old fartitude

[mmcirvin]

Browsing the iTunes Music Store's (somewhat incomplete) lists of Billboard hits, it becomes clear to me that the moment I entered grad school, a large fraction of the stuff being played on Top 40 radio suddenly became unfamiliar to me; and the moment I got out of grad school, most of what was left disappeared over the event horizon, leaving only persistent annoyances of Celine Dion magnitude to make any impression on my mind.

In the other temporal direction, the charts don't get that alien until long before my birth.

Comments

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Of course, that asymmetry is mostly because memory and the historical record only work in one direction.

iTunes Music Store's (somewhat incomplete) lists of Billboard hits,

[infrogmation.livejournal.com]

Is there a web link to that list? If so, I'd like to see it.

I have some awareness of late 1960s pop from my childhood, then 1950s pop from the radio station I listened to in high-school in the late 1970s, and a bit of early 80s pop from what was always on in the recieving room of the bookstore I worked in then. I grew up with 1920s pop from my grandparents 78 collection, then started getting 78s of my own at junk and yard sales. Since then I've become more familiar with earlier music to a much greater degree than the more contemporary. I generally find old Tin Pan Alley commercial schlock much more agreeable than the current commercial schlock.

This simplification doesn't take into account my time listening to the radio in Belize, Yucatan, and Guatemala in the 1970s.

-- F.

Re: iTunes Music Store's (somewhat incomplete) lists of Billboard hits,

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Billboard.com (billboard.com) has lists from 1, 5, 10, and 15 years ago, but they don't seem to have complete historical data there.

Re: iTunes Music Store's (somewhat incomplete) lists of Billboard hits,

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Also, I think those are weekly snapshots, not yearly data.

[bram.livejournal.com]

My situation was similar, but when I briefly became a college professor, I found it in my interest to learn what the kids were listening to.

And nowadays everyone listens to Radiohead, right? Friends of mine who have no Beethoven or Beatles CDs have Radiohead.

I figure the important thing isn't to keep up with the top 40 anyway, but with what the cool kids listen to.

Now I have some youngones on my LJ friends list, and they help me keep up with the new music. I recommend glass_half_full, a 21 year old U of Michigan undergrad studying astrophysics in Germany. She introduced me to The Weakerthans. (iTunes has the album Reconstruction Site.) Also big with this generation are the related Postal Service, and Death Cab for Cutie.

Re:

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I don't know Radiohead from a hole in the ground, but I liked the Talking Heads song that they got their name from.

Re:

[bram.livejournal.com]

Well you have to go out and listen to them! I am a big fan of Talking Heads, and suspected that the song from True Stories was the origin of Radiohead's name, but never saw it confirmed.

When I went back to my college reunion last spring, I was surprised that the college a capella group mostly sang adaptations of Radiohead songs.

So this is a very important band. They are not as sharp as Talking Heads (especially lyrically) and they are not as spare.

They have wonderful sonorities though, and are very catchy. They've been compared with Pink Floyd. I recommend "OK Computer" or "Kid A" (heard in the opening scenes of Vanilla Sky) or "Amnesiac". The first is sharper (more guitar-based), the next 2 are dreamier. And the most recent is "Hail to the Thief".

The lead singer is Thom Yorke, who has a bad eye. The band actually had some classical training.