There are a couple of topics you can confidently predict will turn up repeatedly in places like the online Elvis Costello and Richard Thompson mailing lists. Those lists aren’t quite Music Freak Central, but they share the same post code, and one of the perennial subjects to which a music freak’s thoughts turn in times of reflection is the way in which the freak in question’s tastes have modified over time.
While pondering that question, there’s the side issue of the way we listen to music these days, which leads thoughts towards the way those listening habits reflect changes to the music freak’s social circle.
It’s fairly generally accepted that our musical tastes are largely moulded in late adolescence and early adulthood, and that those tastes continue along more or less the same lines for much of the rest of our lives. I didn’t have too much else to ponder as I went on my morning walk today, so these hoary old recurrent chestnuts had to suffice.
What follows is Hughesy’s initial attempt at a Grand Unified Theory of Music Freakdom. Whether it applies to generations that followed mine may be open to question. Obviously, I haven’t experienced the life issues faced by those generations from their adolescent perspective so these thoughts may only apply to the portion of the population who hit their teenage years between 1963 and 1970.
For a start once rock’n’roll hove over the horizon in the fifties there was a substantial degree of rebellion in what you might call the yoof end of the market. I doubt it existed before that time because the teenager is, more or less, a post-World War Two phenomenon.