What happened to my supposed open mind?

As I was waxing poetically to myself about my youth, I had to ask myself a question
What happened to my supposed open mind?

Flash back to 1990
I have just landed a really slummy yet centrally located house dubbed “The Hash Palace”
Not because it was a drug dealer’s house but because the bass player from the band Hash Palace lived there
I say centrally located because it was THE party house of the early Deep Ellum scene in Dallas Tx, but it was also a 5 minute walk away from Ellum

Deep Ellum’s newly emerging bars were lenient on the artisitic clientelle and allowed me pretty much unfetterd access to not having to pay cover
This meant that all the great bands playing in the early days were available to me because of my reluctance to pay cover for music I might hate
I watched a lot of crappy bands but got to see a TON of great bands
Most played the kind of obscurist music that I already listened to but some played outright blatant sappy pop music
Stuff that I wouldn’t have tolerated if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes and interacted with the amazingly honest and gracious people in these bands
Pop Poppins was completely devoid of musical aggression and yet they performed like a hard rock band
Mildred was a happy pop band with blatantly christian lyrical content and yet I had a blast at their shows

The obvious answer to my aformentioned question is that I have been assaulted by such dishonest music over the years that I have had to insulate myself
I still want to listen to music that is not always so obscure but I just can’t seem to open my 42 year old mind to people young enough to be my children (god forbid I accidentally reproduced) using ideas and concepts that appear on the surface to be derivative and empty of the original intent
Even the ones that merit a second glance fail to deliver when you really listen to their music instead of immediately switching it off

It is obvious that I am out of touch with the way things are in the music industry right now but it is more out of self defense than “wishing things were the way they were”
I had a lot of self limiting principals which I am convinced kept me from succeeding in such a rich gene pool as 1990’s Deep Ellum
The attitude I have grown into at the present time is the most limitless version so far as it applies to my creative works
However, I have found myself over-insulated when it comes to dealing with the reality of doing bidness and networking in the modern world
I am in earnest about my intentions to open my mind
I just need to be convinced that what I am opening it to is worth the amount of risk
My most intensly personal failures and setbacks have been when I have dropped my defenses and opened my mind
It almost killed me at one point so you can understand my reluctance to just opening it haphazzardly