Genealogy
That Teenage Feeling - The Genealogy Of Our Tastes In Music
Adolescence, in case you’ve either forgotten yours or haven’t actually reached it yet and have heard only frightening rumours about it, is a tough time. Not only do we have to start worrying about the daunting cosmetics aisle in the supermarket and a traumatic enough spate of Miracle Gro-like bodily happenings to put Des Lynam off his hyacinths, but we have to begin the somewhat extensive job of painting our identity from top to bottom in the hope that we can invite people in and they won’t be too put off by the Pokemon wallpaper we haven’t quite gotten around to stripping off yet. For most of you reading this wonderful issue of Analogue, and for all of those who contributed to making it so wonderful, one of the main factors in our creation of our unique identities is the music we listen to, that we obsess over, scribble the lyrics of on the back of A4 pads, listen to on the bus to our school trips to Bundoran, make CDs of for our friends and bemoan wasting our childhood without.
As I flicked through a dust-covered stack of diamond cases recently I realized what a vast pile of albums I’ve amassed over the past six years that I never so much as consider part of my current taste, let alone listen to. I scoffed at how I was fooled by the NME into buying Razorlight’s first album like a deaf twat. After putting the scratched CD on though I apprehended that no red-top magazine, no matter how hypnotically brainwashing, could force me to memorize every word of it, record tapes of it for my first girlfriend and make me feel as giddily happy as it did. At the time I discovered it I felt I was on to something nobody else was, because nobody in my year knew Johnny Borrell from the next banjax-faced longhair.
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdA5IcjWcIs]
And as “Up All Night” spun through it’s hackneyed and half-arsed pop-rock a sadness that I couldn’t attribute to the masochistic audience I was granting the music began to come over me. The more I reminisced about this album, and about the pile of albums in front of me (including oeuvres from Franz Ferdinand, The Thrills, Keane, and that seminal teenage-dreams band Ash) the more and more I felt a niggling echo in my chest: I have connected with so few albums and so few bands the way I connected with those in front of me. It wasn’t a case of sepia-tinted glasses, where I hyperbolized my affection for long-forgotten listening experiences - I truly obsessed about these bands and about their songs, every aspect of their songs in a way I have done with only the most extraordinary of bands since my taste became less singularly devoted to what Conor McNicholas and his evil hack-drones dictates. I’ve swallowed up Kraftwerk, Funkadelic and Jurassic 5, sure, but these are bands with massive catalogues of even-more-massively acclaimed albums. Keane were, on the other hand the sound of wet paint drying. And yet I was as zealously attached to their Hopes and Fears as I am to Trans-Europe Express now.
Why has my attachment to bands faded as my infatuation with music as a whole has grown? Is it a case of casting too strong a critical eye on anything remotely hyped as better-than-decent? Was my early experience of music just a giddy headrush that has worn off over time? Growing cynicism, adaption to the instant gratification culture of the internet, too much music and too little time? I had to find out what other’s experience from their adolescence up in their relationship with their music is. And who better to ask than the most zealous of the zealots, the other Analogue writers themselves.
Q. Do you feel you had more of an honest, or a more direct connection with music when you were younger than you do now?
A. “Yes and no. While there was a youthful playfulness of listening to and enjoying the chart hits of the time, I can’t escape the fact that I was mainly listening to the music I was being force fed by radio playlists. There may be an element of snobbery to my tastes nowadays, but at least I know I’m seeking out and listening to the music I want to hear, rather than blindly accepting what’s shoved in my face (or ears).”
“No it was more of innocence, not knowing the bigger world of music out there at the time “
“Yeah, I remember getting really dizzy and almost nauseously excited the first time i heard Kung Fu by Ash.”
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zguGxVes6bI]
“I think I connected way more with lyrics then than I do now. I have actually rooted out my diaries from when I was young, and there’s a ‘meaningful lyrics’ section. Contained are these gems ‘You were there for summer dreaming/ and you are a friend indeed/ and I know you’ll find your peace now/ in eternity’ (Robbie Williams- Eternity).”
“At first, yeah. Every song on an album is important when you only have ten CDs, and you know the words inside out, and it kind of feels like the band belongs to you. That faded a bit, but I’m trying to get back to it.”
“Absolutely. Music, just like romantic attraction, is a million times?more real when you’re 14.”
“No. I think there’s just a sort of nostalgia that goes with the music you listen to when you’re younger. I think maybe I used to pay more attention to lyrics when I was younger.”
“Not when I was a young teen (13-14) but when I was 15-16 I used to get really caught up in albums, so much so that’d I’d listen to them over and over again. I got a real emotional response from them, which I never really get anymore (or at least very rarely).”
I remembered buying every single CD I flicked through; the shop I bought it from, the reason I bought it, the excitement listening to it the first time. I remembered scrounging enough pennies to buy the Killers’ Hot Fuss the day it came out on the back of “Mr. Brightside”, and poring over Anton Corbijn’s artwork, picking up the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds because Interpol’s Antics was delayed and I needed something to review for a Transition Year project, and being venemously irksome when the shop assistant behind a Golden Discs counter had no idea who Editors were, let alone why their album wasn’t in. I have very few CDs or vinyl from the bands I’ve been turned on to over the last year or so, as the internet has become my choice outlet. There’s no sense of hype generated by a magazine or by a pre-release video on MTV2, by Jenny Huston on 2FM or by a massive shop display because I tend to find the songs weeks before their release. Blogs, band’s sites, Myspace, the Hype Machine, and Last.FM recommend something I like the sound of, and I’ll have it within half an hour. Was my earlier appreciation of music more devout because of the channels through which I discovered it?
Q. Who introduced you to the bands and the music you liked then?
“My parents never “forced” much music on me – neither of them were what you’d call enthusiasts – and my brother had his own tastes but kept them to himself, so mainly I found music on the radio. By my mid-teens I was buying dance music magazines, but back in the days before blogs music wasn’t as easily accessible.”
“My cool cousin Robert. Despite being only a year older than me, he had?a ticket to the 1994 Dublin Nirvana show, and listened to Dinosaur? Junior and Stone Temple Pilots. He even had an actual record player,?and only ever bought vinyl.”
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7ekpbbdz8M]
“Dave Fanning, and the band names written on the canvas bags of kids in school who were cooler than me”
“MTV!”
“My mam and My Uncle Tony were huge factors. My Mam comes from the?Talking Heads, David Bowie, Mamas and Papas end of music, and my uncle?was mad into Brit Pop and Punk. And both of them have an unhealthy?obsession with Bruce Springsteen.”
“My mother was a big Dylan fan, and I just always loved music”
“Ray-dee-yo. Seriously. All we used to do was text in. Also, I harboured a secret love for Bob Dylan (thanks Da) and 60’s pop (thanks Ma). “
“Friends were pretty important, but I read Q and occasionally NME and Hot Press from 14 on, so I was building my own immature picture of what was cool and what wasn’t cool to like. That gave me the notion that a finite number of deadly bands exist, and that the way to get to them is through buying music magazines.”
Of course, not every album or band I loved four or five years ago has left me. I have progressed from the bands I loved to the bands they loved. My love for Franz Ferdinand has transferred directly onto Gang of Four, the Fall and Wire, every second I spent on “Is This It” I have replaced with a minute of “Marquee Moon”. The type of song that appealed to me in my early music-listening history has graduated greatly, as it takes more and more to hold my interest. Very few of those bands I listened to survive outside of my iPod’s shuffle mode, but I can recognize that little pieces of what I loved about them, whether witty lyrics or fat-arsed synth sounds, crop up in the songs I love now.”
Q. Can you trace elements in the music you listen to now back to the music you listened to way back when?
A. “When I was growing up, you were either a raver or a grunger. If you?were a “raver” you listened to Cypress Hill, NWA and Body Count - none?of which could under any circumstance be termed rave. Grungers?listened to rock, grunge, sixties and indie. Though my musical taste?has been well crowbarred open since, I guess I still listen to much?more instrumental than electronic music, and my knowledge of hip hop?is limited to early and ‘underground’ acts.”
“Some elements, I’ve come to really enjoy instrumental music which I think I can trace right back to Smashing Pumpkins and their style and approach to writing.”
“Definitely from when I was 16 or older. When I was 16/17, I had Pavement, Sonic Youth, Yo La Tengo and Jeff Buckley on heavy rotation. Looking at the bands I’ve been listening to over the last week on iTunes I can see a connection. I still love slightly weird indie rock that occasionally has heavy parts like Wolf Parade, White Denim and Times New Viking but I’ll also listen to folky slow burners like Bon Iver, Le Loup and Beirut.”
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hu9DnE7gTIU&feature=related]
“Yep. Human error. I still haven’t come to terms with dance music fully. “
“I still listen to a lot of it, so yeah, I guess. I’m a sucker for a melody and a call and answer chorus. Though I probably wouldn’t've listened to half the stuff I listen to now when I was younger. I liked an easy listening experience, no growers thanks.”
“Yeah, I love melody and I always liked the more melodic stuff in the metal spectrum”
“Yes. A good hook, a stupid lyric always gets me”
There are some CDs in the less dusty, beside-the-bed-for-easy-access pile that I bought four or five years ago. Eels, Low, and Modest Mouse remain. These survivors are strangely predominantly those I picked up as the least-favoured of a three-for-one deal, or a half-price sale I couldn’t say no to, but I realized I enjoyed at least as much as, erm, Kaiser Chiefs. Some loves, like Bright Eyes and Grandaddy sprung up from emoticon-heavy MSN conversations, or recommendations from my tastemaking English teacher. The fanboy-like collection of Bruce Springsteen bits and bobs are direct inheritances, both taste and material-wise, from my mother. I loved him as a kid, loved him as a teen, and still love him now (still as a teen, though only for another six months). Why are some acts timeless in my taste while others have worn thin? Personally, I still discover layers of sounds and new levels of meaning, and appreciate different aspects of the artistry of bands more multi-faceted like Low and Grandaddy that I didn’t have the capability of picking up on when I was more used to in-yer-face guff like Hard-Fi. I rarely listen to bands for the memories they evoke, but approximately one night in every three months I’ll throw an older album on for pure nostalgia (can I be nostalgic when I’m only nineteen? Course.)
Q. Which are the acts that you have stuck to liking since you were young? What makes these so durable, do you think?
A. “Dandy Warhols-they’re like musical family. You can fall in and out of love with them but youre stuck to them.”
“I’d still spin the first Ash album because it has the same timeless youthful vigour as stuff like the Undertones”
“Very few. The ones I still actually listen to from that time either? stopped making records long before I was born (sixties stuff), or? started making terrible records after a certain point (Counting?Crows).”
“I still listen to Nirvana every now and then. They are still legitimately good. They are durable in a general sense because kids start liking them for the same reason I did, but for me, I started to hear different things in them when I went back to them a few years ago. Heavy means a couple of different things, and Nirvana are all of them. And poppy too in their way, which helps.”
“Pavement, My Bloody Valentine and Elliot Smith. What makes them so durable? I guess it’s because they each have such an original sound and when you listen to them there’s just something that makes you want to hear the album the whole way through in the right order.”
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GB8nCE2EoIw]
“Well I never listen to Smashing Pumpkins anymore, apart from the odd rare b-side or two. Or any other bands from that time for that matter.”
Unsurprisngly, everybody’s backstory and how they got to the hetereogenous cocktail of what they drink up today is completely different. It is clear that there are direct links between the DNA of those bands at the top of our music-listening family tree to those alive today. Like all family gene pools, of course, there are some molecules we’d rather delete. As Razorlight finished rotating I could embarrassedly find nothing to appreciate the album, or trace any function it has in my life now other than to allow me to distinguish between an aural pile of excrement and what to me is now “good music”. While in another five years I may well be writing about how nausea-inducing Animal Collective are to me and disparaging my once-upon-a-time love for Built To Spill, I feel while I may have sometimes a less emotional response to the music I listen to know, but a far greater sensoral and intellectual connection to it. And I’m still looking forward to Franz Ferdinand’s third album.
Q. If you could erase the memory of one band you liked when you were?young right now which band would it be?
A. “Stone Temple Pilots” “Simply Red” “Eternal” “Bon Jovi” “Muse” “Limp Bizkit” “Sasha” “Arcade Fire” (!)
