Before the internet.......
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Artist:
As I was driving home today I began to wonder how I used to find out about new music before the wonderful internet invaded my life. I am talking a good ten years back when the only constant exposure you had to music was the radio. I guess you could include MTV as exposure, but when I was a kid I did not have the luxury of cable television growing up.
Now I look at my music collection, and I wonder how did I get to the point where I listen to all the different types of music that I do. I have it all when it comes to genres, and I began to backtrack through the years to try and pinpoint different times I was exposed to new music.
I think the first real exposure I had to different types of music came when I raided my parent's record collection for the first time. It was the first time I began to listen to music I had never listened to before, and thankfully my parents used to listen to rather keen music. I was exposed to the Four Tops, The Temptations, The Beatles, and countless others that soon found their way into my room and onto cassette tapes for me to listen to.
In high school I owe all my new music knowledge to Saranata Reynolds. She was a girl in my grade who had a sister in college. As a result I found out about all the bands that were big in college music at the time. Billy Bragg, the Cure, Love and Rockets and all the other bands that I would now have to go to the oldies section of the record store to listen to. She was the first person to take me to Danceteria at first ave where I saw goth for the first time, and of course danced in my first mosh pit. I think it was that one person who really showed me the light when it came to music, and if I had not known her I may have left high school thinking Bryan Adams was truly the voice of my years of high school.
Next came college, and this is when I learned the art of actually reading the liner notes of a cd. I don't know if I am the only one who used to do this, but I would get to the special thanks section of them, and I would look for bands that I did not recognize. This worked well, especially when it came to my love for punk music. I can not begin to tell you the sheer amount of bands that were mentioned in liner notes that I went out and bought their cd's with out even listening to them once. I figured that if the band I liked thought they were good enough to mention in their album sleeve, well then they should be making music I would like as well. This practice prooved to be a winner, and I added to my collection using this method quite a bit.
Towards the end of my college career is when I began to really go to a lot of live shows as well. Opening bands then became my new favorite thing to do, and I was never late for one show as a result. Now that I am older, if I go to a show I don't mind missing one or two of the opening acts if I am going to see someone in particular. Back then, I can not remember the amount of opening bands I watched when you could count the amount of spectators watching on both of your hands. Yet, every now and then you would catch a winner and soon would find yourself at the swag table looking to see if they had any music that you could buy.
Now here I sit and it is 2008 and I see how different it is for kids coming up through the music ranks. It is easy for kids to find out about all kinds of music, and it is just a click of the mouse away. I guess I would like to think I grew up in the golden age of music discovery, although I know if you go back another 10 or so years finding out about new music was even that much more of a task. I wonder what my son is going to say about my music collection, and if it will make him want to hear more as my parents did so long ago. I also wonder what he will have to say when he is 34 in regards to what he had to do in order to find the music that he enjoyed as a kid. I guess time will tell, but until then I will continue to read my liner notes looking for that new band that I have not heard of yet.
Locating MOG account...
Comments (20)
yr so right
i want people to open up a record and smell that brand new vinyl smell, to rewind their tapes by bic pen, to make sure that they make a mix tape for their friends at least once a year (or more). browsing the internet and finding new tracks is fun and easy and excellent for exposing yrself to new stuff but often times i feel like it's more like flipping through a magazine than reading a book, you know?
i found my music by reading articles in magazines, taking notes, live shows, liner notes, and over-hearing conversations. i found it through my dad's record collection, the cbc, college radio, and late night "video hits". i remember seeing a girl wearing a fishbone t-shirt and having no idea what the little skeleton of a fish meant, but later seeing it in a skateboard magazine and then finding a record in my local store. there seemed something organic and fulfilling about researching and hunting down new music. the musicl universe was endless. still is. i hope that in this technological era this method/meaning does not get lost.
thanks for the post.
How did we do it? It is perplexing, but I would agree that it was a golden time for music appreciation. It seemed bands in the 90's were always quick to cite their influences - Nirvana and RHCP come to mind about being particularly good at this. I bought The Vaselines because of Cobain and the Incesticide album.
How do you get into Punk? Why you read the patches on the back of someones jacket, and you take a chance on an album. Why, because all the punks I knew never gave freely of their music.
MTV did expose me to a ton of bands - but you had to work that angle too. You had to sift through the crap, stay up or set the VCR for 11:30 on Sunday night for 120 minutes. Or later in the 90's you had to figure out when shows like AMP would be on so you could learn all about Electronica (when it was mostly still called "Acid Jazz").
And of course there were magazines lots and lots of magazines. THis allowed the process of seeing just how much you trusted someone who wrote a record review.
And if you were fotunate enough to live near a used record store near a college, or had a college radio station, you were able to find those albums that you just couldn't find at Sam Goody.
Good Times, indeed.
Manybooks - I did not even touch on my love for CMJ magazine. I remember reading that magazine in particular, mostly because they had a recomended if you like section. I bought records purely because they were supposed to sound like bands I loved. The same to be said if there was a tee shirt that caught my eye, 7th grade I saw my first Black Flag tee shirt and owned the record a short time later.
Contra - Long live the lead singer wearing a tee shirt of an unknown band. Dave Grohl wore a Sounds tee shirt and they were the next big thing a short time later. Also have to point out that 120 minutes was the show back in the day, I loved listening to Matt Pinfield and his take on the music he was playing.
Fascinating; in high school, friends with connections (usually older siblings) seemed the way to go to find new music. It worked out that way for me, and quite a few people I know in RL and on the interwebs.
Thanks for sharing all this Kev. :)
Thanks for making it back from the camping trip in one piece...... care for a bbq tomorrow?
MTV, radio, and friends is how heard new tunes, and I miss the opening acts now a days also. Although I try to catch them. Guess I'm more of a slacker now a days lol!
Sounds lovely, but I'll be spending all morning upgrading someone's PC off Windows ME. I thought they made that piece of junk OS illegal already. Bleech.
Older siblings were definitely always a gateway to new sounds. I remember a friends sister giving us "Blood Sugar Sex Magic" before it got played on MTV and we were just in love with the album. Yeah, RHCP were already kinda big, but not MTV big, yet.
My brother left a bunch of tapes around like some Phish, King Missle, Velvet Underground, and what ever I could get my mits on. It really gave you an appetite back then when you were so much more limited
Yea, what you said Kev . . . .
one word: radio. I used to listen to the dreaded thing. craving more indie music. and teethed off musicite friends.
""I learned the art of actually reading the liner notes of a cd. I don’t know if I am the only one who used to do this""
Did that too, as well as radio and mags. The other things were two record stores, they had big "imports" section with stuff from abroad, US and UK music, japanese pressed vynils and few more funny stuff.
When i was still a teen i also used a lot to get along with older ppl and those poured many things in my ears too.
I also used to have several friends who worked for radio stations and these were another good source for new sounds and music.
yeah i think friends are the best and cheapest way to learn about new music
10 years back I was finding out about stuff from the internet... but not like now with myspace and mog... then it was all from mailing lists, chat rooms, and the first wave of zines..... but mostly it was zines like Hitlist, and Rip before it that I was reading about stuff in.... prior to that, back when I was in college in the early and mid 90's it was 120 trendy minutes and the Ball on the MTV, college radio and my friends...
There's really no reason for me to comment because you've all touched upon all the pre-internet ways of discovering new music - Matt Pinfield's obsession with obscure bands, the band t-shirt (I remember that photo of Grohl w/ the Sounds T, Kev), CMJ (started using the RIYL system for college radio DJ playlists), friends, and of course as pointed out, the dreaded radio. Our alternative rock station in DC (WHFS) would have a show hosted by Dave Marsch on Sunday nights called Now Hear This - great introduction to local and underground national music. I remember discovering Tuscadero, Sleater Kinney and Built To Spill on that show (actually BTS was a combo between that and a Tower Records employee playing to death Keep it Like a Secret over in store play - not exactly pre-internet era stuff but whatever). Sometimes the stuff he'd play on the air made it into overnight rotation - The Dandys, Sonic Youth, Elliott Smith, mind you the airplay was light on many of these songs.
Overall, my tastes where sharpened when the internet became readily available. I wasn't listening to Minor Threat or Black Flag when I was 15. If it weren't for the radio, I wouldn't know many of the icon bands of the 80's. I didn't really pay attention until I got older.
<cue Bryan Adams' Summer of '69>
Was I the only person who had metal friends who liked certain bands like Megadeth or similar, but they wouldn't let you listen or borrow CD's? What was with this in high school. A lot of punks seemed to do it as well. It was like they were trying to keep it special to themselves, but it sucked. Once I could afford music, I vowed never to be like this. Now I mog.
Radio (college and alt-rock), W.O.M. (word-of-mouth), the rock press (pats self on back, but really means the NME and 'zines) and the club circuit.
This magazine called Pop & Rock educated me. Morphine, Screaming Trees, Girls Against Boys, Afghan Whigs and so many more.
I'm not sure I'd like to be growing up to the internet music era. It can be overwhelming and one can easily drown or swim in dirty waters. Unless he/she has someone to throw him a life vest.
Great post, Kev :)
Thanks Anna!
Great post! My music discovery goes all the way back to 1978 (!) so it was: your older cousins, your friends' older brothers and sisters, magazines, guest slots on Saturday Night Live, a Canadian TV show called The New Music (precursor to MuchMusic), and browsing record stores and just taking a chance. Yeah, what was it with all those people who used to hoard their music? You'd ask someone to tape an album for you (LOL) and they would never get around to it; they would keep it to themselves. So glad that music sharing is now the norm!