In the Newsletter sub-forum there's a thread, "The Seventies: Rock's Classic Age." It leads off with another super piece of writing by Wildwoman1313, author of many great articles in the same sub-forum. In this particular thread, though, there's a good discussion about rock's different eras and decades. Although I'm a child of the sixties, I gotta admit that the 70's stands out (disco notwithstanding ;) ). And I thought about all that when I saw this today,
Last Call: Growing Apart, an essay about revisiting the music and musicians of one's youth,
http://www.premierguitar.com/articles/20910-last-call-growing-apart . I have shared the author's dismay of seeing musicians I revered as a kid decades after the hits. Still, no matter what the decade or what those musicians look like now, crap is crap but quality wins out. As the author put it, "...the very best pop and rock music is, was, and will always be written and performed by people under the age of 28. I’m still amazed by the insightful and brilliant songwriting of a very young Chuck Berry, Queen, Heart, Simon & Garfunkel, Prince, Clapton, the Allmans, Chrissie Hynde, Rod Stewart, Elton John, AC/DC, Nirvana, U2, Bruno Mars, Van Halen, Skynyrd, the Beatles, Hendrix, Zep, Dylan, the Stones, Bowie, the Who, the Doors, Buddy Holly, Springsteen, the Eagles, and more."
That music ages well.
Somewhere on Justin Sandercoe's site,
www.justinguitar.com , he writes, "The music was better then..." but really doesn't define when 'then' was. But I think I know and I think you guys do too. "Crap has a short shelf life" but a lot of the music that first rocked me stands up well. Your does too.
The article isn't earth shaking but I nodded 'uh-huh' throughout the whole read. 'Cept, I did massive quantities of Trix, not Cap'n Crunch. :D
"It takes a lot of devotion and work, or maybe I should say play, because if you love it, that's what it amounts to. I haven't found any shortcuts, and I've been looking for a long time."
-- Chet Atkins
