Another Problem With America: We Confuse Popular With Good

 

I don’t Google. Partly because Google is so pervasive, taking over most aspects of life online, but mostly because Google is not a verb.

I use a search engine called Swagbucks, which rewards users with Swagbucks (duh!) that can be saved up and used to buy stuff, everything from a computer wallpaper of Cage The Elephant (just 5 Swagbucks) to a new scale for the bathroom (6,795 Swagbucks) or full drum kit, with cymbals (37,825). All I ever buy are $5 Amazon gift cards for 450 Swagbucks.

 

Anyway, one way to earn Swagbucks is by answering the daily poll. One recent poll asked:

Which of these decades had the best music?

The results, I'm sad to say, are in the above chart.

What this means is, either it was opposite day when this survey appeared, or it was Moron Day, and 81 percent of these people have been nominated grand marshal of the parade.

As anyone older than 14 knows, the only truly great decade for music was the 1960s, starting with the Everly Brothers, Cathy’s Clown, through the Beach Boys, Good Vibrations, and Aretha Franklin, Respect, to Creedence Clearwater Revival, Bad Moon Rising.

The last half of the 1950s was good, what with Elvis and Chuck Berry and Ricky Nelson and Roy Orbison and Jerry Lee Lewis and Buddy Holly, et al, but the first half was pretty lame. Patty Page, The Tennessee Waltz? C’mon.

Dozens of songs like Unchained Melody and Stand By Me and Hey Jude have proven that they will still be listened to and appreciated 50 years later. You just can’t say that about Lady Ga Ga and Justin Bieber. Does anyone even remember the Thompson Twins?

Put Your Head On My Shoulder For Only A Nickel

I’ve said before I was born too late for my favorite music, you know, Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, Chuck Berry, Elvis. Thank goodness for Amazon, where I just bought 111 classic oldies as an MP3 download for $5.99. That’s not a typo. I got 111 new tunes for my iPhone for less than $6, or right around a nickel each.

The collection has a lot of obvious standards common to this type of album, generic favorites like Why Do Fools Fall In Love, The Great Pretender, Teenager In Love, Rock Around The Clock, Lucille, Rockin’ Robin, Tequila, Put Your Head On My Shoulder.

But it’s also stuffed with a terrific assortment of great, often overlooked tracks, like Sweet Nothin’s, Brenda Lee, Stupid Cupid, Connie Francis, Hey Paula, Paul And Paula, True Love Ways, Buddy Holly, Hello Josephine, Chuck Berry, 3 Steps To Heaven, Eddie Cochran, Born Too Late, The Ponytails, and perhaps one of the finest songs of the generation, Smoke Gets In Your Eyes, by The Platters.

There are plenty of surprises, too, songs I’ve never heard such as True Love by Bing Crosby and Grace Kelly, Halfway To Paradise by the unique Billy Fury, and Honey Love by Bunny Paul.

With few exceptions, these are the original recordings my parents listened to on the rcar adio when they were dancing on the picnic tables at the roadside park with all the headlights pointed toward them. Hello Mary Lou is a live version, probably recorded later in Nelson’s career. A couple of the Little Richards sound live, and some of the Carl Perkins songs sound like they were recorded about the time he played the Carl Perkins & Friends Rockabilly Session, so they sound great, but not like the original Sun recordings.

Except for Hound Dog, the Elvis offerings are obscure, buried treasures like Harbor Lights and I’ll Never Let You Go. There are only five Everly Brothers songs, all classics, but there could have been more. The set is light on Roy Orbison and heavy on Bill Haley, but I could not be more pleased. If it included Birthday Party or 442 Glenwood Avenue by the Pixies Three, it would be perfect.

Check it out here.

Note from John: I saw yesterday, July 8, 2012, that Amazon had this download listed for $2.99. That's so cheap, I'm thinking of downloading it again.....

Signs That I Am Not Much Of A Man, Part 1 Of 3, At Least

I look around and notice that I am not like the men I see.

I don’t wear gold chains and watches that weigh more than a small dog. I don’t wear cologne or after-shave, and I don’t use hair product. All the gray and white above my ears doesn’t bother me. I cut my own hair but don’t comb it. I pluck my eyebrows to get rid of the big, bendy ones, and the little hairs that grow from my antitragus.

I don’t cuss, unless crap is a cuss word. I’ve never smoked and I’ve never used drugs, except for a brief flirtation with Certs with Retsin. I was young. I’ve never tasted alcohol, I don’t drink soda pop, and I don’t eat cheese from a can. I don’t know how to bar-b-que.

I don’t hunt or fish. I don’t mind that people kill animals, whether they eat them or not, but I have no desire to be in the woods with a bunch of tough guys who drink beer and carry loaded rifles. I don’t fish because I can’t imagine anything more dull. You sit there swatting flies and wait and wait and wait, and even if you do catch one – which is exciting for those few seconds – in the end, all you have is a dead fish. I can back up a trailer, but I have no interest in boats. Bass Pro Shop holds no allure for me, although I like to go at Christmas and look at all the lights.

I would rather read than sleep or eat. I can type 72 words a minute. I own a bass guitar but can’t play it. I don’t like bands like KISS or Black Sabbath or AC/DC, but I do like the Everly Brothers, The Monkees and Ricky Nelson. I love Roy Orbison but I don’t get Jimi Hendrix. When I play music in the car, people outside the car can’t hear it.

Tomorrow, Part 2.

And then, Part 3.

Mind Long Gone, Now I’m Losing My Time

Watching a documentary of the Traveling Wilburys, at the point where Roy Orbison dies, I remember it like it was last Thursday. Then they flash the date, and it takes a minute to register. 1988.

1988. A lot of things had happened to me by the time I was listening to the Wilburys in 1988. It didn’t seem that long ago, until the math kicked in.

In 1988, the year 2000 was 12 years away. Now, it is 24 years later. That’s 43 percent of my life, and 2 years away from being half of Orbison’s life. A long time, but it doesn’t feel that long ago.

I remember November 22, 1963, and the Beatles on Sullivan. I remember Neil Armstrong on the moon, the U.S. Bicentennial, and the Cardinals in the World Series, 6 years later, all a long time ago.

Elvis died ages ago, seemingly long before John Lennon (although only 3 years), but Roy Orbison dying, that doesn’t seem that long ago. Bob Dole running for President and Martha Stewart going to prison, those seem far in the past, although both happened much more recently.

Why does Roy Orbison still feel current, while John Lennon does not? Is it the 8 years between their deaths? I don’t think so. I think it’s more of what was going on with me in those days, as Kelly suggested it might be.

Personal and professional struggles unlike any I’d had before 1988 left me, well, struggling for the next few years, a portend of things to come, it turned out. So I turned to music, which I listened to constantly, especially Orbison, and my CD collection, which absorbed any extra time and spare change I had.

I decided to buy every Orbison CD, an impossible task, and watched A Black & White Night hundreds of times. Orbison’s music was a security blanket in ways that Lennon’s was not, and he has stayed more current in my mind.

Could it be that simple? Am I missing something? Or is this just something we all go through once we are people “of a certain age”?