Songs of my youth: Golden oldies … or not |
Having an 11-year-old daughter has rekindled my interest in the music I listened to at that age, what has come to be called "classic rock" (after having spent roughly the past 40 years or so listening to jazz).
The thought occurs that riding around in the Jeep with her with the likes of Fleetwood Mac, Van Morrison and Joni Mitchell playing might wean her away from the bubble-gum ditties of Taylor Swift, all of whose songs seem to sound like variations of the same three.
This re-immersion in the music of my youth also led to a discussion with a knowledgeable friend about who we thought was still worth listening to and who wasn't. During that discussion we quickly agreed on performers that might have produced some worthwhile songs here or there, maybe even a decent album or two, but clearly fit into the overrated category, including:
KISS. I still don't think these guys knew how to play their instruments. Their being honored last year by the Kennedy Center was even worse than Donald Trump slapping his name on it.
Black Sabbath. Turgid and every bit as bad as critics at the time said they were. That the motor-heads in high school loved them only confirms it.
Queen. Freddie Mercury's premature death and a popular film biopic led to an unjustified elevation in status. I wouldn't put any of their albums--and albums are what count here--in a top 100, including "A Night at the Opera."
The Eagles. Lots of good songs--think "Take it Easy"--and one possibly classic album, "Hotel California," but overall bland, stiff and derivative. Listen to Gram Parsons instead.
Billy Joel. He was impressive on stage in Nashville when we saw him a couple years back, but still basically just a top-40 hit machine and a poor man's Elton John.
Aerosmith. "Crotch rock"; they and their lizard lead singer became really embarrassing by the 1980s.
Journey, REO Speedwagon, and Foreigner. They're the same band, aren't they?
Styx and Kansas. They're also the same band, right?
Lynyrd Skynyrd. Redneck rock; putting them in the same sentence with the Allman Brothers is sacrilegious.
Rush. Bombastic; the singer sounded like a hamster being tortured.
Paul Simon without Garfunkel. Maybe it's unfair, but I can't think of Simon's solo career without instantly hearing one of the most annoying songs ever, "Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover."
AC/DC. Monotonous noise; they didn't just make the same album each time, they made the same song on each album each time.
Bruce Springsteen after "Born in the USA." This hurts because I bought his first two albums--"Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J." and "The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle"--when no one else did, and he was probably my favorite artist for the better part of a decade. But over time, the working-class-hero shtick with the fake bad grammar, the Woody Guthrie wannabe act, and the paint-by-numbers politics took a toll. The decline from "Born to Run" has been distressing because of the tendency of overly reverential critics to pretend there hasn't been one.
But if you're going to identify the overrated from back then, those whose reputations exceeded the quality of their output or who sold way more records than they should have, it makes sense to also identify those who were underrated, including:
Blue Oyster Cult. More than just cowbell.
Graham Parker. "Squeezing Out Sparks."
Bad Company. Paul Rodgers was one of the great rock vocalists.
Marshall Crenshaw. His self-titled debut.
The Steve Miller Band. We used to take "Fly Like an Eagle" with us whenever we went to check out new speakers.
Spirit. "Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus."
Harry Nilsson. Perhaps only Lennon and McCartney, among rock songwriters, wrote any as beautiful as "One" and "Without You."
Big Star. I tried to get my high school buddies to give them a listen, but all they said was "Big Who?"
Little Feat. Lowell George and "Waiting for Columbus."
Todd Rundgren. The "Something/Anything?" album; it's remarkable how few people who sing along to moldy Eagles or Queen have ever heard "I Saw the Light," "We Gotta Get You a Woman," or "Hello It's Me."
Be Bop Deluxe. "Live! In the Air Age."
In thinking about all this, I was reminded of how important rock music was for me and every other kid I knew when growing up. There was no topic we talked and argued about more (not even sports, certainly not politics).
Your most prized possessions were your stereo and album collection, and the first thing you inspected when you went into another guy's dorm room was his stereo and the albums in the milk crates. Album collections were reflections of taste and we competed to see who had a more powerful amp (as if it mattered) or the best big box speakers (the Bose now on my shelf are about seven inches tall).
I think contemporary pop music is so disposable because it doesn't play nearly the kind of role in young people's lives that it did in ours. One that I talked to dismissed my opinions because I was from the "album generation."
Freelance columnist Bradley R. Gitz, who lives in Batesville, received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Illinois.