2. music
  3. 192722-192372

Can we make major musical discoveries at age 50, 65, or 80?

Most if not all of us remember our early formative musical experiences vividly. Maybe it was a first live performance, maybe some new band an uncle played on his stereo, or maybe a staticky pirate radio broadcast of a brand new British song for those who grew up across the pond.

I first heard Abbey Road in my single-digit years. Come Together probably rewired my brains right then and there, for better or for worse. My parents liked classical, and I developed a long-lasting fondness for Brahms.

Later in life, more pressing priorities take over. Careers, raising families, spouses who consider music and the gear it plays on a waste of time and money.

And later, we often gravitate back towards music.

I could have been happy listening to glam-rock and prog-rock forever, but I was always curious about new music and regularly got infatuated with new genres and groups and artists. Some of these infatuations fizzled, like with black metal and post-rock. Some, like Chilean rapper Ana Tijoux, ignited a taste for Latino music and Spanish-language hip-hop that lasts to this day. Then, random encounters with the music of Floyd Lee and Junior Kimbrough reignited a long-dormant love for the blues, for good this time.

And (very) few other artists like F ck Buttons, though discovered well into middle age, had the same transformational effect on me that Eno, Roxy Music, Kevin Ayers and David Bowie had when I was 12 years old. Sadly F ck Buttons is no more, having disbanded after just three towering, monumental albums. To this day I listen to them almost daily, and I will only consider audio equipment that satisfactorily passes the F ck Buttons audition test.

Then just recently, an Audiogon member recommended German band Bohren und der Club of Gore as a gateway to Jazz for folks who don't like Jazz. Since I don't like a lot of Jazz, I figured I'd take a quick listen and not only I loved it, it immediately attached itself to empty receptors in my brains somewhere between ambient / drone / industrial and downtempo Jazz / Classical. The band immediately went into heavy rotation here in my humble abode. It is perfect focus music, too.

Which brings me to this thread. Have you experienced musical revelations later in life that equaled or bettered those from your childhood and teenage years? What were they, and when and how did they manifest?

Thanks and Happy Listening!

 

devinplombier
chmaiwald
82 posts
 

What I find interesting that even when I find something that sounds new or is in a different style I didn't listen to before I am still kind of looking for the same things. Last year I went into a bit of a jazz phase, trying to listen to different sub-styles from different times. There's a whole world to explore if you only ever listened to „Take Five“ and there were albums I discovered that I found deeply pleasing, touching and positively challenging. But with all the new approaches to playing music I was confronted with I tended to like those most that shared some qualities with other music I listen to otherwise. One example: I never liked rock's masculine, alpha-male side, so anything that gave me the feeling the musician wanted to present (in musical form) how massive his genitalia are I was out. More inward-looking – yes, please, more. I also always liked music where there's not too much going on on a surface level: Motoric Krautrock, Ambient, Dub Techno, these kind of things. So I also noticed that this plays into my approach to listening to Jazz: Too many notes kind of put me off. So for example I came to enjoy some nordic jazz such as Bremer/McCoy or the latest Jeff Parker ETA IVtet-Album – nice!

What I want to say is that even with open ears there are some things I can't escape. There are shifts in these underlying qualities. I don't listen to agressive music with the same pleasure as twenty years ago for example. But these shifts are less connected to finding new genres or styles.

disc
123 posts
 

For me, my attachment to the music of my youth is in large part due to the amount of emotion I have invested it with. This overlaps with, but is not exactly the same as nostalgia.  Nostalgia allows me to enjoy certain songs that I rejected when they were released (e.g., certain Foreigner, Styx, Toto and the like).  I hear them and it does take me back and somehow I can appreciate the music in a way I couldn’t then.  But if I listen to something like Days of Future Past, Headhunters, 2112, Ingenue or Peaches en Regalia, I connect not only with the music, but with my countless past selves that listened to the piece and what they felt when they heard it.  Over time, I’ve built a patina of emotional intensity for those pieces.   (So if one of you is the guy at 2024 CAF sitting in a small listening room on Saturday facing the long wall who requested Starship Trooper by Yes, that’s why I had tears listening; plus, the system sounded really good.)

This doesn’t preclude me finding new music that I love, but it takes me a while to build the same depth of attachment.  

jomace
21 posts
 

The only way I can discover many of the artists mentioned in these posts is if they were used by reviewers of audio equipment. My tastes  are for  music that is harmonically rich. I discovered Dixieland jazz at 12; West Coast Jazz at 14;  and Lennie Tristano and Sal Mosca at 16. Until I was 35, all my records were of jazz and good popular singers: Sinatra, Jack Jones, Ella, Nina Simone. Then a new audio system led me to big orchestral sounds, so that today I'm listening to Mahler and Bruckner constantly. If anyone here has wondered about these composers, I'd recommend Bruckner's 7th first. Be careful. You might acquire my obsession.

jfrmusic
288 posts
 

Absolutely. Thanks to Qobuz I am continually finding new artists, music and composers. It’s endless. In fact 90% of the time I’m listening to something new and I’m 77. 

devinplombier OP
250 posts
 

What I find interesting that even when I find something that sounds new or is in a different style I didn’t listen to before I am still kind of looking for the same things.

@chmaiwald

That is insightful. I find I do the same, although I don’t quite know what the things are that I’m looking for.

It’s not lyrics. In fact words kind of distract me from the music, and from whatever I might be doing while listening. I think I’ve come to terms with that and I favor instrumental music, or music featuring lyrics in languages I don’t understand.

In that way I’m going back to my beginnings: in my teen years I listened exclusively to British glam rock and prog rock though I spoke no English, and I totally liked it. The voices were instruments.

I think I react well to richly layered walls of sound and slamming, looping bass that drive my amps’ heatsinks to hot-dog grilling temperatures :)

But I also enjoy sparse, minimalist works; ambient, the aforementioned Bohren und der Club of Gore, or Anna Thorvaldsdottir whom I just discovered thanks to this thread.

But I also love the blues, which is none of the above. I do prefer downtempo and minor keys.

All I know is I know it when I hear it smiley

 

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