Your Old Man Music

Old man music is what I think of as the sort of music very vanilla normie dudes who were into music had Opinions on. The peak for me would be Toto, who you would be told by a guy in shorts and a golf shirt was composed of leading session musicians and incorporated tight jazz playing into their expert songcraft.

The Police, to me, are not Old Man music, but Sting is, because he enlisted "top guys" as "percussionists" (some random bongo slapper to my ear) and so on. Led Zeppelin aren't solely Old Man music, but Genesis totally is, especially later Genesis. I think the adult-oriented pop of the '80s, like Phil Collins, Tracy Chapman, all the stuff that was completely mainstream and hugely successful but had these guys pontificating to you about how good they were anyway.

It is a GREAT time to be a Toto fan.

The $1 LP bins would be like overflowing fonts of joy bequeathing you with holy grail upon holy grail. For the price of a pint of Guinness you now have their entire discography on vinyl!

OHHH, you mean Steely Dan?

I'm mildly ashamed to admit I have "Africa' by Toto as a mini-CD single, total nostalgia thing. I also have the original Dune soundtrack.

Gabriel I struggle with because I find there's something repellent about his presence. I do have that single he did with Kate Bush, though. I think he dropped his solo career to do that record label of his with all those world music artists everyone simultaneously agreed to praise.

Dire Straits is starting to appeal to me via his guitar.

Jazz and world music i guess. Wish i was into more classical music so i could say classical.

Also any hip hop music from before the “trap” era or any contempo hip hop that harkens back to a time before the trap era.

Completely OT but what are some "contempo hip hop that harkens back to a time before the trap era."? Just curious because I honestly lost track of hip hop in the early '90s. I watched that Wu Tang doc series and another doc series on rappers from Nas onward and it made me sad to have missed it's further evolution...So if cranking It Takes Two or Wild Thing or Follow the Leader to take me back to my carefree and fun young 20's makes it old man music...oh I just proved that.




Led Zep was much loved in those halcyon days too especially on a Friday afternoon, some jug white wine and a nap on the carpet. But for some reason, I rarely listen to them now, especially compared to other metal and rock gods of yore...

Here's something I wonder about. I think this is true, it's hard to be objective about, but I'd say over the last 20-30 years there has been a larger re-evaluation where for ages it was like... cult weirdos basically who passed around the info along the lines that say, The Stooges are cool. The Ramones are great. You should check out Velvet Underground. Etc.

What I mean is, when I grew up, it was bands like LED ZEPPLIN, PINK FLOYD, THE DOORS, THE BEATLES (obviously) etc who were like... I don't know, unquestionable CLASSICS.

And now I think that previously cult stuff has kind of gotten its due, almost to the point where it's overbearing now, either in place of or in addition to the previous unquestionable classics.

So I wonder if that re-evaluation has taken place to the extent that now there would be young kids, you know, 18, 25, who would be like "Whatever, boomer, we know you like Iggy, now leave me alone while I twerk to hyperpop."

It's possible. In fact I'd venture this entire conversation is some pretty old man shit...

i have a strong preference for sounds i haven't heard yet. like whack avant garde and early experimental electronic/20th century /minimalist composer shit, free/ecstatic zzaj, 60's garage punk, exotica, bubblegum pop, proper old blues and hillbilly music, flamenco and field recording of incredibly strange exotic music from all corners of the world that have nothing to do with 'world music' or the recording industry in general.

not knocking anyone else's tastes, its a personal thing. i personally have zero nostalgic fondness nor love for 99.8% of what passes for 'classic rock'. i grew up in the era of it and have had it up to the fucking eyeballs with most of it. and if i never need to hear most of it again, it will still be too fucking soon. that shits had its day, move on. ffs!

the 0.2%, as if anyone cares, would be something like black sabbath, ccr, rose tattoo, garry glitter (yep, i know), jerry lee lewis, little richard, bo diddly, funkadelic, phil spector wall of sound/motown/stax, the kinks and the troggs, fairport convention/richard thompson/ sandy denny and quite possibly a few other exemptions that i can't think of right now...but seriously most those dinosaur classic rock and alternative/indy rock bands, their fans and their collective outputs could fall off the side of the planet this afternoon and i could not give one single solitary fuck.