What Are You Listening To Now?

[Zorro]

I was going to see Soft Machine at Manchester Band On The Wall some months ago but it didn't happen unfortunately.
I've been listening to Gong on long car journeys, when alone - no-one I know can deal with that kind of stuff!

They, and Caravan, are playing at a festival in Great Yarmouth later this year. I might try and co-ordinate a trip to the UK.

 

[give_us_a_wave]

Sorry folks, I'm here and It's Friday.
Cheap bourbon and music.

I've never been to Canterbury. When I was early 20's, i borrowed a Caravan LP ( and a Camel LP - That was much better) and I did enjoy some of it.
Anyway, Caravan were part of the Canterbury scene in the early-mid 70's (as was Robert Wyatt - he had the first ever top 40 hit for Rough Trade Records, but that's another matter). The band's generally had the same members, moving from band to band. And going Jazz.

Here is a typical 'Canterbury' band, Hatfield And The North.

I'm scared now.

I turn 60 at the end of the year. Is this what happens to old punks when actual old age comes ? We turn into the proggers we used to meet at parties when we were young who looked down their nose at all other forms of music & regarded the turgid noodling they were into as the only modern analogue of classical music ?
Am I going to end up reappraising Tangerine Dream as being something other than a wet weekend in Ramsgate set to music ?
Am I going to cease thinking that Yes were pompous boring ****s & start longing to hear an 8 minute keyboard solo ?

I met Rick Wakeman once briefly in the 90s & he was an exceptionally nice bloke & a good laugh. I've never been so thoroughly disappointed in my life. I wanted him to be a ****.

Help. Please advise.

 

[Orifice]

Sorry GUAW.
I am 62 and have a fondness for the music the punk was born to despise.
Well, not totally. But certainly some.

When I was 12, my brother was listening to ELP and even if I didn't love it (I loved Slade), I can listen to ELP now and enjoy some of it. Genesis tho.......NO.

So, Jethro Tull? Yes..Yes? Yes. Tangerines Dream? Errrr, not quite. Van Der Graf Generator, not sure. Camel? Very yes.

As I get older, I appreciate a lot more music - When I was 17 it was only SLF, The Damned, The Adverts and Spizz oil.....

 

[give_us_a_wave]

Sorry GUAW.
I am 62 and have a fondness for the music the punk was born to despise.
Well, not totally. But certainly some.

When I was 12, my brother was listening to ELP and even if I didn't love it (I loved Slade), I can listen to ELP now and enjoy some of it. Genesis tho.......NO.

So, Jethro Tull? Yes..Yes? Yes. Tangerines Dream? Errrr, not quite. Van Der Graf Generator, not sure. Camel? Very yes.

As I get older, I appreciate a lot more music - When I was 17 it was only SLF, The Damned, The Adverts and Spizz oil.....

I think the key to it all is that I was the eldest child. Nothing to trickle down.

Plus I grew up in a transport cafe. It had a jukebox, like most such places did then. We moved in in 1971. So the peak years of glam rock were what I latched on to at that very early age. The perfect primer for punk when it arrived. My path was inevitable.

I'm the same though, I like lots of stuff now. But still can't shake the blind spot for all that prog. It might have more to do with the insufferable ****s who were into it than the actual music itself though.
But beyond Floyd & Hawkwind there isn't really much at that end of the spectrum that appeals. All the prog giants mostly bore me rigid I'm afraid. If I want to lie down & melt into something I'm more likely to go down the reggae route. Or maybe a Zeppelin album. No martian chords & tweeting birds for me I'm afraid.

 

[Zorro]

I was lucky enough to experience a wide variety of music growing up a few years either side of 1970. Typically John Lee Hooker one week, then Taste (Rory Gallagher),Third Ear Band (classically-trained, playing Indian raga inspired music), Liverpool Scene (poetry-based) etc.etc on Friday nights (the Il Rondo).
Saturdays were taken up by Geno Washington, Family, Fearn's Brass Foundry, Pink Floyd, The Who, Incredible String Band, King Crimson, Steel Pulse, Hawkwind and so on (Top Rank, De Mont, the Uni and the Poly).
There wasn't really any compartmentalization of music then (except for pop). I still listen to lots of "modern" music (Dry Cleaning, Yard Act, Fontaines DC....). I have always enjoyed lots of what I consider to be good music, but still enjoy the music I liked and listened to at around 16-18 years old.

 

[give_us_a_wave]

I was lucky enough to experience a wide variety of music growing up a few years either side of 1970. Typically John Lee Hooker one week, then Taste (Rory Gallagher),Third Ear Band (classically-trained, playing Indian raga inspired music), Liverpool Scene (poetry-based) etc.etc on Friday nights (the Il Rondo).
Saturdays were taken up by Geno Washington, Family, Fearn's Brass Foundry, Pink Floyd, The Who, Incredible String Band, King Crimson, Steel Pulse, Hawkwind and so on (Top Rank, De Mont, the Uni and the Poly).
There wasn't really any compartmentalization of music then (except for pop). I still listen to lots of "modern" music (Dry Cleaning, Yard Act, Fontaines DC....). I have always enjoyed lots of what I consider to be good music, but still enjoy the music I liked and listened to at around 16-18 years old.

Similar for me a little later. I think that being able to experience music live, in reasonable sized venues, for relatively little money was the major factor in all of it. The disappearance of that, along with the ability to stream anything & everything for free (or close to free) has killed everything stone dead really. Add in the fact that "home entertainment" didn't really exist for our generations until the advent of home video, by which time we were all adults & you get today's situation.
Most of the young people I encounter get music from video game soundtracks, or they recognise something older from a hip hop sample. It's all very incidental. Whereas to us the music itself was the centre, along with the experience of seeing it live in a space that wasn't a corporate nightmare in a football stadium with a view from miles away, eye wateringly priced food & drink & the thick end of £100 a ticket.
It's all very sad. But it also makes me endlessly grateful to have been born when & where I was. No other era would have rewarded me as much.