Comments on The Cure for Bedbugs: In the Year 2000

"2000 was somehow easier to handle - I had le...

2010-01-10T23:50:32.544-08:00

"2000 was somehow easier to handle - I had less choice about the music I surrounded myself with and so loads of things seeped into my consciousness without me even knowing - but this means I always DID know about them, and I feel less like a stranger in the land of my own music taste."

Yes, I feel almost identical about these two years. Whereas the music of 2000 became part of the fabric of my everyday life, 2001 feels oddly disparate and maybe even clinical. More on that later tho.

Blimey Dave, until reading this blog post just now...

2010-01-10T23:50:23.403-08:00

Blimey Dave, until reading this blog post just now I honestly thought you were older than me!

I'm finding 2001 rather difficult from a nostalgia perspective: the music I listened to in my first two years at college was either 20+ years old or was limited to an extremely narrow subset of 2001 indie rock (ie stuff that would get played at the Reading festival). I'd hazard a guess that out of the 2001 nominations I knew of before starting the poll, I heard about 50% of them later on (ie in 2005-2009). At the time I wilfully blocked myself out from pop music and kinda feel like a fake repping for certain things when I slagged them off mercilessly at the time. However I remember thinking that because I was catching up with so much older stuff, it didn't seem that important to hear what was going on *now*.

2000 was somehow easier to handle - I had less choice about the music I surrounded myself with and so loads of things seeped into my consciousness without me even knowing - but this means I always DID know about them, and I feel less like a stranger in the land of my own music taste.

Also, the difference between inserting myself into...

2010-01-10T23:50:05.905-08:00

Also, the difference between inserting myself into the stream of culture then and now was that then, if I found myself in the stream, it was kind of a by-product of my social situation. Whereas now, though it's sometimes by-product-like (hearing stuff on the radio I haven't heard before, say), I still feel like I'm constantly navigating -- not with any particular direction in mind (by 2009 I'm more naturally open to hearing just about anything, I think) but scanning it consciously as both a leisure/pleasure object ("do I like this? Does this make me feel good?") and as a more consciously intellectual object ("quick: do a brief scan of the history of pop and find referents, similarities, etc."). In short I was perceptive but ignorant, and you can't get your ignorance back any more than you can get your innocence back.

I'm actually not very good at dating girls. Th...

2010-01-10T23:49:57.505-08:00

I'm actually not very good at dating girls. The ones that I like me I tend to stay with for awhile and/or marry.

What's funny is that by the time I was sixteen this radically changed, almost overnight, and without any clear culture war happening in contemporary music to my knowledge. (2001 and 2002 I still count as particularly weak years in music, actually.) Various early 00's ILM culture wars were still beyond my grasp and/or internet blinders until I was about 18 or so.

Yeah, a lot of the best music on those charts is stuff I hadn't heard: Alizee, "With Those Shoes?" and maybe even the Toni Braxton song, not that it was particularly British. A lot of stuff I feel more passionately about now (like Dixie Chicks "Goodbye Earl") I didn't notice at the time.

"how to date Girls" Any advice? &q...

2010-01-10T23:49:47.603-08:00

"how to date Girls"

Any advice?

"As I look over the Poptimists lists, especially the Top 40, there are very few songs I recognize that I can remember feeling too passionately about."

Well, it's based on what made the British charts and the British dance scenes, and the vast majority of voters aren't into using the polls to discover new music (I think the Americans are searching the lists more than the Brits are because otherwise we're left out of the argument and have trouble coming up with ten per heat).

"insert myself into the stream of culture and see where the tides take me"

This is easier for me now than when I was fifteen (not that it's particularly easy now); in 1969 - in fact from 1964 on - we were in a culture war that dwarfs any current culture wars, and no song seemed to code neutral in the conflict.