Twisted Thoughts And Thoughtful Truths On Thursday #029

Twisted Thoughts And Thoughtful Truths On Thursday #029 – “I Write About Music ‘Cause I’m Right About Music”

If you’re a music-head…which I’m gonna go ahead and assume you ARE if you somehow found this tiny corner of the internet where I’ve been standing on this lonely soapbox I’ve created and yelling about the songs you write for the past fourteen years…then you’re familiar with a bunch of conversations that continually work their way around time and time again.  Stuff like where you hear that grizzled old buzzard in the back of the record shop mumbling about how they ‘don’t make good music anymore’ – or lest we forget, there’s always someone willing to proclaim that a remix can never be as good as an original…and then like, don’t even get those folks started on cover songs or you’ll be there all damn day.

I think my favorite debate as of late is the one about which era had the best music, because there has only ever been ONE single answer to that question.  You know what it is?  It’s always the same:  Mine.

What we’re talking about here is really perspective, or even a lack thereof.  All I’m saying is that we all respond to the question in the same way, because it’s really what WE, as individuals, know best.  It’s the music that made the most impact on who WE, as individuals, became.  It’s the songs, artists, and bands that shaped YOUR life…so of course YOUR era of music is the best one that there is, right?  We associate what we listen to, knowingly or unknowingly, with our best memories, our evolution, our highlights from life itself.  I’m not saying ‘mine’ as in I’m saying the era I grew up in was the best of them all – I’m saying ‘mine’ from the notion that we’d all respond in the same way, thinking that the music that made our lives great has gotta be the best in history, because a myopic view allows for very little flexibility to see it any other way.  Think of it.  If you were born in the forties and you were raised in the 50s, you got the privilege of basically being able to witness the freakin’ dawn of Rock ‘N’ Roll!  How could that not be the greatest moment ever, right?  Raised in the 60s, you saw the first real glimpse of counterculture music like Psychedelic Rock, and balanced that out with the rise of the Soul sound and Motown – how amazing would THAT have been?  Even in the 70s you got your choice of two distinct breakthroughs – you could go the Disco route and get your shiny shoes out on the dancefloor, or you could strap your headphones on and really start absorbing Prog Rock in all its artful glory.  The 80s, the decade I was born in, saw the rise of megahit Pop stars like the world had never seen before.  The 90s, where I spent my teenage years growing up, went Grunge in a ferocious wave of relatable, anti-establishment, anti-corporate music that was a direct response to the decade before.  The 2000s, like it or not, might even represent one of the most significantly broadly balanced palettes…Rap/Hip-Hop had a stronger presence than it had typically enjoyed, EDM was making groundbreaking moves, but so was the sincerity/experimental sounds of Indie-Rock, and even Pop-Punk/Emo had moments too, but no genre in particular really had that much of an edge over the other, which kinda meant you could go anywhere & hear anything at any time – and how cool is THAT?  I’m going on and on here, but you get the point, EVERY era has made some kind of incredible progress, no matter if it went forward into something new, or backward to revisit something that hadn’t been fully explored.  Think of all the amazing things I didn’t even mention, like the Post-Punk/New Wave era…or heck, never mind Post-Punk, what about Punk-Punk…Trap music in the 2010s…the Folk music of the 50s/60s…so on and so on and so of course, what era of music will always be the best?  Mine!  Whatever ‘mine’ is to you – we’re really talking about the time where you grew up.  Who could blame you for feeling the way that you do when we all essentially feel the exact same way?

While of course I’d agree with you – the best era of music IS mine – one of the key ingredients of this site is making a continual effort to do the best I can to remain objective.  To understand that, even though you’re wrong and the best era of all-time isn’t YOURS, it’s MINE…well…maybe there’s still some common ground that we can find in between these two poles of measurement.  While I used to value a certain type of music when I was busy growing up Grunge, I now value variety and diversity so much more than anything else.  I’m that dude that’ll spend hours and hours creating a playlist that might actually only get minutes in the car to be listened to, but you can bet your ass it’s loaded with everything from Punk to Instrumental, IDM tunes to Post-Punk, Indie-Rock to Hip-Hop, and every other genre I can squeeze into whatever sized flash drive the current mix is getting loaded on.  There is immense truth in the old adage that ‘variety is the spice of life’ and it’s just as true for your ears as it ever was for your tongue.  In many ways, it’s those more seemingly confused eras that couldn’t pick a lane like the 2000s, or even the very one that we’re in today, that I think give people the best shot at listening to everything.

And YES – I mean EVERYTHING.  Good lord, I have met so many random folks throughout my life that have claimed to listen to everything, but we all know that’s not the case.  I like to think my track record speaks for itself by this point in time.  Hell, even I used to outright refuse to listen to Country music, but now I understand there is something genuinely great in all styles of music, and that there’s always time to sit and listen to the best of the best in any genre.  It enriches your LIFE dear readers, dear friends – I can promise you that.  So if you know that one dude doesn’t like Rap, or that girl at work would never listen to Metal, or the old guy only listens to Classical music when he’s not just listening to broadcast news on AM Radio…you might not change their opinions overnight, but every bit of exposure to things we don’t know anything about in music is education our ears are all universally craving.  Listen to music from a whole different continent than the one you’re standing on – it’s like you can GO SOMEWHERE without going anywhere at all!  Amazing!  Listen to music in a completely different language than the one that you speak…trust me, you’ll eventually discover what you love in what you listen to translates just fine.  I suppose the real point is, don’t be scared of exploring music as far as you can possibly go with it, because there IS something beyond fantastic in every kind of style under this sun that we share.

I could go on and on about this, as I’m sure you regular readers know…but I’m gonna leave it at that for today more or less.  Commit yourself to listening to a couple tunes, artists, or bands that you don’t know in the short term…feel free to reach out and tell me what you discovered and how you think your life might actually be more full than it was yesterday as a result of checking out something new!  I wanna hear about those moments where you had to practically call in sick or stay home from school just so you could go even further down the rabbit hole, or had to stop the world so you could continue to listen to something you’d never have assumed you’d even like, and now love it so much that it’s all you can think of.  Because that’s what’s waiting for you out there on the ol’ internet y’all…and that’s what’s out there onstage at your local clubs and venues…there’s so much music out there that you’d never come close to listening to it all on the inside of just one lifetime.  Before you go to scroll onto whatever’s next, or open up another YouTube video on pointless politics that will have NO BEARING on your life or change a single damn thing about it…go listen to something you’d never thought you would have, and try to see if you can get your head around it.  It’s just as cool if you can’t at first…it gives you every incentive to go back and listen again…to figure out what it was you didn’t hear…to try and understand the art of what a band or artist is trying to communicate.  This era, that era, it doesn’t matter – there’s something amazing in every single one of’em.  We already established that the best era is always going to be MINE – so maybe, just maybe, if we listened to something from someone else’s favorite tunes, we’d not only be creating a better quality of life for ourselves, but we’d understand each other better in the process.

That’s what’s up.  That’s what I’ve got to say to you this week.  Test the theory…I guarantee ya it’s as bulletproof as they come.  At the very least, I can humbly promise you that I’m speaking from experience and not just making this all up from whole cloth.  Opening the doors to variety and diversity in what you listen to will give you new inspiration in life, and perspectives money can’t buy.

Be excellent to each other.

And as always, thank you for reading.

– Jer @ SBS