I have been listening to a lot of internet radio of late. Time and time again, much to my dismay, I have found that the station I tune into is labeled as “Adult Alternative” or as I like to call it “Easy Listening for Generation X.”
How did this happen? I used to be hip, I used to rock. My CD collection was once filled with ripping guitars, pounding bass and plenty of punk attitude. I should have known it was over when I began humming along to Bruce Hornsby while at the bank. Bruce Hornsby? I love Bruce Hornsby, he freaking rocks. Um, no, they play him at banks, anyone played in a bank most assuredly doesn’t rock.
But really, how did this happen? How could my musical tastes go from The Edge to the old man? As usual, the answer lies in Willie Nelson.
I grew up in with hair metal: Def Leppard, Whitesnake, and Poison. Loud guitars, lyrics about sexy chicks and power ballads. I remember playing hide and seek with my cousins while taunting them with the chorus to Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It.” Many an afternoon was spent pondering the deeper meaning behind Motley Crues “Girls, Girls, Girls” (ok, so maybe the time was spent ogling the hot girls in the video, but still.)
I knew the Sex Pistols, Operation Ivy and Fugazi. As a teenager I laid my long hair on the floor and let the Smashing Pumpkins panoply of sounds whirl around my head.
In college I met, and subsequently fell in love with a girl by wearing a Dinosaur Jr. t-shirt. She was one of those Punker Than Thou chicks, always out to prove that her music was hipper, that she was cooler, and had more edge in her fingernail than I did in my entire body.
Without fail, every time, she beat me. Sure I knew who Jello Biafro was, and watched Gas, Food Lodging just to see J Mascis. I can name 5 Ramones albums and drove all night to see Sebadoh play at Tipatinas in New Orleans. But she walked circles around me in terms of the bands she had seen, the records she owned, and in general punk cred. I would always lose.
It didn’t help much that I also had a soft spot for Hootie and the Blowfish.
There was a break up. A long, hard break up.
Most people would have retreated into the loud angst of punk and metal, letting their middle finger of attitude kick out the hurt and loss.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Aaron Fleming
Aw man what an entertaining story! I think we all get these worries from time to time, when you find yourself listening to more Rilo KIley and less Megadeth. But there's a place for it all, times for a rockin, times for a reflecting, times for a mellowing.
Yet nevertheless, this fills me with pain in the jowls: "Gone are the Dead Kennedys, Suicidal Tendencies, and Alice in Chains. Now the shelves are filled with Townes Van Zandt, Lyle Lovett and Lucinda Williams."
I was listening to some Dead Kennedys and Alice In Chains earlier, and they should be eternally present, never gone!
You need to get rocked up old man! :)
2 - Mat Brewster
I know I know, I should rock. I just can't.
My rockin' has gotten a little better. I've recently squeezed in a little White Stripes into my musical rotation, and they like have electric guitars and stuff.
3 - DJRadiohead
I can really identify with so much of this. I look at the CDs I have purchased here recently and they just make me feel... old. It happens gradually and then one day you realize it... it just hits you... things have changed. Good? Bad? Indifferent? It is a fuck of a thing and it does all manner of fuck to one's head. I haven't figured out if I am depressed by it or if I should embrace it. You've done a nice job of describing it.
I think (if you get the chance to hear it) you will enjoy a certain aspect of my next podcast. There is a certain shared musical heritage between the two of us, if you will, and I will be discussing a certain aspect of it.
Just remember... pimpin' ain't easy.
4 - Bennett
Wonderful post Matthew. As one who has morphed over the years from an advid fan of AC/DC, Van Halen, The Who, and UFO - into someone who prefers Jazz and classical, I feel your pain!
For me though, part of it was not wanting lyrics running through my head for days after listening to an album. Dunno what happened to the gray matter, but alla sudden the shit went on auto-repeat.
I think they call it "The Meatloaf Syndrome". That bastard's lyrics, caught accidently in a TV commercial, will pollute your brain to no end.
I do dive into the old CDs and cassettes now and then, and I still love it, but I don't crave it anymore.
5 - Mat Brewster
Thanks guys. My change was ushered along when right around the Breakup my roommate stole all my CDs. I just never got around to buying back all those metal albums.
Bennett I've always got lyrics running through my head. And I'm really bad at remembering lyrics, so its usually a snippet of a lyric followed by some humming and then me making up lyrics. My poor office mates get to hear it all.
DJ, I've still got the last podcast sitting on my hardrive, unlistned. I will try to listen to the new one when it comes. I just have a tough time dealing with podcasts. I guess I need to burn them and listen to them on the way to work. Or talk the wife into getting me an Ipod.
6 - Mark Saleski
great stuff.
what has happened to me over the years is that all of the heavier music (punk, metal, come classic rock) still gets listened to...but usually in the car or at work on the headphone.
on my home stero in the listening room, i tend to listen only to jazz, folk, blues and a pile of weird instrumental stuff that really can't be categorized.
part of this is because the stereo that i have is so damned revealing that the heavier music sounds like crap on it.
another thing might be that there's just so much music out there, that as i acquire new stuff, the slice of time left of older material gets that much skinnier.
7 - DJRadiohead
another thing might be that there's just so much music out there, that as i acquire new stuff, the slice of time left of older material gets that much skinnier.
I have found that to be a challenge for me, as well. Despite my near-constant about the state of music and all the crap I hate there is a lot of great music out there and I feel like I am gulping rather than savoring. So much music, so little time.
8 - Eric Berlin
Great job as always, Mat.
Reminds me of an old Doonesbury strip where the one of the characters is rocking out to the sounds of The Doors on the radio. He's getting all into it when... the radio announcer chimes in that he's been listening to easy listenin' classic rock!
9 - Mat Brewster
Ok, where did my last comment go? I'm going to back away slowly. This happened once before and I wound up posting the same comment three times. I'll just wait it out and when the comment gypsie wants to put it back up, he/she can go ahead and do that.
My music listening time has gone way down too. Man, in college there was so much more time for music. Now with the weird work schedule and the TV and the movies and the spending quality time with the wife there just ins't much time for tunage.
I used to get prime listening in on the road to work, but now that's only a five minute drive. That's not enough enough time to get through one Grateful Dead jam, much less an album.
10 - Eric Berlin
Dude -- Thanks the lucky stars of commuting that you only have a five-minute drive! Some of us log hundreds of miles and many hours a week...
In any event, I don't have nearly the time to check out new music than I did when I was younger. I really try and be open to new things, but time will often dictate throwing on an old fave. Probably a product of getting older too, I suppose.
11 - Mat Brewster
I do Eric, I do. I now only have to buy gas about once a month. I actually get to go home for lunch. I'm actually home right after work instead of sitting in traffic forever. I've had many a job that I had to drive for an hour or more to get to work. So I am very thankful for the short trip.
I do miss being able to listen to more music though.
12 - uao
I worry about this too. I'm proud to say I haven't gone the Bruce Hornsby route, and technically, the stuff I've recently liked isn't tagged "easy listening". However, I've been listening to a lot of electronica and dream-pop in the last few years, and honestly speaking, it bears much more in common with easy listening than rock 'n' roll.
It isn't aging; a great hard rock song will get me every time, even now. But where are the great hard rock songs?
00's punk bands just aren't going to win me over, for the most part. Nor will metal, unless its progressive, and even then, I'm resistant. I'm more patient with emo than some, but not a whole lot more patient.
The problem, I think, for me is that "rock" has gotten so corporate (even on the indie side) that even indie bands can't afford to be quirky and weird like they could in the 90's. So most rock falls into a samey-sounding post-grunge, post-emo, post-punk revival, post-Britpop, post-alternative loose category, and is pre- nothing. It just gets samey.
Just compare the first half of the 00's to the first half of the 90's; how many compelling, interesting rock groups are there now versus then? A lot of changes have happened to music, and the way we experience it, since then.
At least electronica and dream pop offers some shock of the new with its ambient, easy-listening textures.
But I lust after some real rock the way I'd lust after a thick steak after a year of eating nuts and berries on an island.
13 - Aaron, Duke De Mondo
Mat, i loved this! And i can identify quite a lot, i gotta say. But i think you're bein too hard on yourself, primarily on account of (until the advent of The Libertines when things started gettin great again), rock types were just soundin bloodless next to stuff like Whiskeytown, Uncle Tupelo, Lucinda Williams and so on. There's a HELL of a lot more attitude in "Those Three Days" by Lucinda Williams than ANYTHING Alice In Chains ever did, for example (no slight on Alice In Chains, whom i have a lot of love for). i personally started heading towards the more countrified section of the shelves for that very reason. "rock" music was bland as hell. and thank god i did, i might add. in sayin that, the record collection is still as loud as it needs to be. there's plenty room for Townes Van Sandt and Selfish Cunt on the same shelf (depending on how one arranges them, of course). i can nod knowingly at the relationship trauma also. i STILL sneer when i hear certain bands for the very reasons i used to smile when i heard them. go figure.
14 - Christopher Rose
What a sad story Mat.
15 - Mat Brewster
UAO, Hornsby isn't that bad. Most of his studio albums suck, but he's a great musician and puts on a really good live show.
I'm sure the lack of good rock has a lot to do with my transition to more folky stuff, but there is more to it. I just don't get the same feeling from a loud guitar that I once did. I just don't have much need to rock like I used to.
I haven't eliminated the electric guitar from my musical vocabulary, they usually just don't get as loud or fast as they once did.
Duke, totally agree. F'ing Townes or Lucinda or Guy Clark give more attitude and wrench more emotion out of their voices than 90% of any punk/metal/rock/emo band out there today.
Put on Guy Clarks "Desperados Waiting for a Train" and tell me it isn't freaking punk rock, for real.
16 - Mat Brewster
Ah it aint that sad, Chris. Though my collection isn't filled with a lot of punk anymore, theres plenty of great music in there.
Side note to the relationship trauma of music. There are also a few love songs that have lasted through several relationships. "In My Life" has been a theme song for two or three. I always feel a little guilty playing a song like that with my wife, when it brings back other memories of other girls, but its really a testament to the beauty of the song.
17 - Bliffle
I feel sorry for you. Apparently you were deprived of the pleasures of classical music when you were young, and now have nothing to connect you with the great music of humanity. There's a reason it's called 'classical' music: because it has universal appeal , lasts over time, and exemplifies the best of mankind. I was luckier, being placed in a choir as a young boy soprano, and having a voice of some quality, getting to sing classical music around town. My mother, tho only an immigrant farm girl, played violin and introduced me to several instruments. As I discovered the classical repertoire in my teens I was thrilled beyond belief. I worked my way thru the 9 Beethoven symphonies learning every passage, every note. I was overcome with sorrow upon finishing the last symphony: no more great Beethoven symphonies to explore! But I soon found other classical pleasures. At the same time I explored jazz, the cool kind exemplified by Norman Granz JATP and pop music of the swing variety. I still consider these superb expressions. I shared Buddy Hollys dismissal of rock as a briefly interesting form. At university I helped a small Blues Club that brought legendary musicians to small concert settings. Blues was passe to black people and of little interest to whites at that time. I made many excursions into popular music over the years, finding some enjoyment at times, but always returning to the touchstone, the great base of western music: classical. So I have always been able to find joy and pleasure in my Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Stravinski, Sibelius, etc., and even more in the felicitous combination of voice and instrument in Bachs Cantatas and Handels Oratorios and even Grand Opera! I LOVE the florid and dramatic excesses of Butterfly and Tosca! How thrilling the great moment when Tosca says "This is the kiss of Tosca!" as she plunges the knife into Scarpia!
I'm sorry for the classical-challenged who finally find the egregious novelty effect of pop music wearing off leaving them with nothing.
18 - Mark Saleski
I'm sorry for the classical-challenged who finally find the egregious novelty effect of pop music wearing off leaving them with nothing.
yow. dat is a loada hooey.
a BIG loada hooey.
19 - Michael J. West
I'm sorry for the classical-challenged who finally find the egregious novelty effect of pop music wearing off leaving them with nothing.
One Enormous Load of Hooey.
Fact is, I started on classical music. Was raised on it. Learned the great pillars of European music (Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Wagner) at school starting in the first grade.
I abandoned it sometime later in favor of pop music and never regretted it.
You see, Bliffle, of all forms of art, music is by far the most subjectively appreciated. Like color, there's no right or wrong; there's only what you like and what you don't. It is silly and untrue to say that any music has "universal appeal," as there are obviously people --sometimes large groups of people -- who don't see the appeal of it.
You needn't feel sorry for me. I was not deprived of the pleasures of classical music; I grew up on them. And I'm still a jazz fanatic. But I found pop music later than either of those and vastly prefer it; it's my musical touchstone. And I don't consider it a tragedy. Or even a step down.
20 - Shark
Nice essay.
Me; I listen to everything. Always have. On some level, there's not much difference between Stravinsky and the Sex Pistols.
BTW: Beethoven's [aka "God"] birthday is today. I started the morning with some string quartets; as the day wears on, I'm working my way through the symphonies.
It's 4:00 pm. Number 8 is on. ahhh.
Later, ____ <-[yer favorite genre here] challenged pigs,
Shark
21 - Guppusmaximus
Dude, it's ok to like "Easy Listening" because who can top Billy Joel or Hall & Oates?? But, I think you started on a low to begin with.... "Hair Metal" was all about being pussy whipped, in fact...It was NEVER metal. Thus, my label for it was "Glam Rock"(Yes, I listened to it as well.) So, in theory you were always listening to "Adult Alternative". (Except for your delvings in the punk era) Just listen to the remake of Whitesnake's "Here I go Again"..What a joke. Anyways, you can always be Punk, Metal or Rock because it's not about the clothes or piercings.(Hell, most of those people don't have a clue about the true stuff to begin with.) It's about the passion, Man!! Don't forget it!!
My current playlist:
The Carpenters
Darkane
Opeth
Helloween
Christopher Parkening
Elvis Presley
Michael Manring
Michael Hedges
Dream Theater
Iron Maiden
22 - Mat Brewster
Bliffle, for the record I like some "classical" music. I also like a lot of jazz. But this isn't the point of the essay. I have very broad tastes in music, but I was trying to talk about my waning interest in harder rock.
And don't feel sorry for me, I'm doing just fine thanks. I still get a lot out of various forms of music, just not so much the loud guitars.
Guppusmaximus I hear you on the hair metal. It really was pretty lousy rock to begin with. Though I still have a soft spot for some of the "classics." Tell me you don't shed a tear over "Every Rose Has Its Thorn" or pump your fists at "18 and Life"
"Here I Go Again" yeah, that one totally sucks. And is way over played on classic rock stations these days.
23 - Mat Brewster
Wow! Compliments from the mighty Shark. I'm truly a blogcritic now!
Truly though, thanks for the comments everyone.
24 - Shark
Universal Law: Rock n' Roll Interest Level exactly follows the average annual drop in testosterone levels.
ie. I used to leap about the room screaming and playing air guitar because it was hormonal; nowadays, I just wanna find a comfy chair and some sounds that don't irritate the shit outta me.
25 - Sister Ray
You're not the only one who's not rocking out as much. The Stones have invited country boys Brooks and Dunn to open for them:
Brooks and Dunn