FELLOW BLOGGERS: GENERATION CLASH
As promised, I’m trying to keep this blog as active as it used to be (but if you want more content you can check my instagram, which is updated on a very regular basis). Here’s returning the Fellow Bloggers column and our guest today is Carmela Carr, the girl behind Generation Clash, one of my favorite blogs to read lately. As the name suggests, Generation Clash covers different eras of rock music, and that’s because Carmela has a big interest in – to use her own words – “yesterday’s world”. On her page you can read about 70’s/80’s/90’s bands as much as about current artists, the common theme being the quality of their output. Be it obscure overlooked gems or up and coming fresh blood, the selection is always interesting and original. She also throws in some more popular artists here and there, and that is a nice touch too. Moreover, if you have Spotify be sure to check out the playlists she shares, as they include a lot more music along the lines of what she covers on her webpage. Inviting her on here for a nice chat about music and blogging about music was a real pleasure.
As I read on your website, you’ve been surrounded by music from a very early age and have been seriously into record collecting for 5 years or so now. When and how did you decide to turn this great passion of yours into a blog?
It all just happened one day. I was in my room spinning records and I realized how amazing my collection is, and I thought it would be a cool idea to talk about these albums and my backstories with each of them!
I like the name Generation Clash and I think it perfectly sums what your site is about, as you cover current music and old forgotten gems at the same time. How did you decide on the name?
I came up with the name Generation Clash as a reference to the fact that I’m into a completely different era of music than the era I grew up in. I clash with today’s world, since I’m so into yesterday’s world. Generally, one would be into the era they come from, but that’s not entirely the case with me. I grew up with certain music I liked from the era I grew up in, but I found even more music I loved from earlier eras and when I started homeschool, it gave me the time I needed to really dive into the music I connected to.
When I got interested in music (as a little kid in the early 90s), LPs were quickly fading away and the market was mostly ruled by CDs and cassettes. I used to buy LPs too because some of the stuff I wanted was hard to come by on CD (and I loved the bigger artworks anyway), and that’s how I started to love the format. What about you? You often mention growing up with your dad’s music collection, is that what spurred you to start a collection of your own?
I always remember being surrounded by vinyl and CDs, and I’ve always had a good eye. My earliest memories relating to record shopping was when I would go with my family to record stores, and I always would find the coolest stuff. I’d go through stuff, and I’d always find the most interesting stuff, just looking around. As for starting a collection, I would go with my family to record stores as I was growing up, and I built up albums little by little from what I found interesting. I only had a few albums in the beginning. My earliest included Don Ho, Walter Egan, Royal Court Of China, and Katy Moffat to name a few. The original albums I collected were just albums I found interesting, and albums that were promotional copies. In 2014, I started diving into used vinyl when it came back, and I found all these cool albums on vinyl and I started to expand my collection, and my dad eventually gave me one of his extra turntables and I became a collector! It all came together in time, and my collection started because whenever we go to record stores, my dad would always let me go through the vinyl section and take a look around. Since they were records I found, they ended up in my collection. So, I got more and more albums, a turntable, and I was officially a collector.
What do you like the most about the physical format?
I love looking at the artwork, and reading lyrics as I’m listening to albums. It’s also the coolest thing to have promotional copies with gold stamps and promotional strips on them. They’re cool physical attributes!
As I was discussing with other Fellow Bloggers, the new generation that embraced vinyl after its resurgence seems to have a different way to relate to “oldies”. You go online and see all these posts of young people scoring old classic rock records and it’s cool, but they rarely go beyond “the usual suspects” or scratch the surface. You, on the other hand, talk about bands like Angel or Axe and it’s something I can relate to, as when I started to listen to those bands no one else was interested or even knew them. Why don’t more people dig deeper, according to you? Not enough enthusiasm? Too lazy? Too busy liking what’s “hip” instead of developing their own taste?
The reason why I think a lot of people don’t dig deeper is that it isn’t easy. As human beings, we want convenience. However, the problem also lies in how music is promoted, because even though many albums had promotional editions, this doesn’t mean that whatever DJ or record store they were given to play them. This is because everyone has their favorites, and once you get into a certain niche, it becomes easier to stay there because you’re used to it. You know what you like, which is great, but there’s no expansion happening. There is a way to listen to what you love and expand your mind as well. I think the biggest flaw here is Spotify. On their new releases page, they only feature pop, Latin, and rap releases, and the occasional rock or alternative album. More often than not, it’s whoever the most commercially popular artist is, but that doesn’t mean they are the best. An idea I’ve been thinking about is that Spotify should mix old and new albums on their new releases page, to broaden horizons. So, you can have a brand new album, a 1970s album, an album from a few years ago, and maybe a 1950s album. This can help to mix it up a little and turn people on to more music and more eras. There’s always more than what we see. In any case, digging deep isn’t common because it takes time and it’s not an easy thing to do, but at the end of the day you can find some amazing music, so it’s totally worth it.
One thing I like a lot about your writing is that not only you explain why a band is good and how they sound, you also point out what their music means to you, and that’s a very nice plus. I mean, if I’m reading about some band I don’t know, I feel even more encouraged to check them out. That maybe wouldn’t happen if you only shared some cold facts. What are your goals when writing a post?
Thank you! I try to make these posts both informational and personal. I’m always looking for the next thing to check out, and a weird thing is that when I first listen to stuff I do tend to make comparisons, because I know about so much music from square one, so it’s an interesting second nature tendency I have. My goal for any post is to provide valuable information and show how these artists have impacted me at different points in my life. I hope that people feel inspired to dig deeper after reading my blog, because there are great artists out there, and it’s worth your time to discover them because more often than not, they actually surpass the most popular artists in greatness because they are known for their influence and that never fades away.
You also regularly share a series of Spotify playlists called ’12 Songs You Need To Hear’. I checked some out and I love them because they are all over the place, filled with so much different music. Having a very broad taste myself, I couldn’t ask for more. How do you put them together? You just gather a bunch of tracks you feel like sharing or is it a well-thought work, trying to find the right flow etc?
Thank you, I’m glad you’re enjoying them! They are a lot of fun to make! When I’m creating them, my song choices come from my favorite songs, new discoveries, and whatever I’m listening to on vinyl. I try to make them a broad mix because it promotes older and newer stuff. I don’t know any music blogs who really do that, so it’s definitely one of the things that make my blog really unique! I do try to make the songs blend well together, and you can even listen to them on shuffle so it doesn’t get tiring hearing them the same way.
You mention cassettes here and there in your posts, and that’s a physical format I’m still fond of.
What I love about cassettes, is that it promotes the idea of listening to an album in full. If you don’t have a cassette player that has fast forward and rewind, you have to listen to Side A to get to Side B, or Side B to get to Side A. There’s no selecting a song on cassettes, you just hit play and see what point you’re at. I feel the same with vinyl, even though you can select tracks, but the idea of listening to an album in full should be promoted because there’s more to every album than just the hits.