(written 3.11.09)While taking the rare walk to work (since I usually bike) I started to think about people and music. Music is an enormous part of my life. I am around it for at least 10 hours of my day. As people who personally know me as with everything I am very opinionated with music. I like to think that my musical tastes are top notch, even though I admit some stuff I listen to has a very niche fan base (such as gabber or breakcore). I am very selective and picky with my music and refuse to buy a CD in most instances unless I know that most if not every single track on the album will be enjoyable. I don’t go out and buy CD’s for 1 song, as so many people are apparently apt to do.
What I wonder upon as I passed a stereotypical (possibly illegal) cleaning crew worker sitting in his truck outside of the restaurant he works at listening to tejano, is this: how can people stick with listening to only one style of music? Now you many say, that’s not true, no one can listen to one form of music, people listen to all sorts of music. Yet from all of my observations there are an unexpected number of individuals who only truly listen to one form of music. Country fans, hip hop fans, r&b fans, spiritual music fans, tejano fans, polka, big band…etc. Many, many people stick with one style and fill their life with it. Now, while filling your life with music is never a bad thing, as I am continually amazed when I run into people who don’t really regard music as important, I think sticking primarily to one style is doing a great disservice to the listener.
By only really listening to one genre/style/form of music you are locking yourself into a limited and closed off world. Now, I’m going to pound my chest here a bit, but I listen to a large and varying collection of music. From jazz to classical to techno, to heavy metal to hip hop to blues to minimalistic noise. I listen to all of these genres and more yet out of them I am very selective as to what I listen to. For jazz my favorite time period is the 60’s and early 70’s free form era. I have a plethora of albums from this time period as well as albums that are close to this style from earlier and later. Out of all the different jazz styles this is the one that speaks to me and that I enjoy the most. There are some artists I have found that can entertain me out of this period, such as some of the earlier big band jazz greats but my true love in this genre is from the experimental period. I also prefer my blues from the same time period. I have found that I can not listen to blues before the 40’s for one specific reason, the audio quality of the recordings. While I deeply appreciate roots blues and enjoy it to some extent I can not listen to anything off of say Chess Records and similar labels from the 20’s and 30’s specifically because the quality of the recording is so horrible. Sure, that’s what they had (especially with the low budget world of delta blues back then) but I can’t get around it.
I digress.
There is so much quality music out there that people miss, especially when they limit them selves. Now a lot of people who know me are going to cry wolf and say I limit myself with my opinions and un-based biases…and you know what you’re probably right, but I have so much music already and keep going deeper into the things I know I enjoy that I’m not in danger of running out of new music for a long time, besides I’m not missing anything by not checking out the newest Arcade Fire disk.
What really struck me with this idea was when I considered what I had been listening to on my way to work. I had recently acquired a large collection of singles from an old electronic record label called R&S. I’ve been familiar with the label since the mid 90’s and have listened to a few of the releases. I started going through this collection, listening to the artists I had never heard before and was amazed at my luck in finding such a large collection of quality electronic music. So here I am exploring completely new music by completely new artists, sure it all gets lumped under the generic ‘electronic music’ label (which is probably the most vast and all consuming genre out there, more than rock I would think) while this dude is whiling away his time with the same stuff he was probably raised on (I figured that’s how any person in my generation would get into folk music so heavily that it was his choice of aural pleasure right away in the morning…I mean I don’t wake up and put on polka since I wasn’t raised on it). Although I digress from my original point and open up an entirely different rant on musical tastes.
There is just too much music out there, across the entire spectrum that is quality material that people miss out on experiencing due to limit perception. I admit I fall pray to this as well…I’m sure there are a handful of emo or alt-county tunes I could get into…I’m just not going to waste my time and sanity trying to find them….especially when my plate is overflowing with what I already have in backlog. If you stick with one genre you severely limit yourself to experiencing other worlds. Just because the band doesn’t have a Christian message doesn’t mean you should ignore it, it doesn’t mean they don’t believe what you believe; they just choose not to wear their ideology on their sleeve. If you only listen to rap/hip-hop you miss out on other musical styles that are more then likely the influences or source material for your favorite artists or similar in ground work but different in delivery. I know many jungle tracks that any fan of 50 Cent would love to bump in their ’64, yet because it isn’t rap they don’t even look at it. Expand your tastes (although I’m going to hold tight where I am, I’m pretty damn diverse just really picky in that diversity).
The one thing that irritates me to all hell is when people say they listen to a little of everything. Really? Does that mean you really just switch between the corporate alt rock channel and the corporate urban channel on the FM dial? Do you just own a bunch of soundtracks that include diverging genres that you can get into (sometimes only because it reminds you of your favorite moments in the movie). Sorry but that isn’t actually a wide and varying taste in music. People who fill their CD collections with albums based upon that 1 song they heard on the radio and really got into but then found that that song was really the only one they liked and still say they like the band is like saying I like the Nazi’s because they did that one really responsible social program for their citizens but I didn’t agree with the rest of their policies but I’d still go see them at a rally just for that one policy. Yeah, I likened rabid pop music consumerism to Nazism. If it weren’t for those kinds of people Hootie and the Blowfish wouldn’t have made the money they did. Darius Rucker and Adolph Hitler are both evil in my eyes, sure one helped exterminate 12 million or so people on a cleansing campaign and the other just produced a few platinum reaching adult easy listening rock albums…same crimes in my eyes.
Yet I digress again.
Conclusion: Explore music, you will be amazed at what is out there and don’t come trying to lynch me when I hate. Like The Onion says, You’re Favorite Band Sucks!
