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

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

NICE SPELLING MISTAKES IN THE POLL THERE, ME. When lj lets you edit polls in a totalitarian and undemocratic manner life will be much easier.

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

This does bring up something I think is an interesting'n'relevant thing since iPods etc. meant you can carry around half your music collection all the blvddy time and the ridiculous ease with which you can pirate the back catalogue of, eg: Metallica means that yr modern sixteen-year-old has no trouble getting hold of and listening to music that might have taken awhile to build up before. But then there's probably a thing like that with every new format and also everyone's always had access to, eg: their parents' record collections etc.

Of course the problem of why on EARTH they only chose seven genres to poll people regarding and had 'Spanish Guitar' as one of them is just ...yeah, I wish I'd had more time to make this poll. Also I forgot to mention that my plan was to have a GENRECANON or something where we worked out what seven genres were the most important tomorrow, since err, I'll be at work?

And err. I am writing like three things at the same time as this so I've totally forgotten what my point was. Fail by me there. Oh yes! I was going to put in a 'what's yr occupation' q in the poll to see if there is a difference between students of all ages and working people or whether the retired enjoy more post-hardcore or well. I don't know. In the spirit of the Pew poll I haven't thought this through very well have I?

(incidentally I am not picking on Lex in the poll; as is well-known, neither him nor me knows any music pre-2000 BECAUSE IT IS ALL RUBBISH.)

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

my genres are all kinds of HARDCORE

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I love Patrick Wolf's music, but cannot understand what the young folk see in Bloc Party. Then again, nor could I understand my own generation making a fuss about the Strokes, or any generation making a fuss about the Beatles, when both had peers who were vastly more deserving of the attention.

And my parents like the Chemical Brothers, who bore me rigid.

i forgot i forgot

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

EXPERIMENTAL HORSE!

This unites us all -- by dividing us.

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.

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

20 and under
0 (0.0%)

Oh dere. Time we packed it in?

there was a dog! he had two bones!

[cis.livejournal.com]

OK am I the only person in the world who, when faced with an open Spotify application, never has any idea what to listen to?

Back catalogues being theoretically ultra-available on the universal jukebox of the internet is great and all but it doesn't mean I'm actively going to seek out any music from the vast unfamiliar tundra of the 1970s.

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

No, hang on, right, I've had a think. And what I think is that everyone (myself very much included) has to stop imagining that this demographic known as THE KIDZ exists, since clearly everyone thinks it is younger than themselves and therefore it is probably just what we imagine we were doing at whatever arbitrary age we've set it at (I think of them as being about eighteen but I thought of them as being about fifteen when I was eighteen and etc. etc.) Likewise maybe people look at old types and go 'AHA, THE OLDZ' in a similar way. And I think maybe this is unhelpful in all directions? I mean the basic thing is that no one agrees about all music and it doesn't matter when you were born with regards to that.

And that is my big hippie thought for the day. It's ok, no one will see it down here so my street cred will be preserved...

[petronia.livejournal.com]

All I know is, every specific musical act-related internet forum I've ever been on has had regular posters who were teens, regardless of how old the act is.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

"Generation gap is a myth to the extent that this means that there's some chasm between OLDS and YOUNGS. Depends on whom, but I imagine more kidz like their parents music than their parents liked *their* parents' music."

I meant this to mean it's mythical NOW; the part at the end was suggesting that the Gen Gap was probably realer in many ways (in music, at least) in the 60's. But that's also because now there are much much much more significant generational gaps -- internet use, LGBT politics, other basic policy stuff. I'm guessing that there are bigger disparities between childrens' views v. parents' views now than there even were in the 60's, actually -- anecdotally speaking, I think you can find plenty of young people in the U.S. who, e.g., are generally homophobic or gay-unfriendly who still oppose anti-gay-marriage legislation, which aligns them socially with their parents (homophobia and gay-unfriendliness) but politically directly opposed to them (not wanting to write laws to that effect).

Divided not by age or genre but by function

[meserach.livejournal.com]

Music is FOR things. Different music for different things!

I think about this mostly in relation to dance music. Dance music, when it shows up in the charts and is therefore in the faces of people who do not go to clubs and dance, is often dismissed as so much undifferentiated noise. What's the problem? Well, you're not supposed to sit on your sofa and LISTEN to it, is what. Dance music makes sense at a dance venue!

Functions aren't necessarily as discrete. I usually thing about the purpose of songs in an emotional sense: angry music, sad music, happy music, sexy music. Each has its place in my life.

Much of the extent of generational differences is purely differences in what functions one needs at different times in their lives. I listened to a lot more angry music in my teens!

The rest is largely a matter of simple salience - the music came out at a time while you were receptive, you were exposed, you made it part of your brain. Critical consensus elevates some artists to "timeless" status, which keeps them salient, and in currency, and thus in people's brains.

Grandpa speaks

[koganbot]

OK, er [wheez], everyone gone home? What hour is this? AM or PM? [cough] Well, say, when I was a wee'un, [hacking cough]....

Sorry, oh yes, um, generation gap! Hah! You want to talk about generation gap! I'll tell ya, in my day, we had generation gaps, subgeneration gaps, prenatal generation gaps, postcoital generation gaps, and every other kind of gap as well, I tell you...

Well, let's start with 1963. In 1963, oh, there was... oh, "Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh," "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport," "Those Lazy Hazy Crazy Days of Summer," "The End Of The World," "I Love You Because," "I Will Follow Him," "My Boyfriend's Back," "It's My Party"... songs that had almost nothing in common except one thing [gazes into the air]... got bored with pop in '63, I'll say, stopped listening, became a folkie at age 9, got scared and stayed a folkie, I'll tell you, winkling and ripping my van right up to 1966 when... I was saying, about those songs from 1963, those "Surf City"s and those "Mecca"'s. They had zilch and nada in common except for one thing: absolutely nothing remotely like them made it onto the Top 40 in 1966. Other than an anomalous Sinatra and a WTF Lorne Greene, there was nothing. The past was cinders. Talk about gaps, this was a chasm, an abyss, a schism, a gulf. Past was gone, a world of fear ahead.

In 1966 there was no Elvis.
In 1966 there were no Shangri-Las.
In 1966 there were no Shirelles.
In 1966 there was no Nat King Cole.
In 1966 there was hate, like this:

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

I am relieved to discover that the Lex is indeed The Lex. Who knows what sort of metaphysical catastrophe might have occurred was this not the case.