Is it just me ?

Late in the evening last night, I picked up a woman around 50 years old from the Basement nightclub. She was ‘appalled’ at having to stand for two hours to see Madeleine Peyroux, touted as a Billie Holiday. And to add insult to injury, Peyroux kept the punters waiting for over an hour past the scheduled start time. I couldn't help but sarcastically quip, ‘What a star !’.

Just writing ‘50 years old’ reminds me whilst I’m in the same boat, I can’t really relate to the years my passengers face betrayed. Strangely enough. I discussed this with a 57 year old passenger over the weekend. He insisted he still harboured many of the same desires and interests as those he had in his twenties. Much to the embarrassment of his 28 year old son.

Whilst I can partially relate to this, I can’t understand how one can retain the same musical tastes, for example. With any degree of fervour other than pure sentiment. Regarding this I wonder, is it just me...

Consider boring old fart Doug Mulray (‘hello my darlings’) hosting the Live at the Basement gigs on ABC TV. ‘Tonight we’ve got a wonderful act from the past guaranteed to have your feet tapping !’. Yeah, and our heads nodding off to sleep. Groan. Last week he trotted out a bunch of Aussie stars from the seventies, playing their old hits. Sure they were good then, but they performed nothing new. As they didn't sound any better, why bother ?

Later in the evening I had the opportunity to consider the relationship between one’s years and musical tastes. I latched onto a concert at Luna Park by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. In all I carried home 4 different fares, one local, two to Annandale and one to Darlinghurst. In each case the fans were all middle aged, in their forties and fifties. Amongst the exiting fans this demographic predominated.

It would be fair to say these passengers were educated and middle class, quite possibly holding management and executive positions within their chosen fields. Given that, I couldn’t for the life of me understand their attendance at a Monday night concert featuring a rebel icon from their youth. How did they relate to such music I wondered. A musican who once represented something completely different to their lives now. Surely I surmised, their attendance is motivated by pure sentiment.

Admittedly I was never a fan of Nick Cave back then, a decade behind me. I considered his hard drug persona and music alien to the world I inhabited. Which is not to say my world was G rated. Far from it, as I partied in the pot and acid rock of the seventies. If one could class this as an R rated scene, then for me, Cave’s smack-shaded, punk/alternative rock constituted an X rated world of the eighties.

But of course with the advent of career, family and associated responsibilities, life overtakes those youthful years of experimentation and direction seeking, the characteristics of one’s twenties. Now I look back on those times as an interesting experience, nothing more and nothing less. And these days, I would certainly have no interest in paying money to see a Jimi Hendrix or Frank Zappa concert. Even if they were alive, how could one tell !

Indeed, last week I drove past the Enmore Theatre and saw Jethro Tull’s name in lights. I thought, ‘How quaint’, and drove on by without giving it a second thought. Yet thirty years ago I would have lined up in the dead of an Arctic winter just to score tickets. But hey, I ain’t the same person now as I was then either.

Aaaaahh, call me old fashioned. Here I sit in pyjamas and slippers bemused by middle-aged fans getting out on a wet Monday night to watch a performer from their youth.

However pay no attention to my aged ramblings. For fans of Nick Cave, the beat still goes on. According to reviews, Cave is at the peak of his powers,

Gone is the over-the-top drug-addled performer (see the album From Her to Eternity) and gone is the twisted showman who sang only of murder. Instead Cave reveals himself, not some other persona.

Now I understand his fans. It would seem Nick Cave has achieved that rare state all artists aspire to - true progression in his art. Reportedly ensconced these days in love and domestic bliss, Cave has obviously evolved apace with his fans.

Fair enough then, in this case it’s just me.

Comments

[snaketide]

Adrian, did you at any point head backwards in your musical tastes? I only ask because at 29, I find I'm now digging into my Dad's record collection for the bands that influenced the bands I was into in my teens and early twenties (before this I was a victim of pop).

I now despair at the fact that I'll never get to see The Who or The Rolling Stones in their finest form. Also, I now find it difficult to distinguish between 'influence' and 'stealing' when it comes to comtemporary bands that I like.

Imagine what I'll be like when I'm 50...

[BourbonBird]

Growing up in a strict family environment where I wasn't allowed to hang out with people my age, save for school hours, I was stuck. I listened to some of the most bubblegummy 'old people' (excuse that, that's what my tastes were labelled as from my mates) music anywhere from Doris Day to Dionne Warwick to The Jam to Madness to Pink Floyd to Air Supply to Lionel Richie. And while some people would shirk at some of these artists, I'd jump at the chance to see them live. I'm still kicking myself for not seeing Dionne Warwick a couple years back, I heard it was awesome.

Nick Cave's a funny one. I bought a 3cd box set of his B-sides and Rarities a week ago, and I love it to bits. What I don't love is Nick Cave himself -- he always struck me as arrogant and a bit of a bastard, drugs notwithstanding. It would've been nice to see him play last night at Luna Park, but I can easily miss his between-set chats, if he even does that.

[dee]

Much of the nostalgia for past music is because the 'music' of today is so downright dreadful. If your ears aren't being assaulted by the toilet lyrics and woman-hatred of rap (so alien to Australians that you really have to wonder why anyone listens to it), they are being assaulted by vacuous 'singers' like Britney Spears and Our Kylie (arrgghh!), all dressed up like whores - in fact, the prostitutes around the Eastern suburbs look positively demure in comparison to Madonna etc. Then we have the icons teenage girls are expected to admire - Paris Hilton, etc.

Oh well, I'm off to play my James Taylor CDs.

[PB]

Most recent releases I hear are crap, and there's shitloads of them. A very odd one shows some talent and originality, most of the rest is dross knocked out at an alarming rate for a tin-eared audience with the attention span of a blowfly. I still hear some interesting music on local independent radio, but the stuff that gets rotation on big broadcasters is diabolical. Same as it's always been. I still listen to vinyl I had thirty+ years ago, as well as CDs and MP3s of a wide range of stuff, and still even pull out the tools and play a bit of thrash and dub (at least until arthritis kicks in). There's always been shithouse music around, because it sells like billy-o; it just turns over faster now because there's a lot more of it, and the timescales have changed- something recorded in New York today can be getting airplay today- twenty years ago it would've taken months.

[Michelle]

I agree with you PB about the quality of music of today. There is the quantity, but not much else. I grew up listening to a wide variety of music from pop through to classical. I used to listen to the old 78s (OK, I am not really that old) as well as the vinyl. My parents brought me up to have an understanding that music is about expressing yourself, and that sometimes people enjoy different types of music.However I think even they would have second thoughts about much of the music of today, despite them being liberal minded.

[phil]

I can remember my father crashing into my room when I had Disraeli Gears at max (8 watt) volume, despairing at 'modern music' (he was a Django, Goodman, Dorsey, Beiderbecke etc fan). Nowadays I can't stand rap, but my son is a DJ, genre techno, which I can stomach in *extremely* small doses. But he digs my old records also. My daughter brought Eminem home from the US before he 'hit' here - then I thought it was awful, now I can sort of distinguish the message, and the 'musical content' isn't as un-musical as other rap. Today I bought latest Go-Betweens - doesn't have the resonance because it hasn't had 15 years airplay, but OK nonetheless. What to do?

[Francis Xavier Holden]

Adrian - I reckon Uncle Nick Cave is at the height of his powers and I'm very pissed off at not being able to get tickets. That said I am not a big fan of "Dad's Rock". Jethro Tull hasn't had anything to say for decades, I'm not even that fussed about the Stones these days. Tastes mature.

I've only heard Madeleine Peyroux's version of "Careless Love" on radio and if thats all she ever did I'd wait for 3 hours to see her. (although having to put up with Doug Mulray for more than 2 minutes might force me out). I can't stand Barnsey although Cold Chisel at their peak were world beaters.

I'm fussy - if I wasn't so busy I would have been at every Wayne Shorter concert here in Melbourne last week. Joe Chindamo is magic.

[Amanda]

Do the crime, do the time. Go to the Basement, that's what you get. Waiting an hour past the advertised start time is pretty commonplace. I guess if you don't get out to many gigs it might be a shock.

If the music is being played today, it is today's music. Jethro Tull is just as much a 2005 act as whoever is in the charts right now.

[Francis Xavier Holden]

amanda - you are far too generous, for your penance I sentence you to an hour or two listening to Jethro Tull.

Here in Melbourne I go to a fair amount of gigs and most start within 10 mins of advertised time. But then this is Melbourne. We are cool, crisp, hip and polite.

[Mike Jericho]

Hey Adrian,

I finally got around to adding you to my blogroll. You should have told me I'd forgotten you, wally. You have to allow for my 'tardness and remind me, dude.

[adrian]

Excuse my tardiness in responding folks, after endless shifts I'm struggling with time.

Snaketide, I can sorta understand the discovery of 'new' old music. Except my old man didn't do music. As for me going back, imagine taking your current favourite band, playing them to death, hearing them on radio endlessly, for 10+ years! This is how is seemed to me with seventies music. By the time the Sex Pistols arrived, I shouted Praise the Lord, something different. Would the advent of rap be today's equivalent to punk I wonder..

Regarding today's music, I find it hard to compare with yesterday's favourites, given those sounds have either evolved or barely exist. Digital has a lot to answer for, ushering in a new sound quality.

Here's some heresy - when I was much younger, my tribe and I thought AC/DC was a bunch of westie headbangers, INXS were North Shore tossers with Michael H a Jagger rip-off, Kylie a dead-set waste of space and Peter Garrett a spastic. We were too cool for school. Now of course the joke's on us !

Mention of Disreali Gears. At 17 this was my first encounter with rock - it changed my life. At 25 Djano Reinhart had a similiar effect broadening my narrow musical tastes. What has survived is a preference for progressive blues and folk coupled with today's soul based r/b. I like anything funky to boot, yet buy nothing ! Thank God for radio.