There is a scene in the film adaptation of Truman Capote’s novella Breakfast at Tiffany’s where Audrey Hepburn’s elegant Holly Golightly leans over to Paul Varjak and whispers:
“Hey, did you ever steal anything from a 5 and 10
, when you were a kid, I mean?”
To which, he responds that he didn’t because he was a “sensitive, bookish type.” And, then Holly tells him that she did steal and still does, every now and again.
“Just to keep my hand in,” she explains.
That’s kind of how I feel about music these days.
In last week’s Follow the Prophet post, Jessica commented:
“There is certainly something magical about finding the music that speaks to you in your youth, nothing compares! I have recently been grieving this very thing. Although I’m only 32, I’m a full-time working mom living in a conservative, unimaginative community. I don’t pay as much attention to new music as I used to. My subscriptions to Spin and Rolling Stone have long-expired, replaced by ‘Parenting’ (how could I resist? Couponing made it only $3.99 for the whole year!) and my husband’s “Backpacker” . . . I’ve spent a lot of time searching out the best live shows, or new music, but it hasn’t even crossed my mind in years.”
I like to think I am still passionate about music, still interested in searching out amazing live performances, still on top of all the albums destined to make end of the year best-of lists, already listening to the bands and albums that will keep music interesting and exciting. When we moved to England four years ago, we were ecstatic. The MTV2 here played videos! And, they were videos from bands we loved! Every Wednesday, my husband would pick up a copy of NME Magazine on the way to work and we’d devour it, searching for new bands. Each night, we’d gather as a family around the television to watch the MTV2 Rock Countdown. The kids stomped around the living room doing their wild, freak out dances to “Knights of Cydonia” by Muse and “Bones” by the Killers. My boy, branching out from our taste a bit, stood on the couch with the wooden mast of a toy pirate ship which he made into a microphone; perfectly mimicking Gerard Way’s every move in the video for “Welcome to the Black Parade.” My husband and I were keeping our obsession with music alive and passing it on to the next generation.
However, four years on, I’m in a slump and I’m really just keeping my hand in. The truth is that I haven’t been to a live show since I was pregnant for my now eight-year-old son (Weezer, Jimmy Eat World and Tenacious D — I felt enormous and old and gave drunken frat boys a hard time for smoking around me). I still get e-mails from Ticketmaster every week, telling me which shows I can’t miss. I still pick up the occasional NME and look through the listings and I still feel the urge to go and see this band or that band. However, it’s not long before reality intrudes on my plans. I realize that poverty, or children, or child-induced poverty will keep me from seeing Arcade Fire, the Yeah, Yeah Yeahs, or The White Stripes. I live a little over an hour from London, but the thought of buying tickets for the show and train tickets and getting a babysitter that I can trust all night sends me straight to the couch where I numb myself with TV or Sudoku.
I’ve considered venturing out alone, going to shows without my husband so I can solve the babysitting problem and halve the money problem. His taste has always been more spare and Teutonic than mine. And, it’s a proven fact that he never met a funky bass line he could resist, while my taste skews more towards singer-songwriters and jazz. It is increasingly difficult to think of a show we would be equally willing to overcome money and parental obstacles to see. But, I can’t do it. Our passion for music has been a shared passion. If our taste has not always been completely in line, the strength of our love for listening to and finding new music has been. I can’t go it alone.
This apathy has rather depressingly leaked into my listening habits as well. I’ve only picked up a few new albums this year and nothing that’s really moved me. Like Jessica, I’ve been reaching again and again for comfort food — music that I discovered young and have loved for a long time. Last week, Jessica went on to say: “I realize that I stick with those same tunes that spoke to me when I was 16, cuz they still speak to me. I may not have the time or need to sit in my room listening to Tori Amos while writing in my journal. But she still gets frequent play on my iPod while I work in my office, because I have the same emotional responses. And that’s ok — I’m in good company.”
How do you feel? Do you still listen to the music you found at 16? Has your taste remained the same? Are you still looking for the thrill of finding the music that speaks to you?
Ah, yes, the seeds of a midlife crisis. I remember this trip well. It all started when a good looking guy was flirting with me at the mall but no.. wait, he was flirting with my beautifu daughter walking beside me. When my kids were small I would listen to the radio and impress them with knowing every lyric. I would make my car dance to the songs on the radio and proclaim my inability to stop my “cool” car. As my children grew up I lived through them as they discovered and worshiped new recording artists. We cleaned the house on Saturdays with Madonna, cleaned our yard and garage to Motown and listened to hours of Musical Theatre on long car rides. When my boys discovered rap I learned the cries of their hearts and their view of the world by lying on one of their beds listening to the latest song they had written in the basement of our house.I think the roots and wings slogan applies here. We all need the ,musical roots of our youth, the concerts we attended the songs we made out to,the first crushes we had on rock stars(mine was Davey Jones from the monkeys) and the music we loved because our parents hated it. We also need wings,openness to new music,discovery of new artists and yes in my case writing your own poems and lyrics and singing on your Rap artist son Anagram’s latest CD. I think there is a natural order to things. As we age we make room for the new. Youth is all about rejecting everything your parents tried to package and sell to you, mid-life is about creating your own “sound” and finding other people who listen to the same music as you do and then the years I am in, the true time for wings, “maturity”. Open to new and loyal to the old.
My taste goes all over the place now, and my husband and I have been jumping into each other’s random I-tunes libraries to keep it fresh. I discovered the “genius” bar and it’s an evil, evil thing. I love world music for yoga, and am deep in a singer/song-writer mode right now. I’m trying not to be elitest or picky and I’m in love with stuff I would have never considered otherwise.
I’m with you on the challenges of going to see concerts live. It’s really expensive, and requires such a lot of planning. One thing I plan to do soon though, is to make more of an effort to go catch the local live shows we have, the cover bands, concerts in the park, etc. There is something about live music that really lights me on fire!
My wife and I just went to a concert this past Sunday. My ears are still ringing a bit as I type this. It was only the third live show we had seen since we had kids (and the first in several years). It was a small venue, and we were three feet from the stage. Even though the two opening acts started late (and were too loud and not very good), the headliner was everything we could have hoped for and more. As we walked out the door well past midnight, we were buzzing with excitement and amazed at how unbelievable the show was. The energy made me feel so alive. It also rekindled something in me, though I’m not even sure exactly what. While I wish that we could go more frequently, I realize that it just is not practical. But if you have not gone in a while, pick a band you love and do it! Save up, find a trusted babysitter, make the time. I had forgotten how much live music stirs in me, but screaming and bouncing and clapping in rhythm with a room full of people is so much better than watching a video on TV. And incidentally, if you are looking for an amazing live act, might I recommend Frightened Rabbit (the band we saw). They’ll actually be touring in the UK later this year… :)
Bill — you’ve inspired me to check them out and watch for them when they come to the UK. Going to shows was a huge part of my life from the age of 14 to age 26ish. I still listen to music (new and old) every day, but it does feel like a part of me is missing.
My taste has alternately mellowed and become more “rhythmic” over the years since high school. As long as I can sing along, I flip between wanting to listen to folk music and Eminem. I owe any new additions to my library to my husband who somehow keeps up with the music scene while at work (he’s a self employed software developer with a twitter account as old as twitter – which is how I assume he stays connected?) He has certainly changed over the years as well – going from the likes of Outkast to Imogen Heap and introducing me to all he finds along the way. But I also still go back to my old favorites (Sarah Mclachlan) because of how they make me feel.
And if I’m really in for a trip, I pull out my collection of burned CD’s from my Napster files (it was just getting big when I was in college – at the same university where it started too!) I have discs of all the popular radio songs when I was in HS. Listening to them now is like smelling something that triggers a visceral memory. Why is it that we attach so much emotion to music in those impressionable years?
I was never a concert goer, but I do still love the thrill of discovering something new – especially if no one around me knows it yet. I actually knew about Feist before my sister, and that’s really saying something. And I still have a secret love for good R&B. From Mariah and Whitney to Lauryn and Erykah to Beyonce and Rihanna – I always need something good to dance to or drive to the gym with.
As for male vocalists, I found that I listened to the likes of Dave Mathews and Cold Play to fit in. I wouldn’t have been drawn to them on my own. The Cure was preferable but I felt weird when no one my age really listened to them. I was also a closet Aerosmith fan and had most of Harry Connick Jr’s albums. So, I guess my taste was pretty oddly eclectic and mostly mainstream, but I feel like I was able to express all different aspects of myself with the different styles and messages and sounds. I never felt like I *belonged* in any one genre, which made it harder to identify with some people, and I always knew I couldn’t really participate with much credibility in any music conversations of any weight (out of all my siblings I probably know the least about the music of my own time), but I was happy with what I had. It’s still a little hard to admit my varied tastes (someone will always look down on one choice or another) but it’s getting easier to show all the sides of me.
Now that our kids are getting a little older, I have definitely rediscovered concert going. Saw Hole earlier this year (awful), the Eagles last Friday (way better than expected), and Gogol Bordello the week before that (awesome as usual). Having a 12-year old who can babysit has been a life changer. Freshman year of college was really when my music tastes were set. While there is a pretty broad range of stuff I’ll listen to and enjoy, there is a much more narrow range of stuff that really fires me up, and that more limited range of music all has ties, either directly or indirectly, to what I was listening to back in college.
Only four more years to freedom!
I don’t listen to a lot of music. A bit in the car, a bit on a run. But I like almost anything live, from broadway musicals to NIN to little known local bands like Anna & the Lucky So and So’s. There’s an energy I sense from someone who is living their dream, performing for a crowd. I am drawn to it, so much that I dressed up as Tina Turner for Halloween last year :)
So achingly true. I have, in desperation, left my wife and son at home twice this year to seek comfort from the Cowboy Junkies and She and Him at live shows.
I have been used to seeking aesthetic experience alone since my days at International Cinema at BYU. I was often able to persuade others to come along to an Merchant/Ivory production or a spine tingling German horror fim, but Solaris or Renoir? Fuhgeddaboudit!
I will be seeing U2 next May and was excited about it last year when I bought the tickets, but not as much now. Perhaps I am in a rut.
Discovering new bands is a pleasure, and often, the new band is an old one I just never got around to checking out.
I think I really hit the jackpot friend-wise (see Jessica’s post below) because, for the first 2.5 decades of my life,I always had someone who wanted to watch Merchant Ivory films or Solaris with me. Partaking in art was usually a communal experience for me, and I realize now how spoiled I was. Maybe I’ll start my independent viewing with movies.
So this morning I’m sitting in said office, listening to said iPod (on shuffle), and each song that plays I am now putting into the context of this conversation. When was this song important in my life? How did it come to me? Music is one of those very cool things in the world that does COME to us via some external vehicle. Did a friend introduce it to you? Did you hear it on the radio? Did you read about it in a magazine only to go seek it out on your own?
My favorite story is about my favorite musician, Tori Amos. Yes I’ve already dropped her name in an earlier thread, but in my world it is warranted. In high school, I was editor of the school newspaper. This required hours and hours of extra-curricular time spent in the journalism room. In the day of mixed tapes, there was always something different lying around the room. An unmarked tape piqued my curiosity, and I listened to it only to fall in love. I had no idea who made the mix or who the singer was, but I kept it for myself and it didn’t make its way back into that little room. It probably took a good 6 months and repeated play before I discovered it was Tori Amos, and the tape was a combination of Little Earthquakes, Under the Pink, and B-sides from a couple of singles.
I’m forever grateful to a certain petite, blonde roommate who opened up my musical world. My parents only ever listened to classical orchestrals (with the random sprinkling of Neil Diamond), my older siblings were MUCH older and not very helpful. So I was pretty much on my own. When I met Heidi our freshman year in college, and she continued to be my bestie during the subsequent four years, it changed a lot. I have an appreciation for so much more than I think I would have otherwise. Joni Mitchell, Fugazi, Miles Davis, PJ Harvey.
I’ve been thinking about this since the last post – what is it about this period in our lives (and personal development) that captures and sticks? It’s not just our generation who relishes the music of our 17-22 year-old pasts. Think of our parents’ generation who never quite moved beyond the music of the 60s-70s. We continue to discover new goodies, but it’s not really the same. What does this say about who we were then, and how it contributed to who we’ve become now?
Ah, and without a very cool redhead, I would not have listened to Ani DiFranco, Sarah McLachlan or Tori Amos. :)
I think that part of the reason the music of our youth sticks with us is that it’s so evocative of particular times and places and, for me, identified with so many formative experiences (Proust’s madeleines).
I also think that most music is made by young people and so it is the one time when you are listening to music that coincides very closely to what you are experiencing. Some albums grow with you and some artists continue to write relevant music as they age (Bob Dylan’s “Blood on the Tracks” comes to mind — I first heard that album when I was in my early 20s and I loved it, but now as an adult, the lyrics about loss and missed opportunities mean so much more), but many albums are caught in certain times and places in my life.
For me it’s a little bit from most of my growing-up era — from the Beatles to Pink Floyd to The Cure. So much inbetween there to just escape into. When rap and hip-hop first arive I loathed them both. But since have grown quite of collection of Eminem et al. And my teen daughers keep me connected to the new stuff and I enjoy some of that as well and they occasionally get into mine becasue rock never grows old. But I never listen to my parents’ music. Never.
Periodically something still moves me. The last time was watching ‘Mumford and Sons’ in Norwich. The unexpected pain of the folk ballads caught me off guard.
There are a few younger friends that I have who recommend shows and with whom I share music (though the direction is usually uni-directional). They keep me current but I struggle more and more to relate to it.
I suspect that it has something to do with saturation rather than shifts in taste. Perhaps the music we listen to has a trope that affects us in a profound way; but over time the cumulative impact of that trope reduces as we deal with or respond to the angst that motivated that connection.
When I was a Young Women president in my mid-twenties, I remember overhearing the girls talking about music that I was also listening to and wanting to bond with them on our shared taste. But, they were horrified They did not think it was cool that I was listening to the same music and I realized that I was entering into the tricky old-guy at the club territory (there was always one of these guys at the punk rock shows I went to my in youth — a guy with a heavily lined, often haggard face and a mohawk). Of course, now I’m old enough to think those guys are kind of awesome (as long as they aren’t hitting on the girls).
Radiohead, Pink Floyd, Yes, Ben Folds, Muse, The Killers, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Tori Amos, etc. I LOVE going back to tried and true albums.
Heidi, your post really struck a chord with me. Growing up, my taste in music was suspiciously similar to the boy I happened to be interested in at the time. I couldn’t say I had my own music-personality. Rarely did music stir or inspire me. I was convinced that I would have to wait until the afterlife to find music that moved me in the way that I felt music should: the kind that overtakes your whole body.
It wasn’t until after a particularly unhealthy relationship ended when I was 16, (and my subsequent retreat from other humans for a while,) that I began to diligently search for music (and films and books) that I felt really represented my tastes. It was the first time in my life where it had even occurred to me to value my personal taste and likes. I scavenged through record stores and bought albums with weird cover art. I soon discovered progressive rock, nerdy fantasy metal, and bands with sorrowful songwriters– Yes, King Crimson, The Cure, Blind Guardian, The Clash, Van der Graaf Generator. It was a time of enlightenment for me.
I’ve tried several times since then to recreate that time, but it never feels quite the same. More often than not, music now seems to be relegated to the background, instead of being an experience in itself. I still feel passionately about music and I still love the bands that I discovered when I was 16. And, especially in the past few months, I’ve been actively searching out new music genres and unfamiliar bands. I’ve found several bands that I really dig. But like Jessica said above, “There is certainly something magical about finding the music that speaks to you in your youth, nothing compares!” I guess, try as I might, I’m not really sure how to find that magic again.