I had Good Charlotte spinning yesterday and it just felt like to much was going on, I switched it up to Matchbox 20 and liked it more, but i've noticed lately its hard for me to sit through an entire album. I paly spotify all day and its just been blah. Feels like i lost my music loving mojo....
IKD maybe im just overthinking it but some music lately has just not hit the spot. Its like i want to spin a good album, I dig and dig and cant find anything i want to listen to, switch to CD and its the same, same with cassette, the format or genera dose not seem to matter, I just feel fatigued, and not sure what it is. Either way, any of you ever experience this?
I'm 55 and my tastes have changed a lot over the years. between the ages of 9-12, I was mainly into new wave & post punk. early vinyls I'd bought included Blondie, Devo, B-52's, Bowie's Let's Dance, Human League, Japan, Duran Duran, et al. Then, partly from MTV, partly influenced by friends and my parent's horrified reaction, I got into metal and from 82-85, my tastes were Ozzy, Priest, Maiden & Van Halen, transitioning to hair & glam Ratt, Crue, Faster Pussycat, Kix, NY Dolls, Hanoi Rocks. '86 I was out walking around on a Friday night and came across a punk rock show at a VFW hall and found my crowd. I started out with hardcore, Black Flag, Dead Kennedy's, Circle Jerks etc, before transitioning back to post punk of the Cure, Smiths, Depeche Mode, REM. By the late 80's, I was listening to a lot of goth and industrial, so Front 242, Christian Death, Sisters of Mercy, the Mission, The Cult, Nitzer Ebb, KMFDM, Psychic TV, but also, as the 90's came on, I began listening to the Cocteau Twins, Pale Saints, My Bloody Valentine, Lush, & Slowdive but also Pixies, Red House Painters & American Music Club.
As the 90's came on, I mostly skipped grunge, but got into the indie rock of Yo La Tengo, Pavement, Polvo, Archers of Loaf an post rock of Tortoise, The Sea and Cake, Jeff Buckley Talk Talk, Trans Am, Him (not the got h band), Brokeback & Red Snapper. The latter led me to the instrumental hip hop in the mid 90's of DJ Shadow, DJ Krush & drum & bass of Wagon Christ, Amon Tobin, Funki Porcini & Cold Cut. By the late 90's, I was listening to Thievery Corporation, The Roots, Cat Power, Pharcyde, A Tribe Called Quest & other underground hiphop acts. As the new millennium came on, I got into folk and Americana like Iron & Wine, M. Ward. Granddaddy, Giant Sand & Calexico, while also listening to MF DOOM, Aesop Rock, Roots Manuva & The Herbaliser, as well as acts like Mouse on Mars, To Rococo Rot, Ratatat, Queens of the Stone Age, Add X to N, Pole & Jan Jelinek. By 2006, I'd moved to a new town, only this time, I didn't make music friends- I was 36 and people my age were having kids and doing boring things, so I made friends with people into other activities, mainly motorcycles and meditation- these people listened to terrible music and I stopped listening to new music entirely, instead, resting on the "greatest hits" of the previous 15-20 years.
Eventually, I came to find this listening to the sounds of my younger years to be quite disturbing. I had a mini mid-life crisis: I didn't want to become one of those old fuddies who only listened to the sounds of his salad days; I firmly believe that cutting oneself off from new experiences and wallowing in nostalgia hastens mental aging. I needed an intervention! in the early 2010's social media was still mostly awesome, so I polled some friends that I new from my record collecting days, begging for an infusion of new music and soon began listening to Fleet Foxes, the Black Lips, Fruit Bats, The Black Keys. It took me a while, but by the mid teens, I had started making music friends and my dates began to shift slightly- Tame Impala entered, as did Beach House, Kurt Vile (as an aside, I remodeled Kurt's Kitchen in 2015-6) The War On Drugs, & Courtney Barnett. late teens, a friend introduced me to stoner and doom metal, so I added Elder, Fu Manchu, Clutch & Sleep to the menu. I'd also started playing guitar again and researching gear led me to Emma Ruth Rundle, Drab Majesty & more.
Currently, my play lists are populated by the Marias & other latin musica alternativa such as Asimov, the Melenas & Macha. I'm also digging Real Estate, Beach Fossils, Melody's Echo Chamber, Frankie Rose, Slowdive (again, they're still making great recordings), Wild Nothing, No Vacation, Men I Trust, Nilüfer Yanya, Held By Trees, Hermanos Gutierrez, Khruangbin, Glass Beams, Weedpecker, Arc de Soleil, BALTHVS, & more. every once in a while, I'll dip back into any of the aforementioned periods and music, being careful not to linger too long. I'd been relying on streaming algorithms for new music discovery, but I recently ditched my Apple Music account after using it and iTunes for the past 25 years. Instead, I've set up a Plex server to stream the music I own and for new music discovery, I rely on YouTube (KEXP is a great resource!) and instagram, as well as recommendations from friends.
I'll add that I went through a period from 2012-2022 where a didn't listen to music much at all- 2012, I had some health problems and decided to move back to the midwest, where I had grown up. It only took 6 weeks to realize that I didn't belong in Iowa and took everything I could carry with me on an airplane and came back to Philadelphia, leaving my hi-fi behind. I tried using my earbuds, but that never gelled with me. I used a series of cheap portable bluetooth speakers through 2019, when I trash picked a Bose Wave Radio and used it as a makeshift sandbar in my living room, pairing it with a projector to watch movies. Oddly, that seemed to rekindle my love affair with music and in 2022, I got back into audio in earnest.