Fitter Stoke
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Edited Sep 01, 2023, 19:28
Familiarity breeds contempt
Sep 01, 2023, 19:14
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(Disclaimer: The following represents the rantings of a grumpy old music lover. Please look away now if easily offended by differences of opinion.)
I’m in a local boozer supping a pint, as is my wont on a Friday evening. I’m relaxed and relatively at peace with the world. Then ‘All Right Now’ starts playing from the pub’s low-fi sound system, and I feel my spirits drop like a stone. Suddenly I feel anger. Why? I quite liked the track as a young’un, even though there were many other Free songs I liked far better. No, things have now, quite radically, changed. I think the reason for my sudden - or is it gradual - hatred of ‘All Right Now’ is simply that I’ve heard it about three hundred times more than anything else of its era. In other words, it’s battered my brain so much I’ve grown to dread and despise it.
It’s not the only offender. If I never heard ‘Paranoid’ (the track, not its parent album) again I wouldn’t shed any tears. Ditto ‘Freebird’ (which admittedly I’ve never liked), Smoke On The Water’, ‘Locomotive Breath’, ‘Stairway To Heaven’, ‘Rockin’ All Over The World’, ‘Layla’ (always the shitty short version), ‘Riders On The Storm’, ‘Highway To Hell’ and any number of those oh-so-obvious rock “classics” that appear on cheap supermarket CDs around Father’s Day every year. A pox on the lot of them. Fergawdssake man, these dudes made any number of better, lesser-known tracks. Can’t we, just every now and then, hear them instead of the bleeding obvious ones?
OK, rant over. I’m off yem to play some Faust.
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Vybik Jon
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Re: Familiarity breeds contempt
Sep 01, 2023, 19:39
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For your sanity, never listen to Planet Rock.
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Fitter Stoke
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Re: Familiarity breeds contempt
Sep 01, 2023, 19:47
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Vybik Jon wrote: For your sanity, never listen to Planet Rock.
Lol. Yeah, I guess the clue’s in the name of the station. Doubtless they’ll have jingles voiced by the same gravel-toned, razor suckin’ dude who talks over those Steven Seagal movie trailers (“planet RRUAAACKK”).
:-)
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Monganaut
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Re: Familiarity breeds contempt
Sep 01, 2023, 20:55
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I recently spent 10 months working nights at a well known supermarkets ditribution warehouse. I hear ya rant and respect it, but I gotta raise it with what passes for modern pop music. I'm pretty open to most musical styles, but, FUUUUUUCK! if I ever have to listen to ANY of that drivel again, frankly, I'm gonna shoot myself in the head. Part of the reason I quit was the endless, relentless assault of banality that I had to endure 10 hours a night, every night I was on shift. As it was 'voice picking' stock, I didn't have the option of even tuning it out with my own shit. And you'd hear the same songs, pretty much every night at least 5 times a night. Truley soul destroying. Pity, cos' the folks I worked with were decent and on the whole good fun.
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Citizensmurf
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Re: Familiarity breeds contempt
Sep 02, 2023, 02:56
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I had to google the song title, as I didn't recognize it, but hearing the first notes I'm like, oh yes, the beer commercial song.
Hey, at least it wasn't "Boot Scoot Boogie" or whatever popular country shite songs they play in my city. I want to start smashing things when I hear that music.
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Kwoo
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Re: Familiarity breeds contempt
Sep 02, 2023, 12:35
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Any kind of piped-in music is pure misery. Except maybe if you are a moron (the kind with an easy life who goes to Next and says "Wow this is fantastic" etc etc).
Even if a song is "not bad" something is sapped out of it in that context.
Last year I was working three jobs and one had piped in tunes, mainly funk and a little disco.
Now, I actually like funk and disco but in that context it was completely counter-revolutionary and extremely depressing.
As for that speed of Everywhere Dad Rock, I find depressing anywhere... I'll never forget being in Michigan years ago and Van Halen's Jump was absolutely *everywhere*. Downright draining everyone's orgones... This is why I am a situationist.
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keith a
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Re: Familiarity breeds contempt
Sep 03, 2023, 14:26
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There's been a few over the years for me.
Some 6th formers endlessly playing a live version Stairway To Heaven put me off hearing either version for YEARRRS. I can enjoy it nowadays if I just hear it once every few years.
I've been through spells where I couldn't bear to hear She Loves You and Satisfaction. Still feel the same with the latter as good as it is. I think I went through the same phase with All Right Now but have since come out the other side. I'm not a big lover of trad rock guitar solo's but Kossoff's has such feeling.
And as much as I love Julian I feel my spirits drop when he plays Pristeen live. Probably my own fault for going to see him so often but he has definitely overplayed this one/
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Fitter Stoke
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Re: Familiarity breeds contempt
Sep 04, 2023, 13:16
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Well, while we’re talking Julian, I’d love to hear something other than ‘Reward’ out there in the big wide world. Talk about one track typecasting…
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