I realized something quite profound on the flight back from Montreal a few days ago. I’ve never listened to what would be considered current, popular music.
When I was a young boy my parents had an old, Hi-Fi stereo almost the size of a station wagon filled with rock-n-roll records from the 1950’s, Elvis, Fats Domino, and The Coasters.
Starting at around thirteen (1984) I began listening to rap music, which was so underground at the time it wasn’t even being played on the radio, in Ohio anyway. My B-boy phase lasted until the end of my junior year of high school (1988).
At the end of the 1980’s my musical tastes took an eclectic turn thanks to Columbia House’s mail order CD club, I discovered Bob Marley’s music, Haydn, The Doors and a few other bands that were already at least a decade old.
In the 1990’s Swing music made a brief resurgence for a few strange years, this led me down the Jazz genre rabbit hole that consumed much of the next fifteen years of my listening life – Sinatra, Harry Connick Jr., Glenn Miller, Stacey Kent, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, I could go on and on.
Now, at fifty two years of age I feel like a time traveler. I’m in the unique position of discovering a lot of the music of my own generation, GenX, for the very first time. Tonight my wife and I are seeing Duran Duran. I don’t remember much about the band really. I was somewhere between 1950’s Rock-n-Roll and Rap when Duran Duran was popular. I had a girlfriend in the early 90’s who was obsessed with them so I’ve heard The Reflex, Hungry Like a Wolf, and Rio (probably thousands of times) but that’s about the extent of it.
What I’m learning in my GenX musical journey is my generation had some REALLY great music. I’m sorry I missed it the first time around but happy that I’ve found it before it’s too late.
Like a lot of people, I’ve always had this wistful affection for the past. There’s even a term coined for it, “Rosy Retrospection”. The Romans called it, "Memoria praeteritorum bonorum", which means "What came before is recalled to be good". But now I’m realizing this affliction has caused me to miss out on quite a bit of amazing culture from the here and now.
"Nostalgia is a powerful drug. Under its influence, ordinary songs take on dimensions and powers, like emotional superheroes." - Kate Christensen
There’s this great film called, Midnight In Paris, that illustrates Rosy Retrospection better than any I’ve ever seen. As you probably would have guessed it’s one of my favorite movies, partially because of the literature-heavy content of the plot and, well, the Rosy Retrospection aspect.
Anyway, for the next few years I’m going to try my best to recover from Rosy Retrospection Syndrome and set out on a musical journey to not only explore music of my own generation but current songs/artists as well. Angela Carter said, "Nostalgia, is the vice of the aged. We watch so many old movies our memories come in monochrome." I've decide when I'm old and gray watching reruns on TV, or whatever mixed reality device we have strapped to us, I don't want my memories to come in monochrome.
What are some of your favorite musicians/songs of the last 30 years?
~Eric Vance Walton~
Thanks for reading! All for now. Trust your instincts, invest in you, live boldly, and take chances.
(Gif sourced from Giphy.com.)
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