Conrad Zero answers the question “Who do I have to blow to fill a decent playlist to make the last three miles of my training run bearable?”

Kinda.

Apparently, It’s you; yourself…and if you could do THAT, you’d never leave the house.

We’ve become an impatient society.  We have very little time to ourselves.  We have very little attention to give to anything besides our responsibilities.

More and more, people are spending 50+ hours per week at work, and when they come home, they’ve got home improvement projects, gardening, kid raising, getting little Johnny to soccer practice and little Katie to Karate class at the same time, across town, cleaning, volunteer work, taking care of ageing parents, etc.

Every minute of every day is packed, and more and more people are finding that their remaining “me” time is limited to the time alone in the car on the commute to and from work.  Not exactly quality time.  And during that little slice of space-time, most of us listen to music.  It’s really the only thing we CAN do during that time.

So, as Conrad points out, we have a lot more options for good independent music out there.  By-passing the marketing and pre-packaging, and slick-production-value-masquerading-as-art morass feels good…but it takes time, and the pay-off isn’t always what we expected.

We have a choice, we can keep letting the marketing industry polish up a bunch of turds and sell it to us as diamonds…or we can dig through a big pile of crap in search of our own real diamonds.  Neither seems compelling.  Either way, you end up with a bunch of shit

In the search for good, independent music, there is no getting around the fact that you will have to listen to a fair amount of crap…but I’ve got a couple of suggestions.

1)       Go to your nearest independent music store (In the Twin Cities, the Electric Fetus, for example) find someone who is willing to help you, and say “I’m interested in finding a good, local or regional band.  Something new, that I haven’t heard before.  They might ask you some questions to figure out your musical tastes, they might just shove a CD into your hand and walk away…but at the very least, you’ve had someone who works with music daily do a little sifting.

2)       Combine your search for new music with other leisure-time activities.  Go to pubs where they have live music, and bring your friends.  Get your eating, drinking, socializing and music exploration all out of the way at the same time.

3)       Expand your role.  Dust off that old instrument whether it’s a viola, or a guitar or an electric keyboard.  Join a community orchestra, a fiddling circle, or form a band.  Get voice lessons.  No, you don’t have to be good, no, you don’t have to perform.  Music is most enjoyable when you are completely involved in it.  The best way to get completely involved in it is to make it.  If you think other people won’t enjoy it, that’s OK.  You don’t have to share, but you’ll be surprise how much fun it is just to DO.

4)       Accept the inevitable.  Be OK with hearing music that isn’t your favorite or to your taste.  Be willing to risk that few minutes on something that doesn’t work out.  Yes, some of it might be just plain bad, but give it a chance.  You might find something in it that you can appreciate.  It requires some mental discipline, but it will blend over into other parts of your life.  Not everything has to be perfect, or exactly what you want at any given time.  We’ve been conditioned to expect that in life, and when it doesn’t work out that way, a lot of us react with frustration or anger.  That’s not healthy.  Some music is crap.  Some good music isn’t to your taste.  It won’t kill you to have listened to it.  There’s always the next song.

So, get out there and explore.  Don’t worry if you cover unpleasant ground, or find out that you’ve been covering fallow ground, or that your just now discovering a great “new” band that all your friends have already gotten tired of.  It’s not a contest.  It’s not about being cool or being “in the know”…it’s not about always having the “best” music experience.  Like life, it is want you make it.  And you’ll do better if you just jump in.