I recently ran across a couple of songs from ELO's Balance of Power album ('86), 'Sorrow About to Fall' and 'Is It Alright', and they sounded really good (great even). They were on someone's MP3 player, and I recognized them, though it took me a few minutes. See, I owned this album when it was released (cassette) and I was underwhelmed with it. In fact, I may have played it three or four times and then gave it away. My downslide with ELO came around the Secret Messages period, so I had no patience for this album.

But after revisiting Balance Of Power, I find its better than I remember, though I'm not sure why.

Has anyone else had this happen?

I recently went through a bunch of audio tapes that I collected during the 80s and compared them to CD and digital versions. Underwhelmed is a very apt word to describe the level of fidelty you will find from the majority of those prerecorded cassettes made during the 80s. Very weak bass and overall fidelity is the pits. These tapes were made primarily for playing in the car and on boomboxes...'nuff said.

This has happened to me many times in both directions - new-found appreciation for an album I previously dismissed, and total intolerance for stuff I used to like.

No. (10 minutes later.) Well, yes.

On a more serious note: of course it does. It is my belief that most any even reasonably good album can be appreciated if given the chance and enough spins.

It has happened to me a few times.
I find it very interesting.

I believe it has to do, ultimately, with the evolution of our individual lives.

The perception we had yesterday and all that we intake, today, lend assistance to what we will like/dislike, tommorrow.
I think it's constantly perpetuating throughout our life and will do so until our end.


Regards,
John.

Sometimes time does change a album for the good or the bad.

I have had both happen a few times. Some I used to like, I don't anymore and got rid of them.

Ditto most of the other responses. Often, I find some of the rock stuff I used to like hard to take but like jazz I used to not have the patience for. All that smooth jazzz (triple Z jazz) from the '80s sounds I used to listen to sounds really facile and shallow to me now.

This has happened to me many times in both directions - new-found appreciation for an album I previously dismissed, and total intolerance for stuff I used to like.
Ditto. Although as I get older, with few exceptions, I've become intolerant of the head-banging stuff I used to listen to and play when I was in bands.

Perhaps to some extent we are more interested in listening to music that is popular among our peers when we are young and growing up. In the process we can be tolerant of a lot a lot of music that really isn't that great. When we get older and don't care about what the kids are listening to or even what our peers consider cool, then we can really be honest with ourselves about what we like to hear.

It has happened to me a few times.
I find it very interesting.

I believe it has to do, ultimately, with the evolution of our individual lives.

The perception we had yesterday and all that we intake, today, lend assistance to what we will like/dislike, tommorrow.
I think it's constantly perpetuating throughout our life and will do so until our end.


Regards,
John.
:thmbsp: Well said.

mindset at the time. I searced for cactus one way or another. Man that was an album that got the h*ll played out of it. Found it on Cd 30 or more years later, just did not cut it. At one time in my life I was into it, just not now. Funny, For a rock + roll person I liked Tom Jones Delihla and still like it.

"Does time change your opinion of an album?"
Definitely. I still have a few albums I got when I was maybe 18, 20 years old or so. Pink Floyd comes to mind immediately, as a prime example. At the time, I was like, "Whoa, this stuff is cool, man!" Now, 30 years later, I'm like, "Whoa, I used to think this stuff was cool!" Time, education, and maturity all help to redefine one's tastes.
Tom

I find it does. Not only albums but entire genres of music I never listened to or appreciated in my youth.

I p/u another copy of the first Monkees album (I sold my original copy in the early 70s) and enjoyed it, something I'd never have the guts to say in the late 60s or 70s.

I'm 42 years old. IMHO, AC/DC sounds as valid today as it did when I was 16.
However, much of the music of my youth seems to have lost something in the transition.

Some bands seem timeless to me; Led Zep, 'Floyd, the Doors, etc. Others that I held dear way back when seem almost laughable now. I find myself listening to more and more jazz as of late.

Absolutey. How about an artist? An entire genre? Yes and yes on both accounts.

And like Rich already stated, it can work both ways, and it does with me. For example, as a teen I listened to quite alot of Journey, REO Speedwagon and Foreigner. We ate that stuff up and thought it was the coolest music. Now, save for a few cuts, I find the music from these bands very juvenile, even bubblegum-ish.

On the other hand, for years I never liked Bob Dylan dismisssing his music entirely. Now I own 10 ceedees and absolutely love everything I've heard.

Never cared for jazz either, even as recent as my late 30's. Now I have close to 500 ceedees with an insatiable appetite for more.

Cheers

I used to listen to most of those bands that I now collectively refer to as ".38 Journey Wagon". :nono:

Now back in 1979 my favorite band was of course Pink Floyd. One day a friend loaned me her 8-track copy of Get The Knack by, The Knack. I thought this was pretty darn good stuff. Fast foward to 2004. Snooping around a record shop I discover a NM copy of this thing. Took it home and gave it a spin. All I could do was shake my head and wonder what was I thinking in 1979? :dunno:

I used to listen to most of those bands that I now collectively refer to as ".38 Journey Wagon". :nono:

Now back in 1979 my favorite band was of course Pink Floyd. One day a friend loaned me her 8-track copy of Get The Knack by, The Knack. I thought this was pretty darn good stuff. Fast foward to 2004. Snooping around a record shop I discover a NM copy of this thing. Took it home and gave it a spin. All I could do was shake my head and wonder what was I thinking in 1979? :dunno:

Don't feel bad. I had that release in 8-track at one time when it first came out. It isn't in my collection anymore. :D

All I could do was shake my head and wonder what was I thinking in 1979? :dunno:

You were thinking in 1979? Got me beat ... :D

Don't feel bad. I had that release in 8-track at one time when it first came out. It isn't in my collection anymore. :D

Aw, come on guys, that album isn't that bad, I've heard a lot worse and who can refuse the pantings of a teenage guy lusting for teenage girls. I think Good Girls Don't is pretty good but it needs one more stanza to finish the story. Does he get lucky :banana:

I listened to an old Judas Priest album and THAT was bad :thumbsdn:

I listened to an old Judas Priest album and THAT was bad :thumbsdn:Which one? That sequence from Sad Wings of Destiny to Hell Bent for Leather I consider a run of perfect 10 albums!

Which Priest album? Turbo kinda sucks listening to it now, but the guitar-synth craze was a faux pas for more bands than I would care to admit. I can say I've bought CDs of albums I had owned on vinyl years ago, that I never really could 'get into'. Now that I'm finding them on vinyl again - I'm re-enjoying the hell out of them! I think the medium is almost, if not more, important than the source material.

Hi Guys,

My music appreciates with age. Especially recordings of music that exudes Energy. There are many such recordings. Janis Joplin (she gave herself), Bon Scott's AC/DC, Queen (Freddy Merc and the guys knew he was gonna bite the dust when most of the songs were recorded and as his time grew nearer he sang better), old Led Zeppelin, Frank Sinatra, musical genius of Pink Floyd etc .....

They had a Motorhead in concert on TV last month. I am happy to say that I enjoyed it hahahahahaha :-) Lemmayyyyy!

All said and done, I am mellowing. I find myself buying more and more classical lps these days. I am calmer these days compared to the rowdy teenager I once was! But, if I am in a party then my hair comes down ... can't help it :-)

Heheheheheh :-)
cosmicdust.

Which Priest album? Turbo kinda sucks listening to it now, but the guitar-synth craze was a faux pas for more bands than I would care to admit.

I find a lot of what I listened back in the '80s were wince inducing now. Turbo was one of them, and I believe the band feels the same way. Oh, there's a few decent tunes on it, but the production...yeesh!

Same with another '70s rock icon, Ted Nugent and his abismal Little Miss Dangerous album. That one was painful within the second or third listen. But the tape, once thought to have been given away, was found in an old tape case of mine some 15 years later, along with other bad '80s albums, like Ratt - Invasion Of Your Privacy and Wasp - Inside the Electric Circus. I just had to listen to them one more time; boy oh boy...what was I thinkin?

Its all ZZ-Top's fault.

Nope. With perhaps a few exceptions, I still like what I liked and loathed what I loathed before. The one great exception is John Cougar Mellencamp. Don't ask me why but I like him now.

Where I have changed is expanding into Jazz and Country, albeit old country.

I think so, definetly. I'm no big fan of disco music. I hated the "Saturday Night Fever" craze in the late 1970's and I thought the big selling double soundtrack sucked. Now however....I kinda like it's retro-funk. I may have hated disco back then but the DAYS during that period bring back some fun memories and the music from that soundtrack establish those memories well.

Sometimes you can go home again. Ah, to be 17 again!


Russ

My 14 year old son is cruising through my albums, and asked about Dylan. I said he had recorded for 40 years, and changed a lot. After talking a bit, I recommended he start with John Wesley Harding. I told him he'd hate it at first, but give it 4 listens. After 4 he liked it! Some albums have barriers that the listener has to pass...After Bathing at Baxter's is a wonderful example...before you discover the heart of the music. I love the Skip Spence album OAR. It is so boring on first listen, but is so good it has its own tribute album.

I really kind of laugh at some of the stuff I used to like, and other stuff I wonder about...as in where was I when this stuff was new?

The 38 Journey Wagon stuff especially, though I think I like to think that I had better taste than most folks, back then. I was getting OFF that ride about the time everyone else was getting ON it.

And then there's the stuff that I never *could* understand...didnt like it then, don't like it now, yet it's supposed to be important and classic. Like Led Zep. I guess I agreed and agree with most of the critics back then...to me it's just a lot of posturing and showing off, without much musical going on.

I wonder if Charles Manson thinks differently about The Beatles "White Album"? I wonder if he STILL listens to it inhis cell?? This is geting spooky...

Does time change your opinion of an album?

Oh heck yea! When I was in my teens in the late 70's, there were some songs that got radio airplay that they absolutely beat the snot out of by playing them every 15 minutes all day long. The Eagle's Hotel California and Cat Steven's Year of the Cat come to mind. Now, quite a few years later, I find the melodic content and musicality of the songs rather pleasing (as long as I don't hear them too often).

Yea, opinions change, attitudes change.... and time changes all things.

I tend to get hooked on an artist or group (or two) then pretty much buy out every album / or CD that I can get my hands on. Then hit a listening stauration point within a couple weeks and move on to the next. After a while, I'll come back around and enjoy their individual albums and songs.

I think my brain gets stuck in a tape loop of some sort.