random music thoughts

Nostalgia is one of those inevitable things you get pulled into as you get older. Some give into it entirely, refusing to embrace anything new in favor of yelling at clouds and acting as if everything from their youth was better.

The reality is some things were better. Prices were lower. I can remember candy bars costing as little as 10 cents each. They cost more than ten times that now. Is that progress? Yes, if you sell candy bars. But they’re bad for you, so it’s difficult to get overly upset about that bit of inflation.

The reality is also that some things were bad. They are not worth remembering fondly. They are maybe not worth remembering at all, except as cautionary tales to warn future generations.

Fashion comprises almost all of the things in this category. Every decade has its fashion tragedies. Big hair. Acid wash jeans. Parachute pants. Running gear from 1975. You’d think it would be hard to screw up something as basic as a shirt and shorts. Then you see this:

This looks like a publicity still from a 1977 gay porn film. Marathon Men. And what was the deal with tucking in your shirt? At least they’re not wearing those socks. Which socks? These socks:

But what I’m here to talk about now is music.

I was not an experimental type when it came to listening to music in my teens (time-wise this was around 1977-84). While friends grooved to Dylan, Bowie and Lou Reed, I listened to The Beatles, The Beach Boys, The Bee Gees and Blondie. Pretty much any band that started with the letter “b.” Now, all of the groups I’ve mentioned are fine and I still enjoy listening to them today. And The Beatles (and even to an extent Blondie) pushed the boundaries on rock music. But for the most part these were safe, mainstream choices.

Below these bands were choices that were perhaps less likely to win armfuls of Grammys, like Boney M. Still, I eventually repurchased Boney M’s seminal Nightflight to Venus on iTunes. It even embraces its retro-ness by including album art that is literally a photo of the CD cover. And I’ve repurchased other albums of yore that were not exactly showered with critical acclaim but that I enjoyed too much to resist–Queen’s The Game, Duran Duran’s Seven and the Ragged Tiger and so on.

But there’s a line I won’t cross, where I have to admit the music I liked way back then was actually pretty bad.

So while I happily reacquainted myself with The Police’s Synchronicity, I could not do the same with Styx.

Sorry, Styx.

I bought two of their albums, 1981’s Paradise Theater and 1983’s Kilroy Was Here.

Paradise Theater is actually a pretty decent album and I loved the concept and even the album art. I liked the album enough to pick up their next, Kilroy Was Here. This was another concept album, about a fascist government (one in the future, not the one the US has now) that outlaws rock music. There was a mini-film and most people who were around back then probably remember the oddball hit “Mr. Roboto.” But here’s the thing. It’s a terrible album.

There are some good songs, like Tommy Shaw’s shimmering “Haven’t We Been Here Before?” but “Mr. Roboto” is cringe-inducing and the concept, which seems to be mocking the Moral Majority, is played completely straight, which makes it all the more ridiculous.

Nostalgia can’t bring me to buy either of these albums, and I played both quite a bit when they were new. I can still quote the (awful) lyrics from “Mr. Roboto.” But there are lines that cannot be crossed, so while Duran Duran, Boney M and the soundtrack for Grease get a pass, Styx does not.

iTunes has a bunch of “Classic Rock Albums” on sale right now for under $7. While one might argue over what constitutes both rock and classic, there’s a bunch of good stuff here for old fogeys who fondly look back on the 70s and 80s because they were there.

Like me.

I decided to pick up The Cars’ eponymous 1978 debut and listening to it hit me with a powerful blast of deja vu.

Back in junior high, I took Drawing and Painting, even though I was never terribly good at either. During classes when we worked on our projects we were allowed to play music, provided everyone agreed to the selection. It was an unusual treat and one we savored.

One person in particular–whose name I’ve long forgotten–was the self-appointed arbiter of music and we pretty much went along with his picks.

He really liked Cheap Trick, who were a new band at the time.But he also liked The Cars, another new band.

We listened to a lot of Cheap Trick.

But he also liked The Cars, another new band at the time.

When I listen to the album now, it not only invokes memories of the class, I am reminded of how the album plays like a greatest hits collection. There are a lot of songs here that got radio play. I’m also impressed all over again at Ric Ocasek’s writing skills. The lyrics are funny and quirky and the music is catchy and inventive, effortlessly switching off from ringing guitars to cheesy organ and back again. The album is a brief 35 minutes long and it races from beginning to end, a near-perfect pop joyride.

Plus it has the lyric “Let them brush your rock and roll hair,” which is exactly what you’d expect the good times to do. Right?

Right.