2002-09-26 - 8:32 p.m.

My Music

I just had to do this, because my music is not like anybody else�s here on Diaryland. I always thought I had kept up with contemporary music, but now that my kids� music is called �oldies,� what do you call mine? I look at these lists of bands and I don�t know anyone. Where are Hootie and the Blowfish, or Eric Clapton, or Journey? I don�t see any jazz, though jazz has always been ageless. Has �eclectic� gone out of the music dictionary?

Those radio stations that carry what I like best now call it American Standard. When I was in high school, we called it �popular.� Even then, most of us realized that it went back another fifty years or so. We�d see a movie like �On Moonlight Bay,� which took place around the beginning of the twentieth century, and the songs would be contemporary for that time. Nevertheless, we could sing them as well as the current ones.

During the 1930�s and �40�s, popular music meant big bands like Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey. Toward the 1950�s the bands slipped into the background and the vocalists were the stars. And they sang. No lip-synching, no amplified accompaniment with psychodelic lighting. Maybe they would bring their own sheet music or their own pianist. Otherwise an appearance meant they would be there to sing. (I remember Mario Lanza once got in trouble with the Ed Sullivan Show because he was unwell and he lip-synched his song.)

Adult Contemporary is another category I hear on the radio sometimes. I used to listen to that a great deal, until a local station turned to the �Music of Your Life� programming that I prefer. (Of course, any kind of music can be evocative of some part of your life, no matter what your preference.) One thing about this network is that I almost never hear a song I haven�t heard before. New artists, new recordings, sure. Some of them are wonderful.

It�s not always wonderful, of course. Some of the darned things are no better now than they were first time around. There goes Wayne Rogers with �Danke Sch�n.� Nothing�s perfect.

Current Reading:
Good Diary Today:
From the Old Folks' Radio:

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