an amorous party at a farm

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

Courtesy of freakytigger and indeed FreakyTrigger, apparently we have all resolved our generational difficulties and become one big happy Radio Two family since 1966. Blimes.

Arbitrary Woodstock reference WTF

Of course you can't have an innaccurate and limited poll carried out without poptimists getting involved, with our great experience in POLL SCIENCE and superior democratic methods. Err. Anyway, I'm clearly not the best mod for this task but away we go.


[Poll #1443342]

It would be more thorough but I appear to be experiencing mild 'stealing wireless fail' so thought I'd just shove it out here quick.

Comments

BRAINFIZZ

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

Whilst I'm explaining myself: the 'fondness' thing is I think important because there are people like, say, Morrissey or Mr E or Pete Wentz or err whatever there was before Morrissey (masculinity perhaps, ho ho ho) or y'know, similar figures, who are hugely important to the listeners/fans (& I have no idea why I'm picking on white male emos here, incidentally, other than the convo me and Tom had in the other thread thing) that are relevant to yr age. I mean, I like a lot of artists like, eg: the Zombies, who obviously primarily existed in the sixties (seventies?) and they mean a great deal to me but are not the same as gateway bands like Eels, which existed at pivotal moments in mine music taste. Then again, maybe the kidz of today do not have to shoplift tapes from Woolies (FOR SHAME, YOUNGER SELF; no wonder Woolies is no more D:) in order to find these bands so perhaps they *could* have a revelatory moment to, for instance, the Beatles, in the same way someone might have in the sixties. Except that they would've had to only listen to fifties music previously in order to get the right context to draw a parallel conclusion? Argh, life has too many variables.

I suppose there are a lot of people younger than me who think Nirvana are the bestestthingevar and perfectly relevant to their lives, when really even I'm much too young to remember much of Kurt Cobain being alive.

Still: I'm always going to have a, basically rational but not necessarily proportionate, fondness for Eels and Marilyn Manson whereas ye kidz of today might like... well I have no idea. Actually tbh Marilyn Manson is v. age-determinate isn't he?

Why am I only talking about rock music? It is like the difference between TAKE THAT and MCFLY is what I mean. Except either way, I'm *NSync but nevermind, nevermind.

edit: I really have lost the ability to make a blind bit of sense, assuming I ever had it. Move along, citizens.

Re: BRAINFIZZ

[cis.livejournal.com]

Kurt Cobain was, briefly, CRAZY IMPORTANT to my friends and I when we were eleven or so and that was all about him being dead. (see also richey manic) (jeff buckley) (sid vicious) (keith moon) (brian jones) (bob dylan); I remember this gang of kids three years younger than me suddenly having a collective Kurt Cobain moment and being wtffed out of my mind over it, all "how can this person be so personally important to you when everything you know about him is older people telling you what he's supposed to mean"

which brings me onto-- i think there is a thing people don't remember, because we are intent on seeing teenagerhood as a cutting edge of fashionable taste, which is the moment when the arc of the fourteen-year-old and the thirty-five-year-old meet, as one is growing into "being down w/ the kids" and the other is growing out of. I remember when everyone I knew was decrying coldplay as boring music for thirtysomethings and i thought: but i just met a kid i used to babysit and he's immensely excited about coldplay, and in a year's time he's going to be pretending he never liked them, and five years later he'll be like "yeah but shiver was a classic". And I think that can mess up any linear sense of how music tastes shift generationally.

Re: BRAINFIZZ

[cis.livejournal.com]

i am not sure that point had any relevance to anything! oh well.

Re: BRAINFIZZ

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

This is a v. good description! And also probably has more relevance to everything than anything else in this thread.

The 'embarassed by yr previous selves' Nietzschean thinger (is that Nietzsche? at some point he says something about looking back on yr previous self and going 'WHAT?!' in BG&E* I think ...o well, that thing anyway) is 1x v. good point. I mean, is anyone embarassed that their parents still listen to Elvis? (Does ANYONE still listen to Elvis?)

*Gosh I am amazing at quoting.

Re: BRAINFIZZ

[cis.livejournal.com]

oh dear the embarrassed by yr prev self thing was supposed to just be an aside!

It was more the point that a person's tastes aren't linear - as well as not being constant - and so there's this point where, within the same rough sense of genre, a fourteen-year-old who's only just learning to be a snob about pop music will coincide with a 5-year-old who's too busy to be a snob about pop music any more. So the generations are a little stretched out, they're sort of a funny shape.

tbf this is basically me doing a seth godin, maybe i should go away and make up a diagram and then talk about what we can ~learn~ from this.

(actually this is all coming from the percolation of Franco Moretti's Graphs Maps Trees, what i read last week, which has some interesting stuff on literary-genre generations)

"embarrassed by yr prev self"

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

is what i shorthand with BUBBLEGUM GUILT (then indie guilt, then popism guilt, then etc): seven ages of pop menz&wimminz, all structured by guilt HURRAH

when you are 49 you realise you have never been wrong about anything and it's everyone else who should feel guilty CURSE THEIR PUNY ANTICS

Re: "embarrassed by yr prev self"

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

Nonono I was DEFINITELY wrong about Staind and the next 27 years won't change that.

Re: "embarrassed by yr prev self"

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

When I look back on my teenage tastes I'm seriously just AMAZINGLY IMPRESSED by my taste - while everyone around me were being SHEEPLE into bad, bad, terrible britpop, I was looking down on them from the trip-hop-soundtracked moral high ground :D

Re: BRAINFIZZ

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

Graffs are grebt!

I didn't really word my response right: the non-linearity is of course what is important here. I did so much flipping about and attempting to delete my previous musical history when I was a teenager that even after I managed to get my head around pop it took me another three years to reallign that with the previous stuff as non-opposite. I guess this means I am currently down with the kids? (no)

Re: BRAINFIZZ

[atommickbrane.livejournal.com]

(Does ANYONE still listen to Elvis?)

YES! Viz spotify conversations passim. Elvis is pretty exciting!

Re: BRAINFIZZ

[cis.livejournal.com]

I used to piss the rest of my family off by insisting on listening to Elvis!

As a pre-teen/early-teen I was dead into 1950s/early 60s pop music and listened to NOTHING BUT such that my blues/Dylan/folkrock mother got a second chance to burn out on records she'd liked but not quite loved.

Re: BRAINFIZZ

[sbp.livejournal.com]

I remember when everyone I knew was decrying coldplay as boring music for thirtysomethings

TBF this has not changed.

Re: BRAINFIZZ

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Certainly when I went to see the Marion or My Life Story reunion gigs, while I enjoyed myself greatly, in each case I recognised that this was not a band to whom I could take young folks and expect them to respond with anything more than bafflement.

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

Interesting point re: reunions. My mum and I were simultaneously horrified to discover that Mike Patton is fanciable awhile ago.

Re: BRAINFIZZ

[friend-of-tofu.livejournal.com]

Actually tbh Marilyn Manson is v. age-determinate isn't he?

I dunno, I think I'm a bit older than you and my fondness for MM has gone up and down over the years, but I remember getting quite excited about why he might be important when I read about Trent Reznor working on their first album in Kerrang!