Sometime in the late 1990s I stopped seeking out new music. I’m not exactly sure why, other than to say I turned 30 in 1999 and maybe I have a gene that clicked off (or turned on) at that point, making me disinterested in hearing anything new. I love music and own hundreds of CDs, and I guess I was just content relistening to the thousands of classic rock, metal, and alternative songs that I already knew. Why look for something new when I’ve already got so much music to fill my time?
Maybe I should clarify here that it’s not as though I never bought a new CD at
that point, but rather that I just stuck to artists that I was already familiar
with. If a new Rush, Springsteen, Metallica, or Red Hot Chili Peppers album
came out, there was an excellent chance that I would buy it. (Well, maybe not
so much with Metallica; I’d have to screen those first for potential
suckiness.) But artists that I never listened to before would be a hard no. Until,
over the last decade or so, when two interesting things happened.
The first thing that happened is that I decided to start a rock music debate
group on Facebook. At the time, my idea was to have a forum for lively
discussions mostly centered on classic rock. I invited a bunch of my friends to
participate, who in turn invited their friends, who in turn invited their
friends and the group now has over 250 members, the vast majority of whom I do
not know personally. That has made it a lot of fun and expanded the diversity
of musical interests and opinions expressed within the group. A result of this
is that on many occasions, a conversation in the group has made me look into a
musical group or artist that I either never heard of, or vaguely heard of but
knew nothing about. In some cases, when looking into these artists, I actually
(gasp!) liked them! In fact, sometimes I liked them enough to buy their music
and now listen to them regularly!
In some cases these “new” artists aren’t really new, but just new to me. They
may have been around for decades but just got past my radar until recently. A
band that I’m sure I would have listened to on repeat in my teen years had I
known about them that I didn’t get into until about 2018 or so, is Wishbone
Ash. They’re a jazzy, bluesy, progressive rock band that seems to sit somewhere
between Yes and Steely Dan musically. Their self-titled 1970 debut album didn’t
enter my world until almost 50 years after its release, but now I listen to it
frequently.
Another artist who I learned about via the rock debate group whose CD gets
frequent play in my car is Willie Nile. A folk-inspired singer-songwriter, who
is clearly influenced by the likes of Dylan and Springsteen, his 2006 album Streets
of New York is jaw-droppingly good. Partly a response to the chaos and
mindset in New York after 9-11, the songs are sometimes heartbreaking,
sometimes uplifting and always lyrically fascinating. There are times when you
need to listen to an album multiple times to really get into it, but this one
grabbed me on the first listen and quickly became a favorite of mine.
The other development over the past few years that has exposed me to music that
was not previously on my radar is that my two teenage sons are now VERY into
music and have frequently shared their musical interests with me. Fortunately,
due to exposure to classic rock and heavy metal from me, and new wave and punk
from their mom, the music they’re into is not just whatever lame, mindless pop
music happens to be the flavor of the day, but rather inventive music, often
with a hard edge.
My 19-year-old son is more of a metal guy. But the metal he listens to (often
in the sub genre of “death metal”) frequently makes the metal I listen to sound
like elevator music, by comparison. It’s not all my cup of tea, but I really
like some of the stuff he has shared with me. In particular, my son’s favorite
band, Opeth, a Swedish band that delves into both death metal and progressive
metal, has a couple of albums that I enjoy, particularly their 2016 release Sorceress,
which has lots of classical guitar and symphonic elements mixed in with
occasional heavy riffs for a very prog-rock feel. I was completely unaware that
this band existed until my son started talking about them a couple of years ago
and now, I happily give their tunes a whirl from time to time.
My 17-year-old son is more of a punk guy. Over the past year or so, he has
completely immersed himself in the genre, quickly going past the well-known
bands and delving into increasingly obscure acts. Again, most of the bands he
listens to I never heard of but, interestingly, some are from the 1980s, but
simply never crossed my path. Of course, I wasn’t that into punk back then so,
other than the biggies, like the Clash and the Ramones, I was fairly oblivious
to the genre. But it’s never too late to get into punk, so there I was a week
ago, driving two hours to a club in Tucson, so my son and I could see his
favorite band, the Descendents, whose debut album, Milo Goes to College,
came out in 1982, almost three decades before my son was born. The show was a
blast, and it was fun (and a tad sobering) watching a bunch of guys about five
or six years older than me tear up the stage for over an hour. The opening
act—Frank Turner and the Sleeping Souls—was great, too, so now I have yet
another new band to add to my approved list.
So, there you have it. After almost two decades of willfully ignoring any music
I didn’t already know, I opened the doors and let the new tunes in. And not
only did it not kill me, but I’ve actually enjoyed it. So, if the last new
music you listened to was in the hey day of Bruce Springsteen and Madonna—way
before Nirvana—I say, don’t be afraid to try something new. You might just like
it…or you might hate it, but at least you will have tried.
