It's amusing to look over some of the posts I made around a year ago, just to see how much I've changed my opinions on some things. I once read a post by someone on the GameDev.Net forums saying how kept a record of all his posts over the years, just so that he could read them at a later time and have a laugh at how uninformed he once was. There's no doubt an element of that with this blog, because it's so much darn fun to look at some of the bizarre things I've said over the years.

One such instance would be this post, where I made a clumsy, inept argument that "old music is better than new music". Sheesh, it's practically embarassing reading some of the things I wrote in that post. There are some things I still agree with, for instance questions about originality in modern rock, but the rest of it reads like a big exercise in pig-headedness and elitism (I recall at the time thinking that this is probably how I would be perceived by anyone who read it!). The reason I bring this is up is not for more self-deprecation (there's been more than enough of that over the last few months), but in fact because of something I said there which I think revealed how out of sorts I was. I said something to the effect of "Soon, I will run out of music from rock's golden years, and thus will be left empty-handed". I remember also saying to my brother that Frank Zappa was surely the last bastion of hope in my rock catalogue - once he was done, it had to be pretty much over. But having spent the entire morning casually reading several random album reviews, it struck me how inaccurate such a statement is, and especially blasphemous from someone who is so clearly but a fledgling rock listener. I think it's most likely such a statement was made with purely the '60s in mind - it's true that the '60s itself is running a tad low in terms of music it can offer. Certainly nowhere even near the levels that I predicted, though, for the late '60s have their fair share of gems that I am woefully unfamiliar with. It's the '70s and '80s that I utterly under-estimated, for now there seems to be no end to the number of albums that keep popping their heads up on reviews I read. Especially the whole punk-scene, there seems to be a whole underground city full of these things (Richard Hell And The Voidoids, what a name!). The '80s in particular, because I, like so many others, associated the decade quite unfairly with some of the more horrendous fashion and cultural statements that were made, the kinds that are given coverage on TV. Yet this was a decade that started off with Joy Division and ended up with the Pixies! And hey, who said the '90s had nothing to offer? Maybe the mainstream wasn't brimming with masterpieces, but there were still some people with the ethos of old.

Yes, this is another pointless post, which admittedly was created out of the resurfacing desire to compile a mammoth collection of seminal albums. Where on earth do I get off coming up with such pointless and shallow wishes, you ask? I say point taken, but at least it takes my mind off the trauma of existence! (The astute reader will notice that I am yet again finishing off on a very half-serious note)