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Summer in the mid-1980’s: it’s vague; the opening montage of a “Wonder Years”, maybe, but with Koosh balls being tossed down Crocodile Miles. American Motors and a Walkman with dying batteries- neither could last the whole drive to the cottage.

The batteries were the Radio Shack house brand. The ones that had a cat being electrocuted on the label, I think. They were on the shelf right next to “Battle Chess” for the Tandy.

I had a tape I liked to listen to. In the back seat. Well, two of them, but I once put Huey Lewis & The News’ “Sports” into my Teddy Ruxpin and I’ve never had quite the same feeling for it. Teddy couldn’t pull off carrying his sport coat over one shoulder the way I was hoping.

Aside from various hand-me-downs (Scandal! Sheena Easton!), this left me with “5150″ by Van Halen- the first with Sammy Hagar who I always kind of secretly enjoyed. I mean, “Right Now” is more than just a jingle for invisible cola, the video is iconic (but for a different decade).

What struck me about this tape was how the keyboards sounded. Kind of alien-y to a six year old (specifically the track “Love Walks In”), lending to increasing paranoia that yes, batteries are dying, tape is being eaten… and I have to pee but we’re not stopping until the next Knechtel’s. The act of listening under these conditions made it feel a lot more transgressive than it really was.

Incidentally, the first rock t-shirt I ever bought was Van Halen. It was at Market Square in a bin, and the iron-on smelled a lot like crayons. I was invited to a girl/boy party that night (summer of sixth grade) and I was the only boy who could make it. I got to slow dance with every girl. I was paranoid they would notice my t-shirt smelled strongly of crayons, and this brief moment of popularity with the opposite sex would be even more fleeting than scheduled. Not much has changed, really. Today I thought my Funky Winkerbean fanny pack smelled way too much like the dumpster behind Lick’s- though, that’s where I found it. I made this disclaimer to every girl at the strawberry social earlier, so now I’m here doing this.

-kam

Not that long ago, I was a party where a number of people wanted to quiz me on the state of music. “What’s happened? What is all of today’s music so bad? When are we going to get some good music again?” I get a lot of emails about the same thing. People want to know why music isn’t as good as it used to be.

Here’s the answer: it’s not the music. It’s you. And don’t worry because feeling this way is completely natural. This is because every generation believes that the music they grew up with is the greatest music of all time.

I’ve done a lot of thinking about this and here’s what I’ve come up with:

All music fans have a “coming of age” period, which roughly extends from about age 15 to 25, plus or minus a few years. During this time, all music is new to us. Everything sounds fresh and cool. As we age from teens to full-fledged adults—perhaps the most exciting time of our lives—music becomes a soundtrack to everything we do and think and feel. It becomes indelibly stamped on our psyches.

During this same period, we use music as a form of personal expression and identify. We use music to show other people who we are, how cool we are and how we view the world. Some of us self-organize into communities (Goths, headbangers, country fans, indie kids, dancers and ravers, etc.) where we all get to be individuals together. (I know that doesn’t make sense at first glance, but think about it for a while.) This serves to only make music that much more important to our sense of self.

Between 15 and 25, we have tons and tons of time to devote to music. We spend time online, with our iPods, in record stores, going to shows. Although we don’t necessary have a lot of money, we’ll cheerfully spend it on things involving music. With no mortgage, kids, jobs or grown-up issues to deal with, we’re free to indulge in…well, in being young.

But by the time we reach our mid-20s, everything begins to change. Careers and families start. Real estate begins to matter. You need furniture, RRSPs, RESPs and to pay off that student loan. There are credit cards, lines of credit and car leases. You become pressed for time as responsibilities mount. There just isn’t as much time or money for music as there use to be.

And something else happens, too. You don’t necessary need (or care) to use music to prove your coolness, confidence and identity to peers and strangers. The yardsticks by which other people judge and view you change from music to other things: your status at work; the car you drive; the vacations you take. The music to which you listen becomes less of a badge of honour and more of a personal thing.

Music slips from being a driving force in your life to part of the background din. It’s not that you don’t love music as much as you ever did. You just don’t have the time, the money or the desire to pursue it the way you used to. It’s just too hard.

Then there’s the whole issue of psychic baggage. As you become older, you gain more experience. You begin to recognize repetition in musical styles and trends. For example, when many people first heard Green Day for the first time, they thought “Hey, the Ramones were doing this 15 years ago!” And they were right. When you start to hear this repetition, the constant novelty and newness of music—something that you experience virtually every day between the ages of 15 and 25–begins to slip away.

New music starts to disappoint you. It starts slowly at first, but after a while, you find yourself thinking that music isn’t as good as it used to be.

So what do you do? You go back to the music of your youth, the stuff you were listening to when you didn’t have to worry about that jerk boss or driving the kids to ballet class. It reminds you of a time when things were so much simpler. This music makes you feel good—and it takes no effort at all.

More on this subject next time.

Every once in a while, I’ll stumble upon a song that I can’t stop listening to. Recently, it’s been a song called “Seat In the Kingdom” by the Crumb Brothers. It’s a soul/gospel dirge, recorded badly, featuring a ten-year old singing. The ten-year old is…just insane. You’d have no idea he was just ten when this was recorded - he sounds like James Brown.

Anyway, the song appeared on a vinyl-only compilation called Life Is A Problem on Mississippi Records (I’d provide a link, but the label doesn’t have a website).

The great (and ultimately frustrating) thing is that I can find little to no information on these “Crumb Brothers”. The liner notes for “Life Is A Problem” gives very little information, just this paragraph:

“The Crumb Brothers were a solid family quartet sometimes described as “the teenage Blind Boys of Mississippi” back in their late ’50s/early ’60s heyday. In this song, the group’s 10 year old leader, “Sugar”, directly addresses some people’s questioning of the group’s passion due to their age, that “that little boy he don’t know what he’s singing about because he’s just a little child.”

What’s great is that I’m not immediately presented with a MySpace page, a Wikipedia biography, and a Rhino compilation, thus filling my interest within a couple of hours. What’s frustrating is that I really want to know if there was anything else released by them, what the “deal” was with these kids, and what ultimately happened to them.

So what’s better? I kind of like having no information to go on. It adds a bit of a mystique to the recording and maintains my interest…but I really want more. So, if anyone can find anything about the Crumb Brothers that isn’t listed above, let me know.

Since currently part of one of my vital organs is jutting through a tear in my abdominal muscle, I have a lot of time to sit on my ass, waiting for attention. And time to think. And not exercise, and not enjoy summer. I can’t bring fondue to a picnic and burn down half of Patagonia. I can’t even run from bees. If they only knew it were open season on me… I hope no bees read this blog. If they do, I just pray they’re not Africanized.

It makes me think about those songs that are synonymous with summer for me, for whatever reason. Songs that attach themselves to the feelings of the season some how for even sometimes dubious reasoning- wait, have I written about this before? I was going to write about dinner parties, but was afraid Kelly Ripa might show up with a magnum of Tide and a stiff, worthless husband.

Plus, I think I have written about dinner parties before. I’ve even thrown a few. I’d like to have another, but too many people died last time.

So for the remainder of my summer posts, I pledge to recommend/suggest songs/albums that have particular meanings to me. As if you care.

This begins… next post. Since a rerun of “House” is on and I’m intellectually inferior because I watch it. Is that how that went?

But I won’t just leave at that. The gang at Matchstick Marketing have selected me to participate in their word of mouf campaign for the Microsoft Zune. That means I have to take it places and talk about it- which I am sure to do here. Stay tuned. Or “Zuned”, as it were.

-kam

I think Beat Goes On staff are pretty well-trained when it comes to customer service. I recently had a poor customer service experience at a pizza place that I wanted to share with you.
My co-workers and I ordered pizza twice this week. Well, more accurately, they pressured me into getting pizza. Or maybe they ordered pizza and I joined in to gain their approval. Anyway, I ended up eating a lot of pizza this week. On the back of the delivery receipts were coupons. I quickly cut them out and hid them from sight, with the intention of using them for myself. Today (just a day after receiving the coupons) I went back to the pizza joint to make use of a “2 slices for $5″ offer. The coupon was nicely cut, and not haphazardly ripped like most people would do. I showed the coupon to the server and she informed me that the coupon was expired. I took her word for it, seeing as I hadn’t really inspected all the fine print. Later on I took another look at the coupon. It specified that the offer “expired without notice.” So technically the server may have been correct. It had met its random, undisclosed expiration date.
HOWEVER, what kind of business gives out coupons that expire within 24 hours? I became the kind of person I usually ridicule, and complained via their website. I’m curious to see how they respond. If they offer to give me more coupons I will definitely have to decline… their staff is too unpredictable when it comes to redeeming them. And after my crying fit I am a little hesitant to set foot in there again. But I will keep you posted as things unfold. Your interest and concern is assumed and appreciated.
~Listening to:
This Mortal Coil - It’ll End in Tears