It was precisely 40 years ago Monday (then a Sunday night) that
the Beatles played five songs on the Ed Sullivan Show.
It was precisely 40 years ago Monday (then a Sunday night) that the Beatles played five songs on the Ed Sullivan Show. This past Sunday night television presented the Grammy Awards. Both of these events ostensibly showcased the zenith in popular music. I, however, recognize only the first as fitting that description.
So many performers these days, and I – I who once ate, slept and breathed rock ‘n roll – don’t even recognize the names, much less the collection of sounds they are pleased to call music. Those sounds seem to me today to be roughly divided into two major categories: over-produced treacle so cloyingly sweet that it makes Perry Como sound like Billy Idol, and percussive-beyond-all-reason hip-hop grunting full of praise for the virtues of greed, ostentation and gratuitous violence. Maybe it’s me.
I’m sorry folks, but I just can’t warm to music whose most important element is choreography, followed closely by extravagant costumes, lighting and the number of people on the stage at one time. That’s just because I harken back to the days just after the invention of fire when music meant something intended for the ears, with the other senses of little consequence to the experience. Shows you how old I am.
I mean, I can’t even tell from the names any more whether it means the group or a person who has just chosen to call him or herself by an annoyingly misspelled word. Like, is Outkast a person or a band? What about Ludikrus? Or Pink? There’s just no clue.
It’s not like back in the day, when there was no doubt “The Beatles” or “The Rolling Stones” was a band and “Bob Dylan” was a guy. There was even a band obsessed with clarity in labeling called “The Band.” Well, OK, so there was Santana, which was a band but was really the name of the lead guy. And I guess there was Jethro Tull, who was the guy who according to legend invented the mouldboard plow in the Middle Ages and revolutionized agriculture, although as far as is known he didn’t play guitar or write any songs. But those were anomalies, albeit correctly spelled ones.
And even the idea of a band doesn’t work any more. I mean, nobody plays an instrument; they just hire people to stand around in the background and do it for them; they’re too busy making sure they’re all dancing in unison like a large dry-land synchronized swimming team. And who’s got time to tune up when you’re continuously changing outfits? Without exciting costumes, it’s just not music. Can you imagine the Grateful Dead changing clothes after every song? Well, actually they may have, but since the T-shirts and jeans were all the same nobody could tell. It might be that if they hadn’t, they’d have just been another band of great musicians with an odd but properly spelled name. But I don’t think so.
OK, so maybe I sound just like my parents did when they first heard The Beatles 40 years ago – “it’s not music, it’s just Godawful noise.” Certainly I’m musically obsolete; even the Fab Four are down to the Fab Two. But in the dim recesses of my memory I can still hear them singing “You say you want a revolution, well you know, we don’t want to change the world.” Maybe that’s because they foresaw what it would change into. Me, I just want to get back to where I once belonged.
