So, it turns out that I have been neglecting this blog. I will start writing more again. First off, I vow to stop waiting until I have what I consider to be a “great” idea for a post, as this means that I usually end up having an idea about once a week and posting even less. I believe that this will better reflect what is going on with me and the ideas that I am interested in.
Second, I will be attempting to start an online magazine with a friend of mine, and thus I will have a forum for my long, rambling, detailed ideas that is not this blog. The ideas in this blog will be smaller, the posts will be more streamlined, and with any luck, you won’t have to put up with so much just because you kind of like me.
Recently I have been listening to more and more older music. These things include: Stax Records Singles (1959-1968) and the like. It got me to thinking that the context in which we listen to our music has a great effect on how we hear it. Our grandparents listened to music differently than we do, our parents listened to it differently than they do now, and we listen to it in a way that no one would have dreamed of. I never truly appreciated a lot of this music until I started to listen to it on my own terms. In the context of an oldies radio station, motown songs always sounded so dated to me. Especially when they were accompanied by an intro discussing in which year they were released. 1960, for example, was 25 years before I was born. I am not even 25 years past my birth year, so thinking of 25 before it is just incomprehensible.
Listening to these things on my ipod certainly changes things. I can only imagine what it must have felt like to use a walkman for the first time, listening to music as you wander around a city, for the first time being able to take personal music listening out of the context of the home and bring it with you wherever you want to go. Now, I can fit probably every motown release onto a player about the size of a deck of cards. My parents used to have to buy 45’s.
Infinite availability has inured us to the genius of past generations of musicians, I think, but it doesn’t have to keep inuring us. We can use this to our advantage. I think many people would find that Roy Orbison can seem as brilliant to us as he did to our parents, that Otis Redding can still sing a song that breaks your heart, that Coltrane still cooks, and that the king still rocks. Basically, we should use what we have to our advantage. Try listening to something old, you might be surprised that it doesnt sound so dated when you take it in on your own terms. As a matter of fact, it may sound newer for its unfamiliarity.
