"The past is a foreign country."
Opening words of the novel The Go Between by L.P. Hartley, 1953
I was at the sign shop arranging tor them to fabricate this sign for the road in front of my vineyard.
There were two people at the counter. One was writing up my order, the other, a young woman of about 20, appeared idle, listening to the country music playing in the background. I asked her if listening to country music all day was a nuisance. She said she ignored it.
I said it was too bad they didn't play Golden Oldies, music like The Mamas and the Papas.
She took on a quizzical look. "I've never heard of them."
What a shame, I thought. So deprived. She didn't know The Mamas and the Papas. It is like learning someone of 20 had never tasted ice cream.
I asked, "Have you heard of the Beatles?" She said yes.
"Have you heard of The Beach Boys? The song Good Vibrations?" She said she thought so but did so in a way that made me think the real answer was "no." She was being polite.
I said she might give them a try.
I said I was going to go home and listen to a current song, something she liked. It was only fair, since I suggested one. She brightened and suggested I listen to Pray, by Jessie Murph. I wrote it down. Here it is, the official music video, on YouTube. Two minutes, 21 seconds:
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| https://youtu.be/TJjc94NMmkk?si=o16yIQb4bQHpaAh- |
It's about melancholy, heartache, and drugs. Some of the songs of the 1960s had those themes, but this is darker than the songs I remember. I would never intentionally listen to this, but others do. Just this version of the song, one of several on YouTube, has been viewed 20 million times.
California Dreamin', Monday, Monday, and Go Where You Wanna Go were new and on the radio 60 years ago. Sixty years is a foreign land.
Sixty years prior to my youth brings us back to about 1905. It was the era of gramophones. Yankee Doodle Dandy and Give My Regards to Broadway were both popular in 1905. They have been performed repeatedly over the 120 years, with modern instrumentation and artists. They are the rare songs that have become "standards." Most songs had their era and are frozen in time, with their themes, their instrumentation, their audio technology, and their overall "sound." They would seem like fossils from a long-past era. Here is how Regards to Broadway would have sounded in 1905, sung by Al Jolson:
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| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjrd_wxMni4 |
I would have considered this hopelessly old-fashioned. If an elderly, chatty person had told me in 1967 that I should be sure to check out Al Jolson's great song, I hope I would have been polite and would have nodded agreeably.
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8 comments:
The late 50's and all of the 60's and the early 70's were the best music. After that, not much new. Today's music is awful, unless it's a good jazz version. Jazz is the best music ever invented. County the worst. I don't want to hear about some teenage girl wailing about her boyfriend going over a bridge into the creek up yonder.
As for the 1950s, try Jody Reynolds' Endless Sleep. It's on You Tube. I heard a good local musician, who is now deceased, refer to it as the quaalude national anthem. Quaaludes came later; drugs weren't popular when Endless Sleep came out. But you'll get the point. The drug thing got going around the time of the Mamas and Papas; the country isn't better for that.
Al Jolson was known as the “king of blackface” and one of his signature songs was “My Mammy.” Times change, fortunately. Old men complaining about the younger generation’s music is pretty much a cliché. It isn’t just kids nowadays who don’t appreciate the Beach Boys or Beatles – my parents didn’t either.
I think the ‘60s and early ‘70s had a lot of memorable music, but was it the music or my youth that made it seem so great? I remember first hearing Crosby, Stills and Nash in the supermarket and thinking that when they start playing Jimi Hendrix, I’ll know I’ve lived too long. Not long ago in Food-4-Less, “The Wind Cries Mary” came over the speakers. Oh well.
It was around 1973. I would have been in my mid 20s. I was the keyboard player in a very good amateur rock band. We were all about the same age.
It was a sunny Sunday afternoon, and I was sitting on the deck of the drummer‘s house with the drummer, his wife (our lead singer), and a few other friends.
The drummer’s 13-year-old daughter and two of her friends showed up all of a sudden to ask us a question:
“Was Paul McCartney in some other group before he was in Wings?”
Who knew we could feel that old when we were that young?
I have a theory: your music sensors snap open when you hit puberty. They stay open for about 20 years, and then they snap shut. The music from that period is the music you love.
Yeh, I am really old, - yes, I love the Beatles, but I grew up on Brahms and Bach. And Opera on Saturday morning from the Met.
I agree with Michael about puberty and all but I'm lucky enough to have a young daughter who pretty much keeps me informed of more recent tunes, and many are just excellent. She's helped me keep listening and (without providing links) I urge all Peter's aging (pre-1960) readers to check out the following: Hazlett (My Skin); Brittany Howard (Stay High); Ed Sheeran (Spark); Yo La Tengo (One PM Again); Rodney Crowell (Triage); Avicii (Wake Me Up); Arcade Fire (Rebellion); Keith Urban (Somewhere In My Car); and Alice Boman (Waiting). Just as excellent and just as well liked as in my hormone-driven youth. It's a great time for music but as always one has to search and find.
I’ll say that I suspect the shop girl’ musical taste is perhaps not as developed of many her age. There’s good new music out there but it takes time and dedication to find. I think every generation thinks the currents’ music is junk. My dad thought the Stones were just noise and my grandmother was certain the Led Zeppelin was “devil music”. Just FYI, Jesse Murph is Jelly Roll’s sister. That’s evidence enough for me that she’s just another of the record companies’ manufactured products (just like the Monkees!) and not an actual sustainable artist. As an antidote, may I recommend Kishi Bashi, Lord Huron and Jason Isbell?
We generally like the music that our friends like (it’s what helps define the friendships) Typically the friends we had when we were young. Although when I relisten to the lyrics to the remastered versions of the from my youth, they frankly sound shallow and self-absorbed, but harmless. What troubles me about lyrics now is as Peter says, how dark and melancholy they are. Or Narco rap and cartel rap that celebrates the darkest of mobster life. Hugely popular even among young white men. Music is the language of culture. As it goes, we go.
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