I'm almost thirty-three years old. A few years ago, when the label 'alternative' was not yet a synonym for 'mainstream', I actually got to a point where I didn't understand the 'younger peoples' music'. When faced with a crowd of teenagers, boom boxes blasting, I found myself stifling the urge to say "turn that racket down!" I was becoming my parents.

Two seperate events were responsible for turning back the hands of time -- at least insofar as my musical tendencies were concerned. First, was the recording of Tori Amos covering Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit." Second was seeing the band Live perform "Lightning Flashes" on stage at the 1994 WOMAD festival. Now I know this sounds weird, but hang on . . . I think I have a point here somewhere.

Tori Amos did a cover of Kurt Cobain's obsessively depressive "Smells Like Teen Spirit," with only her silky-smooth voice and trademark piano accompaniment on the final cut. The speed was slowed by an order of magnitude and the lyrics were understandable. Suddenly I realized there was more to Nirvana than wailing guitars and screaming, temperamental lyrics. "Smells Like Teen Spirit," I decided, was brilliant.

Then I saw Live. Right up to the day of the concert I had never heard them before. I didn't know what to expect, but I saw a bunch of kids near the stage with "Throwing Copper" t-shirts and I knew that at least somebody had to know who these guys were. So they played and I recognized "I Alone", which at the time was just starting its climb up the charts. "I Alone" was all right and it was nice to hear something that I recognized, if only tangentially. But then the mood shifted Live began "Lightning Crashes." Little did I know that this song would become a smash hit and help boost Live to superstardom, I had never heard it before and I suspect that few of the rest in the audience had either. But I sat there transfixed, soaking in every word as though the lyrics might hold the key to one of life's great mysteries. By the end of the song I was totally blown away -- enough so that everything else they played after that just added to the magic.

So here I am, some half a decade later and I'm listening to music that, just five years ago, I would have turned my nose up to in disgust. I've overcome the aging process as it pertains to music and I'm loving the new stuff hitting the streets now almost more than I have at any other point in my life. What was it in those two songs that made me change my mind, you might ask. In both cases something -- perhaps something unknown, but definitely something that I can't describe in the space of this column -- triggered me to listen beyond the surface of the recording. Something made me take notice of the songs as a whole, to disregard the glitz and the pomp and just listen. When I took in the whole picture, I found that my knee-jerk reactions were totally clouding my judgement of the song-form as a whole.

So please, if you think you're too young to be considered un-hip, but you just can't seem to figure out what the hell that stuff is that you're hearing on the radio, take my one bit of advice on this subject. Listen.

Listen.

Open your mind for the three or four minutes it takes to get through that song you can't understand. Throw away the preconceptions. Go beyond the pretty wrapping and find out what's in the box. You won't like everything you hear, of course. But maybe you'll end up like me and find that the fountain of youth really does exist, it's just that instead of pumping from the ground, it might just be pumping out of your stereo speakers.