1979, Mayfair section of Northeast Philly. Working class Irish living on St. Patricks and St. Vincents and there was an honest to goodness amusement park at the corner of Princeton and Brouse across the street from Mayfair Elementary. The baseball team was called "The Holy Terrors" and my sister played 3rd base. I was the youngster yet I still palled around with the kids from the block like Willy and Dawn Killen and Robbie Slinkard and Matt & Eddie Lane. The neighborhood thug Ernie used to break into the "Mr. Coooool" Ice machine and steal bags of Ice for cooling his beer while him and the guys worked on their Camaro. I saw it with my own eyes to, he really did it.
Oh yeah, Led Zep. The older kids used to use ballpoint pen and do the "ZOSO" and "LED ZEP" on the back of their denim sleeveless jackets. And I was mesmerized and absolutely TERRIFIED of the song "When The Levy Breaks." I still am terrified of that song.
i've yet to run across a someone who hasn't been thru that 'phase'
Hi.
hey. so what's kept you from zep J?
I spent my musically formative early-teen years 1) living in small towns and 2) listening to punk, both of which are--for better and for worse--scenes that present musical taste as a zero-sum game, and one that's laden with cultural affiliation: If you like this, you don't like that, if you're not with us, you're with them, etc. To listen to Zeppelin was not just to listen to Zeppelin, but to align yourself with, you know, "the Zeppelin crowd." And I used to fight those heshers in the parking lot, man--fuck if I was gonna listen to the same records they did.
These days I of course recognize all that shit as folly, but while I no longer think in lines that straight, nor am I as receptive, either. I do what I can to not close myself off, but they call them "formative years" for a reason, you know? I mean, I might listen to some Zeppelin, but I doubt I'll ever Listen To Some Zeppelin.
Does that mean you're done Hearing music? I hope that's not true.
I also haven't really listened to Zep like that. Just haven't had the time, I guess. I can't wait, though. I'm taking that class 7th period.
Hey, Mike. What's good?
Nah, I'm certainly not done Hearing music, but at the same time, I'm not a teenager, either. I still have that kind of enthusiasm, and I do still occasionally hear stuff that unfastens my chinstrap and watercolors all my waking time and that I listen to for days on end, but the fact is that said enthusiasm is now acted out against a much more complex backdrop--and filtered through what I hope is a more complex mind--than it was back then. I look at it like this: When you're young, your musical taste is a triangle. The first music that comes along and really knocks you sideways adds another angle, and your taste becomes a square. Whatever next gets your nose open makes it a pentagon, and so on. That first handful of metamophoses is pretty seismic, and each one changes your whole fucking channel, clearly and irrevocably. As time goes on, though, and as your taste develops more and more angles of increasingly finer grain, and feelings of "Man, I like this 'hip-hop' shit!" get replaced by feelings of "Man, I like this 'late-1960s Brazilian soft-psych' shit!", and you're less and less about making whole new shapes, and more and more about refining a perfect circle, which--although it may never have the blantant angularity and wholly tranformative punch of that first triangle-into-square--is ultimately a much more nuanced and sublime thing.
And that's kind of where I'm at. Music used to be my earthquake, now it's my weather.
What's doing, James Yeah, I understand that, of course. I also think your illustration is very, uh, illustrative, very Adorno. But I think it's a bit at odds with your earlier point about Listening (unless that was strictly aimed at Zep). Even though each of these additional angles decreases the intensity of the tremors you will feel when you hear the next angle, each new angle that you add now helps to define your own signature, if I may sample from another thread. And as you point out, smoothing out those lines into a circle is extra. I'm certainly moved by less music than I was before, but when I am moved, like by Annie Lennox singing "You've placed a chill in my heart (live)," just to give an example, I feel it just as deep, if not deeper than I did when I first heard Big Daddy Kane's "Ain't no half steppin." (No, I'm not soft, I was just listening to 50 on the train this morning and loving every minute of it.) Part of that is having a whole lot more real-world experience, but part is knowing there's still more world out there to experience. So I need to still believe in Listening, because that awareness lets me know that I'm not done living. Actually one thing that helps open my ears is hearing other people talk about their experiences and relationships to music...and on that note, I went back to Sly, Isaac Hayes, Aretha, Curtis (not that I ever really left him), and others (and Heard them anew) when I read this book which just came out. So read it, it's that crack...
DocMcCoy"Go and laugh in your own country!" 5,913 Posts
This is an interesting thread.
I don't know about grades, but I must have been around 12 or 13 years old when I first heard Zeppelin. Probably something like "Whole Lotta Love" or "Black Dog", maybe "Communication Breakdown" or "Dazed And Confused". They were my favourite band right through school, up until "Song Remains The Same" came out. This roughly coincided with the release of the first Ramones album, which represented something of a sea-change in my life. Like a lot of English kids who got into punk, I turned into an out-and-out cultural Stalinist, and denounced everything I'd listened to for the five years previously. Obviously, and with hindsight, this was pretty fucking stupid, but it took me a while to realise it. Strangely enough, it might have been the Beastie Boys appropriating Zep samples on "Licensed To Ill" that made me think, "Hold on, maybe this stuff has some use". Thus began a slow and steady reacquaintance with them, which continues to this day. I probably enjoy their stuff more now than I did then, if only because I've a better understanding of just how good they were as musicians.
The theft thing comes up a lot but, to their credit, when they were caught, they generally held their hands up for the most part. Alhough I once read Jimmy Page defend their hoisting of Anne Briggs' arrangement of "Babe, I'm Gonna Leave You" on the grounds that, well, everyone else was doing it. Still, two wrongs don't make a right. You could see plenty of evidence of Dylan being just as guilty in that "No Direction Home" film as well, but funnily enough, nobody uses that as a stick to beat him with, at least not to the same extent.
One thing I can't make sense of with some of the responses on here is people not liking them because they didn't like the people who liked them. That baffles me. I can understand someone disliking a group or artist because of the music, but because of the fans?
I was introduced to Led Zeppelin by me and my sister's "watcher", circa 1988. I was in 6th grade and fully capable of watching myself, but my mother thought it would be good to hire an aimless college student to watch over us. The wisdom of this is debatable. Dude averaged a C- and brewed his own beer. I mean, first, how do you average a C-? That takes effort, to be just barely smart enough not to flunk out and just barely stupid enough not to realize this serious institution of learning thing might not be your bag. Second, Berkeley is pretty rich in beer - both variety and quality - and yet this guy felt compelled to brew his own. I'll cock one back for the low aimers of the world though. He was called "Duner" by his friends and his brew "Duner Dog Ale". He might have been the dude. El duderino if you're not into the whole brevity thing.
So while in retrospect I might question my mom's decision, I was pretty hyped to hang out with a 21 year old who brewed his own beer and thought as little of school as I did. I was into Hendrix at the time but other than that it was hip-hop and hair metal. The dude hated that shit but he turned me on to tonnes of rock. In mom's honda civic one day he put in Zeppelin III, and I heard "Immigrant Song". It was over for me. He was like "awwww dude you're not into Zeppelin???"
he would pretend I was the guitar and tickle my stomach like it was the strings and then he'd stop during the singing and just be still until the riff came on and he'd tickle me again.
One thing I can't make sense of with some of the responses on here is people not liking them because they didn't like the people who liked them. That baffles me. I can understand someone disliking a group or artist because of the music, but because of the fans?
co-fucking sign
shit if that's the way i thought then i would have walked right out of second hand record stores a long time ago. i mean, you have seen these people that are fans of the raer right?
One thing I can't make sense of with some of the responses on here is people not liking them because they didn't like the people who liked them. That baffles me. I can understand someone disliking a group or artist because of the music, but because of the fans?
for real. listen to the music for the music.
i got into zepplin late in life...16 years old in high school. i listened to a chunk of metallica for a while, master of puppets and shit, and this one real nerdy dude tried to get me to listen to zepplin. took me a year to actually get around to it, but that shit had me hooked. gottttammm! it had to be immigrant song and kashmir that absolutely ran shit. this is real corny, but i actually first heard zepplin when liscence to ill was out, 5th grade, and someone played me the samples to shes crafty and rhymin and stealin. didnt make the connection though
whats the whole stealing shit all about? people always been doing cover songs, right? wtf?
when i haev to listen to radio, i flip stations trying to find where they are getting the led out. for real. nothing makes me happier, i feel like i won the lottery
im not a big fan of black dog, but i was listening to it on the radio recently and for the first time under the frenetic guitar riff (which is mainly waht i dont like about it) i heard bonhams drums....oh my god, if those things were ever open it would be game over. slow and strong and shit
rapedonkeys- get some ledzep in your life and cure your twisted soul
*The more original blues I listened to, the more I realized how much Zeppelin stole. It was making me sick...
this is one of the biggest reasons why i don't listen to some artists/musicians work.
they're like your favorite artist, until you really hear some "authentic" shit, and then that personal bias of "they're the greatest" slowly erodes, and then you realize music is music, so even if the music is "influenced" or weak compared to the O.G.s or "paying tribute", it's all good. it might be a slightly different take or aesthetic appealing to a differnt crowd but you don't look at them as "the greatest band" anymore.
First time I heard Zep was watching Fast Times At Ridgemont High, Kashmir comes on when they're in the car (I think) and I HAD to know what song that was.
aside from that, prolly my friends hesher sister playing all that shit, I had such a crush on her I'd listen to the Carpenters if that's what she played in her room.
One thing I can't make sense of with some of the responses on here is people not liking them because they didn't like the people who liked them. That baffles me. I can understand someone disliking a group or artist because of the music, but because of the fans?
I???m not sure whether or not these sentiments are directed toward the statements I made earlier. If they're not, please disregard the following. If, however, they are:
Like I said, I no longer dislike Zeppelin because of what I once considered to be their typical fan; I doubt I ever really disliked Zeppelin in the first place, and I wouldn???t say that I dislike them now, as ideas of ???like??? and ???dislike??? imply strong feelings in one direction or the other, which???with regard to Led Zeppelin--I simply don???t have. All I???m saying is that my (admittedly misguided) dislike back then of what I thought constituted the ???typical Zeppelin fan??????typical at my school, in my town, where I lived--is what kept me from listening to Zeppelin back then. And ???back then,??? for me, happened to be those years when one is most susceptible to going through the kind (not the magnitude, not the quality, but the kind) of phase that I believe TREW was talking about at the very start of this thread. That???s all.
That said, I think people that have never ever formed opinions about music based in any part on the typical listenership of said music (judging by the outcry in this thread, there seem to be a number of you) fall into one of three categories:
1. People that spent their formative years in a truly heterogeneous, truly wall-less environment, where everybody at their school listened to everything, everybody listened to all kinds of radio, tape dubs flowed like water between the races, and the lion laid down with the lamb.
2. People that are 25 or under, who???as exponents of the internet and its attendant provision of streaming audio, archiving, file-sharing, infinite reproduction, and general disposability???take musical choice and diversity as a given. Since getting exposed to and acquiring music no longer so much entails going to certain clubs to see certain shows, listening to certain radio stations at certain times, going to certain stores to get certain records, or even talking to certain people to get certain information, there are fewer preconceptions about what a certain music???s ???typical??? listener is like.
3. People that are kidding themselves, looking back at their old unformed self with the eyes of their new fully-formed self, believing that they were always as omnivorous, indiscriminate, and ostensibly impervious to cultural influence as they are today.
People in the second group get a pass. It???s a new day, and although it may not necessarily be my day, I???m not mad. I feel like I gained something by having to fight for mine in the manner I did, but I think you???re gaining, too, just differently. It???s mostly a beautiful thing.
People in the first group are a) really rare, at least in the U.S., and b) lucky as fuck if that was in fact their experience. I grew up in a few small towns in the Midwest and the semi-rural South, spoke to three non-white people in my first nine years of life, and went to a high school that was integrated in 1972. I mean, it???s not like I was living in lock-down; music, information, and cultural association did cross back and forth, but not freely, not without some gravity, some thought. My friends and I all had tastes that crossed some cultural and sub-cultural lines, to be sure, but we were always conscious of it, because we knew that there???d be some reckoning, however small, on one side or the other. ???Man, when did you start liking that rap shit???? ???Yo, punk-rock--what the fuck you doing over here???? Anyone that came up in an environment where it was truly???truly--a non-issue, where diversity was purely organic, has my sincerest envy. I???m not y???all, though.
But I think the reality is most people that horn about this stuff fall into the third group. Their satisfaction with who they are now is admirable, but that it seems to have come at the price of denying the unformed, susceptible person they once were is regrettable.
In short, anyone who says "It's just about the music," and who is older than 25 and who didn't grow up 100% music-boundary-free and who looks back at a teenager's social consideration of what kind of people are listening to what kind of music and sees that as anything other than being a fucking teenager is, as they say, suspect.
when I am moved???I feel it just as deep, if not deeper than I did
As do I, absolutely. But I feel that movement in a heart that???s many years older, hear it through ears that have heard many more years??? worth, and apply it toward a life that???s many years fuller. My capital-L Listening back then took place amidst a life that was more malleable, less decided, so it was more possible for music???s internal influence to spill over into my external world. Experiencing rap music for the first time back then didn???t feel like an exciting new part of my life???it felt like a new life. I mean, that shit changed the way I walked, talked, and ate sandwiches. To a young youth with a not-so-concretely-developed sense of self, that kind of feeling was pure deliverance???it was direction and permission, straight-up and when it was most needed, and made the world seem attainable, or at least knowable.
I can???t stress enough that the depth of resonance I feel in the music I love has remained absolutely undiminished since then. But, you know, there???s resonance that comes from understanding something of life???s pure potential and raw power, and then there???s resonance that comes from an understanding something of its bottomless complexity and immaculate fragility. As I get older, my Listening is rooted more (but not exclusively, mind you) in the latter, and I think that the kind of Listening that???s mostly being discussed in this thread???concerning as it does that first ???new life??? moment, when one???s eyes and ears first get opened to something--has more to do with the former. And while I???m certainly still capable of feeling as deeply as I felt at fifteen, I doubt I???m capable of feeling exactly the way I felt at fifteen. And that's as it should be, I think.
And I???ll check that novel; if just on the strength of the title.
I discovered led Zep around the age of 13. got the live album out of my parents collection and "no quarter" was on full blast. same time me and my friends got into jimi heavily (next to listening to alot of hiphop and drum n bass). we were a very heterogenous crowd when it comes to musical tastes, some came from a mod/punk background. to me, it was always just about the music. so i never hated on led zep, but the "stairway to heaven" student crowd playing guitars at dorm parties can be a bit indeed. however, as i said, i want to because i dont wanna blame people for what they listen to or get out of the music. however, don't wear a led zep t-shirt when u and ur crew is trying to rock a stage and u have 5 guitar players in ur band that all want be famous
infact, i heard that the "levee" break was recorded in a staircase, thats why it sounds so a few months ago, all the drumtracks of bonham appeared on the net, still i dont know if its real or fake! pce - the dojah
they're one of those groups i respect but just dont have a good time listening to...all i can tolerate from them is the muggs mashup of "whole lotta love" with biggie's "dead wrong"...and i'd love the song kashmir if it was a different singer...actually ya, thats what ruins their sheit for me, i despise the singer
I discovered led Zep around the age of 13. got the live album out of my parents collection and "no quarter" was on full blast. same time me and my friends got into jimi heavily (next to listening to alot of hiphop and drum n bass). we were a very heterogenous crowd when it comes to musical tastes, some came from a mod/punk background. to me, it was always just about the music. so i never hated on led zep, but the "stairway to heaven" student crowd playing guitars at dorm parties can be a bit indeed. however, as i said, i want to because i dont wanna blame people for what they listen to or get out of the music. however, don't wear a led zep t-shirt when u and ur crew is trying to rock a stage and u have 5 guitar players in ur band that all want be famous
infact, i heard that the "levee" break was recorded in a staircase, thats why it sounds so a few months ago, all the drumtracks of bonham appeared on the net, still i dont know if its real or fake! pce - the dojah
That's some serious case of graemlins over-use from a newbie
I was three. My uncle had Houses Of The Holy[/b] and I loved what was going on in "The Song Remains The Same". It has since become my favorite LZ album. When Atlantic reissued them with new catalog #'s in the late 70's, I eventually got them all on cassette. The recent audiophile pressings on Classic are very good, at least the ones I've bought.
I discovered led Zep around the age of 13. got the live album out of my parents collection and "no quarter" was on full blast. same time me and my friends got into jimi heavily (next to listening to alot of hiphop and drum n bass). we were a very heterogenous crowd when it comes to musical tastes, some came from a mod/punk background. to me, it was always just about the music. so i never hated on led zep, but the "stairway to heaven" student crowd playing guitars at dorm parties can be a bit indeed. however, as i said, i want to because i dont wanna blame people for what they listen to or get out of the music. however, don't wear a led zep t-shirt when u and ur crew is trying to rock a stage and u have 5 guitar players in ur band that all want be famous
infact, i heard that the "levee" break was recorded in a staircase, thats why it sounds so a few months ago, all the drumtracks of bonham appeared on the net, still i dont know if its real or fake! pce - the dojah
That's some serious case of graemlins over-use from a newbie
Learn to love them graemlins...
kidding. hi! (you're small)
Man, you[/b] a newbie. You just post too much.
Nah, I'm playin. Yo, I had a laugh at your location. A friend of mine actually slept with Jewel in highschool. He had some funny stories about how she would yodel for him and stuff.
I've been kind of curious...informal nationwide poll here, but has anyone noticed any gratuitous airings of "When The Levee Breaks" during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina?
One spin of that tune, plus a tasteless joke is just the kind of thing that might get your morning Zoo Crew fired on the spot.
I've been kind of curious...informal nationwide poll here, but has anyone noticed any gratuitous airings of "When The Levee Breaks" during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina?
One spin of that tune, plus a tasteless joke is just the kind of thing that might get your morning Zoo Crew fired on the spot.
Lenny Kravitz did a version of it (closer to the Memphis Minnie original) at the NOLA Benefit at Madison Square Garden... I don't think the song is in and of itself disrespectful. It's an old blues about levees breaking and floods...
when I am moved???I feel it just as deep, if not deeper than I did
As do I, absolutely. But I feel that movement in a heart that???s many years older, hear it through ears that have heard many more years??? worth, and apply it toward a life that???s many years fuller. My capital-L Listening back then took place amidst a life that was more malleable, less decided, so it was more possible for music???s internal influence to spill over into my external world. Experiencing rap music for the first time back then didn???t feel like an exciting new part of my life???it felt like a new life. I mean, that shit changed the way I walked, talked, and ate sandwiches. To a young youth with a not-so-concretely-developed sense of self, that kind of feeling was pure deliverance???it was direction and permission, straight-up and when it was most needed, and made the world seem attainable, or at least knowable.
I can???t stress enough that the depth of resonance I feel in the music I love has remained absolutely undiminished since then. But, you know, there???s resonance that comes from understanding something of life???s pure potential and raw power, and then there???s resonance that comes from an understanding something of its bottomless complexity and immaculate fragility. As I get older, my Listening is rooted more (but not exclusively, mind you) in the latter, and I think that the kind of Listening that???s mostly being discussed in this thread???concerning as it does that first ???new life??? moment, when one???s eyes and ears first get opened to something--has more to do with the former. And while I???m certainly still capable of feeling as deeply as I felt at fifteen, I doubt I???m capable of feeling exactly the way I felt at fifteen. And that's as it should be, I think.
And I???ll check that novel; if just on the strength of the title.
I think back on my younger years and wish I hadn't been so closed minded. I think the earth shattering moments when I was younger closed doors on a lot of music (and a lot of living in general) that I wish I had been keeping an ear to then. At the same time, I'm still happy I specialized. I wouldn't give up my rap years for anything, but I do feel like that experience also made it difficult to experience other things, music and non, I wish had been more open too. No regrets and all, but, yeah, I guess I'm glad I no longer hear in the same way.
Can't say they ever changed my life or made a dent in my musical tastes, but I like 'em all the same. When I used to hear their stuff on the rock station growing up, I liked their shit. The main reason why I own seven Zep albums is because somebody dumped 'em all for free at the record store I used to work at. At least three of them I got rid of and upgraded to the CD versions. I've played these albums fairly regularly, but Led Zep were never an end-all, be-all in my life.
Comments
Oh yeah, Led Zep. The older kids used to use ballpoint pen and do the "ZOSO" and "LED ZEP" on the back of their denim sleeveless jackets. And I was mesmerized and absolutely TERRIFIED of the song "When The Levy Breaks." I still am terrified of that song.
Yeah, I understand that, of course. I also think your illustration is very, uh, illustrative, very Adorno. But I think it's a bit at odds with your earlier point about Listening (unless that was strictly aimed at Zep). Even though each of these additional angles decreases the intensity of the tremors you will feel when you hear the next angle, each new angle that you add now helps to define your own signature, if I may sample from another thread. And as you point out, smoothing out those lines into a circle is extra. I'm certainly moved by less music than I was before, but when I am moved, like by Annie Lennox singing "You've placed a chill in my heart (live)," just to give an example, I feel it just as deep, if not deeper than I did when I first heard Big Daddy Kane's "Ain't no half steppin." (No, I'm not soft, I was just listening to 50 on the train this morning and loving every minute of it.) Part of that is having a whole lot more real-world experience, but part is knowing there's still more world out there to experience. So I need to still believe in Listening, because that awareness lets me know that I'm not done living. Actually one thing that helps open my ears is hearing other people talk about their experiences and relationships to music...and on that note, I went back to Sly, Isaac Hayes, Aretha, Curtis (not that I ever really left him), and others (and Heard them anew) when I read this book which just came out. So read it, it's that crack...
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1565124847/qid=1127944414/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-7748606-2687262?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
I don't know about grades, but I must have been around 12 or 13 years old when I first heard Zeppelin. Probably something like "Whole Lotta Love" or "Black Dog", maybe "Communication Breakdown" or "Dazed And Confused". They were my favourite band right through school, up until "Song Remains The Same" came out. This roughly coincided with the release of the first Ramones album, which represented something of a sea-change in my life. Like a lot of English kids who got into punk, I turned into an out-and-out cultural Stalinist, and denounced everything I'd listened to for the five years previously. Obviously, and with hindsight, this was pretty fucking stupid, but it took me a while to realise it. Strangely enough, it might have been the Beastie Boys appropriating Zep samples on "Licensed To Ill" that made me think, "Hold on, maybe this stuff has some use". Thus began a slow and steady reacquaintance with them, which continues to this day. I probably enjoy their stuff more now than I did then, if only because I've a better understanding of just how good they were as musicians.
The theft thing comes up a lot but, to their credit, when they were caught, they generally held their hands up for the most part. Alhough I once read Jimmy Page defend their hoisting of Anne Briggs' arrangement of "Babe, I'm Gonna Leave You" on the grounds that, well, everyone else was doing it. Still, two wrongs don't make a right. You could see plenty of evidence of Dylan being just as guilty in that "No Direction Home" film as well, but funnily enough, nobody uses that as a stick to beat him with, at least not to the same extent.
One thing I can't make sense of with some of the responses on here is people not liking them because they didn't like the people who liked them. That baffles me. I can understand someone disliking a group or artist because of the music, but because of the fans?
add 111 and you've got it
So while in retrospect I might question my mom's decision, I was pretty hyped to hang out with a 21 year old who brewed his own beer and thought as little of school as I did. I was into Hendrix at the time but other than that it was hip-hop and hair metal. The dude hated that shit but he turned me on to tonnes of rock. In mom's honda civic one day he put in Zeppelin III, and I heard "Immigrant Song". It was over for me. He was like "awwww dude you're not into Zeppelin???"
Fag.
AYO!!!
co-fucking sign
shit if that's the way i thought then i would have walked right out of second hand record stores a long time ago. i mean, you have seen these people that are fans of the raer right?
for real. listen to the music for the music.
i got into zepplin late in life...16 years old in high school. i listened to a chunk of metallica for a while, master of puppets and shit, and this one real nerdy dude tried to get me to listen to zepplin. took me a year to actually get around to it, but that shit had me hooked. gottttammm! it had to be immigrant song and kashmir that absolutely ran shit.
this is real corny, but i actually first heard zepplin when liscence to ill was out, 5th grade, and someone played me the samples to shes crafty and rhymin and stealin. didnt make the connection though
whats the whole stealing shit all about? people always been doing cover songs, right? wtf?
when i haev to listen to radio, i flip stations trying to find where they are getting the led out. for real. nothing makes me happier, i feel like i won the lottery
im not a big fan of black dog, but i was listening to it on the radio recently and for the first time under the frenetic guitar riff (which is mainly waht i dont like about it) i heard bonhams drums....oh my god, if those things were ever open it would be game over. slow and strong and shit
rapedonkeys- get some ledzep in your life and cure your twisted soul
this is one of the biggest reasons why i don't listen to some artists/musicians work.
they're like your favorite artist, until you really hear some "authentic" shit, and then that personal bias of "they're the greatest" slowly erodes, and then you realize music is music, so even if the music is "influenced" or weak compared to the O.G.s or "paying tribute", it's all good. it might be a slightly different take or aesthetic appealing to a differnt crowd but you don't look at them as "the greatest band" anymore.
aside from that, prolly my friends hesher sister playing all that shit, I had such a crush on her I'd listen to the Carpenters if that's what she played in her room.
I???m not sure whether or not these sentiments are directed toward the statements I made earlier. If they're not, please disregard the following. If, however, they are:
Like I said, I no longer dislike Zeppelin because of what I once considered to be their typical fan; I doubt I ever really disliked Zeppelin in the first place, and I wouldn???t say that I dislike them now, as ideas of ???like??? and ???dislike??? imply strong feelings in one direction or the other, which???with regard to Led Zeppelin--I simply don???t have. All I???m saying is that my (admittedly misguided) dislike back then of what I thought constituted the ???typical Zeppelin fan??????typical at my school, in my town, where I lived--is what kept me from listening to Zeppelin back then. And ???back then,??? for me, happened to be those years when one is most susceptible to going through the kind (not the magnitude, not the quality, but the kind) of phase that I believe TREW was talking about at the very start of this thread. That???s all.
That said, I think people that have never ever formed opinions about music based in any part on the typical listenership of said music (judging by the outcry in this thread, there seem to be a number of you) fall into one of three categories:
1. People that spent their formative years in a truly heterogeneous, truly wall-less environment, where everybody at their school listened to everything, everybody listened to all kinds of radio, tape dubs flowed like water between the races, and the lion laid down with the lamb.
2. People that are 25 or under, who???as exponents of the internet and its attendant provision of streaming audio, archiving, file-sharing, infinite reproduction, and general disposability???take musical choice and diversity as a given. Since getting exposed to and acquiring music no longer so much entails going to certain clubs to see certain shows, listening to certain radio stations at certain times, going to certain stores to get certain records, or even talking to certain people to get certain information, there are fewer preconceptions about what a certain music???s ???typical??? listener is like.
3. People that are kidding themselves, looking back at their old unformed self with the eyes of their new fully-formed self, believing that they were always as omnivorous, indiscriminate, and ostensibly impervious to cultural influence as they are today.
People in the second group get a pass. It???s a new day, and although it may not necessarily be my day, I???m not mad. I feel like I gained something by having to fight for mine in the manner I did, but I think you???re gaining, too, just differently. It???s mostly a beautiful thing.
People in the first group are a) really rare, at least in the U.S., and b) lucky as fuck if that was in fact their experience. I grew up in a few small towns in the Midwest and the semi-rural South, spoke to three non-white people in my first nine years of life, and went to a high school that was integrated in 1972. I mean, it???s not like I was living in lock-down; music, information, and cultural association did cross back and forth, but not freely, not without some gravity, some thought. My friends and I all had tastes that crossed some cultural and sub-cultural lines, to be sure, but we were always conscious of it, because we knew that there???d be some reckoning, however small, on one side or the other. ???Man, when did you start liking that rap shit???? ???Yo, punk-rock--what the fuck you doing over here???? Anyone that came up in an environment where it was truly???truly--a non-issue, where diversity was purely organic, has my sincerest envy. I???m not y???all, though.
But I think the reality is most people that horn about this stuff fall into the third group. Their satisfaction with who they are now is admirable, but that it seems to have come at the price of denying the unformed, susceptible person they once were is regrettable.
In short, anyone who says "It's just about the music," and who is older than 25 and who didn't grow up 100% music-boundary-free and who looks back at a teenager's social consideration of what kind of people are listening to what kind of music and sees that as anything other than being a fucking teenager is, as they say, suspect.
As do I, absolutely. But I feel that movement in a heart that???s many years older, hear it through ears that have heard many more years??? worth, and apply it toward a life that???s many years fuller. My capital-L Listening back then took place amidst a life that was more malleable, less decided, so it was more possible for music???s internal influence to spill over into my external world. Experiencing rap music for the first time back then didn???t feel like an exciting new part of my life???it felt like a new life. I mean, that shit changed the way I walked, talked, and ate sandwiches. To a young youth with a not-so-concretely-developed sense of self, that kind of feeling was pure deliverance???it was direction and permission, straight-up and when it was most needed, and made the world seem attainable, or at least knowable.
I can???t stress enough that the depth of resonance I feel in the music I love has remained absolutely undiminished since then. But, you know, there???s resonance that comes from understanding something of life???s pure potential and raw power, and then there???s resonance that comes from an understanding something of its bottomless complexity and immaculate fragility. As I get older, my Listening is rooted more (but not exclusively, mind you) in the latter, and I think that the kind of Listening that???s mostly being discussed in this thread???concerning as it does that first ???new life??? moment, when one???s eyes and ears first get opened to something--has more to do with the former. And while I???m certainly still capable of feeling as deeply as I felt at fifteen, I doubt I???m capable of feeling exactly the way I felt at fifteen. And that's as it should be, I think.
And I???ll check that novel; if just on the strength of the title.
infact, i heard that the "levee" break was recorded in a staircase, thats why it sounds so
That's some serious case of graemlins over-use from a newbie
Learn to love them graemlins...
kidding. hi! (you're small)
Man, you[/b] a newbie. You just post too much.
Nah, I'm playin. Yo, I had a laugh at your location. A friend of mine actually slept with Jewel in highschool. He had some funny stories about how she would yodel for him and stuff.
oops, you are right! lil dude slightly overmotivated...good thraet btw...no use of graemlins this time....
pretty good analogy, actually...
I've been kind of curious...informal nationwide poll here, but has
anyone noticed any gratuitous airings of "When The Levee Breaks" during
the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina?
One spin of that tune, plus a tasteless joke is just the kind of thing
that might get your morning Zoo Crew fired on the spot.
Lenny Kravitz did a version of it (closer to the Memphis Minnie original) at the NOLA Benefit at Madison Square Garden...
I don't think the song is in and of itself disrespectful. It's an old blues about levees breaking and floods...
I think back on my younger years and wish I hadn't been so closed minded. I think the earth shattering moments when I was younger closed doors on a lot of music (and a lot of living in general) that I wish I had been keeping an ear to then. At the same time, I'm still happy I specialized. I wouldn't give up my rap years for anything, but I do feel like that experience also made it difficult to experience other things, music and non, I wish had been more open too. No regrets and all, but, yeah, I guess I'm glad I no longer hear in the same way.
Like the Yardbirds.
OK, give me a minute to write it down on my diary.