Stop the Music

Time to Exit, Stage Right

I absolutely love the music of the 1960’s and 1970’s.

I can distinctly recall the first time I put on a pair of headphones and listened to a reel-to-reel tape of Cat Stevens “Peace Train”. The music floated somewhere up above my head, crystal clear, instruments in unison but apart, heard as individual entities at the same time they blended into music your brain just absorbed.

I immediately wanted to get on the train.

That tune was quickly followed on the reel-to-reel by “Carry On” by CSN and those harmonies came through my ears as if angels were singing and lifting me up and outside of myself, I was transported to a higher plane.

I was high absent any inducement or influence.

I fully understood at that moment how this music was intertwined with the “movement” all around the country at that time.

Teens facing a one-way ticket to Vietnam listening to this music had been raised up to another level spiritually. It was impossible to be lifted and moved by the rock and roll of the day and board a bus for boot camp.

Which brings me to today.

I say this with all due respect, gratitude, and admiration; get off the stage.

Somewhere along the line the generation that said you couldn’t trust anyone over thirty decided that a craggy faced, seventy-something rocker playing fifty year old tunes live is a good idea.

It isn’t. It’s pathetic.

And I’m not just blaming the rockers, at least they have incentive to get up on stage. They can make some huge retirement dollars by going on tour. A month at the best resort in Hawaii is still on their social calendar due to tour income over seventy. I get it.

I blame the audience.

You can’t go home again, didn’t you read Thomas Wolfe?

There is no reliving the magic of Woodstock, or that concert at the Civic Center in 1974, when the fog of Vietnam had lifted, it felt great to smoke pot and give a middle finger to the establishment, and you were free of all obligations.

I realize you are all empty-nesters and have some disposable cash now, and back to a point in life with no obligations again, but going to see the aging, decrepit “Stones” cackle through the hits isn’t cool, it is depressing. You cannot replicate that feeling of 1974 again. It isn’t possible.

Up close and personal Mick and the Boys are a horror show, a testament to lives lived in the fast lane. And I live in Florida the land of the retired. None of you qualify for Golden Batchelor, if we laid you down and stuck a lily in your arms people would throw dirt over you. You aren’t the cool long-haired dude in leather pants with a Puka shell necklace anymore, you are a pear-shaped, haggard faced, balding old man who has to eat four pills in the morning to keep the heart pumping.

When you went to these concerts recently to see Mick and the Boys, or Fleetwood Mac, or some other seventies super group did you actually listen to the music?

Holy Hell.

I went to a Poco concert in Vero Beach a few years back, they were always a favorite of my youth, but the sounds emanating from on stage vocally were depressing as all Hell, so far out of tune as to make me stand and wince. I’m not sure I can ever listen to “Rose of Cimarron” again without hearing that sound, that awful screech of lyrics.

Which brings me to Hall and Oates. Apparently Oates is out there on tour singing old hits. Hits that apparently were written by Hall. Oates may have sung vocals on the recording, but he had nothing to do with creating the hit. So Hall doesn’t want him touring and singing those, they belong to Hall. At least Hall thinks so.

Do any of us want our thoughts in old age of Hall and Oates to be about two men who can no longer get along, and one who needs everyone to know that me, I did it, not him, I’m the musical talent, he didn’t do any of it, it’s, me, me, me?

Are you telling me they didn’t squander away enough that they both need to tour at this age, sing the old hits, and squabble over it all?

I want to listen to “Rich Girl” and be transported back to the MG convertible, driving around the reservoir with a quart of beer and a Dixie cup, top down, Fall air becoming crisp, having a cold one and listening to great music. Back then that was as normal as can be. Don’t judge.

I don’t want to turn on the radio and hear “Rich Girl” and think, Hall, what an asshole. Can’t he let his old partner go on tour and sing a few hits?

I just finished reading Paul Simon’s biography recently and the fact he and Garfunkel no longer speak, and that Paul is such a self-centered egotistical idiot he has to claim all credit for their music, me, me, me, I did it, Garfunkel just sang vocals to what I created, well, same thing, it ruins their music for me.

I hear their old tunes and all and I can think about is “Paul is a selfish, self-centered asshole supreme, no wonder he and Lorne Michaels are such good buddies”.

That isn’t conducive to hearing “I’m sitting in a railway station, got a ticket for my destination, oooh, oooo” and feeling groovy.

Do you really want to go to a concert and see Stevie Nicks wobbling on stage realizing the lace throw shawl makes her look more grandmotherly than “cool”, or would you rather remember her as the heartthrob she was back in 1976? Be real.

I want to like Daryl Hall, I like the television program he does from his barn, bringing in talented musicians and rocking out, breaking bread together, discussing their lives and the tunes that matter to us all.

Now he has ruined that. Every time I hear a Hall and Oates tune I think “what a classless ass”.

We saw Hall and Oates a few times, maybe the best was when they appeared at a place called “Back of the Rack” in Ocean City, Maryland sometime in the late 1980’s. They played a venue that held maybe three hundred people, you could walk right to the stage, I mean right in front of the musicians, they were standing two foot away playing. I have no idea why, after they’d been at the top, they played such a small place when they were a household name, but there they were. The night was quite an experience. Up close and personal with Hall and Oates.

I want to remember them that way. I don’t want my immediate thought to be “injunction in court”.

Now I’ll be the first one to say that Dolly in a Cowboys Cheerleader uniform at 77 looked pretty good for an old girl, but admit it “Jolene” was a bit sour. Dolly has enough plastic to make an entire run of Barbie dolls, the new 77 isn’t the same as the old 77. At that age does she really think she still has to be “cute”? Aging gracefully is an art.

But I don’t like it all. The Boomers just do not know when to get off stage.

They still really do think it is all about them.

We can’t force the younger generation to blow up auto-tune and become creative and talented and take the music of the 1960’s and 1970’s to another level when they can’t get stage time.

Grandma and Grandpa won’t get off stage.

Well maybe if you’d stop buying tickets trying to relive your Hippie years they would finally exit stage right.

Boomers. Man. What a self centered awful generation.

In rock and politics they just don’t know when to get off stage.