Things no one in their right mind could possibly care about but me and my stalker

A few months ago, I began to fear for my own musical evolution, when I sat back and looked at how my tastes had and had not evolved over the past few years. I had been listening to New Order and My Bloody Valentine for quite a long time now, with ever increasing appreciation, and increasingly to the exclusion of all else. Even Radiohead, once a constant presence, practically faded away, and I can't remember the last time I put an album on by them and listened all the way through.

Fearful of becoming my parents, as everyone should be, I've always been wary of tendencies to ignore new music as I grew older. I figured if I let those instincts gain control over me, I'd be on road trips with my kids in several decades subjecting them to Siamese Dream seven times in a row (with my parents it was, and is, Tattoo You).

So it was to my delight that without any effort and out of the blue, I began obsessing over Bloc Party and Sonic Youth a month ago. For several weeks I listened almost exclusively to Silent Alarm and a few Sonic Youth tracks from their mid-period albums. "Helicopters" started me in on Bloc Party, and "100%" for SY. Now, I've calmed down a bit, but I'm also listening to other new things, notably Belle and Sebastian and strangely enough the classic Beastie Boys' Check Ya Head. I don't know what I was so scared about, I think a long enough tenure at a college radio station will scar anyone for life off of any kind of listening stagnation for fear of not knowing what the latest charts mean and being mocked by peers who are still in grad school but mastered sarcasm long ago.