When the Musical Handbrakes Come On
Sometimes your taste just stops progressing. You can see it happen with clothes, too – there is no way in hell I am ever going to wear skinny jeans, for example. Oddly, I think they look can quite cool on cool people, but they always seem to be monumentally physically unflattering, no matter who’s wearing them. My taste in trousers basically stopped moving forward around the time the hipsters of the world started to leave the bootcut on the shelf a few years ago. A good few years ago now, actually.
This happens to people with music all the time. Here at Proper Job one of my bosses’ musical taste pretty much ceased to have a particularly close relationship with the cutting edge at the tail end of the nineties – about the time he and I both lived around Byres Road in Glasgow, shopping in all the same record shops, unbeknownst to one another.
JC over at the Vinyl Villain has said on numerous occasions (usually when praising Frightened Rabbit for being the exception) that he just doesn’t connect with current music – he finds it difficult not to sigh the weary, jaded sigh of someone who has heard it all before*.
I remember the moment my cousin Steve said how much he liked the new Neneh Cherry song when it came on the car radio one afternoon many years ago. It was spongy, soft, banal R ‘n’ B and I was quite shocked – this is the man who introduced me to the Dead Kennedys, The Piranhas, The Specials, The Clash, The Smiths, Billy Bragg, REM, John Cooper Clark, Madness and Adam & the Ants when I was no more than a nipper.
It’s particularly obvious with radio presenters and magazine editors whose taste clearly and publically starts to stagnate – failing to ever really move forward from the sound they were into when their fascinations and those of the hip and the cool truly coincided for a while. I presume the same will happen to me and this site. Hopefully not yet, but I suppose it’s probably inevitable, notwithstanding the fact that it was never all that hip to begin with.
I always wonder why this happens. Do you just stop caring? That’s what happened with my boss – he says it just stopped being all that important to him. Do you slowly but surely stop surrounding yourself with people who are going to play you the new and the weird stuff until you get over the initial disomfort and get to like it? Do you just get to the point where you fill up? People seem to have the ability to get excited about new television series much later in their lives, although I suppose we all seem to lapse into Midsomer Murders eventually, but why does the musical interest seem to tail off so much earlier? I guess people just watch a fuck of a lot more telly, so they are probably kept closer to the cutting edge just by default, but why do fifty year olds seem so much more likely to get excited about the new series of The Wire than the new album by Animal Collective or someone like that? Or is that not really true, am I missing my guess on that one?
Whatever, it doesn’t really matter, I’m just idly speculating. I think I’ve managed to keep my parents’ taste relatively young, actually, by constantly sending them new stuff. Not NME haircut young, but a respectably alternative kind of young**. They struggle a bit with some of the electronic stuff though, and I didn’t send them the Meursault album, for example; except Small Stretch of Land, all parents love that one. But I hope someone does the same for me. At thirty-three I reckon I have a couple more years of youthful enthusiasm in me before the will to live slowly dies and I begin the long, slow, depressing slide into that awful form of dementia that leads you to believe that Noah and the Whale are any sort of a band at all. When that happens, someone please just give me a massive overdose of Coldplay and put me out of my misery as quickly as possible.
R.E.M. – Radio free Europe
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Billy Bragg – World Turned Upside Down
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The Beat – Whine & Grine/Stand Down Margaret
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*That’s just because he’s so incredibly fucking old, by the way, not because he’s a snob.
**I never liked mainstream music when I was young, so I’m not likely to aspire to it in old age. I just mean stuff that’s still current and innovative.
You’d like the original version of Radio Free Europe they released on Hib-Tone records before they were signed to IRS.
Bit quicker, and more rough and punky.
My copy is still in the big box of records at my mum’s house in Cardiff, and not in Edinburgh.
Which is handy.
FETCH IT!
That does sound rather brilliant, actually.
Here’s a bit of a wobbly copy someone’s put on YouTube.
It’s on Eponymous too.
Oi! I’m 40 YFSP! And while I have long since lost the will to live, I’ll have none of this Noah & The Whale claptrap.
my mum and dad always had very conservative view of music, paul simon, tina turner, yes, dire straits – but now my mum wanders here and there, she finds stuff online and has no critical compass, so shes as likely to like the phantom band as alison krauss’ new album…and they went to their first festival this summer at belladrum, where, incidentally, they saw noah and the whale and said “they were rubbish”.
I am voting for Randan’s parents!
I wasn’t exactly asserting that age = shit music per se, more that a lot of people seem to stop looking for something new at a certain point. I only say this because of self-confessed examples around me, too, not because it’s something I’d necessarily level at someone anyway.
C&B, stop moaning, you old git! Fancy writing a Sunday Supplement? Letter From America and so forth. It could be about the music they pipe into your nursing home.
Strange but I’ve been thinking about this topic quite a lot lately. Usually I feel more passionately about music than virtually any other subject, but from time to time I go through periods where music just seems to fall very much into the background for me and I become extremely passive about it. But then at some point my interest revives, and when it does I can’t even remember how it felt to be so disinterested. It almost feels like a neuro-chemical thing it’s so jarring.
Yeah, i think what my folks did is the other way around, maybe they had more to worry about when they were young, now theyve got time and money, they can look around a bit more now – they never reached saturation point I guess…
Oh no you didn’t! Just because I poop myself from time to time does not mean that I live in a nursing home, although I’m told the creamed corn they serve on Thursdays is quite delicious. And they have the complete series of Matlock on VHS!
At thirty-three I reckon I have a couple more years of youthful enthusiasm in me before the will to live slowly dies and I begin the long, slow, depressing slide into that awful form of dementia that leads you to believe that Noah and the Whale are any sort of a band at all.
Cheeky cunt. I’m 37 & see no signs of musical interest waning. I’m constantly finding new stuff that excites me. There may well be derivations of genre, form, trouser length & hair product, but it’s all movement forwards as far as I can tell.
Fuck, my musical upbringing compared to now is, I would say, very different. It began with parental choices (Elvis, Nashville, Sunday afternoon Radio 2, Rockabilly, Funk, Soul, Gospel, James Brown, Everly Brothers, ’70s schmaltz & cheese, Experimental Prog Folk, John Lennon, Lou Reed, Blondie, amongst others), which bumped against my Canadian school friend Chuck’s introduction to me of The Beach Bots, The Beatles, The Byrds, ’50s rock & roll / Surf, then my old man introducing me to Django Reinhardt, Hendrix, Cream + a ton of mad experimental funk verging on psychedelia.
Throughout all this I was listening to & loving all medium of jazz, blues, rhythm & blues, bluegrass, big band, swing + healthy doses of ‘classical’ music, all while watching Harold Lloyd, Laurel & Hardy, Rocket Man, Superman & any number of ’30s, ’40s & ’50s b&w movies on Saturday afternoons or late at night.
From that mix my natural curiosity led me to the likes of Prince & the Minneapolis movement, the usual ’80s fare, pure pop stuff, grebo, James, The Smiths, Joy Division, Bauhaus, The Cure + the ‘Goth’ ilk, JAMC, Tom Waits, 13th Floor Elevators/Erickson, Beefheart, Zappa, Nitzer Ebb, Mute, 4AD, Touch & Go, Bongwater, Galaxie 500, Butthole Surfers, the Shimmy Disc back catalogue & etc & so on.
That kind of leap forwards/sideways/backwards/everywhere taste reflects my general spastic-danced excitement at hearing something that knocks me sideways (or even simply raises an eyebrow sharply) &, I have to say, I don’t envisage it (or my thirst for that something new) slowing down any day soon.
Sure, there are days I get disheartened — but that is purely because of the vast amount of utter shite I wade through each week to create the playlist for each show. If anything is sacrificed re: music & the pursuit thereof then I would say TWR would go in favour of getting back the art/ability to listen to an album again without thinking “this would perfectly dovetail with such & such” or, “how the fuck did this get made & why the fuck is it in my in-box?”.
Could it be simpler than that? Could it not be that people tend to like music created for and by their generation because it speaks to them? Therefore when your generation is taken over by the younger lot you stop caring because what young ‘uns sing about doesn’t matter to you anymore.
Christ Mathew, a couple more years. I’m now forty and still get enthused and seek out new music. Although I don’t seem to get the same rush of emotions as I did when I first heard Upside Down but I’m no longer 15 and don’t have all those mad hormones rushing about.
A few months back when I heard Skream’s remix of In For The Kill, I got those goosepimples and wished that I was hearing it for the first time in a club. I also got very enthusiastic about Meursault, to the point that my mates kept telling me to shut up, not just saying that. At the moment it’s The Joy Formidable that I can’t stop playing (not that new, I know).
However, there is no anticipation, like that of waiting for a new Fall album.
I love the Beach Bots.
Easy, Dylan. Easy.
“Therefore when your generation is taken over by the younger lot you stop caring because what young ‘uns sing about doesn’t matter to you anymore.”
Every generation tends to say the same thing, really, so I’m not sure that’s it. ‘Ahhh, my girlfriend broke my heart.’ ‘Ahhh, parents just don’t understand.’. ‘Ahhh, why can’t I stay out past curfew?’. ‘Ahhh, the world is terrible!’.
It’s the same with post-pubescent supernatural vigilantism, Sean:
In every generation, there is a Chosen One. She alone will stand against the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness. She is the Slayer.
Precisely. The generational disconnect from new music forms is approximately equal to an uncontrolled surge in the vampire population.
The Beach Bots have to happen. Someone make that band!
Ben, I somewhat disagree – as you can see from the comments above, there are plenty of crusty old duffers who are far more into music than they should be, so I don’t know about the generational question.
Maybe the drive and mania for all things just generally lessens, I suppose, as you get older and more comfortable, so more and more people just settle down and simply stop caring about a lot of things as much.
I think music is always going to be superficial to the vast majority of the buying/listening public. It’s either wallpaper or an umbrella in a cocktail.
I mean, if you look at the so-called youth of today in the UK the vast majority listen (by choice or association) to that bpm/thuddy thud nonsense by way of identity & socialising. That kind of music, in whatever photostat each 5 or 10 years spits out, will always be a constant because of its easy to fit in banality (regardless of its up-tempo nature). But how many of those late teens/early 20-somethings will be listening to it, or anything else as a serious indulgence, BY CHOICE as they approach 30? Very few I’d wager.
Someone’s going to come and shout SNOB! at me again any minute now, aren’t they.
Actually, the people I am talking about in the examples above were very, very keen on music for a long time and then just kinda switched off.
JC is the exception of course – he’s still just as keen, but he just isn’t into all that much new music (if he doesn’t mind me speaking for him – I’m going on the basis of a pretty old conversation).
Someone’s going to come and shout SNOB! at me again any minute now, aren’t they.
I think Tart’s snidey sense is tingling…
To be fair, I love music and have music playing pretty much constantly but, if I didn’t have a brother that supplied it to me and filtered out most of the crap I would probably descend into endless classical.
I just don’t have the get-up-and-go to hunt through the vast amount of indie generated to find what I love.
SNOBS the lot of ya…… yawn
oh and I’m 45 and still get a total hardon for new music (latest is One Hundred Hurricanes) and can’t stop playing it. So go fuck yerselves, we’ve had this discussion already.
Oh pish, Tart. I am talking about hitting that wall where you just kinda stop caring.
Ben – ‘descend’ into classical? Splendid choice of words!
Something like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GN1Ufx62LuY&feature=related
Oi sneaking in a mid afternoon ageist discussion is bang out of order when we are all having a snooze.
You may think the caring less is a problem but wait till you are really into stuff that maybe you should leave to the kids. I’m having a rap/dance catastrophe at the moment and my 13 and 15 year old wont come to see Lethal Bizzle with me at Leeds festival as ‘it’s too dangerous’. Oh and 2ManyDJs were soooo good on Sunday.
I know I shouldn’t but I still can’t help it, at least its dark when I do my dad dancing normally
Oh and Tart is spot on about One Hundred Hurricanes.
Never even heard of ‘em. I take it that’s a recommendation.
Check’s in the mail, Cog darling xoxo
Ok, feeling guilty for yelling snobs and running away (butin all fairness DC did sic me on you) so I’ll give further explanation. Yes Matthew, people do stop caring about new trends in music and innovation and new sounds such as what thrills us obsessives. But in my mind, where we end up being snobbish is when we equate that with a lower form of music consumption.
If I want to eagerly await the latest Dolly Parton album and it sounds like all the rest of her catalogue from 1980 on, then am I also not into “new” music?
This kind of example and other well meaning comments here show me that it’s not really a discussion about what age do you stop caring about new music as much as it’s about what age do you realize you don’t have time to contine being a music obsessive?
Ok, one more, then I’m done.
Obscurity was never the barometer in music outside genres like jazz or classical. The stuff that DC reports growing up on – helluva list and much like mine- was all played on the radio so it wasn’t a matter of it having an added niche value due to it’s rarity per se.
That all changed with the conglomeration if radio stations by corporations and the advent of real indie labels and the rise of DIY and punk music and so on and so forth. Then, popular music obsessives really had something to chew on to make a brand out of. And then we end up with discussions like this decrying the middle-aged hipster’s banality (I jest, a little) xoxo
Tart, every time I mention this, even if it’s just an innocent little tale about people I know losing interest in ferreting out music and simply deciding to stick with either what they already have or what comes on the radio, people make all sorts of ludicrous assumptions and start enthusiastically beating up the most ridiculous straw men.
Higher? Lower? Enthusiastically seeking out Dolly Parton? There seems to be an entirely different conversation going on inside your head to the one I thought I was having.
And that was three-post mentalism on your part, by the way.
I do still love you even if you never can read my mind, darling
Get. A. Fucking. Room.
Tart, your guilt about your snobbery is none of my business.
I really do think that many people lose their music obsessiveness, or at least see their obsessiveness change, when they have young kids. Simply because it’s no longer as easy to play music at deafening volume in the house or to stay up ’til all hours at gigs. For me, I know that my musical tastes have become somewhat “gentler” in the last few years, if for no other reason than because I don’t want fuck and shit blaring out of my speakers while the kids are about.
That’s why I listen to Toadcasts with earphones.
How do you do the quotes italicy thing? I need to chastise Tart and don’t know how to do that.
One of my very best pals declared about 2 years ago
‘I have enough music to keep me going and I don’t need any new stuff’
I was worried for him for a while, then he heard Kid A and was cured.
Anyway if the day to day gets in the way you need to get a different day to day. Apologies for a complete lack of cohesion in this post, I was distracted by the new Cobra Starship album.
DC are you suggesting a threesome? Thought you were quite clear that you didn’t go both ways!
Bloody hell, 41 comments, and most of them by Tart it seems.. I admit I do go through phases of being a bit jaded and it’s often when I listen to something in a genre that I wouldn’t normally listen to that I suddenly get excited again and it tends to revitalise me.
But a lot of the people here have made a very conscious choice to make new music part of their lives and have to some extent arranged their lives around music. Anyone who spends time blogging or podcasting about music is making a bigger commitment than most and therefore is going to continue caring about new cutting edge music.
Isn’t the LCD Soundsystem song ‘Losing My Edge’ all about this sort of thing? Or is that just dad music these days…
“and most of them by Tart it seems”
…crawling back under my bridge now, to lie trembling, waiting for Ben’s mighty whip.
I have been thinking about this a lot lately. I will be 41 in November and finds myself struggling a bit to keep up on interesting new music. What helped is that I took a hiatus for a bit and only in the last couple years have been seeking out younger interesting bands again – considered less mature by people my own age. When I started getting stuff from these bands (recent stuff include wooden shjips, nothing people, tyvek…) I had the impulse to say, “oh this just sounds like (insert any band from the past),” with everything. But I think it was because I lost my point of reference for newer bands. I remember playing nirvana and mudhoney’s first albums for the owner of a record store I was working in then – an older 60s hipster type – and though they piqued his interest he said it all sounded like rehashed sabbath riffs to him. Fair point. But it was then I swore I would never say the same about a band (unless they really deserved it). And I also decided I would fight against that kind of complacency if it ever happened in the future. It’s the future and it’s happening. But he also made the point that rock and roll is a big circle. I agree. I think what happens is that it expands and contracts and each new group of groups puts a little different spin on it. And it’s those spins that I find interesting but also realize I can lose touch with – funny how its so tied into age as well as your own particular context in society. Rock and Roll does seem to be a young mans sport and there is that bais. It also helps to seek out other types of music to offset rock and roll. how much longer can I go when everyone my age thinks rock died with the death of cobain? I don’t know. It helps that I remain curious. It also helps that I have a cool record store near by run by a couple in their twenties who deliberately seek out interesting underground stuff and it helps to listen to WFMU, the greatest radio station in the world. Keep up the fight! Take a break if you need to. There is always and has always been and will always be something interesting out there to listen to. Its just one big circle.
Ben, you just put do this [i] on either side [/i] of the text to be italicised, but use the pointy brackets instead.
Use a b instead of an i and you get bold.
Now unleash….!
Hey Chris, thanks for chipping in.
That’s more what I was aiming at, rather than sniping about whether listening to lots of new music is better or worse, or how much effort it should all be.
I remember about ten years ago someone suggested I become a music writer, and my response at the time was this: ‘Why would I turn a hobby into a job and risk taking all the enjoyment out of it?’ I’ve seen people simply lose pleasure in exploring new music, for no other reason than that their priorities simply changed a little. Or sometimes they just got bored.
That’s why I mentioned the bit about me never wearing skinny jeans at the start. I simply decided that it wasn’t that important to me, so from now on I am going to look just that little bit old to some hipster band I might approach to interview, but I don’t really care.
A lot of people get to that stage with music, and most of the people I know who have, have actually made a conscious decision to let it go, which I find kind of interesting. Sad, but not sad at the same time.
[I] is this in italics? [I]
POINTY brackets! <>
And i at the beginning and the /i at the end. The slash closes the tag and stops subsequent stuff being italicised as well.
< i > At the beginning and < / i > at the end. Without the spaces.
Fcking internet
this is actually a fscinating subject because it gets at the heart of why people like music. specifically rock and all its glorious genres. and your pants analogy is an apt one. i often wonder if those who chuck it away or stop at a particular decade were in it for reasons other than the music. sure, i fall into that music as fasion, as novelty, as new for new sake sometimes. but i like to think there is a current of authenticity to what i like about music that sticks around. as much as i love novelty i’d like to think music is more than simply a distraction for me. people who can easily chuck it away (and ive had that thought myself – especially in relation to the material nature of music – records, tapes, cds) seem to suggest that it was nothing more than a distraction for them during a particular time and place and that they must move on to more serious matters at hand. music actually grounds me. i know for many people its family, friends, or a dog…but for me music is something that i can own on a very personel level and gives me a place to go that those other things, as good as they are, can’t go – this is getting a little new agey. who knows maybe next year i’ll feel different. but i also know if i were to focus solely on music and ignore the importance of other things in life i would probably get sick of it too. its strange, music is very important to me but at the same time i try not to take it too seriously because i think i may get sick of it – plus there is an element to rock and roll that makes it fun because of the very fact that it isnt too serious – i can forgive joy division (but not the cure).
Yeah, I was just going to lambast Tart for saying classical values or thrives off obscurity. Tschaikovsky opened Carnegie hall, Beethoven wrote for Emperors, Mozart was a rock star, and most modern composers are falling over themselves to be in big movies blah blah blah.
I bored myself it took me so long to write it down and in the mean time Chris wrote an actually interesting post.
Great topic, Matthew.
I think TIME and EFFORT are major factors.
The older you get, the less opportunities you have to really listen to music, so the more precious those moments become.
My aged friends (with their [*spit*] kids and jobs and families) no longer want to be challenged by a record.
Say they have 15 minutes to themselves in the car on the way to the market and back. They don’t want to “waste” it digesting the latest Warp release (which is going to take at least 7 spins before it starts to make sense, they want to crank up some instant gratification before they pull back into the driveway.
So, they end up reverting to the old favorites which, by a certain age (noting earlier points by Cogstar and C&B), have become much more plentiful than the amount of lifetime they have left to enjoy, well, even those, to say nothing of new stuff (or, indeed, the time required to seek out new stuff in the first place).
wow..you guys are so old….
i listen to music that hasnt even been made yet
i hope the person that that was intended for actually reads this… that was not a loaded statement…
dev is right. but i cant help wondering why people are allowed to remain so intensely interested in sports until they are old (knowing all the new players and such) and its ok but if some older folk mentions some weird new band they might be looked at as being immature. ive got nothing against sports, but why is that more accepted than rock and roll (you are allowed to like jazz or classical if you are old – or if you liked rock and roll when younger its ok to start listening to folk music when you get older)?
- fuck the rolling stones, but neil young still rocks (though his recent album sucked sara palin moose dick).
Chris, similar to me. I’ve moved around so much in my life that music was always the one thing which made a place home, instantly.
If I ever wanted to react and feel comfortable somewhere, a book, a G&T and some Tom Waits did the trick without fail, even in a hotel room in the industrial parts of The Hague, which are not nice.
It dies occur to me that now home is more crucially defined by the presence of Mrs. Toad, that I might cease to find the music so important.
But then, look at the silly extents I’ve gone to to make music part of the fabric of that place already. It’s like some nesting instinct gone horribly wrong.
music actually grounds me. i know for many people its family, friends, or a dog…but for me music is something that i can own on a very personel level and gives me a place to go that those other things, as good as they are, can’t go
Very well said. Just how I feel.
Dev, it pains me to say it, but I think you’re probably right about not wanting to be challenged by a record so much anymore. There was a time when I wouldn’t respect any record unless it was difficult, and wouldn’t appreciate any film unless it was soul-crushingly depressing, and wouldn’t appreciate any book unless it had something profound to say about injustice. Now all I want to hear is hooks, hooks, hooks, the last three movies I saw were “GI Joe,” “Harry Potter,” and “Night at the Museum,” and I’ve been reading nothing but popular history books. What is happening to me?
You’re turning into a human blancmange, my friend.
mmmmm, blancmange.
ive got nothing against sports, but why is that more accepted than rock and roll
Anyone moreorless can get away with wearing sports clothing at any age. There’s no prejudice. Stick a tassle-armed leather jacket, mullet, faded tour Tee & the face of a 40+ into the mix & it suddenly becomes very sad indeed.
No sure why though, because you can probably still be a great guitarist at 45, but a great footballer? Very unlikely!
Aspirational fantasy, old boy.
I’d suggest that sports are just more universal, inclusive and easy–probably because they’re on TV! Which brings us back around the TV point. When you no longer live alone, it’s a lot easier to watch TV with someone then to put on your music and expect your girlfriend to go entertain herself while you read the latest Toad posts.
So, perhaps sports and TV are things people can enjoy together whereas music tends to be a more personal thing..?
I mentioned this thread to a friend this morning who suggested the loss of music passion is environmental–as you get older you no longer have that “sanctuary” in which to enjoy it.
I wonder how our kids are going to take to Mrs. Toad’s late night punk-fests!
can i ask an unrelated question –
i have been watching this british (im american) tv show (tv and old age go so well together) called ‘the thick of it’ and there is this character, malcolm, who is scottish. he’s a real intense hard-ass. gets things done in a very confrontational way. on the show they are always making reference to the fact that malcolm is a scott.
what is the relationship between the brits and the scotts? why the scots-as-a-bit-brutish vs the brits-as-a-bit-fey theme? the brit characters seem a bit resentful towards scottish characters – not to say the creators of the show feel this but they do seem to be exploring some issue i don’t quite get being an american.
Chris, Scotland is part of Britain*. However, Britain is treated by the Welsh, Scots and (some) Northern Irish as basically a euphemism for English colonial territories, which is not entirely true. The Union has been governed by non-English monarchs and so on (although even the foreigners held the ‘English’ crown, I think, but I’m not sure – the current one’s basically German, but still Queen of England) and is largely a somewhat anachronistic economic union.
But, the Scots, the Welsh, the Northern Irish and whatever other island territories make up the UK treat themselves as conquered and subject nations, although they all contain Unionists (pro-UK), and generally whine about the English like a kid brother with a handsomer and more popular elder sibling. The English, for all they are content to take the piss out of the (under-developed and unsophisticated) territories, generally couldn’t care less about the Welsh or Scots or the rest of them, but the antipathy in reverse can be quite considerable.
Throughout the British Isles there has always been the idea that the further South you go the softer and more effeminate people become. This is partly because of economic development, (ie Northerners are poor and jobless and hence like to drink and fight) and partly because the weather is fucking shit the further North you go and stuff like that. Hence the Scots make fun of the English for being soft, and the English of the Scots for being boorish.
Mind you, that still applies within England as well – Northern English people tend to take the piss out of Southern Softies as well.
Generally though, what you’ve been watching is the exception. The Scots hate the English (which they often treat as synonymous with British) and the English don’t give a shit about the Scots. Which makes the Scots hate the English more, and so it goes on.
Devolution – ie increased independence for the countries within the UK – will be good though, not least because the Scots and the Welsh will have to shut the fuck up moaning and get on with solving their own problems, instead of being able to blame them on the English constantly.
*The UK is the United Kingdom of Great Britain & Northern Island, but for 99% of people they are treated as the same thing.
gotcha. i know from my own family (the irish side) a little about their history but virtually nothing about the scots and welsh – except braveheart and super fury animals.
there is definately antagonism between the brit characters and the scot characters on the show (neither come out looking to good in the end, but makes for some funny stuff)…i assumed it had a lot to do with what you mentioned but wasn’t quite sure. thanks.
Speaking as a Welsh native I will toss this potential shit bomb into the ring & declare my total abhorence of the frenzied, often knee-jerk/uneducated/ill-informed territorial pissing displayed by the small, neanderthal, domestic-media fuelled flag waving cunts that populate Wales.
I am Welsh by birth but I consider myself British. The hollow nationalistic pride that is utilised by the Welsh media to effectively mask an ‘accepted’ form of racism (& a profound lack of education) in order to whip up the idiots into a them & us mentality is beyond pathetic, bordering on desperate, & sure sign of psychological retardation.
I really can’t be arsed to go over the whole thing in detail again because it bores me fucking stupid, & I really don’t want to give any more air time to these pricks. BUT, you ask any of those flag waving fucknuts why the national flag of Wales has a dragon on it & not one of them are able to respond with anything resembling a fact. I’d wager my fucking nuts that 90% of the trolls don’t even know why they’re being told to hate the English in the first place.
Welsh History is rarely, barely & poorly taught in Welsh schools (despite the ‘equality’ white paper being passed back in the ’90s) &, as a result, most ‘information’ used in order to justify the piss poor behaviour of these idiots is drawn from myth & bullshit disseminated by Middle Class media twats who don’t bat an eyelid at the fact that the Mabinogion is a book of thirdhand verbal folk tales & NOT the Welsh version of the fucking Bible, or a How To Do It manual, & the Eisteddfod was invented (by a bored ENGLISH man) to augment/assimilate a pagan ritual into the region.
Don’t even get me started on the fucking Welsh language ‘debate’.
So, to answer Chris’ question, we purposefully, needlessly create sterotypes, with no historical basis or service to reality, in order to maintain a cultural identity — however, the dreadful irony is (particularly in Wales’ case) the only people who end up being taken in by the bullshit are those you’re with in your local pub, or the odd football/soccer match.
& I’m not letting this go…
I wonder how our kids are going to take to Mrs. Toad’s late night punk-fests!
are you & the Missus readying for the spawning season?
Nationalism is *always* a lie propagated by outsiders, a cloak to cover up the economic struggles of an enslaved group of people which are intentionally kept in the dark about the true nature of their own subjugation. Name me one historical effort that was based on nationalism that produced positive economic, social, or cultural effects for it’s target population without greater animosity and further horrors for it’s children? /Marxist history lesson
xoxo
& I’m not letting this go…
for the love of god, let it go!
I don’t exactly think of the Welsh and Scots as enslaved Tart.
And if you are looking for good Nationalism here’s a few
East Timor
India
Vietnam
America (you know, when they brewed the ocean into a giant cup of tea).
Nationalism: Good if your conquered. Less so if you aren’t.
Sorry, it’s a pedantic point but I did waddle away for a good lambasting yesterday so I thought I ought.
Ooh! Ooh!
Native Americans. Although they lost so I suppose it doesn’t count. Still things might have gone better for them if they’d won.
Oh, and Nanuvuk, the Inuit province in Canada. They trying it in Australia too, and I think it counts as Nationalism because they very themselvesas a Nation even if the ultimate aim is not full statehood in the internationals sense.
And were all those former Yugoslavian states being Nationalists when they broke away? I mean things went a bit badly there for a bit but I think they’ve settled down now.
They trying it in Australia too, and I think it counts as Nationalism because they very themselvesas a Nation
They ARE trying it in Australia too, and I think it counts as Nationalism because they VIEW themselves AS a Nation.
Yikes.
Go Ben!
I don’t exactly think of the Welsh and Scots as enslaved Tart.
I don’t think that intelligent Scots consider (or considered) themselves enslaved, either.
The Welsh, on the other hand, long for the day they’re enslaved* so they have something to really fucking moan about.
*Wales has never been enslaved. Ruled over, sure. But then so has the English, the Scots, the Irish, & all of fucking Europe at some point. But never enslaved. Not in the proper sense of the word.
I’ve been off work today and wamdering around town being a tourist with my little sister, I took her to see Cybraphon and we had a good lunch at the Mosque Kitchen over the road.
I’ve been nowhere near a computer so haven’t seen any of today’s comments.
Haha’1 What a load of rotten old bollocks you’ve all been spouting!
And what group of Colonists benefitted in the so-called revolutions in these situations? The very same economic group that perpetuated the colonization of said provinces and territories. Enslavement is a term used much more widely than you’re understanding it here. But this discussion deserves a page of it’s own and not to be tacked onto the comment thread of a post about why old geezers don’t like electronica.
if its too bleepy-bloopy, you’re too old.
There is certain electronica I love. There is certain electronica I hate. Always have had a love/hate relationship with it. But blip blop for blip blop’s sake is simply shit. & there’s far too much of it.
one thing i have noticed about music and getting older…eventhough i love and seek out interesting music i have a growing tolerence for music i might not have liked as a youngster. the kids next door were playing a taylor swift song the other day and i have to admit i liked it…but hated the black eyed peas song they kept playing. i never would have dug beyonce when i was in high school – i would have hated it on principle alone…but now, eventhough id never purchase it on principle i do enjoy her hits. one of my current favorite bands is a symphonic metal band from sweden…not very hip but damn if i love um. and speaking of dolly parton…ive grown to love her music as well. how does that fit with digging the wooden shjips…i dont know. but i guess it goes to not just sticking with one type or level of music. superficiality has its place as well and hipster music can be as superficial as hanna montanna (what is a hanna montanna anyway?)
I’m not big on the whole history thing but didn’t Finland get screwed over by just about everyone and yet they still managed to get all the alcoholics, all the good looking girls and Hanoi Rocks……that’s culture if I ever saw it.
Although that island thing ‘you really have to see’ near Helsinki is shite.
Name me one historical effort that was based on nationalism that produced positive economic, social, or cultural effects for it’s target population without greater animosity and further horrors for it’s children?
How about the huge nationalistic effort in the US after the Civil War to count, identify, and bury the 600K soldiers who died and to provide pensions for their widows and orphans?
Tart,
This is maybe the most stupidly snide thing I’ve said in a while, and is said with my tongue wedged firmly in my cheek, and should be treated with a firm ‘oh fuck off’ but:
Interesting that you chose to refute the point by pointing out the big flaw in in one case that involves white people.
Will no one stand up for the lower middle class white man anymore?
I remain your unreformed, vulgar, and verbose Marxist mascot. Ben, I’ve been bending over for the man for decades, he seems to prefer it that way, now I’m waddling off to bathe in some Meursault and pretend I’m 25 again, xoxo
i cant wait until the lower class white male becomes the fetishized other. maybe in 50 years we’ll see blacks scouring the record bins for cool white music that has been long forgotten.
maybe in 50 years we’ll see blacks scouring the record bins for cool white music that has been long forgotten.
I remember reading a Mark E. Smith interview a while back about how he went to Detroit and discovered that all the black guys with machine guns were scouring the record stores for Gary Numan records so they could sample his beats.
Found it. It was on the sleevenotes to The Pleasure Principle CD reissue:
“The Fall’s Mark E. Smith, a man not given to complementing other artists on a regular basis recalls ‘While I was in South Chicago recording an album in 1992 (IS?), I went to a few clubs and all the black guys with machine guns worship Gary Numan – Snoop Doggy Dogg samples his stuff.”
So Chicago, not Detroit.
Tart
Nothing reminds me more of being 25 than bending over for a man. But then I work in Ballet.
campfires
it’s already happening. and snoop dog isnt quite as cool as he used to be…and gansta rap seems like an anachronism now. we shall overcome.
Tart, I know Ben’s been enthusiastic enough already but this:
“Nationalism is *always* a lie propagated by outsiders”
is completely ludicrous old cobblers. Sometimes it has perhaps worked that way, but outsiders? Look at all the ridiculous “our great nation” bollocks the US has been crafting into a fine art for the last fifty years – not one iota of that flag-waving, chest-thumping, tiny-little-status-hungry-penis-pumping came from outside.
Nationalism is straightforward group bonding. It binds groups together and is evolutionarily useful – everyone uses it and always has, since the moment the concept of nationhood came into being.
91 comments about some of my mates who got bored of music.
Christ.
hey mathew, we are only reacting to scotland’s desire to enslave the world.
But I’m English. Or at least, sort of.
Actually I never thought of myself as English until I moved to Scotland and suddenly started getting all sorts of grief for being English. Eventually I took the attitude that if I was going to end up in fights for being English I might as well at least pretend to actually be English to at least give the whole fucking stupid nonsense a veneer of a point.
i never thought of myself as a northener until i lived in alabama for awhile. i never thought of myself as an east coaster until i lived in chicago – i still can’t quite figure out the midwest.
sorry i shouldnt assume everyone in the world knows the geography of the us.
& vice versa, Chris; vice versa
at last something that i could rant about, nationalism, cos it looks like you all know fuck all about it.
But you know what? i’m not going to lower myself….find a book….hopfully one by a guy called Eric Hobsbawm…read it then fuck off!
Does the book have lots of pictures? Because otherwise I can’t be arsed.
it has loads of pictures in….they are called words
Aw c’mon Chutters, I’m just being a fuckwit. And I freely admit that I know little to nothing about nationalism. Something to do with flags, am I right?
Once again Chutters trolls with the best. Say something useful or fuck off. I am going to start deleting these idiotic comments.
For someone who has given no evidence at all that he has the faintest idea what he’s talking about himself you have an awful lot of confidence in your own opinion and depth of knowledge.
From now on you will be expected to prove it or this sort of childish playground nonsense is just going to be removed from the thread.
I’m having a hate the world day C&B…..so forgive me please
Apology accepted, Captain Needa.
Have you lot stopped spouting hopeless bum gravy about nationality and stuff yet?
New look. New regime. To the Gulag, comrades…
Actually I have to agree with Toad on this. It’s one thing flaming within a constructive argument, but spitting randomly over a fence isn’t on.
thanks for accepting my apology Herr dictator….
However.
Why should i enter into a debate with people who show little or no knowledge of a particular subject? It would be like me discussing the merits of some scratchy DIY music that i hadn’t heard, so my ‘go and read a book’ was an honest suggestion.
Here’s two books for starters –
Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism by Benedict Anderson
Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient by Edward W. Said
and one i haven’t read but it looks great:
Nations and Nationalism: A Reader which is edited by P Spencer and H Wollman
We all have secrets, and mine is that i love/hate nationalism, it’s what i did my honours in at university, not that any of you would know that.
Love
I hope you read a lot of biology with it, Chutters, because without it you can’t hope to understand what you’re talking about.
I suggest you go and read some books.
(See, it’s annoying, isn’t it.)
You are prepared to enter the debate enough to state your superiority without, particularly initially, backing it up with anything, but you are not prepared to enter it enough to make any sort of intelligent contribution. That is just ridiculous. If you are so above a particular discussion as to be unprepared to contribute then stay out of it altogether.
If you still don’t understand why that makes you look like a prick, imagine if you were at a dinner table and people had the exact same conversation as above, and you respond as you did:
Everyone: “Rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb.”
You: “You lot are all ignorant and have no damn idea what you’re talking about.”
Everyone: “What do you mean by that?”
You: “I can’t even be bothered explaining because you’re all too ignorant to even have this conversation with.”
That’s kind of what you did here and it kind of makes you a cunt when you do it. It’s like a sulky teenager mooning around muttering “You just don’t get it.” to everyone.
my point still stands…..
…stop squirming and go to the library.
the essence of superiority that came with my original comment was an unintended side effect.
oh you believe that nationalism is tied with biology?…..then you should read some Anthony Smith.
Any pack behaviour is tied to biology, Chutters, I wasn’t just being smart-arsed.
i disagree….on both counts
Social construction plays a way bigger part in modern day nationalism then biology does.
I wasn’t talking about differences between national groups, more about the selection advantages and disadvantages of all behaviours which increase pack cohesiveness in a social animal.
It was more a basic biological point than anything to do with sociology – I think we’re talking at cross-purposes.
believe it or not….i think you’re are agreeing with me.
thanks…
I’ve been thinking about the original posting in the context of loyalty to bands and musicians. I know that when I had a million distractions in the early 1990′s kids, career (erm kind of), house mortgage and shit the one thing that I did do was keep buying stuff from bands I liked and going to see their gigs. A consequence of this is that I ended up hearing other stuff by accident, support bands, compilation Cds etc and thus no handbrakes.
I think the interesting part is going to be how much this type of loyalty will apply to newer bands. It appears that brand and fashion loyalty is disintegrating very quickly amongst my kids generation. With such rapid access to information and recommendation it seems that the next thing is almost the last thing before it arrives. I think the Arctic Monkeys could be an interesting thing to watch in this context, the new album is so removed from the previous work and frankly a bit crap they may lose their audience overnight.
Ash managed the same trick about 3 years ago but being old my loyalty will drag me out to Oldham to see them.
Sorry for the comment but maybe the whole ‘music is the latest fashion’ will end soon and I’ll be able to get tickets on the door for gigs again.
And finally Loyalty = Orbital how much are those tickets selling for?
I may be, Chutters, but seeing as it’s been such a job to actually get you to make some sort of point, instead of just calling everyone ignorant, I could barely tell you if we’re agreeing or disagreeing.
Cogstar – The Monkeys’ last album was no better than okay, so it wouldn’t quite be overnight. Point taken otherwise, although I’m naturally a bit wary of ‘the kids today’ kind of arguments, whether or not they seem to make sense on the surface.
Oh yeah fair point ‘kids of today’ was as much to do with the mechanisms and speed of communication, referral and recommendation as it was to generalising about my kids and their pals behavioural patterns.
Snigger.
The new AM album is awful.
Just arrived and I’ve yet to listen. I’ll give a fair chance, but I am a bit skeptical.
i heard a couple of tracks and kinda like them….but then again i’ve never been more that a casual listener to their music
My excitement is not building…
I think you need to notch it way back.
i was at a diner party once and the topic was war/military. some older gentlemen tried to silence me by saying unless i actually experienced war first hand i couldn’t talk about it. then the topic moved on to space exploration. funny, he felt completely comfortable with his opinions eventhough he had never been outside the earth’s atmosphere. he might say to chutters, “unless you have been in a nationalistic movement you have no right to discuss it.”
music and fashion – it seems to me that a lot of the younger interesting music types (using pitchfork as an example) seem much more comfortable with music being used to sell products than ever before. however, there does seem to be a cluster of younger folk that revile it and like interesting music but hate pitchfork (you guys know what pitchfork is? – it’s this “grassroots” music festival that focuses on indepentant bands and such – its really come to epitomize “indie” music as a distinct genre that can be packaged in a certain way to make lots of $$ – you can even shop at american apparell to look as indie as you want).
i hate it when parents do the same!!
how would you know you don;t have kids….
point taken Chris ha ha just
The AM LP is a lazy phone-in piece, badly attempting to merge the worlds of AM & Last Shadow Puppets. There’re no tunes. None whatsoever. It’s a horrid dirge.
I suggest you buy the Roses Kings Castles album, when it’s released, instead.
i heard a couple of tracks of the Blue Roses album over the weekend…..sounds promising
Ta for the recommendations chaps – that will make for a pleasant Saturday afternoon.
Right off to Leeds festival now to see Arctic Monkeys……such a haircutty whore at heart.
Maximo and Broken Records are on it’s ok
RE band loyalty…
In a way, spending begets loyalty. But no longer do we have a market for 3-part single releases (each with different B-sides), or import versions with bonus tracks, etc, from our favorite bands to go and ‘invest’ in. When you’re downloading everything for free and willy-nilly, it’s value is virtually nil and offers zero sense of “supporting” your favorite band. You don’t even buy magazines with them on the cover anymore, because everything is read online. OK, I have to go and chase some kids off my lawn now…