If I could turn back time

The old days were better, but not for the reasons you might expect

Yes, I’ll play the part of the old man in today’s installment of “My Impression Now,” but but not because I think the quality of things was better back in my younger days. Rather, I think the lack of choice made me — and probably you — a better consumer of culture. Oh, and I also take a moment to complain about that most superfluous

Two things recently got me thinking about how I experience culture these days, and why I'm probably worse off because of it.

Let me preface this by saying, perhaps to the surprise of no one, that I'm referring to non-print culture. I still read much the same as I have for the past couple of decades or more. But how I listen to music and how I experience film and television is very different.

The first thing that sparked this train of thought was the rather lackluster crop of nominees for the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame. I don't know why I bother, having spent an inordinate amount of time over the years thinking about something that doesn't matter. It's a business designed to sell tickets to a building and, once a year, a banquet. To expend energy worrying about how poorly it represents its titular art form is to waste resources that could be spent doing literally anything else.

But I'll do it anyway. Because there are no stated criteria that I could find for becoming a member of the hall beyond having a debut album that is at least 25 years old (the album itself an increasingly antiquated notion), a case could certainly be made for every nominee. Ozzy Osbourne was a mega seller, Jane's Addiction spearheaded the outdoor festival craze in the U.S., Cher asked important questions about life after love, Foreigner made 4, Peter Frampton popularized the vocoder (and, perhaps more importantly, the live album), and Oasis used guitars in the 2000s.

In all seriousness, there are a handful that probably deserve membership if for no other reason than that they are equally qualified as those already enshrined. Hard to argue against the groundbreaking nature and enduring influence of A Tribe Called Quest, Kool and the Gang, Sinead O'Connor, or Erik B. and Rakim, even if O’Connor is the only one who qualifies as "Rock 'n' Roll."

I don't care who is inducted, but I do know this may be one of the last years I'm aware of every nominee given that 25-year criteria. To qualify for this year's slate, an artist would have needed to debut in 1998. Instead of looking to acts like System of a Down, Lauren Hill, Destiny's Child, Queens of the Stone Age, and Rufus Wainwright, all with 1998 debuts, the committee looked earlier, with most of the nominees debuting 30 or more years ago. 

Either they will continue that pattern, or they will need to start looking to further expand (or dilute, depending on your point of view) the definition of the genre. Next year's eligibility for acts that debuted in 1999 debuts means we'll be contending with the likes of Britney Spears, Mandy Moore, Jessica Simpson and Christina Aguilera. That is definitely a spot on the timeline where I stopped pretending that I cared about or paid attention to popular music. I hadn't stopped listening to music — far from it. I was just curating my own listening, largely ignoring radio, mass market magazines, and TV, turning instead to niche areas of the internet to learn more about things that interested me.

But to hear most of what I wanted to hear, I had to buy a CD, taking a chance on something that might not instantly connect. That investment of money led to an investment of time. I would play something multiple times — either because I was trying to get into it, or because it was my new thing that day/week/month and I couldn't afford another new thing for a while.

That isn't the case today. Most everything can be found streaming on Bandcamp or YouTube, and to ensure the accessibility of a vast majority of modern recorded music, our family signed up for Apple Music last fall. Now, whenever I read or hear about a band or album or song, I don't jot it down and plan to search for it someday at the record store. I punch it into the Apple search bar, and nearly every time, the song is instantly pumped into my headphones. There are gaps, which is why I still have a few thousand CDs in my house, but what is there has widened my already broad horizons. In doing so, however, my listening has become a shallow pool. It is the rare album that earns a complete spin, let alone multiple listens (that album this week was Iechyd Da by former Coral frontman Bill Ryder Jones).

Which brings me to the second thing that set me thinking about all of this. My wife and I went to the movies last weekend. A rare enough occurrence in the past few years given that our schedules have largely been beholden to the sports and music performance calendars of our kids. Finding ourselves with a rare free Saturday night, we went to see "Poor Things."

I won't review it here; I don't think I could credibly do so, to be honest. I don't know if I would say I liked the film or even enjoyed it in the traditional sense, but by the time the credits rolled, I had been captivated and was glad I had watched it. It was a singular experience, the kind all too rare unless you seek them out. 

 Had we been watching it on our TV (where it debuts on Hulu this week), we likely would have given up in the first 15 minutes. With thousands of other distractions on and off the TV to beckon us, I doubt if we would have stuck with it. But in a theater, where money had been exchanged for a seat that was among those filled by other people one would need to climb over to exit, our patience was required, and for the most part, rewarded.

The same is true of music. Yes, there are disposable pop songs that only wear out their welcome with repeat listens. But to truly appreciate something, it requires a deeper commitment. I'm just not giving that to music at the moment, and I know I am missing out on things that would reveal their charms over time. 

What I seek isn't going to show up on a Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame ballot in 2050 (gulp!), but I do fear there is music being made right now that I'm not spending enough time with to appreciate (and films, for that matter). Despite my ability to sample a near limitless amount of music, I know I would be better served by revisiting past habits and sticking with fewer albums for longer. I'll pledge here to do so over the next few months, to see if I can re-establish those deep ties that are so rewarding. Let's see if it works.