Baby Boomer Music.
And how it all changed.
My perspectives on music history and what it used to be, where it is now and where it will hopefully be again someday.
I'm a baby boomer. I was born in the last year of that generation, in 1963. My aunt Kathy is nine years older than me. She was our babysitter when my brother and I were little boys. She sometimes carried a pocket transistor radio with her as we walked to the ice cream shop near the local high school. I remember one afternoon as we were walking, she turned up the volume on that little radio. It was the Beatles playing, "Day Tripper". I was around three or four years old. For some reason, I still remember that particular song, and hearing it for the very first time. We would walk over to my grandparents house and hang out in her bedroom as she played all of her Beatles 45's.
We moved to the south side of town into our very first house. I think I was around five or six years old, and I remember my mother playing Elvis Presley records on the stereo in the living room while she ironed the laundry. That stereo was on far more often than the television set. My old man always had the radio on in the car. He was a drummer, so naturally he beat his hands to the music on the steering wheel as he drove. Saturday and Sunday nights meant watching Hee Haw and the Lawrence Welk show. In the afternoon, my mother would turn on the TV and we would watch "The Monkees" show. We were always surrounded by music.
My long-haired hippie uncle was stoned most of the time as a teenager in the 1960's and early 70's. I remember one Sunday in 1972, we stopped by my grandparents house after church. My uncle called my old man (his brother) into his bedroom to check out his brand new stereo. I was in the kitchen eating strawberries at the table. Next thing I heard was this strange music coming from my uncle's bedroom. I wandered in and sat on the bed. He was playing the Edgar Winter Group: "They only come out at night" album that he had just purchased. I thought it was the coolest thing I had ever heard. I was only around nine years old at the time, but even at that early age, I knew that I liked that rock and roll music. I walked out into the kitchen and the first thing my mother asked me was, "So, you like that music? Are you gonna be a hippy too?" It was sort of like a weird prophecy on her part, that I would one day indeed become the one thing she probably never would have wanted me to be - and that was, a musician.
In the early 1970's, I got my very own pocket transistor AM radio. I listened to WLS in Chicago nearly every night. On Saturday afternoon, the TV was on and we would all sit and watch American Bandstand and Soul Train. The entire family would pile into the station wagon and take a trip out to the "Turnstyle" shopping center. This was considered the main mall in Racine, long before the Regency mall was built a few miles away. My mother would shop for groceries, while my old man took my brother and I around to the auto parts section. An hour later, everyone would meet at the records and tapes section of the store. My mother would buy an album and we would listen to it when we got home.
This was my “normal” as a kid. I grew up listening to all of this music, several years before I ever picked up the guitar. I don't remember ever having any sort of preconceived notions about music that I would or would not listen to. Everything was diverse. Music was music. To me, there was no such thing as "genres" of music, or what we should or shouldn't be listening to. It was the time when some of the best music ever recorded, was all over the radio. WLS was well-known for playing a wide variety of music from blues to rock, from country to folk, from pop to oldies. This was just our normal way to listen to music.
I began playing the guitar in 1976. This immediately changed everything about the way I listened to music from that point forward. I didn't just hear music, I listened to it. The 1970's was arguably the greatest decade in all music, and I was lucky enough to grow up with it. Becoming an instrumentalist was fueled mostly by me trying desperately to find my identity. Then one day, I picked up the bass guitar - and that identity suddenly became clear. During the middle and late 1970's, jazz fusion was a popular form of rock and jazz being "fused" together to create some of the most eclectic and difficult music ever played...and I took to it immediately.
Those decades of music have long since become the soundtracks to my entire life. From all the way back to the early years of the 1940's, 50's and 60's, to the end of the last century, the music from those years that was created, was arguably the best music ever recorded.
All of this happened before the advent of the internet, cell phones and social media. Long before such things as Napster and file sharing. Long before the descent and dismantling of the entire music industry. Back when musicians were filthy rich rock stars who lived lavish lifestyles with mansions and expensive cars, and more access to drugs and alcohol than could ever be fully abused. Everyone in the industry worked to make musicians famous. “Do the concert tours, sell the albums!” “Guest appearances on TV and radio, sell the albums!” Go into the studio and create one or two albums every year.
The public voted for the good music by paying for it. If the music was good, people bought the albums and everyone was happy. If the music sucked, nobody bought the albums and that artist or group would fade away. The listening public decided what music was good and what music was not good by buying music from music stores or recording it onto a cassette tapes from the radio. Sometimes, you'd simply borrow your buddies new album and record it to tape so you would also have a copy. Honestly, that was probably the earliest form of pirating or stealing music. However, it was such a low impact issue that having a copy of an album on a cassette tape, eventually motivated you to go out and buy your own album. The artists still made their music, and everyone was happy.
How old were these artists, bands and groups back then? They were young adults. Some were right out of high school, and some were in the early twenties. Some had been around for a while, still creating new music in their fifties and sixties. Here we are in 2024. Most of those artists, groups and bands have long since disappeared forever. Many of those people have long since passed on. It's so strange to think about all the music that has been taken to the grave and never heard.
Is music truly generational?
In a word, "absolutely". Would I have learned to appreciate music at such a young age, had both of my parents not been musicians? What if my aunts and uncles hadn't grown up as teenagers in the 1960's and been exposed to so much brand new, incredibly music - music that they would share with me as a young boy? My appreciation for music as a listener and as a musician, came from those early stages of my generation being influenced by the generations before me.
I get asked all the time, "Why do you know or how do you know that old song?" Well, if I refer to myself as a music teacher and a musician, it goes without saying that I should probably have some element of a historical, working knowledge of music that precedes my existence, by at least several decades. The irony of this concept is that it only applies to the music that became part of the soundtracks to my life. This is why I pay almost no attention to the music of the past two decades.
My musical heroes are disappearing everyday. All those songs from all of those artists, bands, groups and musicians are slowly dying off one by one. There are merely a handful of the original rock guitar gawds remaining. Anyone who was anyone back in the day, are now in their sunset years of life. It is simply a matter of time before they are all gone. Imagine that - the day when every musician and artist that created music between the years 1950 and 2000, will be gone forever.
My heroes are leaving, and there doesn't seem to be anyone on the horizon to replace them. There simply aren't any popular new rock guitar gawds, no keyboard wizards, no drum professors. Sure, there are some incredibly talented musicians out there who in many ways, can outplay most of my rock heroes. Nobody knows them. Nobody knows who these people are. They're nothing more than blips on the social media radars - here today, gone tomorrow.
I look at someone like Wolfgang Van Halen, and I can't help but wonder if he has the same balls his father had. The kind of balls to change the way guitar music is understood. Eddie changed rock guitar forever. Is his son the next version of Eddie or will he fade away because there is no music industry? The diversity of music and the many genres that used to exist all over the radio, can really only be found now on satellite radio with specific genre channels - and you have to pay for it. Ever wonder why so many young people today listen to the music that was created four and five decades before they were born? I know why.
With the advent of artificial intelligence, block chain technology and social media "influencer's", the writing is on the wall. What used to be, is no more. I imagine anyone born in the early part of 1900's probably thought that rock and roll was the end of music. Here I am, one-hundred-plus years later, reflecting on the same sort of cynicism about today's music. I think that I have plenty of good reason to feel cynical. As a music teacher, it has long since become abundantly clear that the younger generations have very little or very selective understanding of the music of the generations that came before them. When I was a teenager, I certainly wasn't interested in listening to my old mans music. I wanted my own music. I eventually grew up and learned to appreciate his music too. I guess, that’s the hope I have for future generations and the cycles of music. One day, it will hopefully all return and music will be created as an art-form from real artists who can play their instruments and write incredible songs again.