You Can Stop Rock and Roll!

I don't know how many people with whom I've chatted on the subject of music, but it's in the manys. Almost every one of them has the following characteristic: He/she is absolutely certain that the music that was being played while he/she was in high school and college--roughly about age thirteen to, oh, maybe twenty-five--was the best music ever.

I don't think I know (or have known) more than four or five individuals that like popular music that don't fit the above description.

I grew up during the very beginnings of rock & roll. My early favorites were (and still are, sort of....) Elvis Presley, Eddie Cochran, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, the Beach Boys, and many others in that period.

As time passed and rock & roll grew and fleshed out, rather than remaining stuck in the "American Graffiti" era, I started listening to the music of the "Hippie" era. Many of them were hard to listen to, but I liked (and still like) Buffalo Springfield, the Beatles, Cream, and a few others.

I listened to Heavy metal, New Wave and Punk (a little). I was prompted by a friend to revisit classical music, then I spent some time looking for the roots of rock, which caused me to listen to blues, jazz, big bands and even back to Cole Porter and Scott Joplin.

I'm not stuck in the fifties.

I don't like most of the music they're playing today. Maybe I ought to say I like the music of the twentieth century.

There are a lot of "classic rock" stations on the radio. They play the same tunes they played ten years ago. Almost without exception.

There are a couple of stations that play current pop and what passes for rock (for some), but if I hear one more pop millionaire singing, no, whining plaintively about how lonely he/she is, I'm gonna swear off radios (I probably won't).

Rap? Not on a bet. I kind of liked Tone Loc and a couple of others, but it seems as though more recent rappers seem to have reverted to a form of prehistoric savagery.

I've been listening to more classical music lately. I find I like Strauss waltzes. I like Mozart and Beethoven. If I knew more about classical, I could name more. I'm learning.

After many years of staying away from country music (music for dumb people), I've actually started to listen to country some. It doesn't any longer seem to be all of that "I Got A Duck Sittin' On My Hand And I'm Feelin' Down" stuff. It actually seems like a sort of light rock that you can understand the lyrics, sung by nice-looking people whose parents taught them how to dress. Oh, crap! I've just proved that I'm getting old (dammit)!

Well, this has been a fairly long, rambling entry, signifying I'm not sure what, but I've put too much into it to delete it. The point is, (yes, I did start with a point in mind) if you like music, there's way too much of it to allow yourself to become stuck in a single decade. Some bit of every genre is really good, and the rest is mediocre to lousy; it becomes the task of each of us to make the choices.

They've killed Freedom! Those bastards!

Warm regards,
Col. Hogan