Music of the Spheres: Listening To Music From Three Decades

Record store “Mélodies massacre” shop window, Paris, France, November, 1974. Photo by Didier Autin, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

I’m a child of the 80s, and you can tell from my music.

Except that you can’t, unless we’re talking about the 1680s, 1780s, and even the 1880s. But the 1980s, not so much. I’d never considered that I was missing out much by not being familiar with the influential bands and songs of the decade in which I was born. Oh sure, I had heard of the names of the bands and the songs, but hadn’t heard them. And growing up in a house where the predominant genre of music was Classical, I may have even harbored an elitist attitude toward more modern music.

During the long days in my home during the COVID stay-at-home initiatives, I reached what a more sophisticated person might call an ennui toward my preferred choice of music. Perhaps it was time to begin a new phase of my musical development. I grew up in the golden days of ‘90’s contemporary Christian music, and I can wax eloquent about country music from the ‘00s, but it had been a while since I added a genre to my repertoire.

For some strange reason, I chose the classics from the 60s through the 80s. Yeah, the 1960s – 80s. CLASSIC ROCK, BABY.

I streamed rock playlists from streaming sites, deciding I’d listen to whatever they played for me, whether I liked it or not. The local classic rock station became the soundtrack for my daily commute. I learned a lot of new songs and picked up a lot of lessons on the way. Lessons I had not expected to learn.

It’s one thing to hear music when it’s made and follow how it influences newer bands and genres. When you listen to three decades of music mixed up on a playlist, you miss out on the natural progression of how music changes.

Let’s say the band The Lightbulbs (I made that up — I think) influence the sound of the band Hed Gassket (also made up). If I hear a The Lightbulbs song three songs after a Hed Gasskets song on the radio, they may both sound around the same era to me. I won’t fully realize how The Lightbulbs illuminated the music scene. Bad pun. Deal.

I’m also getting curated music lists of the popular bands and songs of the era. Back then, the airwaves would have been included lesser-known bands that I may never hear. And don’t forget deep tracks! I realized I was never going to know the music scene of my childhood like I would have if I had listened to it growing up. To offset this, sometimes I choose a band and try to listen to their entire oeuvre. For many bands that’s a Sisyphean task, but I have another decade or two before my next music revolution, right?

All this makes me consider how we engage with music. Clearly the technology of music has changed, in some ways bringing our relationship with bands and their music full circle: from the era of the A-side and B-side single records to the album era and then to streaming. That in itself is a topic far beyond my ability to opine and the word count of this article.

One of the main lessons that I learned, and I have no way to overcome this without going back in time, is that listening to music so many decades after it came out means missing the context in which the albums are made.

I downloaded the entire AC/DC album Back in Black. Because hey, why not? It’s under $10 on iTunes. It starts out with the song “Hell’s Bells” and the haunting tontine of the bells begins the first track. What would it be like to buy that album in 1980, hear the funereal sound, knowing it’s the first album by AC/DC after the death of their first lead singer Bon Scott? It was touching enough to me in 2020 to hear those bells, see the mournful black cover of the album in my iTunes playlist and feel a sense of loss. It shook me.

What must that be like as a listener and/or AC/DC fan in 1980?

How does it affect how you absorb the album, when you’re living in the time that the album is made? When the lives of the artists are being played out in front of you. Their lives — and their deaths — struggles, victories, issues with women and drugs and whatever inevitable disagreement they would have with their record companies … or their bandmates (side-eye toward the Eddie Van Halen/Sammy Hagar feud, which I absolutely plan on learning about).

Sometimes I forget that I’m supposed to be listening to music to enjoy it and not as a school assignment for a music history class. For that reason, I’ve started skipping songs on the playlist I don’t like. And, as time goes on, I am beginning to recognize those bands whose sounds are rooted in one decade but point forward to another. That feeling is the most thrilling, to hear, even 50 or so years later, the shape they were making of music.

Putting all the lessons aside, the power of music is in its timelessness to the listener. Influence of other bands, recording technology, and radio stratagems aside, it doesn’t matter if you’re listening to a new song just released today or on a classic rock station decades later, a good song is a good song. That song you enjoy listening to can and will affect you, whether the song is from 1972, or 1872, or 1772.