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Time, perhaps, to huddle around a fire and discuss the matters of burning import which keep us awake at night, as the most unprepared feature on the internet returns.
As always, the rules are that the first person to comment below can set the starting point for the day's discussion.
Granted, the way it works in practice is that anyone who comments, somehow, manages to do it.
But what is that discussion of?
Could it be sport, art, films, music, books, fairy tales, myth, magic, mystery, sofas, sausages, eggs, whisky, broth, flip-flops, flim-flam, see-saws, bin bags, cola, pancakes, sci-fi, horror, sewage or sandcastles?
Only you can decide.
If you're brave enough...
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12 comments:
I'd like to know people's opinions of how their musical tastes have changed with age. Personally I still love the same music (hard rock and metal) that I did when I was 19, but I have friends of the same age who can't listen to that anymore and now tell me how great easy listening music is. Does this mean that the part of my brain that deals with musical taste has never grown up?
Theres always someone who gets here before me, but a question I've wanted to ask for a while is kind of related to Dave's, so maybe I could broaden things out a little. Or you're welcome to delete this comment, Steve.
So, on a site frequented by 50-somethings about publications aimed at a significantly younger audience decades ago - how do you read an old 70s comic now? Ironically? Nostalgically? Or with the sense of wonder a miserable git like me (so I'm told) no longer has?
Dave, hope you don't mind, and I'll be back a bit later with an answer for you after I've thought about it a bit. Although I am not, or have ever been, a metalhead (unless you count still owning an old Blue Oyster Cult album from ages ago).
-sean
Dave - There are certain physical changes that happen as you get older - hardly a surprise! My ears (nerves, perhaps?) are more sensitive to loud noises, than when I was younger. So, although 80s rock still appeals, as it did in my youth, ears(nerves?) mean I'm more inclined to listen to audio talk programmes - radio 4, for example - or podcasts. Easier listening, too. (Or, soft rock? - genres are confusing!) This thing about jangling nerves during the day might also relate to frequently waking up at 3am! To me, pop music largely relates to one's youth. By & large, I stopped listening to current acts, after 1992! Anyway, this is just my personal reaction. For other people, I'm probably in old codger territory!
Sean - No adult's sense of wonder remains intact (see Wordsworth's Immortality Ode!) However, to me, the memory of that sense of wonder is sacred. Comics & happy memories go together - parents no longer with us, often bought them for us, and coimcs were read during happier times. To tear apart a particular comic - or character - sacred to another reader, is bad form (although we all forget this, occasionally). So I'd say I remember comics nostalgically - hoping to blow on the ember, and make it a flame again - even though this is impossible. That being said, adults see "patterns", whereas kids do not. Reading as an adult, I can't help seeing when a particular writer's using the same plot device - or motif - over & over again. As a kid, you didn't notice such things.
Phillip
comics - not coimcs - damn typos!
Phillip
Dave and Sean, thanks for the topics.
Dave, I would say I've become more open-minded in my musical tastes. I can now appreciate out-and-out pop in a way I wouldn't as a teenager. That's why I can now fully embrace Bucks Fizz and Boney M. However, my complete and total intolerance for poodle rock and AOR hasn't budged an inch.
Sean, comics I read at the time appeal to me far more than comics that I didn't read at the time. I tend to mostly view the latter with interested curiosity, rather than actual enjoyment.
How much I enjoy the comics I did read depends on what they are. When I had a massive burst of reading the Marvel Essentials, 15-20 years ago, I found I still greatly enjoyed the FF, Spider-Man, Avengers, Thor and Hulk stories of my youth, whereas the Daredevil, Captain America, Conan and Iron Man tales left me cold.
Dave - Some thoughts from a 60 year old.
- I incline towards less music in general. This began at the age of 30 when I started commuting to Chicago on a train and not riding in a car.
- Like Phillip, I eschew loud "noise". I think it is my aged "nerves."
- I do find myself listening more to the station that plays songs from the 60s and 70s, pre metal, pre disco. Lots of songs I never heard, or haven't heard in 50 odd years.
Sean -
I have started enjoying comic books from my youth due to SDC. I try to do some homework for the "50 years ago" and actually dig into the long boxes and leisurely read 1-4 issues a month: DD, Cap, Spidey, FF.
The more I do this, the more magical it gets! Really!
Case in point is FF 116. When I read it 50 years ago the whole "Overmind destroys Doom" in 2 -3 pages loomed huge in my head. Now I was like... "that was way too fast" and it deserves an issue in
itself!
That said I am finding SPidey 100 - 102 and Cap's "Grey Gargoyle" issues pretty fun.
Caveat: I am reading the actual comic, not a compilation. I also get the texture, the smell, the exact same visual, the Checklist and Letters... even the House Ads rock as do the other ads for stamps, coins, muscles and babes, sea monkeys, rocket ships...
Other than odd exceptions (Amy Winehouse for example) I don't really take on new music. I almost exclusively use Spotify which has added variety as I often fancy a blast from the past, which often then opens a conduit to many different songs. I'm an 80s indy fan at heart but similarly to Steve's Bony M comment, will now often listen to a playlist that I wouldn't have made the effort to purchase on CD or record. As an aside, what is this new obsession with vinyl? In Australia an album is close to $80 (AUD). Madness (not the group). I wish I hadn't sold my Smiths and Bowie LPs now...
Comics is purely nostalgia and, for me, a link to the Britain I left twenty odd year ago. Over the past few years I have downloaded complete runs of Mighty World of Marvel, The Titans, Planet of the Apes and the various iterations of Captain Britain, which I much prefer to the US titles which they reprint. I currently download each months featured 2000AD, mostly to discuss with Sean (as comments slow down on that subject) and tend to feel more motivated to comment on the UK material. I was involved in the industry, in a minor way, a few years back and so the economics of the industry still interests me. I appreciate this can be a little dry for most.
DW
Hmmm, two quite intriguing questions here.
For question 1: As I've gotten older, my musical tastes have actually expanded. Greatly. Back in my youth, I'd listen mostly to pop and rock. But my mind began expanding in college when I took a class in Music Appreciation. First it was Classical, then Show Tunes. More recently I've gotten obsessed with Blues, Jazz, Incidental Film Music, 40s and 50s pop and swing. To be sure, I still listen to pop and rock. But now I listen to nearly anything ( except, with a few exceptions, Country, Rap and Metal). At this moment, I'm playing a compilation of 60's crime show music...
Regarding comics- it's kind of like my answer to the music question. I still read the fabulous tales from the Bronze and Silver ages. Often, they read better now than I recall from before. But I'm also reading many other genres : historical graphic novels, vintage horror comics, etc. Currently reading Don Rosa's " Life and Times of Scrooge Mcduck ".
But to more specifically answer the question, it's a combination of nostalgia and a deep love for the art of the comics medium.
Okay, done pontificating!
I think that during our teenage years we are the most influenced by the music around us as its new, exciting, sexy, primal etc. I would say that is the situation in my case and the songs and artists that were popular when I was a teenager have remained my go to songs. As I have gotten older into my early twenties to around my mid 30 (so the 1980s to 1990s) I also liked that music right up until around the end of the Brit Pop bands era - after that I’m afraid it all mostly became a bit like white noise to me and todays chart music (and I have to emphasis “chart” music) to my ears at least , is 90% dross. Whilst I think most people experience a musical paralysis around their mid 30’s due to other priorities (kids, mortgage etc.) I also think that music (the actual sound and the way they sing etc) itself has changed so much from the sounds I liked as 13 years old etc. Saying that there is still great new music being produced in the “traditional” pop, rock styles by some great bands but they just don’t seem to be easy to find as they rarely chart and as I don’t listed to Radio 1 (the main UK chart/ new music station) I miss these songs until someone draws my attention to them. But I think as my tastes in music have always been quite varied from Bowie to pop to punk to blues (I do love blues music and my tastes there have expanded) to classic soul etc I am slowly findings some great new music in those genres . For example although I have always like some country music it has been very limited to the likes of Johnny Cash and Glen Campbell but recently I have gotten into Southern Country music (Drive by Truckers, Georgia Thunderbolts etc) I have also found a fondness I never had at the time for some Disco and pop music form the past in recent years and love finding new "old " music.
Comics: That’s a good question as I’m not sure why I don’t like new comics that much. The art is at times stunning in most (not all) titles but the storylines don’t really attract my attention and I tend to get a bit bored and stop reading them, then again I rarely pick up any titles now. I do still get a we bit “fanboy” excited when I see an old comic I don’t have (and can afford to buy) but again I find I am not able to read them with the intensity I did when I was say 13 years old -Its sad getting old.
A bit busy, but it would be rude not to answer Dave's before the next post later today.
So - Dave, I would say my musical tastes have expanded over the years, and perhaps even mellowed over the years.
But I do enjoy my old Throbbing Gristle and Einsturzene Neubauten records.
And as for my question... I am somewhere between Steve and DW. I hardly read 60s/70s Marvel and DC comics at all these days. Except the ones by Jack Kirby, who always appeals to my sense of wonder.
-sean
*I do STILL enjoy etc...
Duh. I was in a bit of a rush there.
Also, re: vinyl. Come on people, in your heart you know its right.
-sean
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