Back in My Day...
It seems I'm one of the elder statesmen here on Hive. This is very similar to me at work. I used to joke around about the curmudgeony old man at work... now I am him. As a result, I sometimes feel the need to share my unwanted pearls of wisdom about the good old days. Don't get me wrong, there is a lot of cool stuff today and I am not afraid to adapt with the times, but there are still some stuff from the analog days that I think are far superior to today's digital age.
One of those is music. And I don't mean the difference between the sound of vinyl and the sound of an MP4. Many people my age swear that vinyl is so much better, but my ears have been damaged by too many nights at clubs and concerts that i can't even tell the difference.
No I am talking about discovering music. Today, all you need to do is program a Spotify playlist and when you get to the end, the genius AI makes some suggestions of some other music you might like. It's actually pretty cool and convenient, but it is also really boring and takes away the fun of the hunt.
Bake in my day, you either discovered music by someone you know playing something new for you, you heard it on the radio, or you found it yourself. This process also really added to the mystique of seeing a cool, undiscovered opening act. I used to go to shows, check out the opening act and then go and buy their tape ((yes I said "tape" at the local record shop (yes I said "local" record shop)). If you heard an opening band you liked, you could walk into a brick and motor store and hope to get lucky enough to find the one and only copy of their tape hidden in the "new", "local" or "alternative" section.
But discovering a new band like this did not happen every day. You had to wait for a band to play that was worth spending your last 20 bucks on and then they actually had to have an opening act worthy of you borrowing another 10 bucks from someone so you could buy their tape. Those were both very rare occurrences.
Back in my day, the best way to find new music was to go to the local record store and hang around until; the cashier played something cool. then you'd ask what it was and you'd leave with a brand new tape that you could play until it warped or you left it in the sun in the back of your car.
Although that was the most effective way, the most fun was basically gambling based on a name and the tape cover art. Sometimes you struck out and wasted $10 that you didn't really gamble with. But other times you saw a band named "The Revolting Cocks" and you thought, "This has to be interesting". And then you put it in your tape deck and it blew you away.
One such purchase I will never forget is Jane's Addiction's "Nothing's Shocking". This album was released right before the start of my senior year. None of my friends or I had ever heard of Jane's Addiction. One day I was at the mall record shop perusing their very small "alternative" section when I came across, some of the most unique album cover art I had seen. I won't show it here because it is NSFW but feel free to check it out on your own. Two women sat in a giant rocking chair with their hair on fire. I was sold. It was the best music gamble of my life. I listened to that tape on repeat for the next year. Even though I don't listen to it very much anymore, I can still sing along, word for word, with every song on that album.
Yeah it was risky to buy sight unseen... sound unheard, but it was also fun. Spotify is cool and all but my kids will never feel the joy of discovering music on their own.
How about you? What is some music you discovered on your own?
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I have aot of music in my mind. Wherever I go there will be lots of music around and if u like it I will search it or find it's title and if I like the lyrics, it will be one of my favorite.
Hahaha this brought back so many memories! I still remember saving up lunch money just to buy a cassette tape that might be good based on the album art alone. Sometimes it was gold, sometimes... not so much 😅 But you're right the hunt was part of the thrill!
Back in my day you’d find really good music on 8 track tapes and vinyl records at a garage sale.
I once bought a Beatles Abbey road - original Apple Records at a Garage Sale for $1.
The analogy of the grumpy old man is excellent. Sometimes, when we're around younger people, we feel that way, but well, that's life when we get older. I'm not a big music fan, to be honest, but it must be great to discover new bands for ourselves.
music is good to the soul which you cant take that out. I have always been s fan of good music that I hardly stay without listening to one.
The old days.
Cassette tapes bring back many memories. My brother had drawers full of them. I'm sure you remember that some people even recorded songs from the radio and made their own compilations on blank tapes with homemade covers and track lists, which they then passed on to their friends.
experience is gold in life, the younger we are , the more mistakes we make due to lack of exp and knowledge
I always thought that the music between 1990 and 2010 was the best. Easiest to remember, easiest to understand, easiest to dance! I enjoy modern music as well but will always prefer the old one when listening for more hours.
I've found music in various ways over the years. Some was by hearing about it from friends. Our local library had a music section where you could take out vinyl, and later CDs, for a small charge. I would pick out anything that looked interesting. I may have taped the odd one(!).
I also found some via reviews in guitar and music magazines. That's how I found Jane's Addiction :)
A few years back I found a site that had various 'radio' shows that you could download where different presenters would play prog rock and that got me into various bands. One of those was Frost* who I have since seen live a few times.
At one point I wanted to play bass and whilst looking up lessons I found some players like Jeff Schmidt and Steve Lawson who are amazing. Via that I also found guitarist Matt Stevens and his band The Fierce and the Dead who I have seen live many times.
A lot of music I listen to is not on the radio. I do use Spotify now to look up albums by people I like and their generated playlists find similar stuff.
I don't know if I could pick anything out that I discovered on my own back in the day. I do remember that I was in band class and this guy in the percussion section with me had his walkman and he played me a song called "Hot Cherie" by a band called Hardline. It's still one of my favorite songs today. It just rocks so hard. It deserves to be played loud if you have never heard it. Spotify is killer at finding all kinds of bands for me that I have never heard of before.
Being a teen in the mid-80's my friends and I got completely swept up by early hip-hop. A lot of it was still "underground". The genre was so different back then, mainly party music. There was a local, low-powered radio station in Columbus Ohio, CTNT. You had to connect the coaxial cable wire to your radio to even get the station to come in. They spun the newest records from NYC everything Thursday afternoon and would mix live on air. This was always an event and we'd tape it onto cassettes to play later.
A couple of friends and I bought turntables and a mixer from Radio Shack and began DJ'ing. We'd discover when our local records stores would get in their shipments and we'd ride our bikes there make sure we got the newest releases. After rap I had my classic jazz phase for almost a solid decade. Bob Marley's music was a constant throughout it all. Before the internet and all of the modern digital distractions, music seemed like it was a much bigger part of life.
Exactly
Spotify and the others really made everything easier but they also took away the joy of searching and experimenting.
I am a child of the 60s, and after school I skipped the army call-up for a year. I started at Olivetti, went to college and emerged as a qualified typing machine technician. There were several typing pools in the city, and we were paired with a partner to go and service the machines. So off we went on our Olivetti scooters with our service tool bags to go and service a typing pool consisting of 60 machines. We often stopped off at music shops where they had public earphones, and one day my partner said that he wanted me to listen to a song. It was John Lennon's album "Imagine", and I was totally hooked. The album was banned in our country, but the owner of the shop had them in stock, so I could get one. On my own, I bought stacks of albums, mostly rock and rock ballads, and I still have about 30 left. I also have a modern record player and often listen to the music from way back when.
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All the songs from the old days are much more interesting. Even today, I love to listen to them. Now, the love in music is not the same as the fun that used to be in the old music. People still try to make the love of old music heard more.