Musical Brain Training

“Dead leaves and the dirty ground, when I know you're not around.” White Blood Cell's opening couplet instantly transports me to teendom. Back to a time when hanging out on park benches smoking roll ups after school was the height of my ambition (not that I'm exactly an over-reacher now!). This album, and especially its crunchy opening few power chords, is a heady reminder for me of how music has the ability to capture the past. In a way redolent with feeling just like those 'dead leaves.'

Hearing The White Stripes on 6 music's 100 Greatest countdown today I realised that my formative musical years had run parallel with the years of 6 music's activity (2002- present). At the beginning of this period I was a wide eyed musical omnivore, passionately absorbing anything and everything I thought was cool, and hastily forming a half baked opinion on it. At the close of this period I'm still just as engaged with music, but now have to actively fight off the closed mindedness that comes with increasing years. The 'I know what I like and I'm sticking to it' syndrome. I do this by constantly putting myself out of my musical comfort zone. As an ardent indie head, whose favourite band was Wilco for about half a decade, I shouldn't really be listening to Rinse FM, yet I do. It's great, especially as its not so Grime based now. No Sunday is complete without T. Williams nowadays.

It may seem an obvious point, but I strongly believe that if you love one genre of music you can love several. I don't understand 'genre heads'. The energy of Jack White's scraggy blues guitar can find its equivalent in the seamless way Kieran Hebden (Four Tet) creates songs out of many disparate samples. Hebden's crate digging mentality can be seen as similar in essence to the archival worship of White. It's just passion for music. And this transcends genre.

Forgive me, I digress, what I wanted to do was to address the myth that you can't feel music as much as you do in early youth.

POINT 1= It's not the music that changes: it's YOU.

We have our most intense emotions when a teenager or young (wo)man, so our relationship with music is naturally going to be a passionate one, too. It's inevitable that any soundtrack to the halcyon days of a long distant past where everything was ALL NEW AND EXCITING is going to be one fondly treasured. But it isn't that the music was somehow better back then, it's just that you were perhaps more receptive to it, more open minded. And let's face it, the song you listened to when you first got laid is gonna be hard to top. It's not the music it's YOU!

POINT 2 = When music gets boring TRY SUMMAT NEW

It may not be possible to recreate the thrill felt when first hearing The Strokes' Is This It at that party where you got your mum's key cut, but you can try different genres and get a kick out of their alien vitality. When you think British Sea Power have run their course, why not try listening to some ambient techno. This may seem like an absurd statement, but why not? Why should they be mutually exclusive? Clubs are for toffs and elitists. Someone I know listens to Radio 3 on his way to work but on a Friday night is most likely found dancing to pitch black drum and bass. Why the fuck not?

There is something good in every genre. And I'm not trying to be all 'look at my GENUINELY eclectic music taste, ain't I cool?' I'm merely stating what I see as a fact. There is good shit out there under many different guises and forms. Do not limit yourself to what's deemed cool, or what you're familiar with.

The music of your youth sticks with you like none other as it reminds you of a time when you were experiencing things for the first time. It was fresh. And only if you get stuck in a genre rut does music become stale. It's us that becomes stale. So stop the stasis. Interrupt the inertia, and just listen to new things. Music evolves by itself, yet we have the option whether to stay a closed minded curmudgeon, or to embrace the new.

SUMMARY

In adult life our appreciation of music may be less visceral and immediate than when we were a pheromone charged youth, but through trying different genres and styles we can get our teenage kicks back.