Coming of age in the 80s when there was a lot of music I didn’t like (and good stuff too) I back tracked to classic rock, and still have my roots there. But a lot of what I wound up listening to was classic rock era but not classic rock popularity, I got very heavily into prog and metal and went off into the obscurata of the era.
I think the fact that I separated myself from my era so young set me up to continue to explore. I’m not tied to the era that was popular when I was in high school because I didn’t like it, when I was listening to new music then it was new wave and punk, if I was listening to something popular it had probably been popular when I was 6. Which feeds into my ability to find good music in any era, it might have only sold 100 copies when it was new but that doesn’t mean I won’t find it eventually. Also helps I work in software and get to listen to music all day long, and work with odd people that will bring thumb drives over for no good reason.
An excellent point. I did the same along with a number of my friends and listened to a lot of new wave, punk, the Clash ( a favorite ), the pogues and so on.
Having had an interest in American history I started looking for music that would have been heard during certain time periods I was studying.
So, I've listened to a lot of great early music including a ton of jazz, big band, motown and so on.
Trying to find music that would have been listened to by our founding fathers was not easy. I was looking for something they might have heard themselves rather than music from the time period. Have had very little luck finding music from the period of WWI but did find some great stuff from the Roaring Twenties and even the Great Depression.
I do a lot of digital restoration of photographs and try to play music from the time period of whatever I am working on. Listening to Glenn Miller and his contemporaries while restoring an old photo of an LST or a B-17 is a lot fun.
I had thought about trying to find a small collection of German music from WWII as I thought it would be fascinating. I've only heard snippets and of course its pretty nationalistic but I would be interested in hearing what they listened to at the time.
I think doing so gives us a better idea of any time period.
- and while still on subject, thanks to Pandora, I have discovered I really like the Spanish guitar. Would not have ever guessed that but thought I'd give it s try. Its pretty darned nice.