I Can't Be Satisfied

Do you remember the days of discovering a band, digging deep into their influences and having a world of new music open up for you? When I was a kid there were a few main gateways to new sounds: interviews, concert films, books, liner-notes/thank you lists, and mixed tapes. I recall when I finally bonded hard with my dad over music — he brought me to see The Last Waltz in the theater and it was a total eye-opener. Through the film I discovered The Staple Singers, Neil Young and Dr. John, and dug deeper into Muddy Waters (who I really only knew at that point via covers by the likes of the Rolling Stones). A few years later when I got into punk and hardcore, it was all about the thank you lists where you'd read the names of all the other bands mentioned, and fanzine interviews, which I poured over. Of course one of the biggest game-changers were the mixed tapes that circulated among friends (and those weren't just the fabled hardcore/punk mix tapes, but '60s rock and soul as well). I am really not trying to be that old guy yelling at a cloud, but I feel bad for kids in the age of Spotify and lack of printed fanzines (at least the music books keep coming at a good rate). Getting back to my pops: I was very fortunate to grow up in a house where music was always playing, the majority of it being jazz. It's funny, at the time I don't know how much I really appreciated it, but as I got older I did the same with jazz that I did with all other genres, searching out the influences and associated artists. So yeah, another big gateway is other people and luckily the kids still have that