As I listened to The Who's "Quadrophenia,"
savoring every massive bass lick by John Entwistle, I got to thinking about a few friends who have on
several occasions helped precipitate a twitch by offering up comments like,
"I won't listen to anything after The Who Sell Out," or, "I gave
up after Zeppelin II," or, "Bowie lost me after Hunky Dory." A real favorite was an old customer who claimed to hate Bruce Springsteen and would recite this mantra every time he happened to be in the shop while Bruce was on the stereo.
"I wasn't born in Jersey. I didn't work in a factory. I don't like cars. I don't like the beach." Then he'd buy an Otis Redding CD and I'd ask, "Were you born in Georgia? Are you black? Were you ever in a plane crash?"
At
first, I thought it was generational, as most of the comments came from people
10-15 years older than I was. This unpleasant parade of "been there/done
thats" made little sense to me, and mostly just fired me up.
While I was happy for those
friends who got to see the Stones with Brian Jones, or any number of shows at the
Fillmore, it didn't quite add up to me, that these music lovers who I
respected, could toss off Zeppelin's "Physical Graffiti" or the
Stones' "Black & Blue," just because...well... it mattered more
THEN. What was it they weren't hearing, or dubiously choosing not to hear in
such spectacular records as "Houses Of The Holy," or "The Who By
Numbers?" Was I hearing different records because my first show at the
Academy Of Music in New York was after they changed the name of the place to
The Palladium? Why would you love the early records of a band, only to then not
have any interest in the later records? It's probably not about "liking" versus "not liking" at all, and most likely has little to do with the music. It's got to be something deeper.
As another friend pointed out, there are just as many who are 15 years
younger, who possess that same thinking, opting for only the first three
"good" R.E.M. albums, dismissing work such as "Out Of Time"
and "Automatic For The People," as if they were tossing away mealy
tomatoes.
I have a buddy in a slightly famous band, a few years older than me, who I can
always count on to point out how everything sucks except for the few things he
loved when he was 16. The first two Cheap Trick albums, the first two Zeppelin
albums, and little beyond. Whatever you bring to the table is a joke to him
because it cannot compare to the first two Aerosmith albums, or the time before
bands ever learned to play, write, and produce. (You know, like those crazed
Replacements fans who loved how they'd show up drunk for their gigs, play out
of tune, and barely get through any songs. Rock and roll? Hey, I love The Replacements. I just don't like fuck-ups.)
One night shift at the shop, a friend stopped in for some music and a good chat. A few of us, staff and customers, just happened to be discussing favorite concerts, you know, the usual record store fare. I offered up Elvis Costello's five night run on Broadway in 1986 and Rickie Lee Jones at Pier 84 in 1982, for starters. One customer mentioned a Talking Heads show from 1980. My friend said, "Six years ago, in a small pub outside of Dublin, I saw these two 80 year old guys, one playing a bodhran and one playing a tin whistle, seriously the best night of music I have ever seen." He was serious. I laughed in his face. It's not that I didn't believe he truly loved that experience. It was his unwillingness to play the game. It's as if he was incapable of saying something relatable.
A similar situation happened at a job 15 years earlier, where on a slow holiday weekend, we all sat around with nothing to do and discussed our favorite movies while getting drunk on tall boys. "Citizen Kane." "Rear Window." "The Godfather." Then, Jay from Green Bay said, "The Return Of Martin Guerre."
"WRONG!"
He asked me if I had seen it. I had and I loved it. But if you're discussing all time favorite movies in 1983, you can't pick a movie from 1982. You just can't without me thinking you are full of shit, or trying too hard.
We are all full of shit. Some more than others. But no one is off the hook.
Another guy is an amazing
music loving guitar player who's about 23 and LOVES the post-makeup era of
Kiss. He doesn't care that it's the part of their career where the rest of us
had walked away. It's where he came in, so it's the era that feels like his own
pure joy of discovery, before he got old and cynical, or knew that hack
songwriters were crafting calculated hits for a floundering band. Shorn of
context, he sees "Lick It Up" as classic Kiss, for the joy of his
discovery it evokes. I see Gene Simmons acting in "Runaway." (I'd
like to add, I don't understand the people who love The Ramones but show such vitriol for Kiss. They both play excellent, boneheaded rock and roll. Lighten
up.)
No one would see the sense in only wanting writers who hadn't learned to write,
or architects whose buildings were based only on their earliest ideas. I think
musicians may be exciting in their first years, and as the cliche goes, they
have had their whole life to write their first album's songs. Elvis Costello is
exciting on his first albums, but I'd argue that you miss out if you never even
listen to the mature writing of his later work. I don't trust people who claim
they love music but refuse to embrace Costello's work with Burt Bacharach or his most recent trifecta of brilliant albums, "Hey Clockface," 'Look Now," and "The Boy Named if," simply because they don't rock like "Pump It Up." Or worse, dismissing all Elvis once Bruce Thomas got sacked.
I think it's often false and empty to ascribe your own guesses on the
motivation for people disagreeing with you about works of art. Sadly, I find
myself doing that very thing, more often than I'd care to admit. But if I
had to try to guess, I always felt like it's that person's own innocence and
unjaded reaction to those early formative musical impacts that they fetishize,
and they cannot allow themselves to like or even be open to the possibility of
liking anything new, or anything that doesn't fit into that pre-conceived
narrative they see themselves in.
I know I'm supposed to feel obligated to like Bon Iver, but I don't. I do feel
obligated to go back and try again after each new 5 star review. To decide that
nothing after the Stones' "Exile" or The Who "Sell Out" is worth listening to in a world where the alternative is
being force-fed Bon Iver or Sabrina Carpenter, or listening to Zeppelin I and II for the rest of
your life because nothing else is as pure, is losing a golden opportunity. To
me, "Some Girls" is a demonstrably better album than any Bon Iver
CD, but because it came out after we collectively decided the Stones had grown
tired, we'd rather close our ears to its possibilities and circle our wagons
around the music of our youth, secure in the feeling of innocence and sense
memory it provides.
It's hard to not react
strongly when hit with such cynicism towards anything we love, but what
confounds me is how it never seems rational. One friend continues to show disgust for the same two or three artists he knows I love by spouting the exact pre-written insults he first used on me 30 years ago, and on others 50 years ago, while not actually listening to the music made by these artists with any depth or concentration since 1972. Or the friend who can't stand the first Fountains Of Wayne album, but loves their
follow-up as if it was a completely different band. Or the friend who has taken a stand against a universally beloved band based on one less than ideal experience 35 years ago, which again, is based on nothing since. My friend has basically climbed too long and too high on the Everest of "I don't like that band" that it might seem impossible for him to head back down and say, "Alright, I'll give that band a chance." They don't owe me
an explanation, but boy, somedays, I'd sure like one. I've always felt that
disliking something because it's popular is actually slightly worse than liking
something because it IS popular. It's more trendy, and seems even more based in
fear, and therefore fake. This could explain Bon Iver's popularity. It may owe
more to wanting to belong, than to actually enjoying the music. (I'm talking to
you too, Fleet Foxes.)
Another friend is so laughably pompous and contrary you could actually hear his bones break when he proclaims that The Beatles and the Rolling Stones are boring, or that Brian Wilson is overrated. Then, as a bonus gift, he pontificates over the brilliance of James Chance & The Contortions and Alan Vega. Stop trying so damn hard! There's nothing wrong with being good at your instrument, or actually having the ability to create memorable pop music. Lo-fi shouldn't be a badge of honor. The Velvet Underground did it and perfected it. That shouldn't be license to deliberately not try. Wear a fucking orange t-shirt once in a while.
In the 1980 Louis Malle film "Atlantic City," written by John Guare, Burt Lancaster's character
says to the Robert Joy character, a young man who'd just seen the ocean for the first time, "It used
to be really something. You shoulda seen the Atlantic Ocean in those
days." That's a great actor in a great movie by a great director,
late in their careers, evoking that feeling, somewhere beyond nostalgia, in
which we all feel the nagging feeling that something has slipped away from the
world, something we seemed to see so clearly in our youth, and I think that
something was our own ability to each unabashedly feel moved by these pieces of
art that made us who we are. They made us feel deeply then, and they allow us
to access those deep feelings today, by calling them back up within us in a
song, a movie, or a band before they learned to disappoint us. But I
could be wrong. I saw "Atlantic City" in a theater when it came out in 1980. Man, you shoulda
seen movies in those days.
