fogey?

My ex-husband and I read somewhere ("The New Yorker"? "Atlantic Monthly"?) about research on how a music lover becomes an old fogey. It would seem that in a person's mid-thirties, usually they gradually become unable to appreciate new music. They may be able to find a new artist to love, but only if that person's music is very derivative of something the fogey already learned to love. There was a lot of blather about the aging of the brain and so on which I have forgotten, but the basic point was during the thirties, your taste crystallizes and then after forty, forget it. You have to listen to the oldies channel on the radio station, because each and every generation hates the music that those darn young people make.

I felt I needed to get exposed to as much new music as I could, storing up nuts for the long winter of my brain's old fogeydom. I had a few successes, like Ali Farka Toure, Ry Cooder, and the Mermen. But it seemed the process was already happening: I hated almost everything new I heard. This genuinely upset me (this was before I had children, so I had a lot more time to pay attention to myself. Once I had the children, I didn't have much energy for examining myself any more in depth than that classic query of the parent, "Have I left the house in filthy clothing?").

I felt out of touch with pop culture, adrift without being able to enjoy music. Like everyone, I loved Nirvana (RIP, Kurt Cobain), but all that crap that followed... shudder. Flannel shirts (I wore enough of those growing up in Maine to last me a lifetime). Droning music. And the ridiculous shunning of smiling or ever appearing unsuicidal... I used to look at images from the sixties and wonder, "How did we get from a place where flowers and smiling and being happy were what we all wanted to HERE?" It was the fashion to look miserable on stage, no matter how many millions one was raking in. (Not just rock stars, but the heroin chic phase meant the fashion ads in my magazines were all depressed skeletons splayed about in Prada or Jilsander). It all seemed driven by the dreadful music, the horrible stuff that followed Nirvana.

And then there was the techno, ridiculously popular in the Bayeria. It had such a brainlessly repetitive beat that it could make one want to whack one's brains out against a cinderblock wall. Sillily enough one wasn't supposed to listen to this drek on drugs, which would have possibly redeemed the experience, but just on water and smart drugs at the ideal rave. Back in the 80's, the music I loved had complex and changing rhythmns, and I couldn't tolerate these banal, simplistic programmed drum beats which seemed to go on and on forever. Not to mention emocore (so much whining!). Shudder.

I couldn't bear to listen to the radio very much; everything sounded so terrible to my old-fashioned ears. Alas, there were no radio channels devoted to the 80's New Wave music of my youth, so I couldn't settle happily into old fogeydom. (This was before satellite radio and internet radio. Since those technological revolutions, musical fogies have rich ruts to live in). This was genuinely a source of sorrow to me. I did have one coping mechanism: I started exploring ancient blues, which I did love, preferable from the 1910's and 1920's and preferably from Texas and Arkansas. It seemed fitting for a fogey.

But, as it turns out, I hadn't become a fogey. It's just that the music of the nineties sucked. (I have heard so many people opine that the 80's were the worst decade of all history for music and fashion, but no. We were just fine back then, thank you very much, dancing to the Talking Heads with our gravity-defying spiky hair). Somewhere after the turn of the century, the god-awful music of the 90's gave way to new things, things which are actually fun to hear.

I listen to the radio a lot in the car nowadays, as I drive my child overlords hither and yon, and I'm constantly hearing new songs to love. I heard a rap song about "I'm living in liquor land" which I've never been able to track down since, but it made my whole day the time I caught it on the radio. The latest British invasion is composed of hard-drinking neurotic girls, and I love them. Amy Winehouse! Lily Allen! Over in the East Bay, there's a newish form of rap called hyphy. I don't know how to explain what it is, and the articles I've read about it couldn't articulate a definition, either. All that I know is that when they're doing a hyphy show on a local radio station, it's fun to hear. My favorite hyphy song has the most charming line: at one point, in an encouraging voice, the singer calls, "Go, stoopid! Go, stoopid!" This never fails to make me smile.

Even the top forties music of this decade is relatively palatable. There have been some huge hit songs I adore, like "Hey Ya" by Outkast, which has beautiful rhythmns, a wonderful lead singer, and great words. "Lend me some sugar, I AM your neighbor!" is another line which always makes me grin. All the first graders and I loved Justin Timberlake's "Bringing Sexy Back." That song is truly sexy, with its sinuous beat and that line, "You see these shackles/Baby I'm your slave/I'll let you whip me if I misbehave." (I'm not "in the scene" any more, as we used to say in the old days, but I'm confident that song is becoming a dungeon classic, with its steady beat for whipping to. Perhaps it will become enshrined next to that odd kink classic, the disco version of the Hallelujah chorus, which I suffered through so many times in dungeons. And no, I did not share these insights with the first graders).

I could go on and on. Turn on your radios, people; it's a musical wonderland out there. Even one poised on the brink of musical fogeydom can listen happily and rejoice.