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with taste in music being so subjective, it is hard to narrow it down to any one thing, which is why I asked abut everyone's "general musical tastes."
i cannot listen to love songs, for example. The standards love songs. For example, I LOVE Tony bennett's singing. I enjoy hearing him perform, and I love how he keeps JAZZ squarely in the center of his musical world, but I am not moved by the love song lyrics. I know of many Bennett fans who lsiten to him expressly becaus he still sings the great american songbook, love songs by cole porter, and so on. I find his phrasing and voice to be the draws for me.
sure the "average" ear can only discern about 4 different "sounds" at a time, but that is the average. the "average" music listener has no idea how to deal with sonic youth's music, much less stockhausen, wolf eyes, deerhoof, Godspeed You Black Emperor, John Cage , etc.
I think that much of this is learned, not innate. people start somewhere and either stay in that area or they seek to expand their musical world. sonic youth fans, for the most part, are music-world-expanders, always ready and willig to try something new,always ready to give a new act or a new genre or a new sound an open-minded listen.
Of course this is all filtered though my own personal experience, and I am a 33 year old sonic lifer.
There is so much music out there, from all human history.
when i first really paid attention to country blues and to the blues in general it blew my fucking mind away. when I first paid attention to peruvian guitarists, it blew me away, when I first gave myself a mission to expand my jazz vocabulary from just Miles Davis and Coltrane out to the far nether reaches and everything in between, I was rewarded beyond belief.
I think people who love or at least appreciate all of sonic youth's output are the adventurous type of music lover.
robert crumb, to cite an example, is an avid and overwhelmingly obsessed collector and lover of old country delta blues recordings. he is an avid music fan you could say, but he is not interested in giving just any music that comes across his ears a chance,. he is a focused indivudual and I think a lot of "mainstream" music fans, and some avant garde music fans of course, have that same mindset. they could care less about a new band, unless it falls into their pre-set criteria as to what they want to listen to. (e.g. Metal fans, and old school hardcore punks back in the day)
My mom LOVES music and playing music and listening to music, but if it is not ABBA, or Neil Daimond, or Puerto Rican songs, or Josh Groban, or The Bee Gees, she does not know how to even begin to apreciate it. I wonder if this happens to all of us at one time, if our brains just stop adjusting to new sounds. Hopefully not, and this is another reason the members of sonic youth give me hope.
just talking about music.
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