Is there a musical act you hated as a teen....and like now?

Well, I grew up with "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and "She Loves You" first. The earlier stuff is more ubiquitous. "Yesterday" and "Hey Jude" get plenty of play, but that's about it as far as the full-on druggy Beatles era. The only Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band's songs nearly as ubiquitous as those are "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" and "A Little Help from My Friends," which are similarly pop-based.

 

I appreciate Springsteen much more as I get older. I'm just a nudge too young to *really* get the Brooooce thing. I think if I had been, say, 17 or 18 when "Born to Run" came out, it would have affected me pretty deeply. When I actually was 17, 10 years later, it was just another pretty good song.

 

Well, I actually did grow up as a kid in the Sixties, so I heard it all in real time.

But by the mid-70s, when I was a late teen, the pre-Pepper stuff had pretty much disappeared from the radio.
AOR wouldn't play anything before "Pepper," and "oldies radio" cut off about 1960 -- actually, it cut off WITH the Beatles, because most oldies stations would play Del Shannon and the very early Beach Boys (1960-63).

When Capitol released the "Rock and Roll" compilation in 1977, they actually used a campaign that hinted that "Got To Get You Into My Life" was in fact a new Beatles song.

Of course it was on "Revolver," a multi-million-selling No. 1 album in 1966, but hardly anyone who had come of music-listening age in the intervening 10 years had heard it.

When AOR splintered, a lot of "classic rock" stations dumped the Beatles as "too poppy" (a distinction still made today on many formats).


The whole "Pepper" era, the 10-12 month period beginning with "Strawberry Fields" in Feb. 1967 and ending with "I Am the Walrus" in December," was a stylistic and musical cul-de-sac. It was revolutionary and groundbreaking and everything, but in spring 1968 they "got back" to Elvis-style rock with "Lady Madonna," and never really returned to psychedelia.

Really, they could have jumped directly from "Revolver" to the "White Album" and no one would have ever noticed that they skipped a beat.

 

I imagine that was true in the 1970s, but the Beatles songs that have had the most radio play for the past 20-30 years have been the poppiest.

 

But Starman is right that so-called "classic rock" stations rarely play any Beatles songs — and if they do, it's certainly nothing from 1962-65. "Sixties" stations certainly play 'em (if there are any of those stations left, like the old Fox 97 in Atlanta), but they're also loathe to play anything after Revolver. I always thought that was a weird dichotomy. ... I don't know who plays Beatles songs on the radio anymore, because I never listen to the radio.

Oh, as a kid who grew up in the '80s-'90s, the first Beatles song I ever heard was ...

Revolution 9.

My older cousin and my dad pranked me with it when I was about 12. You can imagine my reaction. Then they started playing the rest of the White Album on the way home. "It gets better," they assured me. It did. By 13, I was a full-fledged Beatlemaniac. My first real rock concert was that year, Ringo and his All-Starrs. Been hooked ever since.

 

David Bowie
Tom Petty

I wouldn't say I hated them, I just didn't really appreciate them until much later.

 

Rolling Stones

I could not stand the way Jagger looked, and now I am pretty convinced that they are the greatest band that ever lived.

 

What fascinates me about "classic" rock stations is that they still play the same stuff as 20 years ago. And now, what was hip 20 years ago is as old as Led Zeppelin was then.

So,in effect, The Black Crowes have become exactly that which they imitated: a band whose best work - and all you hear from them - was 20 years ago.

Still weird to think how many great bands have made it to 30 years now, when 20 years ago, the greatest classic bands either were done (Beatles, Zeppelin, Pink Floyd . . .I don't acknowledge their post-Waters fadeout) or playing their standards at half speed (Rolling Stones).

 

Actually, when the Stones played badly (and they did on almost every tour in the 70s/ early 80s), they didn't play their hits at half-speed -- they shambled through them at a semi-chipmunk pace (like an album played on a turntable with the pitch control turned way way up).

When bands are in the mail-it-in/don't-give-a-shit mode, they don't concentrate enough and stay disciplined enough to play songs in the right time, they just rattle 'em off to get 'em over with. (And sometimes it could be coke or uppers or something, too).

For a lot of songs, let's say "Satisfaction" and "Sympathy for the Devil" for two, sustained tension and controlled momentum are what make them great in the first place. When they are played too fast, they sound cluttered and rushed. "Jumping Jack Flash" is another song that sounds like a parody when it's rushed through too fast.

And that's what the Stones did for about 15 years. But since the mid-90s or so, when they do go out on tour, they have made a much better effort to actually play the songs in recognizable arrangements pretty close to the recorded versions. I think the high-roller crowds they now attract demand it. Plus in the 70s/early 80s, three-quarters of the people in the crowd were buzzed too and couldn't' tell the difference, and that percentage has gone way way down.

 

I hated country music growing up because that's what we always had to listen to working in the barn.

A few years ago VH1 stopped playing a lot of videos during the morning, therefore my go to station during commercial breaks became CMT. I don't listen to a ton of country now, but I like Taylor Swift, Miranda Lambert and Jason Aldean. I got the Pistol Annies CD for Christmas and I really like the Civil Wars -- but I really think they're more alt country.

As far as a teen? The only song I can think of is Semi-Charmed Life by Third Eye Blind. It took me 10 years to like that song. Not even that much. I'm pretty consistant.

 

I can't think of any acts that I hated when I was younger who I like now, but I have opened myself up to new sounds over the years.

I have developed a real interest in jazz, I listen to the local - excellent - jazz station, peruse Downbeat online, read bios of people like Miles Davis, Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong and attend shows at the local jazz fests when I can.

 

U2. Never liked them when I was in high school or college.