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When did you most enjoy the music?

I think this may be geared towards the over-60 crowd, which seems to make up a good portion of our membership.  I was thinking the other day - There is no doubt that, since I got into high end audio I am getting better, more realistic sound.  With the right recordings, instruments sound real and I think I have my system well tuned to my tastes.  But I was thinking back on when I really enjoyed the actual music the most and I came up with these - When I was in my late teens and sitting in a friend's room with a pair of JBL 100s sitting on the floor and against the wall, driven by a Kenwood or similar receiver listening to Hendrix, the Fudge, the Band and all that stuff.  Maybe in a bar with a Seeburg jukebox blasting Sexual Healing or Give It Up - 1968 driving down to the Newport Jazz Festival in a Rambler with 1 8 track tape and listening to Born on the Bayou 100 times over and digging it every time it came around again.  We all parrot the same crap now - that our systems are transparent and disappear, but do they?  The system disappeared in that Rambler because you paid absolutely no mind to the gear that was playing.  Just digging the music.  Didn't have to sit in the sweet spot or anything.  Maybe it's something that can't be recaptured, as it is with a lot of things of youth.  So be it.  And you may feel the opposite.  And no, I wouldn't want to go back to JBLs on the floor anymore because my priorities have changed.  Then was then and now is now. 
chayro
tomcy6's avatar
tomcy6
2,597 posts
 
I can remember music coming out of a cheap AM transistor radio, probably with a cracked speaker, resonating with the very fabric of my being. Bob Dylan - Like a Rolling Stone, The Who - I Can See For Miles, Jefferson Airplane - Somebody To Love. These songs hit me like a bolt of lightning.

I still love that music but I wouldn’t want to listen to that sound anymore. The music I listen to now on my several orders of magnitude more expensive system is mostly different and the much better sound helps me enjoy it. I still get great enjoyment out of music, but 50+ years on, the experience of listening to music is very different, but just as enjoyable.
edcyn
1,876 posts
 
I've been nuts for music since I was three. Every record player/music system I've ever had has given me pleasure and a good 90% of the upgrades I've gotten over the centuries has made things better still. Right now I'm listening to some modernist who-knows-what via Primephonic. Sound is not as 3d as I might like but the tone is lovely and the composition is emotionally engaging. Hooray for hi-fi!
perkri
908 posts
 
@russ69 

+1

Sit up much too late listening to music.

Tonight will be no different. Just Lenny Breau and me :)
mapman's avatar
mapman
22,317 posts
 
Whenever I hear good sounding interesting music I feel good. Every time. It’s funny how that works. It happens all the time but more often at times when my hifi is on its game or I am out at some live event. I guess that is why I care about sharing ideas about how people might wean more enjoyment out of listening to music.
perkri
908 posts
 
Oh, forgot to answer :)

I enjoy music much more now than I ever have.

When I was young, I was a pretty lustful creature. I like to think that lustful pursuit of "whatever" has been replaced with a more measured "love" based experience of life.

I think life experience has added relevance to the music I listen to. And as I have gotten older, I am far more open to music that I would have dismissed in my youth. If it wasn't "angry young guy music", it didn't register.

On any given night, my "playlist" can shift from the B52's, to Lenny Breau, Mr. Bungle, Janos Starker, Ben Webster etc.

That would never have happened in my youth :)


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