World of music can broaden horizons
When I was younger, I mainly listened to the older music of, “whatever my parents listened to.”
That means a whole lot of Led Zeppelin from my dad and Billy Joel from my mom. I’d listen on the bus, listen during study hall, listen on the way home and spend much the rest of the day listening.
It was all the clichés you’d imagine: comforting, escapism, and the singers really “got” me. But it was mundane. I listened to the same music senior year as I did freshman year. Pepper in Korn and Evanescence and I was your standard angsty teen.
For me, the catalyst was a truly millennial happenstance: I was in the local Starbucks, and noticed a card that looked interesting. It was that brown, scratching sort of paper they use to make stuff look “artisan” or whatever, and it had a list of songs. The card was free, and by using it you could download the listed songs for free. It was a sampler.
I was always looking for new music, so I brought it home and listened to each one. I dismissed song after song, until I came to one called Battery Kinzie by Fleet Foxes. “Sounds pretty pretentious,” I thought, “like hipster bait.” But I listened through, and in four minutes rediscovered present-day music. It was familiar; Fleet Foxes are a folk outfit from the Pacific Northwest. They have a lot of vocal harmonies in the style of 60s pop, and the lead singer kind of sounds like Graham Nash. But it was ethereal and strange at the same time. Like if the Beach Boys were gypsies or something.
From there and through college, my musical tastes grew as quickly and as much as my student debt. I discovered punk rock in bands like Black Flag, Minor Threat and Refused; I found jazz in artists like Charles Mingus, Miles Davis and Charlie Parker; I discovered how important bands like Metallica, Megadeth and Anthrax were to the fabric of heavy metal today.
The problem with listening to the same music is it boxes you in. Music provides comfort, sure, but it also provides context, for both times and places. Listen to A Love Supreme by John Coltrane, and you’ll discover the important role faith played in the black community. Creedence Clearwater Revival will give you a pretty good picture of the unrest during the Vietnam War. Paul Simon’s Graceland does a pretty good job of showcasing South African musicians during apartheid in the 80s.
Whenever I’m feeling a bout of anxiety or depression, I always come back to music. At its core, music should entertain and soothe, but it also tells you something. Not branching out limits that input. At the end of this column I’m putting a list of albums I think are good entry points. The order is artist, album, genre. Give them a try, your old music will always be there.
-Miles Davis, Kind of Blue, Jazz.
-Charles Mingus, Mingus Ah Um, Jazz.
-Title Fight, Floral Green, Punk.
-Paul Simon, Graceland, Pop.
-The Mountain Goats, Transcendental Youth, Rock.
-Rush, Moving Pictures, Rock.
-Mastodon, Leviathan, Metal.
-Neil Young, Harvest, Folk.