I group up in a musical family - immediate and extended - and music was always playing in the house including my mother singing various songs. I don't know if this was one of them but it may as well be. It's funny. I wasn't crazy about those songs back then (though I recognized their merit) but now they seem to hold a different meaning and find myself enjoying and appreciating them more.
I'm no expert, but I think the lost art of the melody is something I miss. It's what made these musicians and bands (like The Beatles) so memorable and impossible to forget. I can't connect to modern music. I don't know why. It just lack something.
The other day I watched 'All things must pass: The rise and fall of Tower Records" and found myself smiling with nostalgia. While TR was a little before my time and originally a California phenomena, its influence, now I see, was immense. The idea of going to a record store to browse around and talk to the workers was a ritual I thoroughly enjoyed in the 1980s and this was thanks to TR I reckon.
My nephew rekindled my interest in music. I had stopped buying album/CDs for a while and started again. Albeit tepidly.
I've been somewhat perturbed by people like Roger Waters and bands like Steely Dan absurdly weaponizing their art for politics (which baffles me to no end) but his love of music reminded me it's best to look past their politics and just enjoy music.
I'm happy that I got to see Tower Records in NYC in 1987. I purchased 'New York' by Lou Reed. It was a CD I aimed to by leaving Montreal on my first trip to New York. I was 15.
I'm no expert, but I think the lost art of the melody is something I miss. It's what made these musicians and bands (like The Beatles) so memorable and impossible to forget. I can't connect to modern music. I don't know why. It just lack something.
The other day I watched 'All things must pass: The rise and fall of Tower Records" and found myself smiling with nostalgia. While TR was a little before my time and originally a California phenomena, its influence, now I see, was immense. The idea of going to a record store to browse around and talk to the workers was a ritual I thoroughly enjoyed in the 1980s and this was thanks to TR I reckon.
My nephew rekindled my interest in music. I had stopped buying album/CDs for a while and started again. Albeit tepidly.
I've been somewhat perturbed by people like Roger Waters and bands like Steely Dan absurdly weaponizing their art for politics (which baffles me to no end) but his love of music reminded me it's best to look past their politics and just enjoy music.
I'm happy that I got to see Tower Records in NYC in 1987. I purchased 'New York' by Lou Reed. It was a CD I aimed to by leaving Montreal on my first trip to New York. I was 15.
I share your sentiments for the lost art of melody, chords, clever arrangements, and cerebral and/or sentimental lyrics.
ReplyDeleteI, myself, don't pay any attention to anything that came out commercially beyond the 1980s.
I first ran across Tower Records in Berkeley in 1977.
...then, later, in Seattle, Nashville, Tempe AZ (ASU area) during the late '70s into the 80s ...