I’m sure we’ve all heard some variation of it – “I don’t get the music you kids listen to these days.” “That’s not music. That’s just noise.” “When I was growing up, musicians had talent.” “Don’t do that, or you’ll go blind!” Wait, that last one was something else…
As a kid, I was exposed to an earful of my parent’s music – lots of oldies, Motown, bubblegum, psychedelic rock. I also got a lot of 80s pop music. On long rides to visit my family in Douglas, we would listen to Billy Joel, and I really remember liking “Uptown Girl and “For the Longest Time.”
The first cassette tapes my parents bought me were Huey Lewis and The News and some Beach Boys/Everly Brothers compilation album. I played those tapes non-stop. They were my favorite. In fact, one day I hit rewind on my cassette player. I went to school, and at some point, I realized that I had left my Beach Boys/Everly Brothers cassette in the tape player and had never stopped the rewind. I spent the whole day terrified that the tape was being stretched thin by the rewind mechanism. It’s funny how I can remember these small things from two decades ago but can’t remember to return my Blockbuster videos.
I was still living in Tucson at the time. I remember one summer, my friend Ben was able to get his hands on some new radical music. I think he had stolen them from his dad or cousin or something. There were three tapes in particular: Motley Crue’s “Girls Girls Girls,” Cinderella’s “Night Songs” and The Beastie Boys’ “License to Ill.” With respect to the content of the music, I don’t recall understanding anything. All I know is that the albums were loud, raucous and unlike anything the Beach Boys or Huey Lewis ever made.
Fast forward a couple of years. It was the early 90s. I was still jamming to the Beastie Boys and Motley Crue. I had graduated to some Metalica, Skid Row, Faith No More, and Run DMC. Unbeknownst to me, my musical tastes were being solidified. This was the dawn of my Golden Age of music.
Then it hit. My music. Grunge bands like Nirvana, Soundgarden and Alice in Chains were making dark brooding music in their flannel shirts. Dr. Dre and Snoop Doggy Dogg released “The Chronic” and “Doggystyle,” respectively and exposed every white kid in the world to Gangsta Rap. Nine Inch Nails and Ministry made grimy Industrial Rock accessible to everyone. Even the Red Hot Chili Peppers made it big (after 10 years of trying). Green Jelly (formerly Green Jell-O) sadly was unable to keep up. It was awesome. I had something I could listen to. The Golden Age of Music had arrived.
I just figured people had been trying to make good music since the beginning of time and had finally gotten it right. I mean, the Beach Boys were cool, but Alice in Chains and Dr. Dre RULED. I just assumed that music would now rule forever.
Like most presumptions I have about life, I was wrong. By the late 90s, music was beginning to suck. Bands with numbers in their names were becoming huge (Matchbox Twenty, Blink-182, Third Eye Blind, etc.) and singing about their friends and “Closing Time.” It was lame. It really hasn’t stopped being lame.
When I scroll through my iPod now, a majority of my music is either from the Golden Age of Music or was made by or produced by former members of bands that blew up during the Golden Age. There are exceptions. Every once in a while, someone pushes their head up through the sludge that is music now and grabs my interest. Nobody comes to mind at the moment (*sigh*). When I do get new music, it is often because of a suggestion made by someone else. A lot of times, the music is no good. I tend to listen to a lot of movie scores now.
So I am now where my parents were. The other day, Meggie was flipping through the channels, and there was a rare music video playing on MTV. It. Was. AWFUL. I turned to Meggie and asked, “What was that? That was just noise.”
I’ve decided to start a series of blogs chronicling my personal adventures with music. Essentially, they will be reviews of music I listened to or that is in my iPod and why that music ruled. The series is going to be called “What Happened to Music?”
- David C. Garcia
