Indie-ignorant and proud: What it looks like to love the musical eras of yesteryear
I have no idea what new music is out there right now. I have the freakin’ pen-name “Hipstercrite,” and I have no idea what people my age are listening to.
I am no hipster, I’m an old lady.
Cherishing my Time-Life 1950’s compilations on tape is what I do best. Loving Meatloaf is what I do even better. I still long for the days when I would wistfully stare at a poster of a shirtless Elton John (don’t ask). I’d probably stare at a poster of a shirtless Meatloaf and enjoy that too. I still have my Stevie Nicks costumes.
I even called Callin’ Oates; when my boyfriend got sick of hearing Daryl Hall crooning from my speaker phone, I was reduced to getting my fix of H2O in the car.
It’s Free Week in Austin, and you know what I’m doing right now instead of catching awesome local acts? Writing this post about how I’m indie ignorant.
I’d love to be in the know on what music is hot right now, but there is not enough time in the day to catch up! I haven’t been actively listening to new music since 1989. I was six years-old then and thought George Michael was the most hetero man that ever existed.
There is over two decades of music I’ve missed out on and I don’t know where to begin. (On a side note about current music: How have the radio DJs in Austin not been reduced to a zombie-like state after all this Adele playing? Seriously, like, don’t you DJs even find it comical how often you play her music?)
What I’ve always listened to is oldies.
Oh man, anyone born up to 1965 will be super pissed for me calling 70s and 80s music “oldies.”
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My suggestion for getting caught up [if that is what you want to do] is actually to find one musician you loved in particular, and work your way *back* first. Yeah, that’s right, back – so you may already be on the right path.
My personal example: Being a 90s child [born in 85! But to hell with the 80s], naturally, I idolized Nirvana front man Kurt Cobain. I may, actually, be one of the few people still proud to say that, but the hell with everyone else. Anyway, when I wanted to expand my musical tastes which hadn’t changed in years, I looked at two things – who Cobain said influenced him [Vaselines! Meat Puppets! Young Marble Giants! The Raincoats! Kim Deal!] or who he liked before, during, or after Nirvana got huge [Bikini Kill! The Gits! Nation of Ulysses! Anything on Sub Pop!]. There’s even a neat story about a Nirvana signing at some LA record store where Cobain was telling people to put his CD back, and go buy Bikini Kill’s album. Anyway, once I had this handful of names, some I knew, some I didn’t, I just started looking at what was written about them – even at the bar minimum, what they were considered or called genre-wise. Suddenly, I had a better bearing on what Riot Grrl was, understood the difference between 90s Punk and 70s Punk, and had this name of this new thing [well, new to me] called Twee. Started asking people about it, and learned enough lingo to get purists to talk to me about it – knowing who Black Tambourine was opened doors like a secret handshake, and suddenly I had names of bands to check out and a lot of mixes and youtube videos in my inbox.
Or course, none of this music was new yet, but a lot of the members of these bands were still around in some form or another [or, in more tragic cases, like with the Gits frontwoman Mia Zapata, there was a string of folks she influenced as long as my arm… side note, I hate talking about Zapata’s death so clinically… it hurts, often, to think someone who made music that spoke so much to me is just gone, and that’s on top of the fact that a good and beautiful person is just gone], and they had started other bands, or were producing bands that sounded like them, or were at least getting mentions by modern bands.
Of course, there are a lot of other ways to get into new music. I actually a know a lot of stuff from the Austin scene because of this thing a friend of mine hosts each April called a “mix swap” – where a list of people sign up with him, and then he tells how many mixes each person should make, and mail to him with like $4.00 to cover the shipping as he sends one mix of each out to everyone in the swap.
And then there’s just reading and television. There’s a great Brit. blog called “The Girls Are” which gives me the female fronted radness I crave, and Kickstarter and all the other blogs that have sort of formed around it are okay resources. Since I know you’re getting into comics there’s a great series from earlier in the ’00s called Phonogram which turned me on to a lot of old and new music as well. And I tend to find fun stuff from the opening acts that just barely make it on Mountain Stage or Austin City Limits, or even… I caught two 5 second bumps watching MTV at four in the morning, and discovered Titus Andronicus – one of my favorite bands of the last ten years.
It definitely takes a little time, which I know you mentioned, but there are great ways to fit these little things into your day-to-day stuff.
[/tutorial] Haha.
P.S. As I forgot my manners! Great article, by the way. Nice to see more people not embarrassed by a little nostalgia. Bums me out it’s becoming passe.
Well, couldn’t the name “Hipstercrite” imply that you are a hypocritical hipster, or maybe that you are a critic of the lifestyle? I think you’re covered.
I was born in ’66, and even though I agree on an intellectual level that the 70’s and 80’s can be considered “oldies”, it feels very, very weird.