Warren wrote
This is what I was trying to say earlier, and you've been much more succinct: proximity. You only know about it if you get to hear it. Contemporary stuff is more ubiquitous.
Yes. But that makes us victims of somebody somewhere's marketing strategy. This is where magazines that cover a broad range of music come in handy. They tip you off to other things, plant the seeds in your mind. Who knows when they will blossom....
I remember reading about Martin Carthy years ago in (of all things) NME. This would have been late 70s when the NME was all about punk, but there was a mention of the new Steeleye Span lineup. Carthy had rejoined the band (he wasn't there for long this time around) and there was something about him being one of the greats of English folk (along with John Kirkpatrick, the other new comer to the Steeleye Span lineup at that time). So that got filed away - along with countless other names I read about in NME and Melody Maker and whatever else I happened to read. (John Otway is one I recall, Loudon Wainwright, Leo Kottke). Some of those names I picked up just by reading the sections in which gigs and tours were advertised. At some point I would read something else about one of those names and so there was a tick against the name now. Enough ticks (or one or two very big, bold ticks in red pen with gold stars) and I might get interested. I heard about Nick Drake in this way too... Sometimes I follow some of these up out of something approaching boredom. "Hmmmm.... I feel like some new music.... well I keep on reading about this Drake guy so that's give that a shot."
One left field source of information is Richard Haslop's excellent column in Business Day every Monday. You'll read about things you had no idea existed.
I suppose all of this is just another way to get some proximity ?
I don't get to do this so much these days. 30 or more years ago I was perpetually broke and occasionally jobless and thus had plenty of time on my hands and often had nothing better to do most of the time than to read NME from cover to cover and then read it again. No TV set or anything like to distract me, so I could really soak up what I was reading.
I miss those days some times....
I also get the objection to Mayer's clean, almost "pretty" tone and playing, even though I don't share it. I actually really like that quality to his sound, and I struggle to really enjoy, say, Cream era Clapton as much (it's still cool, just not as personally satisfying for me).
I think there's various ways in which music can be clean and smooth and pretty. Richard Thompson once spoke about how the really interesting stuff in music is "in the edges". How he likes music that is sort of crude and sophisticated at the same time, how if you smooth the edges too much you lose the magic in the music. He wasn't saying (I think) that you shouldn't have good quality recordings or that we should applaud sloppy playing. I get this sometimes, where you hear something that has been so perfected that it's boring. Squeaky clean - but boring.
Any genre which has the word "smooth" in the name, or any marketing campaign (for music) that has the s... word generally has me running for cover.
