Sunday's Beatles post was probably bad for my brand. I mean, John Lennon has been dead for 42 years. To young people, it must be like I'm writing a post about Beethoven. Or maybe Scott Joplin. Not that there's anything wrong with that. What's that line David Bowie wrote?
And my brother's back at home
With his Beatles and his Stones
We never got it off on that revolution stuff
What a drag.
Too many snags.
The way I feel is that it's gotten increasingly frustrating trying to keep up with new things in the new world order. There's so much stuff, everywhere, and it's all so hard to pin down. What's that phrase? "Everything happens all the time?" Something like that. There's much less shared culture or shared experience now.
Every now and then I will delve into the music of "now," or my conception of it, but it's shocking how quickly that ages. Another part of the problem is that I don't have the same appetites and interests I once did. Or methods of consumption, either. With records, if you were lucky enough to have one, you got to know it very intimately. Other records, unbought, not owned, were a little like foreign countries: you knew them only glancingly, from rumors and radio and friends' houses. The first 12-inch LP (for "long-playing") album I ever got was the Beatles' Something New, a U.S.-only Capitol Records collection. I got it when I was seven. I had to play it on my Dad's "suitcase" stereo record player (one speaker firing outward from each end), because mine only played 45s. But I'm not interested in the current equivalents—Ed Sheeran, say. Because I'm not, you know, seven. Or 13. Or 21. (Although I like Billie Eilish, whose real name is Billie Eilish Pirate Baird O'Connell. That "Pirate" part kills me. Who names their little girl "Pirate"?) I memorized and analyzed and internalized Something New because it was the only record I had. I heard "Komm, Gib Mir Deine Hand" a hundred times before I heard "I Want to Hold Your Hand" one time!
My friend Kim keeps my ears open, but his tastes are eclectic. (Try "Signal" if you like country, but expect some very Coen-Brothers-y twists.) Sirius XM Radio, which I have in the car, is staid and unadventurous. And way too ghettoized—a whole channel of nothing but Tom Petty, a whole channel of nothing but Grateful Dead, a whole channel of nothing but Dave Matthews Band. That's kinda the opposite of what I want. Whenever I make a concerted effort to listen to new stuff, I almost always discover something I really like. But the "finds" I've found that way are up to 35 years old now! Dating from when I was an old man of 31 trying to stay hip. Even the most recent "keep pace" find—the endearingly weird video for Twenty One Pilots' "Stressed Out," which I really like—came out just about exactly eight years ago—or, for today's 20-year-old, when they were 12! That's not recent. Well, not for them. To me, yes.
It's hard keeping up.
Snoop Dogg at TechCrunch Disrupt SF in 2015. Photo
courtesy TechCrunch via Wikimedia Commons.
The great exception is hip-hop. I'm right up to the minute...at about 1993. The rule of thumb is, in music, white people are forever 30 years behind whatever Black people are doing at any given time. So I'm right where I'm supposed to be with Wu-Tang Clan, A Tribe Called Quest, Missy Elliott (dj please, pick up your phone, I'm on the request line), Coolio, Snoop Dogg, Geto Boys, et al. (And Coolio and Bushwick Bill have already passed; RIP.) As far as what Black people are really doing now, what's cool with them now, only they know. Whatever it is, I'll be right there in 30 years lapping it up and learning from it...age 96, still hoping, no doubt, to keep up.
Mike
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Occasional reader here (a lurker, I guess). Re keeping up with new music. Try Radio Paradise, a free, listener-supported, on-line station, with no commercials. I've been listening for at least 15 years, and have not listened to commercial radio in about 10 years. They play anything and everything (well, almost - no hip hop). You can check their playlist on their site to get an idea of what's played. I've been exposed to so much that I would never, ever hear on commercial radio. I download a cache of their playlist to their phone app to play in the car. Awesome stuff. radioparadise.com
Posted by: Bruce Leonard | Sunday, 09 April 2023 at 09:31 PM