After listening to a group of younger folks talking about new artists this past weekend, I realized I had no idea who about ¾ of the names were. And the names I did know, I knew for the wrong reasons (usually tabloid headlines). So when does this happen to us?
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| CC DeVille of Poison - St. Louis, MO - 2017 |
Strangely, there does appear to be an answer. A study published a few years ago found that most people tend to stop going after new music and circle back on “coming of age” favorites when they reach about 33 years old. Men are less likely to listen to newer music than women, but the median age still averages out about the same.
But what that doesn’t explain, really, is why. Over the last few days, I’ve had the SiriusXM radio streaming at work. Rather than my fall-backs of Hair Nation, Ozzy’s Boneyard, or even Turbo, I put on Octane to see what’s new in the genre I love – hard rock and heavy metal. And none of it was bad, not a one of the songs was something I would point to and say “what the hell is that???” The problem, for me, is that none of them stood out enough to get that far. It all just sounded the same.
Doing the concert photography thing, I’ve found myself hanging out with photographers generally younger than me (getting into the game late). I get excited when the bands of my youth are coming back to town – Poison and Def Leppard and Judas Priest are all coming through my area, and I hope to be in the pit with them! But when newer bands, bands that excite my fellow shooters – Queens of the Stone Age, MGMT, Muse – come through, I’m looking to shoot those shows because I know they're popular and I want them for my portfolio and to attract people to my work. It’s not that I have any problems with the music, it just doesn’t excite me.
The flip-side is that I feel the same way about what I see as “legacy” acts coming through – the Eagles, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Chicago. These are bands that are legendary, but they’re before my time. I want to cover the shows for the prestige of having them in my collection, but not for the show itself. (And even committing these words to the electronic ether, I run the risk of it getting back to a publicist and having them say “well, if you don’t really want to be there…” But that’s a chance I’ll take.)
The thing is, these are all bands that fall into the circle of music I should like. Old and new, these are rock acts. But only some of them are mine. There are a few exceptions. I’ve really gotten to like The Struts, and Ghost from Sweden. A few others are pulling at my attention, we’ll see if they latch on.
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| Luke Spiller of The Struts - Champaign, IL - 2017 |
I don’t know what it is in out sort-of evolved primate brains that, at a certain point, we just say “nope, that’s enough. I like what I like and all this other stuff is just white noise that won’t get through my filters.” I don’t really like having those filters, but it really seems deeply ingrained. I’m trying to break it and shake it, but I just keep coming back to what I know.
Just my rambling thoughts for a Wednesday afternoon.
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