A Post About Music, Yesterday's and Today's

Before I discuss last night's awful Yankee game, I want to talk about music, and how it now compares with what came before.

I saw this article posted on Facebook, lamenting the sound of rock and roll, and the attitude of "rock stars," today, as compared with the past, particularly the 1970s.

You can click the link to get the full article, but, in particular, the author was comparing Led Zeppelin (never one of my favorite acts) to Mumford & Sons (one of the biggest bands today, although I wouldn't know a note of their music if I heard it):

Rock Stars in the '70s: You'd travel in a big-ass jet plane with your band's logo on the side of it. You'd put out a concert film that featured fantasy sequences where you rode around on horseback, and it would NOT be pretentious, it would be AWESOME. There'd be legendary stories about hotel rooms being trashed...

Rock Stars Now: Today, if you want to be a rock star, you buy some sweaters, I guess.

He also mentioned David Bowie, saying:

Rock stars in the '70s were so huge, they could create completely different personas and their alter-egos would become rock stars too.

Bowie has been Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane, The Man Who Sold the World, The Thin White Duke, and the leader of Tin Machine -- and that's just what I can remember off the top of my head. All those personae did well at the time, and all of the music he made in those roles has held up pretty well.

Coming up with the ideas made him a genius; making it still work 40 (or, in the case of Tin Machine, 25) years later makes him an artist who knew what he wanted and knew what he was doing -- which is not the same thing as genius, but is insight, and might make you better off.

Remember when Garth Brooks tried The Life of Chris Gaines? It totally flopped. Personally, I liked the idea, mainly because he wasn't being Garth Freakin' Brooks! (I hated him because I thought he was the country equivalent of a poseur. I have since turned around, and realized his songs didn't sound so bad.) It was a great idea, but it didn't work because it was too different from what he'd been doing: Unlike Hank Williams Sr. and his "Luke the Drifter" persona, Chris Gaines was so different from Garth Brooks that the fans he already had hated it, and people who didn't previously like him (like me) had another reason to dislike him.

Take another example: Vanilla Ice. We thought he was an obnoxious prick, ripping off both Queen and black performers, and we were right. Well, Robbie Van Winkle might have gotten away with it had simply done an interview, saying, "Look, Vanilla is just a character I'm playing. It's not the real me. I'm just lampooning guys like this, white guys who want to rap but can't, think they're cool but aren't. I'm no more Vanilla Ice in real life than David Seville was really the leader of some singing chipmunks."

Then again, the Beastie Boys eventually drifted away from their "You gotta fight! For your right! To par...ty!" persona, because people didn't get that they were parodying kids like that. Same with Right Said Fred, parodying models (men and women alike) in "I'm Too Sexy." Sometimes, people think the joke is the reality.

A few years later, people praised Sacha Baron Cohen for being in character as Ali G, Borat, Bruno and Admiral General Aladeen. He got away with it, because people knew he wasn't really those guys. But Van Winkle insisted that he really was this hard guy from Miami, instead of some cushy kid from the suburbs of Dallas.

Not that Dallas doesn't have some hard streets and serious crime issues, but what the hell did he know about them? I tell people I'm from Bloomfield, which is true. It's certainly a less easy place to live than East Brunswick, where I've lived most of my life. But I don't say I came from the Newark ghetto, just a few miles away from Bloomfield -- or from the New Brunswick ghetto, just a few miles away from East Brunswick.

So it's not just that music "sucks" today, it's that it's "sucked" for a while now. It's an extension of the author's point.

But I don't totally agree with it. The best performers under age 40 today may not measure up to the ones we grew up on. On the other hand, there was a lot of crap back then, too. I saw something in SPIN magazine in 1990 or so where the author actually (Brace yourself: Poor taste is coming) praised Milli Vanilli.

He said that when the early-'90s nostalgia wave comes (any day now, I fear), you'll understand that anybody who didn't like Milli Vanilli, or Paula Abdul, or C & C Music Factory, would have been sitting in some damp Greenwich Village coffeehouse listening to folk music while everyone else was Dancing In the Street. (1964)

Riiiight. Had this same guy been a teenager in 1968, he probably would have been listening to "bubblegum music," like the Lemon Pipers ("Green Tambourine") and the Ohio Express ("Yummy, Yummy, Yummy"), instead of going to the movies and watching Monterey Pop and all the hard rock and psychedelic acts, including many who would be at Woodstock like The Who, Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix.

There's always going to be crap on the radio and in the "record stores" (man, did I just date myself by using that term), and there's always going to be good stuff.

I watched the Grammys a few years ago, and I was prepared to not like many of the performers. I saw Bruno Mars, and figured this was just a gay kid trying to look like Elvis. I was wrong: He was fantastic (and, apparently, straight). I saw Nicki Minaj, and figured this was a girl trying to be the next step after Lil' Kim, or a black version of Lady Gaga. I was right, and she was horrible, making those two look like geniuses (genii?) by comparison.

That was also the night when Pink did the harness thing and didn't miss a note, showing she was as good as any female vocalist ever.

There's always going to be great performers, but that usually gets followed by a bunch of second-and-third-raters copying them. I couldn't stand Nirvana, and so many acts tried to copy them and looked both stupid and contagious. I did like Alanis Morissette, but her fellow Franco-Ontarian Avril Lavigne fell short, and she's still the best of the Alanis wannabes.

Too many singers are still trying to be Britney Spears, who's still trying to be Madonna, who, on her best day (which is now long past), couldn't touch Cher.

On the other hand, I think Beyonce is the one singer now who approaches Cher -- or Tina Turner, for that matter -- for a combination of great sound and great show. And, as she said a few weeks ago on Twitter, Cher agrees. High praise, indeed.

For every Elvis, there were a few Pat Boones. For every Beatles, there were a dozen Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas. For every Who, there were a bunch of Ohio Expresses. For every Elton John, Billy Joel, Harry Chapin, etc., the early-to-mid-'70s had a slew of one-hit-wonders with awful story-songs that often did better ("The Night Chicago Died," "Timothy," "Run Joey Run").

For every Judas Priest, there were a few Quiet Riots. For every Dire Straits, there were a hundred Glass Tigers. For every Josh Groban who can actually sing superbly well, there's a bunch of Biebers with no Direction, thinking they're acting like a great classic rock band, but actually acting like idiots.

There's always going to be crap. But, eventually, the cream (if not necessarily a group with someone as talented as Eric Clapton in it) will rise to the top. So, take heart: The next great singer or band might be on the way up right now, and he, or she, or they, will win out in the end.

How Old Are You Now? Music Edition

In a few weeks, I'll be 42 years old. That seems ancient. But is it?

In 1955, Boyd Bennett & the Rockets had a hit with "Seventeen." This would make her 73 years old today.

In 1958, Chuck Berry had a hit with "Sweet Little Sixteen." That same year, Johnny Maestro & the Crests had "Sixteen Candles." This would make both girls now 71.

In 1959, Sam Cooke sang "Only Sixteen," in which he played a kid who said that he and his then-girlfriend were that age a year ago. This would make both characters 71 as well.

In 1960, Johnny Burnette had a hit with "You're Sixteen." ("You're sixteen, you're beautiful, and you're mine.") This would make her 67. In 1973, Ringo Starr covered the song -- his version's girl would now be 54.

In 1961, Neil Sedaka sang "Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen." This would make her now 66.

In 1963, Chuck Berry wrote "Memphis," in which a man tells a long-distance phone operator to "get in touch with my Marie." At the end of the song, we find out that "Marie is only six years old" and is his daughter, taken away by his estranged wife -- or perhaps his sister, and the singer is a little boy now living with "my uncle"; either way, Marie is not his girlfriend. Johnny Rivers had a much bigger hit with the song the next year. If Marie was 6 in 1963, she's 54 now.

In 1963, in the Beatles' song "I Saw Her Standing There," Paul McCartney sang, "Well, she was just 17, you know what I mean!" Assuming that this had just happened, she would now be 65.

In 1970, Alice Cooper had a hit with "I'm Eighteen." Which means the character he played in the song is now 59. Alice, real name Vincent Furnier, is 63.

In 1971, in her song "Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves," Cher sang, "I was 16, he was 21." Assuming that the events in the song had just happened (probably hadn't), she's now 56, he's 61.

In 1975, Harry Chapin released a song titled "She Is Always Seventeen." The song begins with John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Address in 1961. If she was 17 then, that means she's 67 now.

In 1976, in his song "Rock and Roll Never Forgets," Bob Seger sang, "Well, now Sweet Sixteen's turning 31." Which means she's now 66. This would match Seger's actual age.

In 1977, in his song "Running On Empty," Jackson Browne sang, "In '65, I was 17" and, "In '69, I was 21." This is true: He was born in 1948. Which means he's now 63.

In 1977, KISS had a hit song titled "Christine Sixteen." Which means she's now 50.

In 1983, the Stray Cats had a hit song titled "She's Sexy & 17." Which means she's now 45.

Probably the best-known song in which a character's age is mentioned in the lyrics, but not the title, is "It Was a Very Good Year," first recorded by the Kingston Trio in 1961, with the best-known version being the one in 1965 by Frank Sinatra.

In the song, the singer remembers the very good years he had when he was 17, 21 and 35. But the singer does not specifically say how old he is now, only that, "Now, the days are short. I'm in the autumn of the year." (Sinatra titled the album for which he recorded it September of My Years.)

Frank Sinatra was born on December 12, 1915. So if he's playing himself in the song...

* He was 17 for nearly all of 1933. I seriously doubt that this Depression year was a good year for an Italian teenage boy in Hoboken, New Jersey.

* He was 21 for nearly all of 1937. It might have been better, but he didn't become famous as a singer until 1940 or so.

* He was 35 for nearly all of 1951. That was actually a horrible year for Sinatra: His 2nd wife, the fabulous (in more ways than one) actress Ava Gardner, left him, and his career was going badly. He began to lose his voice due to psychosomatic stress.

But the days did not turn out to be short for him, at least not at that point. September of My Years actually boosted his career, and at 50 he became bigger than ever before. He continued to perform before adoring crowds until 1994, when his health started to fail. He died on May 14, 1998, age 82.

If you were 13 and screaming over Sinatra outside the Paramount Theater in Times Square in 1944, you're now 80.

If you were 13 and screaming over Elvis Presley when he went national in 1956, you're now 68.

If you were 13 when the Beatles arrived in America in early 1964 (if so, surely, you were screaming over them), you're now 60 or 61.

And, if, like me, you were 13 in 1983 when Michael Jackson changed from Motown kid to an Elvis-sized phenomenon in his own right, you're now 42.

*

For me, 17, 1987, was a very good year -- until the end; 21, 1991, had its good moments, but also some dreadful ones; 35, 2005, was, in some ways, the best year of my life, but in some aspects (sports, for example) it was not a year I would care to repeat.

42? According to Douglas Adams, in his Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, 42 is "the answer to life, the universe and everything."

It's also the only uniform number retired for all of baseball, for Jackie Robinson.

In the original, British, soccer-themed version of Fever Pitch, the climactic scene revolves around the final game of the 1989 Football League season, in which London-based Arsenal Football Club had to defeat Liverpool Football Club by 2 goals in order for the tiebreakers to fall into place and give them the title. This at a time when they hadn't won at Anfield, Liverpool's home ground, by any score in 15 years.

When the game reaches halftime scoreless, Steve (played by Mark Strong) says, "We're doing okay, aren't we?"

Paul (Colin Firth): "Well, what's the use of 'okay'? We might as well be losing 8-0!"

Steve: "I don't think that's really true, Paul. I'd say, if you want to win a game 2-0, you've got a much better chance if it's 0-0 (pronounced "nil-nil") at halftime than if you're 8 goals down. You see where I'm coming from?"

Paul: "You're living in cloud-cuckoo-land! Join the real world!"

Steve: "In the real world, it's 0-0 at halftime!"

Paul: "Might as well be 8-0."

Steve: "Jesus, Paul! You need medical help! You've got some kind of disease that turns people into miserable bastards!"

42 times 2 = 84. These days, it's hardly surprising for a man to live to be 84 years old. Unless he's lived his life like a cross between Evel Knievel, Charlie Sheen and a Mob hitman.

No, life isn't great for me. But it's been considerably worse. I haven't had a lot of offense, but I haven't allowed too many goals, either.

Maybe my life really is "nil-nil at halftime."

And Arsenal did win that game, 2-0, and win the title. If they could do it...