Seems to me it must be the decades at issue - most 50s, 60s and 70s artists I know but some, like Phil Collins, Yes or Genesis or Floyd I never listened to. If I think 80s, it's a complete blank except for say Bananarama or those three Spanish chicks with strange mouths who kept jabbing their hands right or left and of course, everyone knew of Susie and her Bangles, Kenny Rogers' Islands and this or that hit.
But I couldn't name any bands other than that. I vaguely know about some paedo named Glitter.
There was a definite coming back to speed late 80s, coinciding with my coming back here and thus the secondary kids played various bands, e.g. Take That, East 17 ...
... Backstreet Boys. I went to Russia and that's when girl overkill really began, so the music was front and square, e.g. Macarena, something called Franz Ferdinand, Jarvis Cocker and so on. I'm pretty much up on 90s music.
Thought I'd look up this Radiohead I'd never heard, though had heard 'of' them of course, same with Oasis. Wiki:
It does? Gen X - that explains it. Plus the 80s were my 'family decade', which pretty well killed listening, except to womanly songs and I never got to any concerts. So why not this Nickelback? Are they 80s too?
Nope, 1995 onwards. Hmmmm, at that point, I jumped from senior secondary girls to senior university girls, so they were back in the early 90s for music in one fell swoop. Hence no Nickelback.
There was some sort of revival post 2010 and I wonder why ... coming back to Blighty? Who knows but there are plenty of bands I know from 2010 to about 2014. Strange. The 2000s though ... another lost decade but I do know why - a gf who listened to Russian bands and singers almost exclusively, so I know many of them. Plus plenty of Trance and House at the gym.
Just curious ... are there any dead decades for you, when it was a cultural washout?
Sometimes utub offer musical suggestions, along with recipes and such. Occasionally I play a suggestion which is immediately picked up by their algorithms giving me more suggestions in that genre or era. Fortunately I haven't found myself trapped into any of the 'dead decades' yet. One interesting discovery I made recently was a group or collective under the name AuliEtnotranss, Latvian trad music being their thang. That in turn sent me around the world of music, the last piece I listened to was some Turkic throat singing. I still occasionally watch that Weingarten chap building his marbleous music making machine. There is some wonderful stuff out there to discover, ancient and modern, that I don't seem to bother with stuff I've heard before.
ReplyDeleteFor me from the mid 70s and through the 80s was my 'washout period', circumstances really, like your being overseas. Teen years were spent in almost line of sight of Radio Caroline and Radio London so I know almost every top40 record of that period from the first note. John Peel played exotic West Coast stuff which I followed after the pirates were closed down and then I attended almost every live gig for my university years. But then found my soulmate, we moved 200 miles for college and jobs and a mortgage, lost touch with venues and friend's recommendations, had no time, and mostly just followed the people we already knew plus aspects of the folk scene. The stuff on the radio was mostly crap anyhow (Slade, the Sweet etc?)! Once the children were older, with renewed opportunity, we started taking an interest again, and hearing their choice of music broadened my taste. Still, for easy listening, I gravitate back to electric folk, punk folk, good guitar players, classic rock and late 60s/early 70s bands plus the familiars like Neil Young, Eagles, Tom Petty spiced with a bit of german electronics like Faust, English hippyness like Ozric Tentacles and the slightly surreal lyrics of Half Man Half Biscuit. I doubt I could tell you anyone who has been in the top 40 since 2000.
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