Urban Hat€monger ?

Tore, I know you're a prog fan. Let's use a band like Yes for an example.

If a Yes fan around your own age said to you 'I love their 70s stuff but I don't really like their 80s output & I thought Tormato was utter rubbish.' would you think he was saying that just to be cool. Or would you just think that it was a pretty common opinion based on the quality of work that band released then.

They wouldn't have been around in the 70s to listen to that band either and became new to the band at some point so essentially that person is the same as the teenage Metallica fan now.

Is it not fair to say a lot of the reasons people say things like these is because they like the same aspects of the band that most other people do.
For example I liked Metallica when they had a rawness, which their first 3 albums had. Is it possible that the a lot of the reason people love about Metallica was their early rawness, and once that was gone they lost interest with each passing album?

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Guybrush

Well, it is a little bit suspicious, yes. It's a formulaic answer, isn't it?

That opinion could be a product of an environment which fosters that opinion. The MusicBanter environment certainly does. But let's say this person lived alone on an island with a record player and the whole discography of Yes and didn't have any preconcieved ideas about their music and noone to impress. Would he arrive at the same conclusion? Maybe, but perhaps a little less likely.

If this comes from some self-proclaimed prog head of some 30+ years of age, of course that adds credibility that it's not all fake and that he/she's actually heard the music he/she talks about.

But I think some of these preconceived ideas and opinions take on a life of their own.

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Something Completely Different

Trollheart

Not to mention that just because you weren't born when certain albums were around that you can't listen to them retrospectively. I mean, if a teenager now told me that they only loved (to keep with the prog idea) Marillion with Fish, I wouldn't just say well you weren't around when Fish was at his height. There's nothing to stop someone buying (or downloading) an artiste's full discog and then listening to them carefully over a period of weeks to be able to form an opinion as to which period, if any, they prefer.

My own personal view though is that if I were to do that with, say, Bob Marley, I'd make the point that "I've only been listening to his music for a few months but I prefer this period to that period" --- make it obvious I'm not pretending I've been into the guy for years and years.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018