Music as Fashion.
March 24, 2004, 06:31 pm(JB has been hounding me on this for a long time. Damn you, JB!)
You may have guessed that I have a strong relationship with music. When I really get into a band or album, I'll listen to it all the time and oftentimes figure out the parts for the songs to see how they work. And I'll get stuck on a band, listening to anything they've ever put out and trying to find live/bootleg recordings. I've been like this with Radiohead and Weezer/the Rentals/Matt Sharp and Grandaddy.
At times I'm even reluctant to listen to new music because it's draining to get into a new band: I'm not entirely sure I'm ready to take in another band, especially since I rarely phase out older music. I still listen to all the stuff I used to listen to.
Other people relate to music as some sort of ephemeral thing, like fashion or cut flowers. They listen to whatever music is en vogue. I think I'm always behind the times on whatever music the cool kids are listening to.
And even still, there are other people whose relationship to music is like software, where they don't really care about the content of the music, just so that it shows off their expensive stereos.
In the movie 28 Days Later, Selena says to Jim, “... you'll never hear another piece of original music ever again. You'll never read a book that hasn't already been written or see a film that hasn't already been shot.” And I'm not worried about this at all. Even if no more original music was created, it would take so incredibly long to exhaust the enormous volume of music that has already been recorded/written.