Declining interest in music...

Bob Carlucci · From: Candor, New York, USA

I was at a garage sale today, and one guy had HUNDREDS of old albums in pristine cond.. ALL my old favorite stuff. I could have had them for peanuts.. I just walked away and as I did, this realization came upon me...

I really don't like music that much anymore.

I don't know how,why or when it happened, but I have bought NO recorded music in years, don't listen to radio much except for my right wing propaganda,. and haven't gone out to see a band or recording act in a coon's age..

Of course I still love to play... I love making music,as always, but listening has become less of a joy and I didn't even realize it was happening.... I wonder if I am alone in this ?... Can anyone else relate? bob

Gene Jones · From: Oklahoma City, OK USA, (deceased)

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[This message was edited by Gene Jones on 13 November 2005 at 12:50 PM.]

John Rosett · From: Missoula, MT

it's the opposite for me. i listen to music all the time, and i'm always trying to learn new stuff from what i hear. i feel like it turns my work day into added practice time. my day job is housepainting, so i don't have to think too hard about the work. i come home and try to put things i've heard into my playing.
maybe you guys need to listen to something different? i can't imagine ever getting tired of bob wills' tiffany transcriptions, or thelonius monk, or django, etc, etc.

Mike Selecky · From: BrookPark, Ohio

I agree with John - you just have to start looking for different sources of music to listen to instead of the same homogenized crap that corporate radio dishes up - whether it be modern, classic rock or what they pass off as country these days. Most major metropolitan areas have several college radio stations with a variety of formats that can introduce you to some new stuff - and there is a lot of independent artists that have some of their work available for free download on the internet. Good music is out there - you just have to find it.

[This message was edited by Mike Selecky on 16 July 2005 at 09:24 AM.]

Jack Therrell · From: Conroe, Texas, USA

I understand where you are coming from Bob.I notice that we have a lot of discussion about country music. That is to say whether it qualifies as country or not. I like many, like different kinds of music. But my favorite listening music are the country ballads. I don't hear many in that genre anymore. or to re-phrase that and say what passes for a ballad now just doesn't appeal to me. Whoever commited murder on music row has gotten away with it. It is in the "cold case" file now. So making a short story long was not my intention. Bottom line, I had rather make my own music than listen to radio Jack

Charlie McDonald · From: out of the blue

I know what you mean, Bob. My record collection might as well go to a garage sale. But lately I'm picking up (belatedly) on steel music, particularly ambient stuff. It's giving me new ideas.

But all those old tunes? Who needs a record, they're still in my head.

Jim Cohen · From: Philadelphia, PA

Bill Hatcher · From: Atlanta Ga. USA

Bob. Stop listening AT music and listen INTO it. There is too much to experience and to affected by to get tired of it.

Now having said that, I stopped at a yard sale today myself. Bought a big box of LPs for 5 cents each!! Came home and found 4 mono Beatles records in them no less!! Anyway I listened to several more including "A little Bit O Soul" by the Music Explosion and "Last Kiss" by J Frank Wilson and the Cavaliers. I listened to the recording techniques, the guitar parts, the strange stereo mixes, James Jamerson on bass on the Supremes records, the LP covers---got on the net and checked out some of the artists, so much to learn--all this in a seemingly worthless box of old records...

Once again, there is so much to learn about music---how can you be tired of so much you don't know and have not heard?

Fred Shannon · From: Rocking "S" Ranch, Comancheria, Texas, R.I.P.

Gene and Jimbeaux said it for me. A mirror of my feelings exists in both posts.
phred

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"From Truth, Justice is Born"--Quanah Parker-1904

Walter Stettner · From: Vienna, Austria

I go with Bill!

Music is an art form, like writing, painting, architecture - there is so much to discover by reading a book, watching a play, discover a building. Right, sometimes I'm not in the mood to listen, sometimes I only listen to it as background, sometimes I dig deeper into it, compare styles, listen to different styles and artists. I am not talking about the music I am trying to play, listening to examples to learn from etc., just talking about the pure delight of enjoying music.

My life would be much emptier w/o music!

Kind Regards, Walter

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www.lloydgreentribute.com

www.austriansteelguitar.at.tf

Leslie Ehrlich · From: Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada

What Jim said. Over the past five years I've really developed a distaste for popular music, including the rock and country stuff that's been played since the beginning of commerical radio. The only time I'm involved with music in any way is in recording original material, periodic band rehearsals, the odd gig here and there, and once in a blue moon I'll listen to whatever I have in my record/tape/CD/digital audio file collection.

Cody Campbell · From: Nashville, Tennessee

Bob,
Several people have shared your position here, and can identify with you and relate to your...well, Strange and unexplainable Loss (i'll call it).

I do not. I can't, and I hope I never will. I was amazed and stupified as I read your post. Forgive me please, but I feel obligated to share my opinion, as listening to recorded music is a thing a I feel strongly positive about.

Perhaps I'm not aware of the extent to which your listening experience reaches. Maybe you've heard all there is to hear. You know all the standards, and have had your fill of anything that lies beyond that. I don't know.

I could write about music and its greatness forever, but allow me to offer an earnest effort to help revive your declining interest.

I'll try to explain how I become introduced to new music. One is my friends. (Seek out friends with contrasting tastes, and if you don't know already, find out what they see in their preference). [Maybe find someone before your time (or ahead). My grandpa told about some fun songs the other day, (Fats Waller...Ink spots)].

My friends listen to alot of NEW music, and their opinions are available for offer, if my ears should someday happen to be perked by something.

But most of what I find comes about by blind luck or intuition, (the latter often happening in a situation when I'll think "Hey, I bet that might be cool." And sometimes it is.

Well, none of this could help you, I know. But you MUST find help somwhow!!

I don't buy new music often either, but I ALWAYS listen. Mostly to CDs. I have hundreds, but I find myself listening to the same ten or fifteen discs. My 33rpm LP record collection is more rapidly expanding, but most of THEM gather dust too.

Pardon my low level of comprehension, but I just can't understand anyone not listening to music. Especially YOU, Bob C. You love music enough to play it. And talk about it all the time on this forum.

There has GOT to be something you haven't heard that you'd enjoy. Maybe you just need to meet people who have better musical taste than the people you already know.

I don't know. Maybe we on the forum can help. Tell us what styles you like. I'll offer suggestions accordingly. You've GOT to do SOMETHING. People weren't meant to just hear talking and other noise. Your'e ears will thank me.

Anyway...IMO, progressing as a player and growing as a listener are one in the same.

If you don't get help from me...PLEASE, get it somewhere.

[This message was edited by Cody Campbell on 16 July 2005 at 11:35 AM.]

[This message was edited by Cody Campbell on 16 July 2005 at 11:38 AM.]

Dave Van Allen · From: Doylestown, PA , US , Earth

I'm with Cody.
(parenthetically, maybe if you took a break from your "right wing propaganda" your outlook on life might improve to the point where you might enjoy music again... this applies to all propaganda, lefty and right... it's hard to enjoy beauty in the face of folks spouting agitaion against the "other side" whatever the other side may be.)

I for a while lived by the motto "I wish someone would write some NEW oldies" because like Jim I felt I had assimilated by overconsumtion the cultural benchmarks... like ANy station ever needs to play Stairway to Heaven again... but there is soooooo much to find... deep catalogue, album tracks, artists I never heard of in the Pre 1970 musicthat I am constantly now finding NEW OLDIES...

and on top of that I am finding great new music by wortd of mouth, foruitous happenstance and friends' reccomendations.

Joe Casey · From: Weeki Wachee .Springs FL (population.9)

I have to agree with Jim on the listening to collection stuff. I have a vast collection of music that goes back to the, well I'll admit to the 50's.It is set up nice for display in my music room but the only time I play anything is when someone visits and picks somethin out. Other than that I have a favorite Jazz station 94.5 Fm locally that is constantly on in my car or music room while I am on this puter.

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Smiley 22-9 Crank&pull&push pro model Deluxe with auto string changer.500ft. roll.

Bob Hoffnar · From: Austin, Tx

Find a way to relax, smoke some pot or whatever works for you and listen to Duke Ellington or Bach. You would have to be about half past dead to not experience the glory of God's creation through those guys.

Talk radio is a plague ! I got an iPod for Christmas and that has been a big help.

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Bob
My Website

John De Maille · From: On a Mountain in Upstate Halcottsville, N.Y.

I grew up playing R&R and then gravitated to Folk / Country Rock. We had a real heavy Byrds influence. I had my "Rick 360-12" serial #078, and my 66' Tele, and we played all over the place , up and down the east coast. We even did a gig with the Byrds in NY, on LI. A very strange gig to say the least. Because I'd become more subjected to a country sound, the jobs here were becoming few and far between for a country rock picker. Bands like Chicago, Air Supply, and a host of others, were taking over in popularity, and my kind of music was out to pasture. Until, I found true country, or the country I liked. Waylon Jennings, Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, Wynn Stewart, Vern Gosdin and especially (even though she's a girl) Emmylou Harris were my new heroes. I bought and listened to a lot of their music. Mainly for entertainment, but, also to copy and play with the band. And that lasted for about 10 years, until they were all considered passe'. I stopped playing for a while and DIDN'T LISTEN TO MUCH MUSIC AT ALL. I didn't want to hear the new "crap" being forced on me and others, as country. Being in the NorthEast made it almost impossible to find decent (My Kind of) music. I built a house in rural upstate NY and found a local radio station that played "Classic Country" (My Music) Then they changed venues after a few years, but, now I have satellite TV and X-M radio.
What I'm getting at is, that, the music that is engrained in my brain by myself, will always be dominant in my pleasure senses. If I don't hear it on a semi- regular basis, I tend to lose interest in listening at all. I can't explain it, it just is that way. Sometimes I bore myself to death with my playing, then, I research an old tune that I liked to play and work it out. I have found that, many older phrases work with a lot of the newer (My Style) tunes. It makes sense, music is based on noisy mathematics, so, 2+2 still equals 4.
Sorry for the lengthy post, just my take on the subject.

Eric West · From: Portland, Oregon, USA, R.I.P.

Bob C.

You know the truth hits so hard sometimes, it's like not hearing the noise of a gunshot for the shock.

I have enough albums to fill a U Haul. The BEST.

You name it, classical country, jazz, even the old Columbia Record Club stuff my dad got in the 50s, my old 45s and a trunkload of old 78s bought at yard sales etc. All the old Doors, Hendrix, Zeppelin, Beatles, Buck, Ernest Tubb, Roy Clark..... ad inf.

I bought a Brad Paisley album recently, the BBC Hendrix collection, and most of Bobbe Seymore's collections, AND the Lloyd Green Revisited.

What I hear on the FM dials in the "Top 40" vein, sucks. I like the Prairie Home Companion features, though they subtly remind me that the left wing has Buddy Emmons and Cindy Cashdollar hostage, and will kill them without my listener support. and I listen to all kinds of things to and from work.

I don't know why or when it happened either.

I still LOVE to play it, and maybe we differ because I LOVE to go out and hear local music. Once about every three months though anymore. The last live "concert" I saw was Cheley Wright and Paycheck in 95. (Openers for national acts notwithstanding..)

I just don't hear what used to catch my ears on fire like the "Ricky Scaggs" or farther back the "Strangers" on Cousin Herb.

It doesn't "underscore my life" like it once did when I can remember sitting in my bathtub one miserable winter in Montana listening to Duane Almond set my life to "Sweet Melissa" or pulling green chain in the snow plugged into CFUN listening to Edgar Winter and Joni Mitchell from a pocket AM over the noise of the saws, living for it..

I can go all week and not put one CD in, or find one FM station. Not for "Listening" anyhow.

I always have KINK FM on quietly on my 90 minute sleep timer while I read Civil War stuff, and the radio's on in the kitchen lowly 24/7, but I don't "Listen".

I play EVERY weekend, and it's my life's blood. I listen to new songs on breaks, and the music in my head can go on and on and on, but I know EXACTLY what you mean.

Nowadays you can listen 24/7 nonstop.

You can "make yourself do it".

But it won't bring back the "wanting to".

quote:
Memories, they can't be boughten.

They can't be won at carnivals for free.

Well it took me years to get those souvenirs,

And i don't know how they slipped away from me. -John Prine-

Sad thought indeed, but truer than I like to think.

EJL

David Mason · From: Cambridge, MD, USA

DO YOU WATCH TV???

If so, stop. I hate to think of how many hundreds of jumbled, joltingly discordant, key-changing and/or atonal musical fragments you're subjected to in the course of a single evening. Every single bit of it is either designed to create and elicit a conditioned response from you that will hypnotise you into buying crap you don't need*;

or, it's throwback music fragments and adaptations of existing music designed to pair an existing emotional trigger with the need to buy crap you don't need* (if you'd told Skynyrd back in 1972 that they'd end up pimping fried chicken...);

or, as is in the case with station themes and news show themes and creepy dead-body-autopsy musak and drooly sitcom background musak, intros and outros, it's designed to elicit an "alertness response" in test audiences that will convince advertising executives to buy time on that particular show in order to try to sell you more crap, that you still don't need*.

All of this can definitively fry your mind, man. And, obviously, incidentally, destroy your ability to enjoy music. I hope it's not too late, only time and enforced abstinence can tell.

*(If you needed it, you'd be buying it anyway, and there'd be no point in them wasting all those billions yearly on advertising & licensing? They're "informing" you of each product's availability and new improved features as a public service, and because they're your friend? HAHAHAHAHA... sniff... drool....)

Jody Carver · From: KNIGHT OF FENDER TWEED

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Eric West · From: Portland, Oregon, USA, R.I.P.

Well Jody I dunno.

I think one thing that's missing in my later life for the last half of it (25 years) is drinking.

Beer, especially as the active ingredient in it, "hops" is an acknowledged hypnotic drug.

You mentioned "Stardust" and others. I used to go into the Mint Bar in Townsend Montana, and drink half or more days' wages" worth of booze. Always plugging Artie Shaw, the Andrews Sisters "Rum and Coca-Cola" and a couple others on the jukebox over and over and over. To this day I get the mental picture of sitting there halfway down a row of a dozen daquiris, or two pitchers away from closing time. Those songs were that ingranied into me and it's been thirty years.

Others in high school, like some of the "Elton John" or James Taylor songs elicit similarly ingrained mental images. All were attended by the massive ingestion of alcohol. That was a period in my life where music was "Everything". I can run the whole timeline during the 60s-70s "Set to Music".

In fairness there are still mental images I get from listening to TEF's "Sixteen Tons", and "Playmate" "I'm an old Cowhand" from periods in my 52 year life long before the "alcohol years".

I think that in my case, the links to mental imagery became much less when in 1979 I started playing music in public for money.

I think my addiction to playing it live for the physical sensation has lessened the previous link of music to my psyche. Probably a protective mechanism of my addiction.

Addictions have them you know.

Hm...

Something to think about anyhow...

EJL

[This message was edited by Eric West on 17 July 2005 at 03:02 AM.]

Gene Jones · From: Oklahoma City, OK USA, (deceased)

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[This message was edited by Gene Jones on 13 November 2005 at 12:49 PM.]

Jody Carver · From: KNIGHT OF FENDER TWEED

There are few and not none that I know of...........

Keith Cordell · From: San Diego

Maybe it's a lack of interest in looking for the good current stuff, or finding the interesting but obscure older stuff that could pique your interest and get the ole juices flowing. I am constantly reading about old and new artists that might be interesting to me. I have discovered a few great ones lately that I'd love to share with you that you might like, given the ones you mentioned;

1. Derek Trucks. The heir to Duane Allman, an indescribable master of the bent note when he was a mere 15 years old- and he;s had a lot of time to mature!
2. Norah Jones. If you like the torch songs that Jody mentioned or just like smooth, easily digested but seriously complex music she is AMAZING. And she is Ravi Shankar's daughter...
3. Beck. Yeah, I know, he has that hip-hop rep but check out a record called Sea Change- after you've listened to it about 10 times you'll want to play to it. Very cool and inspirational, and not even a tad like his other records.
4. Pat Metheny. Every piece he has ever done has left me scratching my head, wondering what inspired him to create some of his music. Once again it is easily just listened to, or you can analyze your a$$ off- lovely.

There is a lot more stuff out there and a lot of reissues that could put a happy grin on your face. I too tend to spend a lot of my time over working my brain when I listen, but these records tend to be the ones I can really listen to. Lots of great re-releases coming out, too- Stonewall Jackson is a recent find for me that I can't help but grin a lot when I listen to.
Listening enjoyment is something worth fighting for- it has to be what got you started playing in the first place, right?

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GFI D8 Non-Pedal, Peavey Delta Blues, Goodrich H10K VP, Modded Vox V-847, Ibanez DD1000 Digital Delay, Dunlop Lap Dawg bar

Roy Ayres · From: Riverview, Florida, USA, R.I.P.

Gene and Jody have it right. If you look up the word "music" in the Merriam Webster online dictionary, you will find that one definition of music is:

Jody Carver · From: KNIGHT OF FENDER TWEED

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