Musically, my tastes and knowledge are stuck in the period of time before 2001. I mean, yeah, there’s a few modern bands and projects that I find pretty cool, but with regards to who all the crazy kids are listening to these days, I’m flummoxed. The amount of new music worth listening to has multiplied geometrically, and it’s simply not possible to know who to listen to. In the old days, we had the record labels to rely on as the gatekeepers of taste. Their curators helped us filter out the trash and nonsense. But now that the labels are irrelevant dinosaurs, who’s to tell shiny from shitty?
I guess I could listen to my friends and their talk about who’s who. That’s usually how most knowledge is passed around. But with so many people in my life (most of them at a distant orbit), trying to pick one voice from the din and follow their suggestions without wasting effort, attention, and resources on a new band is something I’m not really in the mood to do these days.
My trepidations in finding new entertainment is kinda like my mother’s trepidation in learning anything about computers. There’s just too much to pick up. Any one thing to cling on to is enough, but what if it’s a thin thread that will snap?
Is this what growing into middle age is like?