Why we listen to new music

Why we listen to new music
pitchfork.com

I like discovering new music. Very few people in my circle of friends like the music I choose to listen to. I think I have a specific pathway to how I got here:

I wasn't into Faith No More, I didn't like Epic at the time it was a hit, until I heard Midlife Crisis. That song blew my young teenaged mind. Cue the Angel Dust album and the weird, beautiful, jagged aural landscape it created. I researched Faith No More for their history, found The Real Thing, the song in particular but also the album are both highlights. Where my journey forks way off the known track is where my research came across Mike Patton's previous / parallel band: Mr. Bungle.

I found their first full-length album (self-titled, Mr. Bungle) on tape, and bought it. Holy fucking shit it was a chaotic mess of who-the-fuck-knows, what even is this? It's musical instruments, but they're being, I don't know, just bashed at incomprehensibly. I paid a hard-earned $25 for that tape though, so I was determined to get my moneys worth out of it, so I listened and listened and kept listening (I didn't have a huge catalogue of other music) and I eventually "got it". In the end you'll find patterns in the chaos because it is, after all, music; composed, designed, written, planned. It's up to the listener to put in the effort.

Mr. Bungle was the gateway drug that opened my mind to the joys to be found in complex, difficult, and original music, and part of my personality, how people know who I am, is defined by my obscure tastes and knowledge of music that's forever hidden only just under the surface of mainstream popularity (I'm by no means very deeply knowledgeable).

I get great joy finding new music that I like, and I'm always surprised when I find something new to me, but not new to the world, and wonder how I'd missed it all these years when it's exactly the kind of thing I would like.

My source of new music is pretty much exclusively ThreeD radio[0] a local independent, volunteer-run and listener-funded station in little ol' Adelaide, South Australia. There's a lot of gravel, but there are diamonds hidden amongst it.

[0]: https://www.threedradio.com/

Edited to add: I've only listened to Trout Mask Replica twice, so I'm a good five listen-throughs away from any semblance of understanding of that musical masterpiece.

https://www.music-map.com

I followed sites like pitchfork but today I'm just not interested. I started noticing that music on my hard drive would get bigger and bigger and I had no time to listen to all of the stuff I wanted.

I do have some moments where the spark lights up again. There was a recent live 12 CD The Rolling Thunder Revue that I gobbled up and learned a lot of lyrics automatically. Or the new Arctic Monkeys album, or Kendrick Lamar's butterfly.

What my conclusion from this is, I'll just let the Lindy effect filter all the good stuff and I'll come back to the music from decades ago when the time is right. A bunch of new music and new movies are just forgettable, even the critically acclaimed.

I guess I'll miss out on a lot of present culture but I really don't go around circles where present cultural references are mentioned regularily.