...and women swooned. Seriously.

So it’s 2:23am and while working on the website I’m half-watching an infomercial for one of those TimeLife Records’ Ultimate Rock Ballads collections… think Supertramp, Boston, the Cars, Foreigner….Because the 70s and 80s had a lot more than leotard-wearing axe-wankers… they had musicianship!  But they also had glam and new wave and that overdone-to-the-point-of-tiresome acid rock thing, and what I like to call Leg Warmer Rock (all of that Flashdance crap) so yep, the good old days had tons of lame stuff too…so anytime someone starts going off about the good old days, facepalm them with a reminder that every era had some music which was as ridiculously overcooked as anything that hip kids are making fun of today, whenever ‘today’ might be.  Speaking of which, who are the ubercool making fun of now? Britney-bashing was longer underscored in the elitist guidebook but it still lent a decent amount of cred to mock Avril Lavigne when I last paid attention…that was awhile ago… and more recently I witnessed someone in an Animal Collective shirt bashing Rihanna, and the implications of this were apparently obvious to whomever she was talking to, but I didn’t get it. So seriously, I think I just don’t know anymore).

But anyway I can’t be the only one to observe that in 1984 or so, dumpy-looking people who danced poorly were often big stars, into their 30s and maybe even their 40s… compare that with today, when I recognize most of the names on the billboard top 40 but don’t see one who isn’t at oldest 20-something, and all sexed up. I’ve heard the ‘video killed the radio star’ rhetoric and I understand and accept it BUT.. watching that infomercial I was stoked hearing the “I can’t fight this feeling anymore” and “Electric Avenue” soundbytes drift past…in FACT, I smiled and bobbed my head for half of them. And don’t worry about me guys, I’ll be ok… I like Radiohead and the Flaming Lips and am, therefore, safely ‘kind of cool’ for life… but I also like Eye of the Tiger. And good tunes are good tunes. And I can’t help but hoping that someday another band full of funny-looking, balding, mildly dorky guys cracks the top 1o because they can sing on-key and write great tunes.  -C