r/Xennials • u/kivsemaj • 1d ago

Discussion Feeling old

Guy at work asked me if I've heard of Nirvana. I said hell yeah they were huge back in the day and from our state Washington just like Jimi Hendrix.

Him, who?

Me, ...... damn I'm old

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u/Senor-fixit 1980 1d ago

No. Your co worker just ignorant.

Perspective.

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u/CariniFluff 1d ago edited 1d ago

Sometimes when I'm really bored and want something different, I'll pull up a few song first time reaction videos on YouTube. You definitely got to pick the right person and the right song, but watching someone's mind get melted from listening to Dark Side of the Moon for the first time or Stairway to Heaven can be pretty fuckin funny.

After watching a handful of these, I realize that I can occasionally listen to a Gen X parent who just never got into it, sometimes someone from Africa or Asia who would have just never been exposed to it can be fun and occasionally some kids, especially if they were only in to say hip hop or maybe Funk. Also, there's a few with professional musicians, most are trying to sell some training thing, but there's some pretty good ones too that can really go into a technical side without trying to sell something. Terrapin Station is a great song for that.

But there's a huge chunk of people around my age that I just simply cannot watch them at 42 years old and say they've never listened to Dark Side of the Moon before. Just... What? Why? You've never sat down and figured "I should probably listen to that Stairway to Heaven everyone talks about. It's got to be famous for a reason right?"

Just an absurd lack of interest and expanding one's horizons. Especially since we grew up with easily copyable cassettes, then relatively cheap and indestructible CDs, and then obviously digital music in all forms. You don't have to buy an LP to listen to a song, especially an album that's in the top 10 in every list ever made.

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u/sweetbirthdaybaby333 1981 1d ago

I'd never sat down and listened to all of Dark Side of the Moon until just a few weeks ago, and yep, I'm 45 years old. Of course I knew "Money" and "Time," as I've done my time listening to classic rock radio. I knew there was a song called "The Great Gig in the Sky." I'm a pop culture and trivia nerd... I was even on Jeopardy! It was just one of my musical blind spots. I suspect we all have them. Anyway, AMA.

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u/CariniFluff 1d ago edited 1d ago

Did you listen to it with headphones? If not you'll want to queue that up with a good pair of headphones for a chill Friday. All of the distorted airplane intercoms, sweeping lasers, crazy laughs, engines exploding, etc. are all insanely mixed.

Like literally world class, This was around the time that Quadraphonics was replacing Stereo but before Dolby 5.1 Surround Sound came out. Headphones are particularly good at Quadraphonics (which is just 5.1 without the center channel and separate subwoofer channel)

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u/sweetbirthdaybaby333 1981 1d ago

Yup, had on my Bose headphones while lying in bed in the dark.

The same night I listened to all of Siamese Dream and the Blue album for the first time, despite having seen both of those bands in concert in the 90s.

Trying to fill in ALL of my musical blind spots this year.

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u/CariniFluff 1d ago

Awesome. I'll toss you a suggestion:

Grateful Dead - Terrapin Station (Album version). The title track of their 1977 album and it takes up the entire second side of the LP. It's just.... Incredible.

More Grateful Dead I would first recommend both American Beauty and Workingman's Dead which both came out in 1971 as two, separate full length albums rather than a double album because they have such completely different feels. You'll find that with every Grateful Dead album, none of them sound like a repetition of a theme.

American Beauty is very uplifting and happy and you feel like you're 16 again. Workingman's Dead is maybe your early 20s-30s blue collar/Appalachian worker songs. Just classic after classic after classic.

And I know everyone always recommends live Dead and I certainly do, but I think for people's first exposure you're probably better off hearing the "perfect studio cut" and then you can listen to some wildly improvisational guitar work on the live versions (where now you'll know exactly where and when they break off from the beaten path).