Still Too Soon To Know

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Three questions, which I will try and phrase right - all related though.

They're about importance. For once I'm not talking about importance to one's personal listening history, emotional development etc. I'm interested in how we as individuals perceive "music history" and "historical significance" while it's happening.

The question:

1. What moment, or trend or era in music have you felt was most important while it was happening?

2. Have there been any moments you felt at the time were important, which don't seem as important with hindsight.

3. When you first became aware of pop music as something which had a history, what seemed to you the most important things in the previous ten years?

Comments

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I saw this briefly at work and was too busy to even think about composing a response :( And now I'm doing it because the alternative is to deal with the boxes piled up behind me.

I'm not sure I can really answer any of the questions properly in any case because my musical "development" was so weird. I first fell in love with music a couple of years before I moved to v rural isolated countryside - at age 8 it was just so much chart pop. And then in the country - where even if I had been aware of a pop history I wouldn't have had access to it, PLUS it wasn't that kind of household, my parents morally disapproved of rock/pop and were given to CONFISCATING RECORDS as punishment. And that is where I stayed for a decade - not reading any music magazines (first encounter with NME = diss of Tori Amos = immediate and never-rescinded prejudice) but somehow still voraciously consuming music and going through the usual pop => alternative angsty stages.

Which meant that by the time I emerged into the outside world ie university I was armed with v in-depth knowledge of What I Liked, Why I Liked It, What I Hated, Why I Hated It, and What The Past Decade Of Music Had Been (but only if that music was a) Chart b) Female Singer Songwriter c) Trip-Hop) - but absolutely no sense that it had a history worth noting (apart from a couple of key artists who I recognised as being in the same vein as what I loved and who I'd had easy access to) and absolutely no sense that there was this...body of STUDY called Rock Criticism. (I discovered most of my music through broadsheet reviews!)

At university I had about a year of half-hearted effort to catch up, esp when I briefly decided I wanted to be a music journalist, but it never really took (if I had discovered ilx in 2001 it would have not taken AT ALL and I would have saved a great deal of money and time), mostly because I didn't really like much of the canon. And because I was getting my ideas of the canon/old music from the most deathly dull of sources (didn't discover internet til 03 really)...by the time I discovered ilx and so on, I just wasn't interested in the history of pop at all, I believed and still believe that what really, really distinguishes pop music from most other art forms is that what is important is ALWAYS what is happening now. Which means:

1) Everything I have ever loved
2) Have never felt this, I mean...grime is the obvious answer but it was important at the time! Ultimately I don't care if it goes crap and gets forgotten about. All that matters is that it was there.
3) First became aware pop had a history (as opposed to just a past) about a decade after I started loving pop, and when I discovered that the people writing and cataloguing this history were calling the music I knew I hated most the most important (ie Britpop)...I knew that this history was not for me.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

My lack of interest in the history of pop right now is...

- a quarter defence mechanism against all these people who are about a gazillion years ahead of me, such that if I thought the history was important I would basically be unable to talk about pop music to them, bar a student/teacher kind of deal which neither of us would be interested in
- a quarter prioritisation of what's happening now - I will always always always choose to hear a new record which might be great over a 40-year-old record which might be great, and I think this is the ESSENCE OF POP, though it's also a consequence of...
- a quarter lack of time and funds - you know, if it was humanly possible, I would buy or download every record I thought I might potentially love! But...I was talking to Stevie C on the Amerie thread today, some dude was v patronising to me when I asked who some old Motown people were, but lovely Stevie actually gave me recommendations and enthusiasm about them which made me want to hear them. But still...he was like, all of it's so good you can leap in blind! But I can't leap in blind, because I have stoof in the Motown section of HMV approximately 100 times in my life and every time ran away in panicky indecision. There are HUNDREDS of compilations. HOW DO I PICK ONE?! And then where do I find the time to listen to a 3CD box set? It makes me feel nervous and tired just contemplating it.
- a quarter genuine lack of interest :D

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

And of course the reason for the lack of interest is because of the second point; if what's most important is what's happening now, because it's alive and I'm part of it, what's happened before can never measure up because I wasn't there, and I can only ever feel what the people who were there felt second-hand.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

"it's alive and I'm part of it" = recognition that really it's NEVER just about the music (I cannot remember whether I usually argue this way or not). When I love the latest minimal techno 12 it's because I either have memories or...potential memories* of dancing to it in a club with my friends. When I love the latest teenpop diss it's because it fits into this glorious tabloid narrative I know inside out. &c &c.

*ie I can imagine it getting played out! and everyone going mad for it! this might never happen but that does not matter.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Bah I will be stymied by the limitations and restrictions of the COMMON WORKING DAY and no one will reply :(

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I think most people have phases where they feel very connected and engaged to the Right Now and phases where they don't - sometimes but not always linked to how they feel about the music in question. I think probably you're unusual in that most people I know can sustain that feeling with a curiosity about the past in tandem, and then when the feeling falls away they can indulge the curiosity more.

One of the reasons I made an effort to get into older music - before I got heavily involved with newer stuff - was financial of course! Pre-internet I was limited by what I could borrow from friends, all of whom were into old stuff.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I do have the curiosity about the past! It's just that it's not enough, usually, to counter the other factors. And I've never not felt connected and engaged to some sort of Right Now, I can't imagine that ever falling away.

[koganbot]

You seem never to have had an experience that is quite common for me, which is hearing something made some time ago and thinking, "I've never heard anything like that before," or "I've heard it loads but I never noticed what was going on until now" and either way then going "and everyone who's heard it before me has gotten it wrong and I can use this RIGHT NOW TO DO WHAT HAS NEVER BEEN DONE." Which is to say, yeah, I'm curious about the past but when I listen to "old" stuff it belongs to my present to be used any way I want! Just like new stuff. In fact, old stuff can be newer than the new, by being new to me.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I do actually get this, but only in certain circumstances - single tracks, sometimes, or things which come my way accidentally, or most often old songs that I hear in bars and pubs &c which I forget about afterwards and can't track down. But in a situation like now, eg me and Motown, the sheer weight of this massive genre is just too daunting to possibly feel like that about.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Lex I'm selling an old Motown compilation right now on eBay. (Motown Chartbusters Vol.1). If it doesn't sell, you can have it. Or you could bit on it yrself, it's only 1p!

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Ooh that is one of the ones that Stevie recommended! How come you're getting rid of it? I don't understand the weird machinations of ebay though, if it doesn't sell can I have it?

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I'm getting rid of it because I have a great big Motown 3CD triple pack which has almost all the same tracks on somewhere, and I need to save space!

[koganbot]

Motown is a hard one because Motown itself has been canonized, and "canon" tends to drown out the idiosyncrasies. Probably the best way to approach something that has been canonized is to listen for the stuff in it that seems to have nothing to do with the story that's usually told about it; afterwards, the whole thing may appear different from the canonical story, and it can become yours to do with what you will without its having to bear the weight of its historical importance.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Yeah I just posted in that thread that a reason I find it daunting is because I know from my experience of genres I DO immerse myself in, that it's never as simple as waltzing into a shop and picking up the canonised box set, the most interesting tracks will often be the ones which have slipped through the cracks.

Also why the fuck do people seem so...I dunno, offended when others admit ignorance? and why do they instinctively patronise you? Is it actually possible to ask ANYTHING ABOUT MUSIC AT ALL on ilx any more without someone implying that you're a bad or lame person for not knowing the answer already?

[koganbot]

Well, ilX seems to have crossed some threshold so that the bores and creeps carry the day, though my reading of it is too limited to know for sure (impressions like mine become self-confirming, since they're what drive me away from hanging around and looking for counterexamples; and of course there are still some good threads, and the fact that people like Tim Finney are still around must mean there's a lot of value not only in what they're saying but in what they're reading). Also, your stance threatens people so some of them are looking for an edge that allows them to dismiss you; and the threatened ones who aren't looking for an edge might be projecting onto you the idea that you're bragging when you say you don't know who someone is. There are 60,000 CDs released each year (that's what I read somewhere, anyway), not to mention Internet-only stuff, so no one's going to know most of what's out there. Some music attracts more toxicity than others (which doesn't make it bad music); I'm more hesitant talking about hip-hop than I am about country, even though I'm vastly ignorant on both subjects. Hip-hop people who think they know their shit are more likely to shit on others. They'd rather maintain a knowledgeable facade than to learn new and interesting ideas from someone who may not have heard all that they've heard.