GROW OLD, NOT UP!
(or, NEVER TOO OLD TO ROCK 'N' ROLL)
The call came last Sunday, and not a moment too soon; the Significant Other, the Only Child, and da Flatline were all getting on each other's nerves, and the situation was a hair-trigger away from that Good Rats tune "Reason to Kill." That's when my second-job buddy Mark phoned: "Dude, you wanna jam?"
The S.O. gave me a "I think you'd better!" glare.
"Be there in a half-hour," I barked, then grabbed my bass and bolted before she changed her mind.
It was the first time I've had my axe plugged into an amplifier -- much less played with other human beings -- since I'd been married. It was loud, it was sloppy, it was fueled more by beer and boo and boundless naivity than by actual talent...and it was some of the most fun I've had in years. To grind through songs by Bush and STP and, God help me, Lynyrd Skynyrd, with no intentions beyond having a blast and making some noise -- yow. I was easily the oldest guy in the room by a decade, but I felt like a teenager again.
Prior to the Fifties, pop music was made by grownups, for grownups. Frank Sinatra may have been the first crooner whose audience was primarily screaming teenage girls, but the suits from A&R were still calling the shots as to what he performed. It took Elvis and Bill Haley and Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis to create a raw, punchy sound that teens could actually call their own -- as both fans and practitioners. Every "punk rock" revolution that's come along, be it Question Mark and the Mysterians or the MC-5 or the Sex Pistols or Green Day, has been based on the assumption that kids could form bands and make music without years of training -- and it might actually sound good, too!
Rock and roll really is the Fountain of Youth. We're now seeing the first generation of "senior citizen" rockers, the ones who have passed the big Four-Oh (or even Five-Oh!) and are still bashing away at it. For that matter, check out the audience of bands with any kind of multi-decade longevity -- Stones, Who, Page/Plant, the Moody Blues, for God's sake! -- and you'll see everything from pre-teeners who've just discovered the band to married couples who still carry the torch for their youthful faves. Face it, there is no "biological clock" that rings at age 40 and says "OK, trade in the Zeppelin CDs -- you're going on an elevator-music diet now." My own musical tastes have both widened and warped over the years, but at the core of Da Flatline Music Library it's still the loud, abrasive guitars of Jeff Beck and Buck Dharma and Johnny Ramone.
Don't be surprised if, three or four decades from now, you find me in my rocking (or wheel-) chair with Soundgarden or Nine Inch Nails in the Discman and the volume set to an SPL that would boil water. Maturity and decorum be damned.
"I don't wanna grow up, I'm a Noise 'R' Us kid!"
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