Does anyone over 60 really still care about pop music?
Popular music usually contains a myth to go along with the musician. It’s the label’s way of selling records, tapes, CD’s, streaming…and whatever might be next. Think of your favorite artists and you will certainly come up with bits and pieces about them that you admire. You will also realize that the music ‘speaks to you’, partly because of your relationship to the musician.
Very often this trend works in reverse. There are musicians you simply don’t like and will not even give the music more than a cursory listen. We all have both sides of that coin. In the latter case I have been on the fence about a musician, writing him off as someone I had no interest in listening to, and quite honestly I never really did. This musician is John Mellencamp.
I read somewhere recently that John was about to issue a new album and the reviewer thought it was ‘damn good’. “So what”, I thought…
I am not a rock star nor have I ever been one. Therefore, I know next to nothing about being a rock star. I imagine it can become quit addicting. I think about this when I see bands from my era, the 1960’s, still dancing about in spandex tights and silk shirts open to the navel with a phalanx of chains hanging across their chicken-like chests. Sad. Certainly they have enough money, fame, and fortune from their younger incarnations to last a life time.
If they are indeed true musicians why not progress from stadium shows to smaller more intimate settings where their musicianship can be admired in a more conducive setting. If they are not truly musicians, then why not sit quietly in your castle and finish your eleventh joint of the day. No one cares, and certainly no one will hold it against you. {The joints, not the castle!}
It’s time to move away from the feeding trough and let some new customers in. Bring on the new music, the new painting, the new dance. Push that rock up the hill, don’t follow it lazily downhill.
The 70’s band Arrowsmith has a Vegas deal, Mick Jagger still wears his 1971 spandex and even the genius of my generation, Bob Dylan, is playing over 100 gigs a year. Although in Dylan’s case who knows what he’s thinking, which in my opinion is what makes him so great. (He always gets a pass from me. Sorry.)
The Stones are a great blues band. How great would it be to see them in a smaller venue doing original and reworked blues tunes, while wearing ‘man clothing’.
Arrowsmith is a true rock and roll band and no one who listens to their tunes can deny that. But please, Steve Tyler, write something new and great, let us see what a pop star at 76 really can still do. Have you still got the chops?
For those of us growing up in the 60’s, “derivative” is a dirty word. Create new work, don’t repackage the old stuff. If you haven’t got the goods, stop… sit back, let your tunes payoff on some arcane 70’s radio station, collect your royalties and enjoy the afternoon. Most of us wish we were so lucky.
Oh, and getting back to John Mellencamp, reading the article I now find out that he is a righteous guy, lives right, backs up what he says, and in general supports the same causes I do…. Therefore, I have promised myself to buy his next album….Hope I don’t regret it.
