Can't stand fill-in-the-blank music?

[becca]

Probably because Fleetwood Mac encompassed such a wide variety of styles it might be more noticable among it's fans, but I've always had an inability to understand the sometimes very narrow interest type of music fan. I am so much a musical omnivore who gets really into discovering and understanding music new to me while others might have tweleve varients of the same 45 or CD for the slight differences, or eighty live tapes of a San Francisco based group doing the same dozen and a half songs over and over, and usually those people respond to some other entire area of music with an "I can't stand that". Often it's country music and rap music people say this about, it used to always be jazz before rap came along, and for awhile it was disco. Is there something wrong with me? I really think that sometimes... how can I be digging on some old Dolly Parton or even Cowboy Copas stuff one day, the more obscure rarities of european psychedelic rock another, and enjoying the opera singing The Priests on tv with Mareid O'Brennan of Clannad the next? My Jamaican and African vinyl andCD collection is sizable and deep I think, my Japanese pop and early Blues ones at least presentable. I enjoy much folk of all periods, exotic percussion, hawaiian guitar, South American traditional, all modes of dance including the reviled disco/funk.

In other ways in my life I've been a reactionary against specialisation, which is probably why I'm something of a failure on paper I suppose. Jill of all gets Jack from today's society. A bit of computer programming, hands-on horticulture, commercial artist, a stint as a fiction editor, delivery person, sign painter, retail clerk. But how do you pick one thing, one style of music or artist and stick to just that? It would be like cheesecake everyday, and eventually I'd get sick of even that. Life seems too short to fit it all in that is available. I'm the same with books; non-fiction, sf, romance, war and westerns even! I'm the opposite of the person with every Dr. Who and Star Trek book but will have read a couple of them.

I don't know, maybe people are really filfilled and happy closing the door on all of this and all of that to focus on one narrow field of vision, but usually the most successful creative people, the very people indeed the closed-off focus on, are like me. They don't for example watch only U.S. action-movies and go on to make near-exact copies of them, they are the people who bring many influences and experiences to bear and result in such mutli-faceted and fully developed art. 'To bear', hee, Bears are omnivores, I think people are supposed to be.

There is a world of music and sound from many places and times more available than at any other time in human history, suspend the urge to dismiss and try to see it through the creator's point-of-view, to figure it out, to feel the moods. It's called growth and it is very fulfilling! My 'collection' will never be complete but I am hungrier for music than I have ever been. I wish I could live a thousand years and try to hear it all! How can anybody settle for just '50s style doo-wop when there is Capetown jive, and Andean flutes, and Norweigan strings, and middle-eastern tablas?

If you 'hate' some kind of music to me it sounds more like 'I hate music', I just don't get that. Discrimination is a natural trait mind you, but it's usually a mistake to broadly write-off entire groups of music the same as it is with people. I won't say you might be missing something, if you do that I absolutely know that you are. Your identity is not going to be obliterated by letting it all in, you can still extol the virtues of John's bass lines or Lyndsey's magic fingers, but putting down something else to make it bigger doesn't work at all.

[wondergirl9847]

Lindsey.

I'm like you, I like all types of music and love to find new music or rare stuff you don't hear everyday. You obviously cannot trust the radio these days for that as they play the same 25 songs in various order. Plus, Clear Channel owns everything, so even if you cross state lines, you get KISS FM and the oldies/country/pop/etc. stations sound the same too. Even the DJs sound similar...disturbing.

Even though I do like all sorts of music, there are still songs/artists/genres I don't care for. There are people on this board who HATE boy bands. I like them (most of them anyway), some more than others. I enjoy listening to classical music, but wouldn't wanna listen to it on a constant basis. I need variety. The only genre I really will not listen to is probably death metal. Just not my thing.

People have preferences and sometimes, I also can't understand why folks won't give certain music/artists a chance, but that's life.

I just listened to a live version of Come from Lindsey's GOS tour. Now, on my Zune...Beat It by Michael Jackson. UPDATE: Now....Demon Woman by Flight of the Conchords.

If music be the food of love, then play on.

[mylittledemon]

I probably don't HATE any kind of music either. I can always find something redeeming within a genre that I tend to dislike such as "hip hop", or "country"

[chriskisn]

Personally I never understand how people can afford to listen to each and ever musician and genre under the sun. I'm definitely one of those people who restricts my listening/purchasing to a select few artists, but I do go out and find the back catalogue for those artists so I have 50 albums by Dylan, etc.

I have no really interest in going beyond what I already listen to, partly because I rarely get time to listen to the 10,000 songs on my computer now (oh for an iPod).

As the very opposite to Becca, I can't understand people who buy one album by an artist. If I buy one, I'll buy the entire back catalogue. To me that is much more interesting than listening to a range of music.

I guess that is why it is personal choice!

EDIT: Think of it as being like monogamy. I'm happy with my exclusive relationship with my wife and have no desire to have affairs with other women. Some people like to bed hop. There isn't a right or wrong way, there are just different ways. Whatever makes you happy...

[David]

I listen to an array of music, but I have my specific dislikes of styles.

[HejiraNYC]

I don't know what it's called exactly, but I absolutely cannot stand the modern rock/pop genre where the word "you" is pronounced yee-oh, as typified by acts like Blink 182, Linkin Park, Avril Lavigne, Miley Cyrus, etc. They're typically minor-chord teen angst ditties that all pretty much sound the same. Nothing, and I mean nothing makes me reach for the dial/remote faster than when this **** comes on .

[Gypsycat999]

^I agree completely with you. I never cared what's in the charts (oh yes, the charts of the 60s & 70s hehe). Also when I look on people in my age, somehow they look all the same to me. Maybe they did always or it's just me...

There's some music I can't stand listen to (for example hip hop or techno) but I enjoy listen to a whole lot. And I also think you get a lot more when you buy the entire collection of an artist than just one or two albums but unfortunetly I don't have enough money to buy so much stuff. That way I'd only be able to listen to very few artists. So I try to discover some new music (I mean music I haven't already listened to no modern music) instead of collecting everything from 2 or 3 bands.

[DigYourGrave]

Originally Posted by becca

how can I be digging on some old Dolly Parton or even Cowboy Copas stuff one day, the more obscure rarities of european psychedelic rock another,and enjoying the opera singing The Priests on tv with Mareid O'Brennan of Clannad the next?

OH MY WORD! Respect!


I love music. As a music therapist, you have to have the type of taste that fits all, really. You wouldn't ask a doctor to not prescribe medicine just cos he or she didn't like it. So in turn, I have to have an open mind when it comes to tunes.

That being said, in my 2 years as an MT, I've never had the displeasure of dealing with Slayer. Thrash metal? Just the name turns me off. Blegh.

[HejiraNYC]

Originally Posted by chriskisn

As the very opposite to Becca, I can't understand people who buy one album by an artist. If I buy one, I'll buy the entire back catalogue.

I'm totally guilty of this. The downside to it, however, is that it makes me somewhat reluctant to fully embrace an artist who has produced a sh**load of music over a very long career. It's hard to get into a "mature" artist's music all at once- the music becomes a blur and the appreciation for that artist is nowhere near the appreciation you get by following that artist in "real time." For example, I would love to really dig deep into Neil Young's catalogue, but between all of the band albums, solo albums, bootlegs, live albums, box sets and videos, the amount of music that man has produced is just head-spinning. In recent years I have started to get his music in a way that I haven't been able to comprehend before, but I feel like it would take me the rest of my life to fully appreciate and understand the context of his work. Bob Dylan is another one. For the most part, to my ears, listening to him is akin to listening to the grinding maw of a garbage truck. But at the same time, there is a definite gravitas to his music that is interesting to me, and is something that I would probably understand with enough time, effort and patience. Or maybe not. Will it be worth the effort?

[markolas]

I like a fairly wide range of musical styles, but yes there are certain kinds I don't like and I don't think that means I just don't like music or that I'm narrow-minded. I'll give most anything a chance, but I certainly have preferences.

Usually I won't bother digging deeper into an artist's work if I don't like the first thing or two I hear. Some artists have made very different kinds of music over the course of their careers - I may care for certain "periods" during a particular artist's career over others and that'll account for me not having everything someone ever recorded. There are maybe 2 or 3 artists I like well enough (and that have a consistent enough body of work) to have everything they've ever done. Also, I tend not to buy a CD that I don't think I'm going to like all the way through.

[LukeA]

I can do without most ranchera music.

That's about it.

[estranged4life]

"I know what I like 'cause I like what I know...."

I'm the BIGGEST junkie of music around, when one sees my music collection they usually have a look of shock on their face, which is then followed by the usual "Do you listen to all of those?", "Yep, pretty much".

I am a completist, when I like an artist I hunt down their complete catalog of releases, even if it means paying around $80 for one disc

I have jazz, rock, METAL (Gee, in a lil' more than 9 hours I will be 39 and I have spent 25 years of my life listening to metal), country, big band (I love that stuff for some reason), new age, classical, disco, funk, spoken word and even the Osmonds in my collection (Which I inherited from my late-Mother) . I'll listen to ANYTHING as long as it is NOT forced down my throat.

I even had Debbie used to looking for new releases for me when I was busy and could not make a trip to the store.

I never been into the whole download a single thing nor have I ever been into buying an album/compact disc/cassette/etc just for one track - I am a "dinosaur" in the sense I listen to the whole album not one track...

And remember kiddies, "Dinosaurs may no longer be around, but they ruled for millions of years".

[becca]

I always had problems with that boy band label, maybe because to me The Beatles were a boy band. Also The Monkees, Raspberries and on up, but mostly people seem to mean groups like Osmonds, Menudo or New Kids. I'm not entirely sure what thrash metal is but can be in a metal mood even entering my fourth decade.

When I do like an artist a lot I will dig out everything studio-wise I can (and I have everything Miriam Makeba put on vinyl as one example) but I draw the line at live recordings for various reasons. I really hate when you think you are getting all studio tracks of someone and after buying it find all or some are live recording with applause. Live jazz is the one exception with that even though the applause still irritates me when it comes over some playing.

Oh well, I'm just a music slut, hee hee. I don't get into the lives of the music makers so much but I can be a real fanatic for stuff I like the most and maybe even push it at people, but I do seem to get some people hooked into things new to them, and that's what it's about in a way really.

Oh, and I heard an Ashlee Simpson song I liked and thought she was good on, so I don't think I really block my ears even to the current teen-bubblegum stuff. I don't expect it to be aimed at my tastes anymore than Barney the Dinosaur should be.

Overall maybe what I'm saying is I tend to look forward, to seek out the new (even if it's old it might be new to me) but I know people who look backward almost exclusively, who seem happy enough I guess listening to the same Eagles records they listened to in 1978. I mean they really listened to it in 1978, 1988, 1998, 2008 and all points inbetween! I can't stand even to play Rumours more than once or twice every couple of years. And yet the fact that someone is the fixated can make me curious about the music that can stand up for someone that long and I will investigate it further.

It's not 'all good' but 98% of everything is not crap either (although I hate to disagree with Theodore Sturgeon). I suppose the die was cast when I got laughed at by some kids in junior high for saying how cool I thought The Grand Illusion by Styx was.