The Cure as well as EPMD long before their college years.
And it's why Baltimore natives hop-scotched North Avenue litter so we could spend the evening sweating through our leather Westwind jackets to filthy club anthems at Odell's.
I hope, rather trust that as our minds and communities change, so will our taste in music.
For there are only two genres of music: good and bad.
Man, Okkervil River is so good. The latest album is pretty awesome, but you should check out some of their older stuff if you haven't already. Black Sheep Boy is a great album, as is Don't Fall in Love with Everyone You See.
I like this. I don't know if I would compare them to these guys but I also like the Stills a lot
Well... they sold another album (two actually).
iTunes is a great thing for those 35+ who don't get out.
T-NC, getting older is no excuse. I turn 30 next year & i think I'm more tapped into music than I've ever been. I'm just less tapped into "pop" music, i.e. stuff on the radio. But every new artist or group I've learned about the last few years I've learned about through use of my computer. I know you got one of those so stop being lazy.
Another band I like, the Artic Monkeys
Damn another black person that listens to Okerrvil River. They could fit all of us in a Yugo. Saw them when they came to Portland. Beyond awesome.
Whoa. I am a big fan of both bands, but I would never have made the connection between them.
Try Voxtrot.
Okkervil River has a surprisingly wide range of fans around, I've found. One of their biggest fans I know is otherwise pretty much a straight up top 40 freak, and UK top 40 at that. Go figure!
At 37, and having spent about half my life (and most of my freelance writing time) talking about music, I'm a bit wary of the Genius/Pandora approach, not because it can't be handy, but because I resist grouping and prefer either albums straight through or utterly random track by track chaos -- for all that I have very known tastes (as PR people have noted a long time back), I don't only listen to what I write about, nor do I want to. Then again lately my thoughts on music and how I work with it have increasingly veered away from cataloguing and more towards endless and never-revisited flow from song to song, artist to artist. I find that more...I hate to use the word 'honest,' but interesting, at least in terms of wider exposure. (Thinking out loud here more than anything else!)
Yeah I feel ya, I am a 33 yr old mexican dude who has noticed a variance in musical tastes. A few "obscure" bands that might meet your new aquired tastes:
Midlake- just youtube them, Van Occupanther and Young Bride are good starters but they are just bad ass
The Shins- I have played the sh-- out of Pink Bullets
The Theater Fire- a local Texas band, very folksie- These Tears Could Rust A Train- is a good starter
TNC, like other posters have said already, you gotta cop "Black Sheep Boy"--it's Okkervil River's "Illmatic".
TNC -
If you wanna taste of what's really hot with the kids these days, best to check out this song:
MGMT - Kids
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIEOZCcaXzE
First head this song when their cd came out early this year but this song has just started to get "big." I'm currently in college and everydude loves it.
Electric Feel is hotter than Kids.
TNC, You might enjoy Lightspeed Champion. Falling Off The Lavender Bridge was one of my favorite records of 2008.
you've become ROTFLMAO.
One thing I noticed w/ my kids is that I never heard their music the way my parents heard mine(and all we had was the radio and stereo. my mother scared us off that because she put the release arm to the outer side and played the vinyl off a Love Supreme). Everything is on a personal player now and that is what you're dealing w/. People everywhere cocooned to only what they want to hear. The crazy thing is the diverisity. All the services let you hear everything.
So keep on listening and just ask someone what they are listening to.
I agree with everyone else that says to get Black Sheep Boy. That album as a whole is brilliant.
Also, I no longer trust Pandora after i put in Olivia Tremor Control and it suggested I listen to David Hasselhoff.
I'd strongly recommend giving Andrew Bird a try. It's great music, he's incredibly talented and plus he often looks kinda like a coked-out Bill Nye.
Some samples:
Heretics
Fake Palindromes
Armchair Apocrypha
The last one is just an absolutely beautiful song. I love the way it restarts itself at about the 5:30 mark and builds to a nice finish. Plus these lyrics are great:
I dreamed you were a cosmonaut
of the space between our chairs
And I was a cartographer
of the tangles in your hair
[...]
In time you need to learn, to love
The ebb just like the flow
Grab hold of your bootstraps, and pull like hell
until gravity feels sorry for you, and lets you go
As if you lack the proper chemicals to know
the way it felt the last time you let yourself fall this low
Indie rock, more than 90's hip hop even, can be stylized by looking at the label, especially if its a small label, like Okkervil's label, Secretly Canadian (which is based in Bloomfield, In).
TNC, I can't really relate to your late arrival to the wider world of music, but I do understand feeling out of touch with the zeitgeist of music. Now 39, with two kids under four, I worry sometimes that I might be getting a bit codger-ish in my listening, but then I look at what I'm actually listening to, and I get a reality check.
I've realized that I'm about six months, sometimes as much as a year, behind the hip kids in hearing new bands. But I'm hearing *about* them early on. This is mainly because I don't have a lot of friends who are buying new bands' records, and I haven't been in the habit of buying records solely on the strength of a positive review in years. I do, however, read Pitchfork (I know, it's not really cutting edge anymore, right?) and I also like Daytrotter for hearing new bands. And, it's the hearing that does it for me.
I don't really think that I'll ever stop looking for new music to enjoy. I've been hooked on it since before I can remember. All kinds, too. Although I'm much more catholic in my taste than they'll ever be, my parents are the blueprint for my life in music. Mom would throw a record on the turntable (one of those all-in-one Panasonic joints with the matching speakers!) in the morning when we were getting ready. O'Jays. Steely Dan. James Taylor. Elton John. Whatever she liked, we heard. And she was my black parent! Dad, the white one, had a great record collection. Allman Brothers, Dylan, Sly Stone, Traffic, Dead (which I still don't like), Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder.
I just can't pigeonhole music. Every genre has something to offer. The musicians themselves usually get this; the fans are another story.
Okkervil River is amazing, and one of my favorites after TVOTR. If you like them check out Glassvegas and Frightened Rabbit- you will be a geeky white boy in no time.
I felt like I was getting too old for new music at around 25... then i was rejuvenated by music blogs. A great one is the Daily Growl.... it is a UK blog so it is especially good for this US citizen as it gets the best indie filtered from the US and introduces me to all kinds of UK acts like Emmy the Great, Ed Harcourt, and Noah & the Whale (now featured on a van commercial)
The blogger just posted his top 20 albums of 2008 so now is a perfect time to stop on by
I'm late to this party (this happens when I take a day off from work) but TNC posting an Okkervil River track is just this absurd collision of awesome that I never dreamed possible. In an interesting twist, I've spent the last three days rocking exclusively boom bap, so, you know, small world after all 'n shit.