I drove down Highland Road this past week thinking “I owe Isaac Brock and his fans an apology.”
Modest Mouse isn’t a band I would have been into a year ago. Nor was it a band I would have listened to four years ago when I was in high school and the band’s breakout album “Good News For People Who Like Bad News” was released.
But now, Brock, the band’s frontman, somehow speaks to me through his lyrics, and I even dig the band’s music.
Changing tastes in music is all about age and growing up. With the digital age, it’s now easier than ever to discover more artists and revisit some albums.
I don’t want to give you the wrong impression, either. I still go back and listen to music I listened to when I was younger – well, maybe with the exception of groups such as New Kids on the Block.
But I’ve always been up for going back and discovering bands I’ve forgotten about for one reason or another or had just passed under my 15-year-old radar.
I hope I’m not alone with this ritual.
There are so many great albums that came out when I was 15 years old that I didn’t pay much attention to for one reason or another.
In high school, I wasn’t ready for a band like Modest Mouse. I was still listening to punk and ska, and like everyone and their mom, I owned a copy of Limp Bizkit’s “Significant Other.”
How did my taste change from trite and boring music to complex and full music?
Growing up in the digital age, it’s easier to discover archives of great music from 10 or 20 years ago.
With the Internet and portable MP3 players, it’s simple to stock up on catalogs of music.
This brings up a bigger trend and problem of hoarding music in the digital age.
It’s now easier than ever to obtain a lot of music through downloading and transferring songs to iPods.
To store all that music on a portable MP3 player or computer and not listen to it is ridiculous, and it hurts artists’ musical talents more than their wallets.
The industry’s move into the digital age has given me the ability to discover a treasure trove of music I would have never taken the time to listen to.
Thousands of records come out each year, and each person’s taste is different. While I’m only 21 years old, there’s more music to come in my life, but still a lot to revisit. At the same time, I’m not advocating any particular genre.
Open-mindedness is something that should be encouraged by not listening to a song once and tossing it aside.
There’s much more music out there than is on the surface. For every Top-40 rock band, there’s a more thought-provoking one just clicks away on the Web.
There’s so much music out there. That’s right, Clear Channel is lying to your ears. Nickelback isn’t actually the best rock band on the planet – they just get played five times an hour.
When a buzz is heard, take time to grab three songs by that artists or from a particular record and have a brand new sound for that ten minute car ride from campus back home.
The new sound may grow, just as age and life experiences do.
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Contact Adam Pfleider at [email protected]