I like Plague Soundscapes pretty well, I love Alex Newport's production, he's amazing (he's produced At the Drive-In, Ikara Colt, Polysics, and is in the great Theory of Ruin).

But man............... I hate to beat a dead horse, but jesus.. NEW ERECTIONS was the most worthless piece of shit ever..

One reason I enjoy keeping up with music is that finding a new amazing band is always around the corner, no matter how much you think you know. I wouldn't say that my appreciation of a particular band or album then was any greater than a new appreciation for a new band.

However, I will admit that my excitement with the possibilities of music was greater back when as I did not know as much as I do now as I was naive to the power of music. It then comes to a comparison of naive enthusiasm versus an informed appreciation. Of course it is up to the individual to decide which of these feelings are more gratifying. Do you think it is better to just binge drink beer to get drunk and have fun or to cultivate a taste and appreciate on a more sophisticated, more intellectual level? I say both are equally worthwhile as they are essentially the same energy. Only difference is that one is engaged in the activity while the other one the understanding.

I have a much better relationship with music now that when I was a teen. I listen to anything that I fancy listening to without a care in the world. I've always liked finding out about new bands as a teen and that hasn't gone now, it's just that I have less time than I used to have.

As a teenager myself, music is a damned large part of my life, but too many people my age are concerned with finding their niche or their 'specialism', if you like, in the music world. They see it as important to know every band in said genre, and don't focus enough on buying and enjoy the records. I see my music collection as a lifetime undertaking, and it will be in middle-age or later I may get even close to owning all the music I want to. Musics important to me, and it's as good as it will ever be, but I realise now I'm still scratching & sniffing all the music out there, and in the future I will be alot wiser the musical universe, if not enjoying more or less...

don't count on it the more you learn about music the longer and longer your shopping lists will grow.

This is the 2nd time my writing has been mistaken for his. Does our freeform-radio-nerdness make us so alike, I wonder?

Something else to consider is how the experience of being a curious teenager today is different than curious teenagers of previous generations.

Nowadays, with the media saturation and such a wide variety of music available for free online, it's so easy to take music for a short test-drive, and the tendency is to listen for immediate gratification. Young listeners often do not develop any patience when it comes to music appreciation. Maybe their first taste of a new band has a long plodding intro, and maybe that gets dumped for the next download of a song that starts off right away with the urgency and aggression that might excite a more typical youngster.

Back in the olden days, the best we could do was READ about music or hear it on the radio or see the video of the one single and then buy the album. I know that I trusted my reading and my local freeform community radio station to put the band on my to-buy list, and then I'd buy it, and if I didn't like the album at first, I'd hafta listen to it and listen some more and try like hell to make it worth my money.

I think I've told the story here before.....I was 14 and curious about where this punk rock thing had come from, and I was reading about a band called Television which so many writers had called "great" and "influential," so I bought Marquee Moon. I put it on and listened and was surprised at how unpunk it sounded. Here I was, still dumb enough to think that The Exploited were some kinda rightfully legendary band, and now trying to wrap my head around a much more mature masterpiece. Well, it did eventually dawn on me that it was great, and certainly, that was some kinda watershed moment of developing a more informed sense of taste.


So, certainly the Exploited were better when I was 13-14. The stuff I liked after the Exploited were dead to me....SO MUCH BETTER!

Blank Generation is still boring.

but blank generation the song is still a masterpiece.

yes, in a tepid, leeched-of-it's-vitality-due-to-age kind of way.

nah, it still sounds great.

the rest of the album, i agree.

I was just teasing. the song is great, until the guitar solo. then it is as I describe.

no, as you get older you just apreciate it more and it takes longer to find things that you like more than others. some people never get past the teenage years and seem stuck to like the music they liked then which is a real shame as there is so much other studff out there.

As I get older, it takes less time to find new stuff I like.

im only 18 now, but i have to say, i dont think any record has hit me quite how Nevermind did when i was 13. Such a powerful record, I may have since wandered off into the world of indie snobbery and rarely listen to it now, but i was completely obsessed with it at that time.

there are a handful of bands that i've liked since being a teenager though and those bands will always have a special place in my heart

Quote of the millennium maybe?

Is music better when you're a teenager?

Well, I think music sounds best when you're not constantly exposed to it [i.e. you don't own the album]. Before I started buying CDs, I only heard music on the radio, MTV and BET. Usually, I would be lucky to hear my favorite songs, like, "Fade into You" by Mazzy Star and anything by the Wu-Tang Clan from their debut album Enter the Wu-Tang. Now, though, when I listen to certain songs from the early to mid-90's, I'm not moved by them in the same way because I'm so familiar with them and because I have such easy access to them.

I miss that.

So from now on... the next song that moves me the first time I hear it, I won't listen to it again for 15 days, or maybe a month.

What was the other time? That is an interesting phenomena. Maybe it's just the denseness of the text, since I often launch into the long diatrabs of a guy who's been around the block too many times as well.

That said, while I find your tastes and how they were founded completely interesting, our stories are actually rather different. I got into post-punk in my late teens straight from a pathetic art-rock / AOR prog background when Sonic Youth woke me the fuck up that there was a whole world that the FM radio of the day hadn't been telling me shit about. From there I reverse engineered from their influences that punk rock was cool and proto-punk even cooler, but I was already far too old for the Exploited. I'd probably enjoy them more today than I would have back then.

Yes, and no. What I mean is that at first as a teen one gets into music, but has no direction where to go. As one explore more and more, they enjoy other kinds of music, thus branching out. Leaving bands one heard as a teen behind, and liking newer music. However, I do agree as it have been mentioned, that some do just get stuck in their teenage years and never go past that.

True.

I think I will never be blown away by great music as much as when I was a teenager (I guess I got blasé in time).