Play That Funky Music, White Boy

It’s hard for me to believe but this is my 100th post of the Laughable Feast on Substack. Even harder to believe is that so many of you have actually read one or more of them. To celebrate this auspicious occasion, I present as a present the following post in its entirety, to all of my readers, asking the musical question ‘Where Have All the Flowers Gone?’.

Cheers!

Eric

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Can I tell you something?

I love music. I love all kinds of music, except for folk music, Irish clogging, bluegrass, baroque chamber music, disco, and bubble gum pop, all of which I hate. I don’t like rap either and I know in some woke circles that makes me a racist. Truth is, I’m just an old geezer who doesn’t understand modern music. So sue me. If I want to see someone grab their crotch and growl unintelligibly, I’ll watch professional baseball thank you very much.

My father loved Tommy Dorsey and Duke Ellington and Artie Shaw and all the other dudes who stood in front of big bands with shit-eating grins on their faces pretending to conduct the music. While the big band sound is not off-putting to me – how can a bunch of blaring trumpets and wailing saxophones be bad? – I never understood the visual appeal of this sort of entertainment. I do make an exception for the famous Spanish bandleader Xavier Cugat, however. Not because I found his saucy arrangements compelling but because the singer fronting his band, his wife Abbe Lane, was incredibly visually appealing and saucy.

I also have tremendous respect and admiration for classical music courtesy of all those brilliant composers with bad hairpieces, as well as the maestros and virtuoso musicians who so elegantly interpret and perform their great works. I just don’t want to listen to it for very long. My father required me to attend most performances of the Oregon Symphony and the Portland Junior Symphony, of which my sister was a member, and the concerts to me felt like a 20-year stretch in a Siberian gulag.

Most symphonies have three or four “movements” all of which last as long as a thorough teeth cleaning. And they don’t get around to playing them until after the first half of the show which features a carefully curated program of intermezzos, concertos, scherzos, cantatas, sonatas, tostadas, frittatas, and other things as well.

As you might suspect, there’s also a long history of music prior to the Classical Era, including ancient hit parades courtesy of the Chinese, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Persians, Mayans, et al. But none of them got much airplay from Wolfman Jack when my musical tastes were forming, so I really don’t have anything good or bad to say. Maybe if they came out with some dance remixes, I’d give a listen.

But that’s not what I wanted to tell you.

I like The Rolling Stones. I’ve never seen them in concert, and although Mick and Keith and Bill are still miraculously alive and touring, it’s much too late for that. I saw The Who at the Rose Garden in Portland a few years ago, and after listening to Roger Daltry try to scream and watching Pete Townsend try to not tear his rotator cuff, and being the only one with a Bic lighter instead of a cell phone, I just felt old and sad.

So I’m going to pass on seeing The Stones live now but I had all their albums back in my salad days and loved listening to them. Out of Our Heads, Beggar’s Banquet, Let it Bleed, Sticky Fingers, Exile on Main Street, and my favorite Some Girls. I didn’t like Goat’s Head Soup much, but not because I wouldn’t want to eat such a thing, I just hated Angie. I found it vaguely uncomfortable watching Mick Jagger prance and strut, but hearing their bluesy backbeats, deliciously ragged guitar riffs, and snarling lyrics moved something in me that other rock bands couldn’t.

Rolling Stone, the magazine not the band, regularly publishes a list of the 500 best songs of all-time, which they claim to be based on rigorous critical examination but appear to be randomly selected for their commercial success. I suppose updates are necessary because the vast majority of today’s listening public think Pink Floyd is an energy drink and Chuck Berry is something you put on top of your quinoa power bowl.

Indeed, a quick review of the current list confirmed I’m a certified geezer because I’ve never heard of seventeen of the top fifty songs and have no fucking idea who the people are that play or sing them.

The Rolling Stones, the band not the magazine, had their first #1 hit in the United States back in 1965 off the Out of Our Heads album and it was (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction. It was too sexually suggestive for British airwaves at the time, but evidently American censors thought the song was about low-tar cigarettes and let it play. It was about sex of course, as many Stones songs are, but also a thinly veiled slap at commercialism.

Despite the social undertones, and likely due to raw sexuality, the song clawed its way to the top of the U.S. charts, and when Rolling Stone magazine published its first Top 500 list in 2004 it debuted at #2. That rarefied spot is currently occupied by Public Enemy’s Fight the Power and Satisfaction has slid all the way down to #31 on the list, slotted just behind Lorde’s Royals, a choice I would quibble with even though I’ve never heard it, but thankfully a spot above Notorious B.I.G.’s Juicy which I would have no higher than #43.

But that’s not what I wanted to tell you either.

Whatever you think of The Rolling Stones and wherever you think (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction belongs on the Top 500 list, you cannot deny the unmistakable influence of the blues in American music, and rock and roll in particular.

To say that rock and roll ripped off the blues and substituted lyrics about acid trips for the bone-weary, two-in-the-morning laments about cheating lovers and cheap whisky is not far from the truth.

Which is one reason, although I like rock well enough, the blues is really my favorite musical genre.

The evolution of music has produced all kinds of sounds from country western to rockabilly, from zydeco to bluegrass, from soul to R&B – that genre is a close second to the blues for me mostly because it makes older people feel sexy – from punk to grunge, and from pop to, well more pop. All of these styles appeal to different people with different tastes for different reasons and I have no issue with anyone liking any of them. That said, nothing can explain or excuse disco.

Disco music, the unfortunate love child of bubble gum pop and funk, emerged in 1970 and aside from the Vietnam War and Watergate was the biggest reason the decade sucked. During its heyday it was a giddy time of glitzy discothèques. Everyone was dancing the hustle, drinking cheap champagne, snorting cocaine, and sporting a very regrettable fashion trend. And also a time when, against all odds, John Travolta became a star.

Happily, the Disco Era didn’t last very long, peaking in the late ‘70s and dramatically dying the night of July 12, 1979, after the infamous – or famous depending on your perspective – Disco Demolition Night after a White Sox game at Chicago’s Comiskey Park. Revulsion with disco music was so deep-seated and widespread, what was supposed to be a light-hearted baseball promotion turned into an ugly riot.

Virtually overnight, as if we’d all woken from a terrible nightmare, the disco balls stopped spinning, the strobes stopped flashing, and after all that boogie, oogie, oogie-ing, people just couldn’t boogie no more.

But what I really wanted to tell you is this.

Music is like ice cream. Stay with me. It’s strictly a matter of personal preference and what tastes good to you. One man’s Strawberry Swirl is another man’s Spumoni. And even though there are lots of exotic flavors to choose from, people might try a taste of Honey Jalapeno or Tamarind Twist but most of them will end up buying vanilla bean or chocolate chip or rocky road. Which helps explain the popularity of Taylor Swift. And nobody but nobody is going to buy Neapolitan. Which helps explain why most people who compete on American Idol end up scooping ice cream at Ben & Jerry’s.

What is meaningful about music is that it becomes inextricably entwined with the fabric of our lives and we attach certain songs, even whole genres to periods, conveniently forgetting all the bad shit that happened and remembering the good times. This is why oldies are golden, right?

What is inextricably true as well, however, is that life passes us all by and the music that means so much to us inevitably becomes anathema to our children, and if we live long enough popular with our grandchildren, and finally nothing more than a curious museum relic. Que sera, sera.

One day you’re the angry poet of a generation and the next thing you know you’re selling sport utility vehicles and serenading shoppers in the frozen food aisle.

Which brings me back to The Rolling Stones.

Even though their concerts are cringe-worthy now, I still like their music. And I still think that old-time rock and roll is great. But do you have any idea how depressing it is to hear (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction on the Safeway sound system at the exact moment you discover they’re sold out of Ore-Ida tater tots?

Thanks for listening. Talk soon.