Let me say this first: I grew up in the 80s, and I love the music of that era. If "Kickstart My Heart" comes on the radio, I'll turn it up and sing my lungs out. For all that, I realized recently that I never, ever, get out a Ratt or Dokken or Motley Crue CD and put it on. I just don't have it in me to listen to the same songs for decades on end.
What do I listen to now? I love the new Lacuna Coil, Black Veil Brides, Avenged Sevenfold, the new Nightwish, bands like Electric Mary, Mastadon, older stuff like The Sweet (who I only recently discovered), Rodrigo y Gabriella and so on. Now, when a band from the 80s comes out with a new CD, I'll give it a go. I love the new Van Halen, for example.
I saw Motley Crue on the Carnival of Sins tour and loved it. I've seen them a few times since and I've seen Poison a few times and all these bands play the same set list every time. Does that mean the people who love to go over and over, are also listening to the same CD's over and over at home? I have to admit, Motley toured Australia late last year and I did not even consider it. It's not that I don't like it, it's that I've seen it and I don't see the point in spending a fortune to see it again. I want to keep adding to my music collection, and enjoying new music as well as continuing to like the music I grew up with.
I will say that Metallica are in a much better place. They are less of a "chart" band to start with, so they have a group of songs they do every night and then they change the rest of their set. As a result, fans follow them from city to city and they sell enough repeat tickets to easily do several shows in each city. Iron Maiden are the same in that they alternate between a "classics" tour and a new album tour, and they have a lot more scope for each tour to contain different material, which makes them worth seeing over and over. Surely bands that do the same set list are going to struggle to find new people to come to see them, and will lose more people on each touring cycle?
Am I alone in loving new rock music as much as I love the old stuff?