Reliving teen music

These days, I don’t get to listen to as much music as I used to. At work, I listen to Last.fm, which I have mixed feelings about: how amazing is it to be able to type a name of an artist/band and listen to a stream of related music; that said, I do find the channels sort of narrow. (I say sort of because some channels produce quite disparate playlists. I love the way when I base a channel on Scott Walker, I get to listen to This Heat, for instance — problem is it always does this. Anyway, I’ll save my Last.fm experiences for another posting.) I’m enjoy some radio shows on 3RRR: the Skullcave on Friday arvo/evenings, Beat Orgy on Saturday evenings, and Under The Sun on Sunday evenings.

I finally got my hands on the Zombi CDs Spirit Animal and Surface to Air.  Zombi make me laugh. They sound so like the music that as a teenager I was repelled by. Back then I hated lame-arse synth rock of Genensis or Tangerine Dream; today I’m more open to it (um, I might have even bought some Tangerine Dream recently).  And indeed the music make me feel like shutting myself in a room, reading some comics, playing with Bionicles or somesuch.

In my teens, I listened mainly to pre-’60s blues and some ’60s psychedelic rock (mainly Hendrix, and indeed I was obssesed with Hendrix). I wish that I’d been more open to other music, especially local Australian indie/punk bands, instead of now feeling like I need to make up for lost time. Making up for lost time by listening to Tangerine Dream. Hmm… I think I’d better reassess my priorities.