this isn’t going to be a review. not of any particular band or incredible new song anyway. im just in one of those reminiscing moods where you think back and see a lot of things you missed along the way. no one does it intentionally. we just seldom understand the significance of the times we’ve living in.
we’re just busy living in them.
for example – the 70s were far too short to me. i got to live through all of that decade as i was closing in on 15 when the 80s took over. you don’t think you can pack too much into 15 years but it’s amazing how many of those times i do in fact remember. you know, remember living in them but not what those times would come to mean to me later in life.
the music, for one. wow. you had acid to yacht rock and about everything in between. maybe the music had to be so bad ass at the time because they came on 8 tracks and needed to make up for that distortion in technology. who else remembers having to shove paper in the side to keep the 8-track in place? or in the middle of singing your lungs how and having a pause come along to jump tracks? in the end, it was just another part of the experience you look back on to make you smile.
music sure has a way of doing that to us, huh?
now, we had disco also. while some may want to issue penalty points for that, it’s still a strong part of what defined the times. are the bee gees a guilty pleasure or simply that good? i tend to go with both. switzerland here, huh?
along with great music, we were fearless! the toys we had in the 70s would terrorize most kids today. that or they’d learn to stop doing stupid shit with them or you’ll get hurt. you know, yard darts; glass balls on a string you fling back and forth at high speed, those things. who the hell thought of the monoshock bike anyway?
thank you, whoever did it. simply loved mine.
we didn’t realize at the time how…unguarded our lives were. but that’s what made it so amazing and we didn’t understand that til later in life. you know, as the world changed around us; evolving but maybe not in the best of ways. yea, things hurt you, physically or emotionally. but we had some bad ass music to get us through it. our “wonder years” so to speak. we didn’t know at the time how wonderful they were.
we were just busy living in them.
i mentioned yacht rock a bit ago and i think that was the “bridge” to the 80s. parachute pants, pat benatar and the movie heavy metal defined maybe more than they should have. but pat still tours today and face it, you can’t say SNOWTIME in a room of friends and have someone not go “oh wow, good nyborg!” references made in the past carry much of todays cultural weight. while that makes me proud of being alive in those times, it makes me sad for those who seem to live in a repeat scenario.
you see, so much of the music and references we hear today came from these times. The 90s were the start of the shift where the fun came out and something changed. it got more serious, so to speak. the music today simply isn’t the same. is it? or are we simply living in a different time in our lives so everything changes in how we see it? how we process it? can i claim switzerland and say “both” again?
today, music is a mixed bag of whatever you want it to be. there is no driving force behind it like there used to be for radio, tours and letting us know what the next cool thing was. “rock” can be anything from what it used to be to some jacked up folk punk emo lets sing like an aged grandmother with a lisp.
i don’t get it. i certainly don’t listen to it. did i become my father where this generations music doesn’t make any sense and i keep putting in slim whitman? maybe, but i don’t think so. i could well be wrong but hollywood and music sure does seem to rely on these times for continued survival.
while living in a “woke” generation may give people something to be “socially proud of” it sure doesn’t seem to be creating an open society where people can have fun for the sake of fun. so these times we live in today, how will someone growing into their own look back on them? will music and movies catering to this “woke” culture become the classics they look fondly upon, or collect dust on the cloud server?
in the end, things change. because of time or because we grow in time and view things differently; they change. better or worse i suppose is as many things – a matter of perspective. memories grow and provide those subtle differences that make one stand out over another. but rest assured, the times we are living in play a huge role in the eventual role our memories take us.
maybe i’m jaded, but i sure do miss those simpler times where we were too busy living to be so judgemental. may we one day find that road again.
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