I Hate Old Music, Too by Dave Thompson

Author:Dave Thompson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Globe Pequot
Published: 2023-12-17T00:00:00+00:00

Except … you’ll always end up hearing those songs regardless. You could spend a year listening to little more than a cappella performances of medieval English folk songs (I know I did),132 but sooner or later you have to leave the house … to visit the butcher (Survivor, Yes, Spring-steen), the baker (Bad Company, Tom Petty, ZZ Top), the candlestick maker (Asia, Journey, the Guess Who). Maybe you received an invitation to a presidential inauguration (Fleetwood Mac, James Taylor, Bruce Springsteen); and don’t even mention that forty minutes on hold with your neighborhood auto dealer.

In other words, don’t go shopping, don’t keep appointments, don’t make phone calls, don’t visit the dentist, don’t ride elevators, don’t attend parties, don’t get in anyone else’s car. There, problem solved.

Again, it must be stressed that nobody is blaming the artists themselves for this state of affairs. A lot of performers, whether through personal choice (selling one’s entire back catalog to a music IP and song management company133) or not (being bound by the terms of an existing contract or agreement), have about as much control over the use of their catalog as they do over the weather.

Less, in fact, because at least if it rains, you can put up an umbrella. But if your greatest hit suddenly turns up soundtracking a truly embarrassing cause, there’s no way of sheltering from the fallout. Indeed, it is not beyond the realms of possibility that, in years to come, wealthy political action groups might well launch their own Song Funds, albeit under the cover of a few offshore shell companies, purely to subvert the message of their most prominent musical critics by airing them at fundraisers and election-time commercials.

Colorful Characters from Rock’s Rich Tapestry No. 3

The Expert

The Expert is rarely the one who initiates a conversation on their chosen field of expertise. No, the Expert is the one who lurks silently to one side, waiting for somebody else to start it. Then they (but they are almost exclusively male) pounce.

Prior to the invention of the internet and, more pertinent, social media, it was a lonely life—a near-mythological one, in fact, in which our hero was forever doomed to wander the earth in the hope of hearing the magic words, the Open Sesame that would enable them to speak.

In musical terms, this tended to restrict their range to record stores, and the scenario never changed. A customer approaches the counter bearing an album—let us say, one of Lance Corporeal’s 1980s releases, best remembered for the two minor hit singles and the portrait that resembled a year-old chicken liver sculpture.

The Expert speaks. “Are you sure that’s the album you want?”

The customer looks up with surprise. “Well …”

And seizing upon that moment of indecision, the Expert begins, “Come with me. If you’re getting into Lance [the Expert is always on first-name terms with the artist], there are far better places to start.” And then, for ten, fifteen minutes or more, the Expert will hold forth not only on why these albums are better, but why this one is the worst of all.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.