Note: If you've done this topic before, well, sorry. But it was the best one I could come up with.
If you've followed Jeff A week, you've noticed that the songs are all oldies, mostly from the '70s. The reason for that, of course, is that the '70s are the time I was growing up. All of my high school and a good share of my college years came in the '70s.
I think for most of us, the music of our youth holds a special place in our hearts. It's not so much that the music of our youth is better than any other kind of music (although in my case, it clearly is). It's that this is the music that was playing during the years when we were becoming the people we were going to become. Hearing that music takes us back to that time, and usually back to happy memories. It even does that for those of us for whom the high school years do not have that many happy memories. Maybe it's because the music was a kind of refuge, a place where we could go to forget the way things were and think about how things might be better for us someday.
I don't just listen to these oldies. I listen to some contemporary pop music and some contemporary country music. I listen to some contemporary Christian music, too. But my go-to music is still the music of the '70s. It's where I go when I want some music to put me in a good mood, or music I can sing along to. The music of my youth.
So, what's your go-to music? What's the music that puts you in a good mood? What's the music of your youth? Put it here. Or, put in a random ten list. Or, do whatever you want. I'm not the boss of you.
1. The Bug vs. Earth “Don't Walk These Streets” Concrete Desert
2. Bad Bad Hats “Things We Never Say” Psychic Reader
3. Patty Griffin “There Isn't One Way” Servant of Love
a. Bobolink “Song” (Cornell Master Set)
4. Black Dice “Earnings Plus Interest” Repo
5. [EAR]* “Daughter of the King” Furnace Room Demos
6. Current 93 “Abba Amma (Babylon Destroyer)”* Black Ships Ate the Sky
7. Autechre “Montreal” Amber
8. Palace Music “Old Jerusalem” Viva Last Blues
9. Autechre “Djarum” Anti EP
T. Jo Johnson “Weaving” Weaving
*Notes:
5. Yes, my wife. She's recently been writing and home-recording songs for our parish's Vacation Bible School.
6. Lyrics:
"And I cut off my face
And made skittles with its teeth
...
Well there are
Bluebirds, Blackbirds, Deadbirds, Totembirds
Baked in pies and praying to die.
I made them rise from their pies
And married the moon and killed my face
And threw its quincunx into space.
The cats are like furry constellations
They lap up the Milky Way."
I just now learned the word "quincunx": "A baseball diamond forms a quincunx with the four bases and the pitcher's mound."
AMR, I've been listening to múm recently and keep feeling like they're probably on your radar.
They have been, I have Finally We Are No One on CD, but I haven't really seen where they've gone from there.
I've mostly been listening to Early Birds. This track is more spare than some, but I like it:
Thanks to Jeff A for taking the post this week. This is two months in a row where the person doing Guest DJ duties was asked to also take the FMD post, and I think we should just run with that as a standing thing, if everyone is cool with it? Provides some good variety in my opinion.
I spent a lot of time on school busses in the 70's, so I know my way around those hits.
While looking for "new" music for our nursing home singing, I suggested "Let Your Love Flow" by the Bellamy Brothers (a little more recent than the songs we usually do). Another guy in the group wondered what their names were -- Jim & Jeff? Joe & John? Nope, Dave & Homer :/
Surely, Walt was one of the Bellamy brothers.
Ralph must have been one of them, too.
The Footloose soundtrack and "Uptown Girl" were the only contemporary songs I can remember hearing growing up, so they really bring me back.
Funnily enough I generally strongly dislike the music I listened to in high school. (mostly nu-metal) Y'all know where I ended up, but that was formed during my college years, which were fantastic years.
I'll sometimes come back to what I listened to as a youth, but I'm nearing 40 and still seeking out new things from new artists (admittedly, not with the verve I did as I approached 20 or 30 though), or old things from old artists that are new to me (say, Gene Autry and Merle Haggard).
I think my personality is one of never tiring of exploring and investigating, not just in music but in food, television.
I keep birding and mushrooming the same small area over and over, but even there it's always changing with the seasons and time, so maybe that's more like getting unfamiliar enough with old musical that they sound new to me again.
And I do like exploring new places, it's just more costly (time and money) than exploring new musics or flavors or TV shows.
There are some musics from my youth that I still listen to a lot, but it's not necessarily what were my favorites at the time. I've listened to a lot more Monster Magnet since I turned 30, even though in my teens they were well below the Seattle 4 and Tool in my preference and listening.
It's weird listening to the "Oldies" station in the Twin Cities: KQQL "Cool 108". It was THR's favorite station when we'd come to the Twin Cities before I reached majority, playing songs from the 50s and 60s. That's been shifting ever-later, almost at the same rate of the passage of time. I think in college I realized that there were no 50s anymore. Now it's 70s and 80s. It's still my dad's Twin Cities station, but I bet he'd prefer something else. Which must be why he now has five CDs in his car. But EAR and I sometimes hear things we enjoyed when they were fresh. Still sounds older than me, but will it in five years?
There's also the Twin Cities new "Classic Hip-Hop" station, which plays 1988 or so to maybe 2007. Lots of my high-school and college years (1992-2000) in there, and I've been surprised by how closely a lot of what they play tracks my tastes within that genre (as far as radio-playable hits goes). Could be more Digable Planets and Ice Cube, but I've been assuming they're doomed because there can't be much money in catering to my tastes.
The first and one of the very few singles I ever bought was "Popcorn" by Hot Butter (1972). I also had the single of "Riders on the Storm" by The Doors, but think that was one my dad brought home (he ran the Spamtown CC radio station for several years and brought home freebies).
Early LP favorites included Johnny Cash, Eddy Arnold, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Patsy Cline, Roger Miller, and a set of Beethoven symphonies.