Someone in comments the other day asked what was playing on WTAM FM. Well, yesterday during my errands, the little music gizmo served up:
- "If I Had A Gun" -The Dead Milkmen
- "Ocean Size" -Jane's Addiction
- "Fuckin With My Head (Mountain Dew Rock)" -Beck
- "Untogether" -Belly
- "Yeah, Yeah, Yeah" -Uncle Kracker
The Uncle Kracker track saved me from
TheIrritableArchitect's dire prediction of
"Taking a wild-assed guess here, but I'd say most anything after about '95 or so is too, um, errr, youthful for her to get."
...although it's disturbing to think that
Double Wide is as old now as
Physical Graffiti was when I was in high school, and freaky Perry Farrell and
Nothing's Shocking is as far back in time from the present as the mop-topped Beatles on Ed Sullivan were from my senior year.
21 comments:
Well, at least WTAM is better than listening to NPR all day.
(But how do you know how to worship The One if you don't listen to NPR?)
Shootin' Buddy
Yeah, nothing like looking up the age of songs to make you feel old. I had already been divorced a few years when "Never gonna give you up" was released, I remember hating it on all the radio stations, and now the song is old enough to drink, in all 50 states.
I haven't checked, but are classic rock stations playing "Had A Dad"?
So that's why people look at me weird when I wear my jacket with the "Nothing's Shocking" patch on it... they just don't know.
Then again I get the same looks blasting and singing to Oingo Boingo while driving.
Maybe it's me...
"Gunpowder and Lead" by Miranda Lambert
I don't know who half these people are.
*runs away grinning*
Ha!
Don't worry Tam, I have the same affliction, can't stand all this modern pop bullshit that's the rage these days.
I guess that means we're getting old!
Oh, and Jane's Nothing Shocking is absolutely one of the top driving albums I've ever heard.
wv: comates. Yes, shortly, I'm sure
The classic rock station here in PDX plays Guns and Roses, and Metalica. Which REALLY causes my head to hurt.
Then I listen to the stuff the neighborhood kids are listening to--rehashes of disco stuff, and I tell them that I was trying not to listen to that stuff when I was their age.
It is kinda fun being the "old curmudgeon" though.
And yet, Miles Davis' "Solea" still shows the old heroin addict was a musical genius. The Monk is still Monk, and Coltrane has convinced generations that there's none better on soprano sax. Don't even try.
Yet Miles Davis enjoyed playing horn with the Hip Hop crowd, and swing dancing is hot with 20-somethings. And many of the 20-somethings have no idea that their "latest, greatest," was done before. By 20-somethings in WWII! Those ex-20-somethings are now in their late 80's and 90's.
An extreme example was back in the '90's, when 20-somethings were clubbing to Gregorian chant - in church Latin, no less.
"An extreme example was back in the '90's, when 20-somethings were clubbing to Gregorian chant - in church Latin, no less."
I had totally forgotten about that fad.
OTOH, that's how I discovered Enigma, which is great roadtrip music, so I can't complain.
You're making me feel old. I was just thinking when you mentioned "Where The Streets Have No Name" yesterday, that album came out 22 years ago.
Since grundge got to be mainstream in the early-to-mid '90s, it always seems to me that every song I hear on the radio is too busy. Too over-played. Too much instrument, playing no melody, just a drone in the background that never leaves a quarter note of silence.
To my tinitis-ridden ears, I can't parse out the music from noise. :( That's a definition, I suppose, of being too old, isn't it?
Then, too, some of the newer stuff that I can't help but kinda like these days has lyrics that I would defy ANYONE to understand.
Matt: I count "Backyard Dog" under a strange phenomenon I've discovered for myself- rap/hiphop in a foreign language suddenly becomes listenable to me, even though I hate almost all of it in English. I figure that if I can't understand what moron thug thing they're saying, then I can just enjoy the vocals as one more track in a rhythmic, listenable "instrumental" piece.
Anyway, almost all top forty stuff tends to fall under sturgeon's law by definition, since top-charting songs are lowest-common-denominator. Most of what we think of as the "good stuff" from a previous decade is that ten percent, the rest long forgotten unless it was egregiously earwormy. It's not that each generation's taste is progressively worse so much as only the decent from the previous one has been preserved...
Based on the things I've seen that you do like, I'd suggest checking out the "Horrorpops". The song that got me hooked on them initially was "Walk Like a Zombie".
If it's any consolation. I've been doing the opposite. Most of my digital collection was made up of more recent stuff. Now I'm going back and getting digital versions of all the stuff I had on cassette for years.
Although... modern remixes do have hidden gems.
Remember a bunch of kids on the corner listening to some rap. I stopped and listened for a moment, then nearly hurt myself from laughing. The underlying music was the theme from Knight Rider (the TV show). They had no clue.
I wonder if it's bad, Tam, that I don't recognize a single song from your list. Or...a single band.
'Course, my pop music elevator stopped going to the top around the time the Beatles broke up.
A year or so ago I was in a situation where I had to catch rides to town with my neighbors' teenage son for a couple of weeks. At one point, driven beyond manners by the sounds coming from his ipod, I asked, "Do all bands scream incoherently now? Have decipherable lyrics actually been banned outright?" Because, you know, I'm always being blindsided by new laws I fail to notice until I run afoul of them. I'd have been happier if he'd just looked disgusted and said, "Yeah, all screaming all the time now." Instead he kindly tried to explain the different kinds of screams, as it seems they actually have categories for them. Once home, with shaking hands I rummaged around for a Led Zeppelin CD...
welcome to the world of getting old! I LIKE good music but have heard very little of it from todays modern music. So welcome to the old age pensioners radio station WTAM.
Today, I found myself walking around Fred Meyers, singing along to the muzak: Jethro Tull's "Bungle In The Jungle."
That reminds me of the last night I spent with Tanya in Boston. It was 1995 and she and I could no longer come to terms with the distance. We were as of that moment, as with now, untogether. It was also the first time I had ever taken public transit as it was my only option since she wasn't going to drive me to the Royal Sonesta and I sure as hell wasn't going to walk the four miles back from Fort Apache. When LSFU came out I couldn't listen to it for about a year. Now I can't stop listening to it since it reminds me of so many good times.
Yesterday, I pulled out a Stone Roses CD I bought new back in '89. As I was listening to it, I off-handedly wondered if today's Emos would like the song "I wanna be adored," when I realized the song is older than they are.
Oof. No wonder they like such crappy music these days - they weren't alive when the good stuff came out!
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