I'm posting this in the general forum for now, because I want a lot of people to see it.

I don't know if it's because I'm getting older or whatnot, but I'm getting this general feeling of dread and boredom when it comes to music. Listening to it doesn't make me happy anymore, I've got that dread feeling that it either sucks or I've listened to it before, and well, I feel musically lost. Nothing feels inspiring, and I've hit a snag on what I should listen to.

So here's the deal-- I need recommendations. The band, the genre, the age of it, even if you THINK I may have listened to it before, it doesn't matter. In fact, it's almost like I'm giving you carte blanche to gush about any and all bands you may like and want everyone else to listen to. I open it up to anything, even stuff you think I may have heard, simply because there may be an awesome song by a well known band I may have somehow missed.

Open up about it. You can give me long ass lists, it doesn't matter. You can give me guilty pleasure songs even. I hate to say it, but it's depressing to feel this way about music, and I'm open to any and all suggestions to rekindle it, or at the very least have fun listening to something again.

Lay it on me.

joshwoodzy wrote:

Music forum.

I knew that was going to come up, which is why I made sure to add "I posted it here so more people would see it" to my original post. I don't feel that forum gets as many visits as this one. What I'm looking for is sheer number of responses. Ideally, I'd want to get enough to fill up a few CDs.

Excellent. Good suggestions, all.

As for my mindset, I'm an overall happy, optimistic kinda person. I'm not in any kind of bad mood. The thing is, I own something to the tune of over 500 CDs and I've been buying them since I was 12. I'm now 30. I'd been listening to various things in my stash for just about 18 years now, and I rotate out what I keep in my car until recently. Recently I felt that I've listened to every CD I own quite a few times, and what used to elicit a reaction out of me now just plays as background music. Then I get cognizant(sp?) of what I'm listening to, think about it, and switch it out. Since I'm tired of all the CDs I own (I am the type to buy a CD to give the band a chance if I like one song), I'd tried listening to some of the albums all the way through, and frankly, one song does not always a good CD make. After finding out I pretty much spent $15 on one song and a bunch of shit filler, I started making my own CDs, making sure to put only songs I like on them. This lasted awhile, then started landing me in the same funk.

So I started listening to the radio. Big mistake. Rock, rap, anything that makes it to the radio just frankly sucks I think. Locally, we have about fifty "in the club" radio stations, two modern rock stations that think playing Nickelback and POD makes them awesome, and exactly one classic rock station that constantly gets preempted by sporting events. Radio took a record two days to make me sick.

I am a musician, and I learn how to play songs by ear, so I'd give shitty songs a chance as well, just for the sake of listening to it, learning it in five minutes and saying "Cool, I know how to play another song." This well has also dried up, as it's like, well, what good is it to me to know how to play shitty songs?

To make a long story short, I guess you could say I'm in the frustrated musician mindset, if that makes any sense. I laughed when someone recommended Bouncing Souls though, as when I was playing in a band, three of the five members were huge Bouncing Souls fans, so our setlist included three Bouncing Souls covers.