All Our Times Have Come: Questions about rock music and aging

In My Humble Opinion
1

This thread is motivated by two book reviews I read recently. The first book was called “Rock Til You Drop: The Decline From Rebellion to Nostalgia” by John Strausbaugh. In it the author coins phrases like Colostomy Rock and talks about how performers like Mick Jagger and Bruce Springsteen are responsible for “Civil War renactments of Rock. It’s pure nostalgia and nostalgia is the enemy of rock”. The other book is called “This is Serbia Calling: Rock’n’Roll Radio and Belgrade’s Underground Resistance”. It is about how rock music has a very strong “transformative and resistant powers and can ignite change and save souls”.

My question is: How should rock fans approach middle and old age? What is the correct attitude to take? I grew up with rock music. It was a big part of my life and I still love it and have the same faith in it as the Serbian radio station owners. It is a part of my culture and culture is generally thought of as a preservable rather than disposable thing. Is it all right for people in their 40s to listen to U2 from 1985 but not from 2000? If you bought Ramones records in 74 can you buy Green Day in 2000? Is that wrong?

Things that were once simple are now complicated.

2

Approach it with style. Be an old old skool rocker. :slight_smile:

Don’t worry about, I wouldn’t (but then… I’m only 19. :))

ps. Is your name pronounced ‘Gnome’ or ‘Gee-nome’ or is it a clever parody between the two?

3

It’s G. as in an initial and Nome as in garden gnome.

I saw a musicologist on television this week talking about how parents should try to understand and perhaps tolerate their children’s infatuation with Eminem. I thought that was a little weird considering the average age of the parents is likely to be somewhere between 30 and 40. People who grew up on Iggy Pop, The Sex Pistols, The New York Dolls and Metallica. This musical authority seemed to be in her thirties - young enough to know that parents these days are unlikely to be mystified or even intolerant of Eminem.

4

Listen to it all. Its the sound track of your life. Try not to get stuck in one era. There was a lot of good music then and a lot now. I think Pnuk Guy got the right idea. Try to handle it with some style.

FWTW- I’m an old guy (42) and I am constantly finding good new music and still listening to the music I grew up on.
I’ll pass on Eminem though. I always thought that with guys like Iggy and Steven Tyler all you’d have to do is prick them with a sharp pin and they’d just sort of pop and collapse and a rush of dried spores would come out.

5

Yeah, I feel bad about not being able to keep up anymore, but “keeping up” with any culture has always been an illusion anyway. The world has seen millions of cultures and subcultures for millions of years, and each of us has our own created culture (think of inside jokes among old friends)–we’d be less rich if we were capable of knowing it all. And culture is self-referential–those old friends with their inside jokes delight in them because they connect with something they recognize. So, don’t fear the reaper–don’t forget what you have had, and recognize that no one can absorb everything.

(added “close bolding” tag–Veb)

[Edited by TVeblen on 07-13-2001 at 08:12 PM]

6

Approach it with a Spinal Tap attitude. These go to eleven!

My parents said I would eventually ‘grow out’ of ‘my music’ and move on to listening to something ‘respectable’. I’m 32 and can’t imagine listening to anything but heavy metal when I’m 52. As far as old school – I just got KISS Love Gun, Destroyer, and Rock and Roll Over from the CD club. Tonight I’m going to see Morbid Angel, Skrape, Static-X, Slayer, and Pantera. On my wall is a cartoon from some newspaper……it is an old man (about 70) standing behind a walker holding a guitar. Next to the man is a wheel chair and in the seat of the wheel chair are a head and a huge cabinet. The dude is ready to rock!

I will go…….but not quietly!

NP: Slayer - Show No Mercy

7

Sometimes I’m curious as to why we ask ourselves these questions. It’s not like right or wrong really apply to matters of taste, but it’s easy to think of it in those terms.

As to the music, it’s the same as it ever was - mountains of dross punctuated by really good stuff. I’m 40, and I’m still as big a fanboy as I ever was. I still seek out new stuff that I find exciting.

Some of the stuff that’s popular now does nothing for me, but it’s been that way since I seriously started listening to music decades ago. There’s a reason that music slips from cool to nostalgia, and that can be pinned partially to artists running out of new things to say, but is more accurately placed on the shoulders of fans in that a fans association is often more tied to the time of life when they first grew to love the artist. A sense of nostalgia about music isn’t so much about the music, but more about th perceived qualities of the fans life at the time the music was new.

I seriously question the overall rebelliousness of modern music. There have been points where it was momentarily rebellious - the late 50’s, the mid to late 60’s, the punk era, and the advent of rap. But most of the time, it wasn’t truly rebellion, it was novelty. This is especially true today as new music is rapidly assimilated as an aspect of consumerism. Just one example is the Philips commercial where a guy creates a mix CD for a blind date. As dinner at his apartment begins, he presses play, and from the speakers comes a downright ugly sound of some guy bellowing “Let me love you sweetheart.” The music has no business being in a mainstream commercial, as there’s very few people who would actually be fans of it. But it has a sufficient level of novelty to stand out to jaded consumer’s ears. Any rebelliousness the music may have had is stripped away by it’s inclusion in mainstream media.

In the end, the answer has always been the same: Listen to what you enjoy. Everything else is an abstraction. If you want to find music that you consider new and exciting, you will. If you don’t, then you won’t. But someone else still will.

8

Creem magazine was my Bible. I was completely into Lester Bangs, Robert Christgau, Jaan Uhelzki, the Plasmatics, The Tubes and the whole seventies aesthetic (so to speak). All those people were responsible in some way for the little cloud of disingenuousness under which I have to live the rest of my life. Because although there may be reasons rock becomes less significant as you age you can never stop liking it. It’s with relief that some forms of it these days completely lack appeal for me - I don’t get all the female narcissistic posing and I don’t like gangsta rap. But so much I continue to like and I find that in order to play some of the roles expected of you as you get older you can’t always admit to it.

On a different note: I read an interview with Neil Young in Rolling Stone once in which he said he was embarrassed by older fans turning up at his concerts. He said his music was oriented towards young people. It always had been and that was his continued intention. It was in the mid-eighties shortly before he toured this country. My brother was just turning sixteen at that time and because of his interests and the part-time job he had, he met Mr Young (briefly) face to face. A lot of people round my age (13 years older) plied my brother with questions about what Neil Young was like. All he ever said was “he was like a little wizened up old man”. Oh, well…

P.S. Thank you for the profound replies.

9

There is absolutely no reason why rock must deal only with issues of youth. We have associated Rock with youth because it was the youth of the 60’s that championed it. But it’s just a form of artistic expression like any, open to the total of human experiences.

I’ve been listening to Warren Zevon’s “Life’ll Kill Ya”, which is full of musings on a adult issues by a rocker in his 50’s. And it’s just awesome.

10

First, a couple of asides. The Ramones didn’t release a record until '76. Also, I am astonished to find another living human that is my age, 42 years old. I was born in the baby bust and since I left high school, I have never ever met another person who was within 5 years of my age. There were fewer people born in our birth year than in any postwar year. Perhaps this is why punk never took off, the group of rebelious teenagers coming of age in the punk era was too small to sustain itself in the face of the whiney hippies behind it and the mindless heavy metal headbangers that followed. But anyway…

Music is dead. It was killed in the mid-80s by corporate greedheads that are more interested in profits than music, when they learned that hate and anger sold better than any other genre. A good primer on this would be the classic “Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television.” In this amazing book, the author discusses mass media in general and just what sort of ability it has to move people. He says that media is inherently unable to convey positive messages. He cited a study he did of public service ads he did for the Sierra Club. Two types of ads were produced, one showed a healthy forest and said “please save the forest” and the other showed a burned out forest after a fire, and said “don’t let this happen again.” The negative images were inherently more motivating, the response to the forest fire ad was huge compared to the positive ad. Mass media is inherently suited towards carrying negative content. So if you want to produce something that will effectively convey its message in mass media, you’ll produce mindless headbanger death metal, or rap, or some other garbage that kills people’s souls. You cited Serbia and I have to admit, it’s a classic example, but not for the reason you cited. Music is being used in Serbia as propaganda for various hate groups, it’s the perfect medium to motivate people to commit violence against others.
Anyway, call me a cynical bastard if you want, but that’s what I believe. I don’t listen to any music recorded since about 1985, except for the Ramones, and now they’re gone too. There is a huge difference between the original punks who hated Reagan and Thatcher (which was ultimately a GOOD thing to rebel against) and the new pseudo-punks who hate everybody.

11

You are absolutley incorrect, sir. Music is by no means dead - unless you’re talking about Death Metal :slight_smile:

“Real” music has always been underground. The heyday for me was late 70s and the entire 80s but I’m not talking about Madonna or Micheal Jackson. If you are the least bit pro-active (which is easier than ever thanks to the 'net) you will find more quality music than you can possibly listen to in a lifetime. I live for Heavy Metal and most of the bands I like were never that popular in the first place. I’m sure a lot of people have no idea what I mean when I say this (with the exception of Opengrave I’m sure). Turn off your radio and pick up a 'zine or do a google search on your favorite band, sure enough you’ll find plenty of new bands with a lot to offer.

NP The Crown - Deathrace King

12

First of all, there is no “wrong” when it comes to listening to/buying music you enjoy. If you need to check for the approbation of nameless “others” before you dare enjoy a piece of music, then you’ve got serious problems.

Though I’ve not read the Strausbaugh book, I’ve read an article about it and I get the gist of his premise. Let me put my reaction to it as simply as possible:

Show me a film clip of a crowd of people having a great time at a (pick a “dinosaur” band of your choice here – Stones, Neil Young, etc. – I’ll even let you choose one I personally can’t stand) concert. Then show me a picture of some smug critic with a stick up his ass who’s so deathly afraid of having a taint of “unhipness” that he can scarely keep his eyes still in his head.

Now ask me which of the two fits my definition of “lame.”
No question, there’s plenty of music I personally don’t care for, and I’ll be happy to explain why I don’t like it if anyone asks. But I have a big, big problem with people who DEFINE themselves by the music they don’t like – and who use this as a weapon to (they imagine) establish their hip credentials.

“Nostalgia is the enemy of rock.” This is the statement of a man who is afraid to simply trust his own ears. The bottom line is, I enjoy what I enjoy…you enjoy what you enjoy. If you expect me to enjoy, or at least have some respect for, a new piece of music for the sole reason that it’s new or “rebellious” or whatever, then I’m gonna have to disappoint you – just as surely as I will if you expect me to reject music made by an older artist for the sole reason he or she is older.
I grant you that what makes all of this an issue in the first place is the fact that rock historically HAS been very much tied up with the notion of youth. So as its original fans age, we truly do enter uncharted waters.

But as someone else said, there’s no particular reason that rock has to remain the sole province of youth. I think the tent’s big enough to enclose us all. I personally have no intention of relinquishing rock’s considerable hold on me simply because I’ve reached a certain age.

13

Nostalgia may be the enemy of rock, but nostalgia gets it’s ass kicked every time by good rock, which is timeless.
My first rock concert was on Mt. Tam in the SF bay area. It was outside, in a huge natural amphi-theatre. The Doors were there and , among other things from their first album, played “Light My Fire”. A longer than long version.
That, my friends, was and still is, beautiful and classic rock. I don’t whine about the good ole’ days. But great shit then is great shit now.
Listen to what you want. Why should anyone else care. I’d prefer that you didn’t take cop killing and bitch slappin’ seriously, but the people that do that probably would do it, “music” or no music.
Rock is no respector of age.
I’m 61, if that means anything.

14

The important thing to remember about music critics is that they are the most useless form of life on earth. So you regularly get pronouncements like “Rock is dead,” (no offence, Chas E., I don’t mean to insult you by calling you a music critic) They need these sort of pronouncements in order to convince themselves that they are somehow relevant, but most other people aren’t fooled. The guy qouted in the OP sounds particularly pungeant. Listen to what you like. If someone criticizes you for it, turn up the volume until you can’t hear them anymore.

Ageless: The Doors? Playing on Mount Tamalpais? You lucky bastard. This is now number four on my list of places to go once I perfect my time machine. See you there! :stuck_out_tongue:

15

I’ve come to believe through my own experiences that people may be programmed with the right attitudes to ageing anyway and that worrying too much may be unnecessary. That seems to be the general attitude of other posters here. In a sad kind of way I remember Jackson Browne’s song Clever Innocence and the lines “you know what it’s like to never be who you wanted to be”. Because when I reached 40 I suddenly saw with crystal clear vision what I was and wasn’t and could still be and couldn’t be. It surprised me that I had been gifted with so much insight. So, I suppose I agree that in the end, it all takes care of itself.

16

Rock and roll dead? Never.

I had the radio tuned in to our classic rock station this morning as I was twisting wrenches and getting some work done on the Thunderchicken. Perhaps I will someday have her fixed up so that she can run low 12’s in the quarter and as I rocket down the steet the radio will be playing something in the way of Aerosmith, Zeppelin, or the Doors. I may just as likely be listening to Wide Mouth Mason, Collective Soul, or The Tragically Hip.

I say screw the critics and listen to whatever makes you happy. I don’t think I ever listened to music that guys my age were supposed to listen to and I turned out okay.

Chas… you are a cynical bastard. There’s has been a ton of realy good music written since '85.

17

The stuff below is only as relevant as you want it to be. I came across it on Arts and Letters Daily. It’s ridiculous in my opinion because almost everyone could say they like both classical music and pop or rock but not everything they ever heard. Just as you can like Pearl Jam but not Tina Turner you can like Bach but not Stravinsky. That’s right, isn’t it?

"Psychiatric consultant Dr Raj Persaud of Maudsley Hospital in London believes his studies of dementia patients show a link between taste and “hard-nosed intellectual function” - in other words, appreciation of classical music may require more brain power.

Persaud has observed that, as brain power diminishes in dementia patients, they sometimes go from liking classical to pop - but not the other way round."

18

Certainly in my youth I absolutely lived for music. I’m 34 years old and by 15 was gigging locally. I have played (from time to time) drums, bass, keyboards (VERY important in the mid-eighties), and now guitar. Um, and I flirted with Trumpet at age 8. I earned money in college spinning records at dances and on the local AM country station. I’ve seen what must be ten thousand bands live. My credentials are clean, I think. Everyone who predicted that I would lose interest have been proven wrong.

But in the end, as I age, I think about it differently. Perhaps more critically. And, as I do that, I see how shallow a lot of rock and roll is. I’m not necessarily saying that’s bad, just that it’s a fact. Rock and roll, as a youth-oriented music, must necessarily reflect the attitudes of youth. Sports, cars, girls, boys, anger, alientation, listlessness, energy, love and sex. These are, IMHO, the primary topics (frankly, sex should be the top one) of youth oriented music.

And that just doesn’t speak to me anymore. I don’t have to worry about wanting a car at this point…I have one. Heck, I have TWO. I’m no longer insecure about girls, I’ve been married to a wonderful one for 8 years (this month!). All of the things that make youth music viable have trouble connecting with me because I overcame the issues they present.

So, I find myself mining different sources of music. No longer just rock and roll but vintage country and bluegrass (though I find most contemporary country as banal as Britney Spears. Faith Hill is as easy on the eyes as Britney is, but she’s just as shallow.) The folk sounds of Woody Guthrie and the other music Alan Lomax recorded in the 30s. Big band and jazz. All of it can speak to me with a larger appreciation now that I’ve gained more experience and sophistication.

There will ALWAYS be music I haven’t heard. That makes the journey worth making.

As for older bands, here’s an anecdote for you. One of the kids who works for me is 23. She’s got tickets to see Madonna when she hits the MCI Arena this summer. She managed to get ahold of the set list on the web somewhere and told me how disappointed she was that Maddie wasn’t doing more of her ‘classic’ songs. I told her (perhaps too strongly) that Madonna was doing the exact right thing. A living artist shouldn’t focus on the past. If she’s released new music that should ALWAYS be the focus of the tour.

Twice I’ve had to take my mom to see the Rolling Stones on tour. Both times they had released a record prior to the tour and both times they played one (1) song from that new album while pulling the rest of the set from 30 years ago. As a counter-example I give you Rush. During the 80s and 90s they kept their commitment to their new music by playing all but one track on their latest album in each set. This began breaking down when they went from 8 songs per album to 10-12. Then, on their last tour, they billed it as ‘An Evening With Rush’, dropped the opening band and played two sets, one of older stuff and one of newer stuff. They also announced that it would be their final full scale tour. And they’ve kept that promise.

And don’t even get me started on the Who.

A proper retirement (IMHO again) for a rock and roll musician is illustrated by Chuck Berry. In his bio (which I recommend. He’s got great things to say about music, civil rights issues, the cops and innumerable other subjects. It ain’t your typical self-serving autobiography.) he says that he considers himself retired from rock and roll. He doesn’t really try to record or tour but, if someone wants to pay him $25,000 and fly him out, he’ll play 90 minutes worth of Chuck Berry music and go home. Say what you want about Chuck, he knows how to age with grace. (Um, less all the jail time.)

19

The ability to “mine other music sources” or widen your musical tastes a little bit is probably the difference between life and death for some people. Rock music has an anaesthetic quality that must have got an awful lot of people through some very bad lives. I just don’t buy that connection between youth suicide and music. Have you looked at the faces at 1000deaths.com? Why is it that people who suicide smile so much? Why do they have the happiest faces in the world? I have a (rather bizarre) theory that they possess an innate happiness (an optimist gene if you must) that is in constant conflict with the world and other people’s less ebullient natures. The world tries to enforce equilibrium and suicide results.

There’s something that no one has mentioned here - something I would like understand a lot better. It’s generation “merging”. My love of rock music differentiated me from my parents. By identifying myself with it I was identifying with another generation. That’s not the way it works anymore.

20

I’m disappointed with the current state of Rock. I think of Rock kind of the way I think about Moxie. It suprises me everytime I realize they’re still making the stuff.

It may be that rebeliousness is essential to the form, though I’m not so sure about that. The R&B that later came to be called Rock was not intended to be rebellious, it was made to be listened to by people for whom it was not controversial.

I do feel like Rock is dead, and I have a list of culprits, but when ass hits grass I’m just grumbling. I haven’t quite worked out the exact time or cause of death. But here are some speculations:

Rockologists – Those fans who grew up and decided to call themselves Rockologists seem to come largely from the late sixties through the seventies, and tend to glamorize that period. They have labeled this period classic rock' and filter all perception of Rock through the standards of this era. What came before it was the precursor, and what came after the downfall. To a Rockologist, Willie Dixon was the proto-Led Zepplin and New Wave was the corporatization of punk. Although Rock & Roll was a term co-opted out of context to begin with, and came to be applied very loosely at that, the term had cache as a label for music, and Rockologists took posession of it, giving short shrift to the music that made the term famous. These days, Elvis and Buddy Holly are regarded as country singers. It was Rockologists who declared that at Woodstock Rock came into its own as an established American art form -- which, when I'm in a cynical mood, I consider just too conveniently close to when that the last black guy on the Rock charts choked on his own puke. Classic Rock’ is Rock divorced from its black roots.

Phil Spectre – Rock & Roll took one in the gut the day Phil Spectre became a household name. “This brilliant man,” the VH1 party line goes, “changed everything when he proved you could take any four black girls and make them all sound the same.” For this, he is lauded around the world. I myself don’t think much of Mister Spectre.

Soul Music – The rise of soul music from gospel and R&B attracted a lot of black artists away from Rock & Roll at a time when the Rock audience was being lured away by white artists who were being spuriously labeled Rock. Many of the singers from the great vocal harmony groups went on to have careers in soul.

The British Invasion – Largely, the stuff was good, particularly because the British were still just now getting Chuck Berry records, and the people trying to sell Paul Anka as Rock hadn’t made it across the pond. But it was a very different sound from what had influenced it, and while a lot of the R&B singers were moving to soul, I think a lot of the country/western style rockers decided it was Hippie or Hillbilly, and most of them went Hillbilly. So they were playing honkeytonks when Rock & Roll started taking itself too seriously.

Soft Rock – You can blame James Taylor or Joni Mitchell, I don’t know. But at some point in the seventies, they started recording Rock that was all but indistinguishable from the elevator music that it was destined to become.

Anyway, that’s my take on it. I don’t think nostalgia killed rock. I think what’s left of it, only nostalgia is keeping alive. By god, my children will know who in the hell Sonny Til is.