Blog Assignment 5: Movies or Recordings

I interviewed my dad, Christian Kaiser, about recordings. He was born in 1964 and is now in his late forties.  

1. What were some of your music-listening habits as a teenager?

I used to listen to music on my record player every afternoon, while I was doing my homework. I also listened to tapes I created myself. The tapes contained music either recorded from radio shows or copied from records my friends owned. I listened only to one radio station, the local Bavarian radio station called Bayern 3. Every Friday at 6 pm, the station played the Top 10 songs. I often recorded these songs because they cost a lot of money to buy on record. 

2. How have your tastes in music changed? 

I still like the same type of music I liked when I was a teenager (new wave and electronic music), but now I also like some of the more recent music genres such as trance and techno. I always liked music with complex rhythms. When I was around eleven years old in the mid 70s, I listened to classical music. I don’t do this anymore. In the late 70s, when I was in my early teens, I started listening to punk, new wave and the German genre NDW which stands for “Neue Deutsche Welle” (New German Wave). In my early twenties, in the mid 80s, I began to like trance music. Today, I listen to techno, trance, ambient house, trip hop and dub music.

 

3. What were some of your favorite artists back then, and which artists do you like listening to now?  

In my early teens, most of my favorite artists came from British bands. I liked the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, The Clash, The Stranglers, Sex Pistols and Ultra Vox. Later, I liked the NDW bands Fehlfarben, Grauzone, Extrabreit and the Spider Murphy Gang. From my late teens to my mid twenties, I liked some “more mainstream” artists like Prince and U2, as well as trance music artists like Paul Van Dyk, and the bands Dead Can Dance and The Orb. Some of the artists I like to listen to today are Kruder & Dorfmeister, Creed, Underworld and Thievery Corporation.

4. Do you think the music industry has changed? If yes, how did it change? 

Yes, the music industry has absolutely changed. It is so much more diverse now. Back in the 70s, you could get a pretty complete selection of records to fit in an average-sized living room. Not anymore. I also think that today, possibly because artists now make music videos and etc., there is a lot more “popular” music that is made mostly for money-making purposes, rather than for musical expression.