We are programmed by the times we live in, even though we may have done our own programming.  As a result, it can be hard to embrace cultural change.

I’ve been listening to a lot of 1980s music (early to mid-80s, actually) lately, the music of my teenage years.  In this era of channeled media, it’s not hard to find a stream of themed music or other content to meet many musical tastes.

The 1980s weren’t a particularly happy time for me (or a lot of then-teenagers, I suppose) but there is something about that decade’s music that grips me.  ”Haunts” is a better word.   My musical tastes were largely formed during those years and they won’t seem to go away.  I say formed rather than discovered because I was influenced by the music that my friends were listening, by the singles that got radio airplay, or by the music videos that were starting to proliferate across the airwaves.

For good or bad, the music of a different era transports you away from the present to different times.

I’m also bound to two different musical eras:

• The 1960s, especially the British Bands:  the Beatles, the Who, the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, and Pink Floyd; and, the patron saint of rock guitar, Jimi Hendrix.  Most of my first exposure to this music came from some mix tapes that a friend made for me.
• The early 1990s, especially the Seattle bands and grunge rockers:  Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, and Nirvana …  there was something about Smells Like Teen Spirit that actually gave me the chills when I heard it on the radio, even though Kurt Cobain probably came to hate it more than any other song he wrote.
• And then there’s the British band XTC (note:  website doesn’t appear to be working at the moment, so here’s the Wikipedia entry), possibly my all-time favorite band, active in at least three decades, but not belonging to any of them.

But, for me,  the 1980s still seem to override the other two eras (XTC was at its peak in the 1980s, so I guess that fits).  This is funny considering how often the 1980s in general are fodder for jokes.

Attitudes, behaviors, and tendencies are like musical preferences:  they tend to stick with you over the years.  I always used to say that the only people who can’t change are dead and I still think this is true.  I’m certainly not the same person I was back in the 1980s, but the boy that I was still plays an important role in the concerto that is my life.  Themes reoccur.  Changes can be made temporarily but then old patterns resurface.

A lot of what I do with this blog is to try to change my ways of thinking, expand myself through a digital platform and to exercise my creative muscles.  Through this work, I get a clearer picture about what I’m willing (or not willing) to do with my life.  It’s funny how this work serves to re-expose the inner core of a person instead of just adding to it.  Renewing acquaintance with old favorites and obsessions naturally happens when you look outward.

The question remains:  am I still stuck in the 80s?  Am I stuck on replay?  Not entirely, but more than I might have realized.

How about you?

Image by kevindooley

If you’ll pardon the fact that these lyrics are written from a man’s perspective, I think there’s some really good stuff here.

I’m biased, of course:  I think Andy Partridge is a song-writing god and that XTC created some of the best pop music ever.

I think this song is talking about human potential; what do you think?

Merely a Man (recorded by XTC on the album Oranges and Lemons; lyrics by Andy Partridge)

Higher.

I’m a king, yes, I’m a head of state.
But I’m the kitchen boy who’ll
wash your dirty plate.
I had no message and the message was,
We’re all Jesus, Buddha, and the Wizard of Oz.

I’m merely a man,
And I bring nothing but love for you.
I’m merely a man,
And I want nothing that you can’t do.

And you know it’s true.
That with logic and love we’ll be
lifting humanity higher.
Higher.

I’m all religious figures rolled into one,
Gaddafy Duck propelled from Jimmy
Swaggart’s tommy gun.
Don’t promise rainbows with some golden pot,
In fact what I can offer I know you’ve already got.

I’m merely a man,
And I bring nothing but love for you.
I’m merely a man,
And I want nothing that you can’t do.

And you know it’s true.
That with logic and love we’ll have power enough,
To raise consciousness up and for
lifting humanity higher.
Higher!

And you know it’s true.
We should chase superstition and
fear from our hearts,
If we’re going to survive and take
levels of sanity higher.
Kick it up… Higher.

I’m merely a man,
And I bring nothing but love for you.
I’m merely a man,
And I want nothing that you can’t do.

And you know it’s true.
That with logic and love we’ll have power enough,
To raise consciousness up and for
lifting humanity higher.

I used to listen to a lot of music in my teens and early 20s. I was a guitar rock fan and that’s what I would usually listen to. As time and circumstances changed I cut back on my music as I focused on career, education, and family. I’ve been able to start squeaking it back in my days thanks to streaming audio, my new iPod, and YouTube.

YouTube is a funny thing Continue reading ‘YouTube is my Wayback Machine’ »

In modern pop music, you have a common array of instruments that work together to produce a song. You have keyboards and lead guitar to help provide both melodies and filler for empty spaces of sound. You have drums, percussion and rhythm guitar which help lay and maintain the beat.

And then there’s the bass.

It’s not a bass guitar, by the way: it’s a bass. Spelled like the fish, sounds like “base”.

What a weird instrument.

The bass is supposed to be a part of the rhythm section of a band, providing a sonic tie between guitars/keyboards and drums and percussion.

A little bit groove, a little bit thud.

So what does this have to do with social media?

Good question, but it does bring to mind the fact that I’ve rediscovered the GoGos after almost two decades and I’m silently grooving to them on my couch. How am I listening to them?

YouTube. It’s one of the biggest social media sites out there, probably the largest collection of video files that is freely available to the general public. There are original musics videos and live videos from thousands of musical acts. Then there’s the quite possibly illegal live performance videos that appear. The quality sucks for a lot of them, both audio and video, but they do offer different ways to experience this music.

Sometimes that bass riff in We’ve Got The Beat is exactly as per the original recording, sometimes it shifts and plays around depending on the gig and the tempo. That’s all about the musician.

You can get some incredibly creative user-made videos set to these songs. Sometimes they are cover versions played by other bands. Other times, someone creates a deck of completely different images and synchs them up to the beat. There’s a pretty cool mash up on YouTube where someone took a scene from The Breakfast Club and used the GoGos song instead of what was in the movie (or maybe that’s the original song from the movie – I honestly don’t remember). There’s another which uses footage from the movie Grease.

And there’s this goofy but fun version, too.

All legalities aside, it’s pretty freaking awesome that we can take sound and video files and mix them together, share ‘em with the world, get feedback, and spawn a lot of new cool stuff.

I spend a lot of time writing about Twitter, FriendFeed, blogging, and such.

I’ve done virtually nothing with audio or video on the Web. And it’s become such a huge part of social media, something that is vibrant, pulsating, and throbbing like that grooving bassline in We’ve Got The Beat. This rocking undercurrent of sound is fun, it pulls you in and makes you want to pump your fist. Or dance. Or both.

Just like a good conversation and trading of ideas in social media can pull you into its groove and tickle your intellect and make your brainwaves want to dance.

Man, it looks like fun.