The fan I am

Music and I, we go way back. I can trace our serious relationship back to junior high years, when I first heard a first Simon and Garfunkel album that belonged to a friend of my big brother. The relationship is still going strong 45 years later. I have a collection of 2,000 compact discs and I’m always on the lookout for something I haven’t heard yet.

But like any long-term relationship, things change as time goes by. One or both parties grow and evolve; expectations shift; and the world around us never stays the same. The bottom line: I don’t listen to music in the same way, with the same expectations, as I did when “Sounds of Silence” first caught my ear.

(My other log-term relationship is analogous. I’m not the same 22-year-old man my wife married all those years ago – to which she would undoubtedly say, “thank God.”)

Here’s the quick version of what happened between me and music: 

A few years into the relationship I wanted to take things to the next level. I wanted to go deeper, to know all I could about the music I was hearing. This was before rock ‘n’ roll had parental approval or corporate sponsorship. There was no internet yet and rock wasn’t covered by newspapers. The only information available to a small-town kid was newer, countercultural sources like Rolling Stone Magazine (at that time, less than 10 years old). So I subscribed. Rolling Stone’s articles and record reviews turned me on to many artists and a lot of music. But there was a down side: Relying on rock critics for all my info left me with an elitist, snobbish attitude. The critics often disdained the most popular music because it lacked substance, and this left me with a misguided tendency to abandon some great artists after they became megastars, even though their music still had substance (Elton John, for one).

What made me recognize this toxic attitude? That old relationship changer, having children. My own son and daughter inherited my love for music and some of my particular tastes (Paul Simon and Jackson Browne), but also grew up with their own music and developed their own tastes. (They’re also both talented and gifted musicians themselves, but that’s another blog). Children have a way of paying back their parents, and mine have given me a new willingness to listen with open ears and without prejudice, especially prejudice against hugely popular music. Sometimes millions of fans are actually right.

Not only have my own children influenced me, but also my daughter-in-law, whose broad musical taste encompasses the most popular hip hop, pop and folk, as well as obscure jazz, blues and old-time fiddle and banjo music. And she can teach me a lesson or two about jazz. Two years ago she took me to the Village Vanguard Club in Greenwich Village, which has been showcasing live jazz since 1957, giving exposure to the likes of Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, Bill Evans, Charlie Mingus, and Stan Getz.

   

Looking back on the relationship, I can trace another change or two in the way I listen to music. I used to try to fit music in genres: country, rock, country-rock, bluegrass, blues, zydeco, Cajun, swing jazz, bebop, cool jazz, modern jazz, classical … you get the idea. I overlooked some great music because I couldn’t see how it fit into a genre, or else it didn’t sound like anything I’d heard before. I have learned somehow to take to heart Duke Ellington’s observation that there are only two types of music – good music and the other kind. 

Have the way you listen to music, and your attitudes, changed over the years?

Here's a song by Paul Simon about HIS relationship with music: