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Underground > Radio & Music >

I Am (Not) My Music

  
 
miss wonderstarr
08:46 / 12.08.06
When I was around twenty-two, I had a prepared answer ~ I probably had both a long and short answer prepared ~ for whenever anyone asked what music I was into. And they asked quite a lot. My list was honest, but it had the double, deeper purpose of also telling the questioner something about me ~ which is surely also what they intended to ask.

So I would mention Suede, the Smiths, Curve, the Cure... the Furs (no "Psychedelic" ~ that itself implying fan-familiarity), the Fall ~ Belly, the Breeders.

These bands were important to me in a way that went beyond just enjoying their sound ~ they were part of my identity, how I constructed myself, how I saw my lifestyle. They were bound up with what I wore, where I went out, the kind of friends I had and the kinds of people I found attractive. And by listing those bands, I was saying, or certainly intending to say, quite a lot about those other aspects of my life. They were the soundtrack to my little bedsit that I decorated with second-hand jumble-sale Barbie dolls; where I ate some daft diet (nothing until 4pm, then a whole cake) and sat in front of a mirror trying to make myself look like one of the models in New Woman magazine. If I told people I was into Suede, in particular ~ and I was, in particular: I was into Suede from the first single, and took them into my life more than any other band at the time ~ I was trying to say something about my skinniness, my femmeness, my feyness, why my hair was like this, why I wore those bracelets. (I know! But this was a long time ago.)

Anyway, to simplify: now I'm... now I look late-20s but am biologically a little older, ahem, I find myself relating to music in a quite different way. If someone asked me what I was "into", which they don't, so often, anymore, I would still probably come up with Bowie as the artist who I feel explains me most, but beyond that the picture would fragment to the point of near-incoherence.

In August 06, so far I have listened to and enjoyed More Fire Crew, Dizzy Gillespie, Girls Aloud, Xtina Aguilera, Boston, Cream, Jay-Z, Dean Martin, Yes. Off the top of my head. I'm not "into" those artists in the same way I was the bands I named above, but I enjoyed them. It just doesn't add up to a sense of identity anymore. I don't know what impression that would give of me, except that my tastes are relatively catholic. I got different pleasures out of listening to each, but they don't really shape much about me ~ I do sometimes drag up as Dino Martin when I'm going for cocktails, but I think that's about it.

This is in contrast to some of the whippersnappers I see and sometimes "talk" to on myspace or Livejournal, who clearly still build their lives around a band in terms of it affecting their wallpaper, their wardobes, their fringes, their friends.

Sooo... I wonder, when did YOU stop defining yourself so much in terms of the music you like, if you did? How is it affected by your age?
 
 
uncle retrospective
10:40 / 12.08.06
Good question, personally I'm still into music more than ever. I'm turning 31 next month and I though I'd have left music behind or it would have left me behind but no, I've been to more gigs this year than ever before. What I have found though is that the though of only listening to one genre of music appals me now. I'm my teens and early 20's I was a fully on Thrasher, if your weren't into metal you were no friend of mine (Not really true as none my mates liked rock) but it's where I was. When your young and angry metal is a great thing to keep you there, but even as I listen to less metal, well more of other kinds of music I still will bond faster with someone over metal (CF most threads in this forum).
In my 20's I got into Goth and Industrial which really defines you as a person when your walking around in PVC trousers and black lipstick, but again, young and angry, it's a great fuck you to the rest of the world.
At some point I decided that I just had to make the move to muso which stopped me painting myself into one musical corner, if you asked me what kind of music I like I get stumped, what do I say what won't take a long time to explain, I tend to settle for saying that the Super Furry Animals are the best band in the world (or the Flaming Lips, who ever I saw last) and get blanked stared.

So to really answer the question, I still define myself with music, it's my main past time, like someone would say i'm a mountain biker or a runner, I put as much time into my music. It's just not as healthy, pogoing is bad for the knees.
 
 
Jack Fear
14:24 / 12.08.06
The funny thing is, now that I define myself less by the music to which I listen, I am free to enjoy the music itself a lot more—to enjoy any kind of music, and to enjoy it for what it is, rather than for what it says about me.
 
 
Shrug
15:21 / 12.08.06
I probably made adolescent attempts to emulate various musical icons by way of clothing and/or attitude. That's probably a rite of passage for many people and it's quite the useful tool by which you can purvey a easily identified, widely recognised sense of self to others. I suppose that was at least some part of why I adopted the more angst ridden rock, glam, indie & punk as my musical heritage during my formative years (if I could be said to have left them) because I was pissed off, pissed up, vague, selfish and FUCKEDUP!!11!!23 and that guise let me wallow in it a little without having to think of much else. And in that way, especially in your teens, where things can become almost tribal, music taste, appendages, accessories, styles are very important. The music I listened to spoke of drugs, glamour, rebellion, self harm, excess and hazy sexual encounter (which all attracted me immensely) and my life at the time was, indeed, thematically similar in a cut-rate sort of sense. It is, in many ways, like an extension of the game "dress up" too- Tonight, Matthew, I will be?- (something that's still fun to do when on the out and about).

I still let music dictate dress if not attitute (attitude more so dictates music) to a certain extent and at any given time I can squirm comfortably back into the boundaries of different genres like a second skin. What Jack says is right, of course, although, I'd still feel like a knob if I didn't dress (even almost act: depressed at the disco, not I) appropriately at a dance club vs. at a folk music gig vs. a rock concert. The same could probably be said for any occassion, though: office, funeral, date, beach, bike ride.

I am (not) my music and my music is (not) me and for the most part I couldn't begin to coallesce the two ever again.
 
 
miss wonderstarr
16:20 / 12.08.06
I can only agree with the posts above so far, which very much echo and expand what I meant to say. When you're younger, a specific type of music seems more important in defining your identity, to yourself and to others. I suppose as you get older, perhaps other things help to define you, and make music less important in that way ~ not necessarily less important though, just because your taste becomes more diverse. On a walk down into "town" (I am in some rustic English non-London "place") between posts, I was listening to music non-stop just as I might have as a youngerstarr. Actually, it was the sort of music that I would have been comfortable to have define me, had the goths, nu-punks and other assorted locals asked me what I was into: it was a new band with only singles out, called Performance, who seem to aspire to be a bit like the Human League and a bit like Visage. However, I then went in HMV and bought albums I would have scorned when I was younger ~ not because I thought they were awful but because they didn't fit the neat idea of "what I was into" and would look out of place in my then-smaller and more-coherent collection. So, I am now the sort of person who listens to Performance, and then "Ain't No Other Man", while buying the best of Cream and the best of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. In some ways I've lost something (branding) but in other ways I think I've gained.
 
 
MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!
09:08 / 15.08.06
I suppose as you get older, perhaps other things help to define you, and make music less important in that way ~ not necessarily less important though, just because your taste becomes more diverse.

True that. I stopped defining my identity in terms of the music I enjoy when the music I enjoy broadened itself to the point that it took ten minutes to answer the question "what music do you enjoy?"

So now I just say "most of it," and if the person wants to know about something in particular they can ask. Getting older has definitely made me mellower, and being mellower has really given me more space to appreciate things for themselves instead of how they slot into my self-image.

I go artist-by-artist now, rather than genre-by-genre. Can't think of any type of music I don't like anything in... I used to be able to say "I hate pop" and "I hate country," and I imagine the loss of those bold-stroke divisions came right around the time I stopped defining myself in terms of "my" music.
 
  
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