Ah! Music! Beside politics, is there anything more divisive? Sure, most people don’t go to war over The Stones vs The Beatles or Blur vs Oasis (although it’s rumored that the Ayatollah prefers Metallica to Megadeth. I know, right? I was surprised, too).
While my childhood was filled with seemingly genre-less radio offerings, from Motown to The Animals to Burt Bacharach (superb), and Donovan to The Doors (seriously creepy), by the time I hit Junior High (again, Middle School for millennial readers – hi kids!), we had Album Rock, and suddenly, camps were formed.
I was very definitely in the Deep Purple, The Who, Allman Brothers, Jethro Tull camp (and, if you bring me a nice pastry or perfect sesame bagel - butter, not cream cheese - I’ll gladly sing most of “Thick as a Brick” (I really don’t mind).
I didn’t know him then, but so was my husband - and anyone else with any taste (See what I did there? Cannons at the ready!). Of course, you move through the bands as styles change: I don’t remember liking much in the mid-seventies other than Steely Dan, but loathing the commercial treacle offered by Barry Manilow and Elton John remains true to this day, followed by the mercifully brief horrors of disco. The music of that time was as bad as the clothes: ugly, cheap, mass-produced, embarrassing - the aural equivalent of the leisure suit that defined the demi-era.
And then something wonderful happened. Artists like The Clash, Sex Pistols, Devo, Elvis Costello, Blondie, The Police, Joe Jackson, The Cars, Talking Heads et alia turned up in the late 70s and ushered in New Wave, which paved the way to MTV - a phenomenon of meteoric proportions for those of us who saw the inaugural broadcast in real time, and for the artists who were otherwise only heard and not seen. Music changed from something you lay on your parents’ living room floor (because they had the best sound system), with your headphones on to something you watched*.
More on this later, but I want to praise my husband for this: As Jethro Tull moved into the 80s, Ro remained loyal (and there was much to like; check out “A” from 1980). When front man Ian Anderson went solo, some of what he produced was sublime, some was WTF?, but Hubby hung on. And then our son, who was a mere boy, also developed a liking, so we took him to two (!) live concerts. Win-win for the generations!
Spin me back down the years and the days of my youth . . .
*Regrettably, a singer’s appearance was more important than his or her vocal talent. Read about the glorious Sarah Vaughan and how her label wanted to “sex her up” for the new market. I had the great good fortune to see her sing live at a club in Harlem in 1976. I wanted to linger more than a while.