Get With The Jive, Daddy-o!

[poliphilo]

Ailz was listening to the Seekers yesterday. I was mildly scornful. "Oh, yes," she replied, "And who's the youngest artist in your CD collection- Paul McCartney?" 

That shut me up.

At the very time she was playing the Seekers I was downstairs listening to the Velvet Underground.

And my last three CD purchases were compilations of Edith Piaf, Charles Trenet and George Brassens- all now members of the choir invisible.

There's not much music from the past thirty years I really like. Oh, I'll listen to contemporary stuff, but it wouldn't occur to me to buy it. Ailz is much more savvy. She just bought Katie Melua and Snow Patrol. Her tastes may be middle of the road, but at least they're up to date.

It's rather the same with cinema. Yesterday, belatedly, I bought a copy of Teh Big Gay Cowboy Movie ( a snip at £4.99)  but, if I'm honest, my heart is elsewhere. I try to keep up with the movies, but the things I usually buy- the things I want in my collection- are from thirty, forty, fifty years back. 

In the good old days people like me used to be known as squares. I don't know if there's a modern equivalent.

Comments

[cataptromancer.livejournal.com]

Well, pop music hasn't been very good at all for a while, but there's a lot of not-always-played-on-the-radio stuff that's good. And of course, it does recycle the past, but I think that's what good art does by default anyway.

Have you tried the band 'The Magnetic Fields'? Particularly their triple-album '69 Love Songs' - articulate, witty, and genre-playful, hopping from tin-pan alley mockups to modern pop. And for a more music-y and dance-y kind of listenable pop (which is definitely guilty of recyclying the past), have you tried 'Belle and Sebastian'? (Although B&S may be bigger in the UK than in the US, so perhaps you think of them as a well-known band that gets airplay). Far less well-known is 'Ad Frank and the Fast, Easy Women', a pop songwriter out of Boston, Massachusetts. And speaking of Boston, there are the acerbic, self-proclaimed "brechtian punk cabaret" duo 'The Dresden Dolls.' And for weird, Joanna Newsome, kind of Narnia-nonlinear-folk.

If none of those work, let me keep trying to convince. I'm rather fond of the music that's been produced since I've been a-breathing this air, and so I'll defend it to the best of my ability.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the recommendations.

I really need to get out more.

So much to listen to, so little time....