Saturday, August 16, 2008

Cleaning out the Mp3 player and the cobwebs in my head.

You'd think 8 gigabytes of songs would be enough to satisfy a person for at least a year. Yet, here I am again removing songs I've found myself skipping lately over so I can fit some live music or songs I haven't heard in a long time or brand new songs onto the MP3 player. I find myself doing this about once every 6 weeks or so. It's like spring cleaning but without the dust bunnies or screaming from your wife that you missed a spot.

I'm also finding that studio recordings tend to wear on me quicker. I'm more apt to get bored with 3-4 minute ditties than a live performance with improvisation. Soon my MP3 player will be strictly filled with Phish and Umphrey's McGee shows. Perhaps as I age I've become more accustomed to the jazzier and freer side of music. No more repetitive drum beats and song refrains over and over. Just trippy guitar riffs and piano scales with funky percussion and even bass solos for me now.

My dislike of pop music has to be partially my fault because if I ever do like a song's melody, I tend to overplay the damn thing until I almost hate the song. Maybe, we all like to replay things we like but as we get older we tend to dislike recurring or predictable things. I know my kids love to watch reruns as did I as a kid. Their tastes aren't mature enough to be more varied or they're afraid to try new things. Like music, formulaic movies and TV shows have also started to bore me.

What it comes down to for me that if entertainment becomes too predictable then I'd rather find something else to do. The underlying problem is that as I see more and more things as I age there is less and less that is original or fresh enough for me to like. Thankfully, the wife and kids have been eclectic enough to hold my attention so far.

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