(no subject)
Becky and I took Grant and his buddy to Thermopolis for the weekend for a dip in the hot springs. Sort of a celebration of the end of the school year.
The boys are 15, and are in the process of discovering the music I listened to when I was their age.
Note that I didn't say the music I liked when I was their age. Thanks in big part to my big sister, Ruth, I've long had an ecletic taste in music. I shiver to think what my musical tastes would have become without her influence. When my peers were digging Kiss's "Beth," I was digging J.J. Cale's "Cocaine." And when my friends wanted to turn up some Kool & the Gang(rene) tune, I'd bitch about how they never played anything I wanted to hear. I'd try to tell them about Otis Blackwell or Doug Sahm or Howlin' Wolf, and they'd just get this dumb stare on their faces. And then burst out laughing.
It wasn't until later that I started hanging around with friends who really influenced my musical tastes. Those friends brought me to a lot of good music that people my age weren't listening to. Before, I'd been listening to things older people listened to. My friends introduced me to a lot of stuff that younger people were listening to. While my former classmates were still tooling around town listening to Foreigner and Van Halen, I was learning about SST's Meat Puppets, Minutemen, Replacements and Husker Du. My other tastes, folk, country, bluegrass, blues and so on, just became more eclectic. And as I felt sorry for my old friends whose tastes had stagnated sometime about 1980, I listened to popular radio less and less.
It would be a mistake, however, to infer that I hated all of the popular music, that I was right about all of the stuff I griped about back then, or that all the stuff I liked was good. Hell, I had plenty of dumb picks, too.
On the ride back from Thermopolis, we were listening to a "classic rock" station. I'd be hard pressed to call more than one or two of the tunes we heard "classic." Shitty then, shitty now, for the most part. The boys asked several time who a particular song was by. They were impressed that I could tell them it was Styx or Journey or whoever, and were confounded when they asked if I liked it and I said, "No, it sucks."
So it got me thinking about which popular songs from my youth I still liked, and I decided to download some of it for them to hear.
I started off with Peter Frampton's "Do You Feel (Like I Do)," the live, 13-minute, 46-second version, of course. It wasn't until I'd listened to it a few times through that I realized how well I knew every part of the song, or that it represented a big chunk of my life, albeit in 13-minute, 46-second segments. All those segments added up to a lot of cruising around the lake, looking for friends or looking for just enough trouble.
"Papa Was a Rolling Stone," by the Temptations. I always liked them, along with the O'Jays, the Spinners and such. Hated the white disco crap from K.C. and the Sunshine Band and that ilk. Hated disco dancing, too. Couldn't wait for disco to die, but it never did. Long live rock, alas.
"Respectable," speaking of Rolling Stones. "Some Girls" got me interested in the Stones and their earlier stuff.
"Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo" by Rick Derringer. If you don't turn it up when this comes on, you're too damn old.
"Nothing from Nothing," by Billy Preston. Sadly, Billy died the day after I downloaded this. That song plus "Will It Go Round In Circles" were his big hits, but there was a lot of other good stuff, too, including his gospel albums. Guy could play.
"Frankenstein" by Edgar Winter. Another rocker worth listening to again.
There's plenty more I want to be sure Grant and his friend to hear, and even more to hear that will never get played on classic-rock stations. But for now, I'll try to point them to some of the good popular music from "back in the day." Otherwise, I'll have to keep listening to crappy old stuff, which just isn't going to happen.
Us old codgers have a responibility to show the young-uns the difference between good and bad, and that goes for music, too.
The boys are 15, and are in the process of discovering the music I listened to when I was their age.
Note that I didn't say the music I liked when I was their age. Thanks in big part to my big sister, Ruth, I've long had an ecletic taste in music. I shiver to think what my musical tastes would have become without her influence. When my peers were digging Kiss's "Beth," I was digging J.J. Cale's "Cocaine." And when my friends wanted to turn up some Kool & the Gang(rene) tune, I'd bitch about how they never played anything I wanted to hear. I'd try to tell them about Otis Blackwell or Doug Sahm or Howlin' Wolf, and they'd just get this dumb stare on their faces. And then burst out laughing.
It wasn't until later that I started hanging around with friends who really influenced my musical tastes. Those friends brought me to a lot of good music that people my age weren't listening to. Before, I'd been listening to things older people listened to. My friends introduced me to a lot of stuff that younger people were listening to. While my former classmates were still tooling around town listening to Foreigner and Van Halen, I was learning about SST's Meat Puppets, Minutemen, Replacements and Husker Du. My other tastes, folk, country, bluegrass, blues and so on, just became more eclectic. And as I felt sorry for my old friends whose tastes had stagnated sometime about 1980, I listened to popular radio less and less.
It would be a mistake, however, to infer that I hated all of the popular music, that I was right about all of the stuff I griped about back then, or that all the stuff I liked was good. Hell, I had plenty of dumb picks, too.
On the ride back from Thermopolis, we were listening to a "classic rock" station. I'd be hard pressed to call more than one or two of the tunes we heard "classic." Shitty then, shitty now, for the most part. The boys asked several time who a particular song was by. They were impressed that I could tell them it was Styx or Journey or whoever, and were confounded when they asked if I liked it and I said, "No, it sucks."
So it got me thinking about which popular songs from my youth I still liked, and I decided to download some of it for them to hear.
I started off with Peter Frampton's "Do You Feel (Like I Do)," the live, 13-minute, 46-second version, of course. It wasn't until I'd listened to it a few times through that I realized how well I knew every part of the song, or that it represented a big chunk of my life, albeit in 13-minute, 46-second segments. All those segments added up to a lot of cruising around the lake, looking for friends or looking for just enough trouble.
"Papa Was a Rolling Stone," by the Temptations. I always liked them, along with the O'Jays, the Spinners and such. Hated the white disco crap from K.C. and the Sunshine Band and that ilk. Hated disco dancing, too. Couldn't wait for disco to die, but it never did. Long live rock, alas.
"Respectable," speaking of Rolling Stones. "Some Girls" got me interested in the Stones and their earlier stuff.
"Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo" by Rick Derringer. If you don't turn it up when this comes on, you're too damn old.
"Nothing from Nothing," by Billy Preston. Sadly, Billy died the day after I downloaded this. That song plus "Will It Go Round In Circles" were his big hits, but there was a lot of other good stuff, too, including his gospel albums. Guy could play.
"Frankenstein" by Edgar Winter. Another rocker worth listening to again.
There's plenty more I want to be sure Grant and his friend to hear, and even more to hear that will never get played on classic-rock stations. But for now, I'll try to point them to some of the good popular music from "back in the day." Otherwise, I'll have to keep listening to crappy old stuff, which just isn't going to happen.
Us old codgers have a responibility to show the young-uns the difference between good and bad, and that goes for music, too.