On the topic musical overwhelm and other things...

Mercury · 2014-02-09T14:28:56-05:00

Do you ever get overwhelmed, overwhumped, overcome by the enormity of how much music you want to hear and how little you've truly heard? I mean when I am out in life, you know, in real life I am a FORMIDABLE source of musical knowledge. At least that is what I seem to be to everyone I deal with in person. I can say I have probably heard far more music than anyone I deal with on a consistent basis. Since I was about 10 I have been interested in music. I've been shooting off in all directions, only getting caught up in one subgenre for small periods of time. I've had my classic rock phase (as many of us have), my Hardcore punk phase, my thrash metal phase, my delta blues phase, my urban/chicago blues phase, my soul phase, my proto punk phase, my (very short lived) jazz phase, my country phase, etc. but generally I am all over the place musically - getting into anything and everything on a whim - for about 14 years now. As a result of this I have maybe heard, idk, 3000-4000 Albums in full. Maybe 40,000-60,000 songs. I've listened to maybe a thousand artists. I have learned about and heard of thousands of musical minds. And before I came to know many of you, I was somewhat haughty and proud. I thought I was the bee's knees. I thought I was the shit. Once I came to this site a few things happened. For one I met a lot of like-minded people who shared a similar passion for music. I discovered that I was not alone in my knowledge and obsession. I learned also that I DIDN'T REALLY KNOW ALL THAT MUCH! At least not in comparison to some of y'all. Boy, was I a bit chagrined. It dawned on me that my modus operandi of getting into everything everywhere on my whim lead me to having a starter's knowledge of many genre's, and at best a very good knowledge of a few small subgenres. There were yet whole bodies of work and whole genres of great music that I had never even glanced at or touched upon. Ambient? House? Dub Step? "Kraut Rock"? Post Rock? I didn't really have much of a clue. And what's worse I found that my seemingly encyclopedic knowledge of genres like Punk and Delta Blues was equaled or surpassed by several prominent members here. Now I see that my knowledge, while still huge compared to the avg. person, is not all that impressive around here. Just to name a few examples, lethalnezzle clearly knows tons more music than I do. Same with Norman. And Manc/Magenta (come back soon) and joyofdivision and meccalecca, Kool Keith Sweat and many many more. There are people here who have insane knowledge of subgenres that I can't even get my head around - Cymro with his love for garage/psychedelic , Geevy with grime and other relatively modern stuff that I know nothing about, Nezzle with hip hop and many other styles too, thePoe with all his knowledge on world music, romanelli with country-rock and rock in general, etc. There's sooo many examples. And the thing is I do know quite a bit of music. And there are recommendations I can make and have made to all of those people above. But for some of them it's like crazy! It's like a 15 to 1 ratio of my recommendations to them versus their's to mine. Anyway, it's kinda wild. This whole realization has gotten me to think. I don't have the time or money or energy or inclination to try to listen to all the music ever made. And it's really easy for me to give up and go into an apathetic state of mind like "what does it matter? Why waste so much time on music?". But the main thing I am feeling now is a sense of wonder and exploration. I know that I only have so much time this life to learn and listen to new music. So I better not waste it. Interesting thought.... Anyway, what do you people think of this? Do you ever have similar thoughts of inferiority (LOL) whilst discovering music on BEA? What are your thoughts? What are your thoughts on people around here and their vast knowledge of genres? How do you explore music, all over the place or do you try to tap one genre or era at a time? and really what I am most interested in is what are your thoughts on me (because I am a self interested egotist.) ((especially if you are one of the people I mentioned or you are Drakonium, Brandon, NickVolos, or you are a friend of mine and you know who you are rocky racoon, samistake2ice etc) Peace.

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Mercury Turn your back on the pay-you-back last call Profile
St. Louis

Amen, Saoirse.

Yeah, it's true. It's all relative and it really is very easy to turn something basically just aesthetic such as art into something much less.
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dmercado Profile
Somerville, MA

The amount of existential angst and bro-love here is through the roof! I've realized that I'll never listen to most albums, even some by bands that I like. Right now my goal is to listen and get comfortable with a good breadth of the ~1000 albums that people consider most critical. At the same time, if I like something, I'll swim deeper. The best feeling is becoming an expert in a song/album/artist/genre, the music has so much more meaning then.
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quincytejani Profile

I have a rule that if I like an album the first time around I will listen to it at least ten times before moving on. It makes me appreciate and become close to so many albums. But it does take a lot of time. I constantly have a list of music I need to listen to and I just don't know how some people on this site listen to so much! It's crazy and I am so jealous aha. I often get the feeling that I want to hear everything but sadly I can't and it bothers me so.

RockyRaccoon Is it solipsistic in here or is it just me? Moderator Profile
Maryland

Ahh it's so much opportunity. I'm in a similar boat as you Mercury. I know (or at least I think I know) a fair bit about music. But there's also so much I don't know. I've always said that one of the biggest signs that someone is good at what they do is their ability to acknowledge how much they don't know and their desire to discover it. The people who sit there and act like they have nothing to learn typically know nothing.

I see all of the music I have to listen to as so much opportunity. There's so much good music out there, that next album that's gonna blow me away, it's out there, waiting for me to listen to it, I just have to find it. I love it. It can be overwhelming if you really think about it, about how much music is really out there, but you take it an album at a time and then, before you know it, you'll have listened to a ton of stuff.

Also, Mercury, you da best. You're my TMOE buddy. We can worship at the altar of Kristian Matsson together.
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