Grumpy old men are everywhere. Talk about any human activity – sports, politics, journalism, music, television programming, you name it – and you'll come across the following sentiment, repeated a thousand times, with varying degrees of bitterness: 'It used to have heart, soul, substance, depth. It used to be about something. But it's been ruined. Today it's all just commercialism and shallow hype-chasing.'

In all these areas, the Good Old Days for which the grumpy old men yearn are often specifically the 1970s. Which leads me to wonder, will the stuff we like to dismiss as hyper-commercial trash today be…

'Fun fact: I don't regularly listen to any music recorded before 1989,' Jeph Jacques wrote in his commentary for one of the earlier Questionable Content comics. 'Don't know why, but it's true. Thank you in advance for suggesting but there is too much stuff being released NOW for me to keep up with. When good new music stops coming out, I'll check out old stuff.'

I found this amusing and intriguing to read, because it's almost exactly the inverse of what I do. I don't regularly listen to much music recorded after 1989 (actually, make that 1992 - a few…