Fifty Year Old Music Still Rocks

 

What music were you listening to fifty years ago.  If you’re about my age, your stack of rock albums might have included Eat a Peach (Allman Brothers), Exile on Main Street (Rolling Stones) and Foxtrot  (Genesis).

If you preferred your music on the lighter side you probably owned Honky Chateau (Elton John), Catch Bull at Four (Cat Stevens) and Harvest (Neil Young).   The top country album in 1972 was Will the Circle Be Unbroken by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.  Good Hearted Woman (Waylon Jennings) and Let Me Tell You A Song (Merle Haggard) followed on the top selling lp list.

Fifty years sounds like a long time ago but the music from 1972 is still in circulation and listeners of a certain age have their ITunes and Spotify playlists loaded with “oldies” from the seventies.

The term oldies is hard to define.  Top 40 radio station programmers in the 1970’s considered any music made between the early 1950’s and mid 60’s to be oldies.  Using that same standard, Adele’s Rolling in the Deep and Katy Perry’s Fireworks are now officially oldies.

The classic 1972 tune American Pie often pops up on playlists fifty years later.  Can you imagine listening to the radio in 1972 and hearing fifty-year-old music?  The top artists of 1922 included Al Jolson, Fanny Brice and the Paul Whiteman Orchestra. The answer to the question is “no way would you hear Al Jolson on a popular radio station in 1972.”

The fact is that old music is more popular now than ever before.  A recent article in the Atlantic Monthly magazine reported that old songs represent 70% of the U.S. music market and that number is increasing. The article went on to say that vinyl recordings are now outselling CD’s with a large piece of those vinyl sales in reissues of “old” artists and albums.

I would like to arrogantly declare that old music – my music – is better and that’s why it sells more. Of course, it’s not that simple.  New music still remains very popular with young people but it doesn’t have much of a shelf life.  Younger listeners want to hear new songs at dance clubs and on pop radio stations but they don’t stop by the record store or the App Store to buy that new music.  They are more content to accept the playlist that streams over their car speakers.

In contrast, I bought Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon album in 1973. I then bought the 8-track in 1974 and the cassette in 1977. I had to have the pure compact disc version in 1982 and eventually downloaded it from ITunes in 2002.  Now I just yell “Hey Google play Dark Side of the Moon” and it happens. How cool is that?

I think much of the old music has survived because it is also good music. Old folks like me appreciate their quality and younger folks might discover their parents listened to some pretty cool music when they were in high school.

That doesn’t mean all 1972 music was good.  In the top five records of the year, we see Chuck Berry’s My Ding-a-Ling, Michael Jackson’s Ben and Melanie’s epic Brand New Key.  You just don’t hear those classics much anymore although I’m still waiting for release of the ten album Melanie retrospective. Maybe next year.

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Quarantine Like Its 1969

I found myself building a car model last weekend.  It was raining and I found a half-built ’69 Dodge Dart Revell model in my closet. It was started about 15 years ago on a rainy day by my daughter and me.  It stopped raining, she lost interest and we literally forgot about it.

So here I was on COVID day twenty-eight struggling to connect an exhaust system to a manifold. I came to the same conclusion I did when I was 12.  This pretend driver will never need an exhaust system.  I will just leave it out.  With that fast track approach, I finished the model in about two hours.  However, I pity the first person who tries to drive a car with no suspension or exhaust.

Like many people, the thought of staying at home for weeks at a time didn’t seem so bad with an Ipad and a laptop. What I hadn’t anticipated was spending many hours each day in Zoom calls on that laptop or answering emails on that Ipad.  I have become literally burned out on my own technology.

The year that real ’69 Dodge Dart first hit the streets I turned 13 years old. When my friends Gary and Bill were on vacation or otherwise occupied, I was trapped into entertaining myself at home – alone – with no technology.  Can you imagine?

TV wasn’t an option during the day and any suggestion that I had nothing to do might lead to some household chores. So, I disappeared to my attic or basement and kept busy.  I was too old for Matchbox cars so I might set up the HO scale slot cars for two hours.  Then I would play with them for maybe fifteen minutes and spend an hour taking them down.

I might build a tower of baseball cards at the bottom of the stairs and kill time flipping cards down the stairs to destroy it. I could update my stamp collection with the packets of stamps that kept arriving by mail.  I considered reading the latest issue of Mad Magazine and Sports Illustrated as an intellectual activity, but my favorite solo activity was building models.

An entire afternoon could be pleasantly consumed for only $2.99 and some paint.  I was never very good at building them, but the challenge was there. It was great.

Just like Buzz and Woody in Toy Story, my models eventually got boxed up and stashed in the basement.  Years later, after we got married, decisions had to be made about how much of my “stuff” was coming with us and how much would become junk.  

I didn’t put up a fight over the models.  They would not match our newlywed décor.  I stacked them up, shot some photographs and dropped the box in the trash.  It was not an emotional moment, but I do remember thinking about all those quiet, rainy afternoons they represented.

I was right back there last weekend with that ’69 Dart.  It was a nice place to be and for a while. Being quarantined like it’s 1969 wasn’t so bad.

Remembering Fish Friday For The Wrong Reason

 

I was never a big fan of fish.  As a kid in a Catholic home, I assumed eating fish during the Lenten season was a form of penance.  My mother would probably have agreed with that– but not about eating the fish. The penance for her was getting her kids to eat fish.

Catholics have abstained from eating meat on Fridays since the earliest times. The reasons may have changed over the centuries but the practice remains.  In the early days, forgoing meat was forgoing a luxury. This was especially true in the Middle East, where meat was scarce and fish was plentiful.  Ironically, fish is now the luxury and meat is more or less affordable. 

The tradition of abstaining from meat never required one to eat fish.  That memo never reached our home so every Friday during Lent we had fish.  Of course, the 1960’s were the peak of processed foods.  We never had fresh fish but the canned tuna and salmon harvest in our home was plentiful.

Tuna was the preferred choice for my brother and I. Thank goodness for Chicken of the Sea. It somehow tasted less like fish. Fortunately, I never made the connection between their logo – a mermaid - and the can of fish.  Even so, mom had to disguise the fish as tuna casserole with cream sauce and peas.  Apparently, this most popular family dish was created by Campbells Soup in the 1940s although fish parts in crème sauce was an old 1800’s dish called cod a la bechamel.

Salmon came straight from the can in patties much like SpongeBob’s crabby patties. The best part of salmon cakes was the potato pancakes mom served with them.  The “pancakes” were served with applesauce. For a kid who gagged on salmon, two full tablespoons of applesauce helped the salmon go down.

Fish sticks could also be consumed with a generous amount of catsup or mashed potatoes. General Foods introduced fish sticks in 1953 under their Birdseye brand. They were part of a rectangular food stick line that included chicken sticks, ham sticks, veal sticks and dried lima bean sticks – egad. Only fish sticks survived and became the preferred choice in many countries where the quality of fish was suspect. Fish sticks also solved a bigger problem. Fishing technology after WWII led companies to overfish. To keep from spoiling, the extra fish was processed into frozen sticks - Yum.

Abstaining from meat on Fridays for Catholics became optional in 1966 when U.S. Bishops allowed members to replace the abstinence with other forms of penance. There was little argument from our household.  Fish Fridays soon became Pizza Fridays and all was good with the world. I haven’t eaten a salmon cake since.

It was never about fish of course. It was about abstaining from something we desire to focus our thoughts on more important things. It’s a big month for that as Christians prepare for Easter, Jews celebrate Passover and Muslims prepare for Eid al-Fitr, a feast that follows one month of fasting and reflection. Happy celebrations to all our Allen neighbors.

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