EXPERIENCE

The following post is inspired by someone's recent blog. This blogger and I used to play in bands together, and we love to trade banter back and forth concerning the sorry state of music today.

Here's a list of all of the CDs in my carry-all bag, in no particular order:

Pixies- Surfer Rosa/Come On Pilgrim*
Pixies- Trompe Le Monde*
Husker Du- Zen Arcade*
RZA as Bobby Digital- Digital Bullet*
50 Cent- Guess Who's Back?
N.W.A.- Straight Outta Compton (currently playing in my ride)
Love- Forever Changes
Dead Milkmen- Beelzebubba
Morrissey- Vauxhall And I
White Stripes- Destijl*
Ramones first album*
Outkast- Speakerboxx/The Love Below*
Men At Work- Brazil (live album)*

All the titles with asterisks are burned copies.

There are also two mix CDs, three animation-related burns, and one CD-RW of some music I've been recording.

In my car, I have seven mix CDs on hand, with various bands in random order.

This catalogue is not meant to display my eclectic-ness and variety. On the contrary, when you get past the issue of diversity, there's a strong conservative bent to my selections.

1. Out of all of the CDs in my immediate possession, the most recent release is the Outkast double CD set. The oldest release is from 1967. Out of all of the store-bought CDs (non-burns), the one I've had the longest is Beelzebubba. I bought that in junior high, at the end of the '90's. I don't count the N.W.A. disc because that particular copy is a recent addition-- my original cassette copy was stolen years ago.

2. None of these bands are Britney Spears, of which I own nothing, nor are any of them Radiohead, of which I have plenty at home. Some of them are relatively big-- Morrissey is experiencing a comeback, 50 Cent has a new album out, The Pixies reunited last year, The White Stripes probably have something new coming out soon, and The Ramones' documentary End Of The Century has been released on DVD. Even the bands that are no more like Husker Du and N.W.A. have left enduring legacies that last to this day. However, none of the titles I listed above are current releases.

3. About half of the artists mentioned before are groups or performers that I got into after they peaked or broke up, with the exception of the rap stuff-- I get wind of that shit as soon as it's hot off the streets. But I became a fan of The Pixies when Trompe Le Monde was released, which was when they broke up. Same with The Smiths and The Ramones-- their glory days were over with once I jumped on board their trains. I'd never paid Husker Du any mind until three years ago, well after they disbanded. And Love... they've been broken up since the end of the '60's, and ironically Arthur Lee is still touring under the name!

4. The inclusion of Men At Work and Love may seem like catering to some sort of kitsch factor, but in the case of the boys from Down Under, my older brother had their first two albums when they came out. He played them non-stop. I started to like it. I'm a genuine fan as a result. And Love came from my backwards time-traveling into classic rock, when I discovered that Love was Jim Morrison's favorite rock group. Otherwise, all the other titles seem like they are trying to stress some type of street cred or cool taste, like "Look at me! I'm still cool, even though I'm over 30!"

5. 8 of the 13 CDs are burned copies, 9 if you count Outkast twice. Of the store-bought CDs, two of them were either freebies or gifts from friends, possibly one of them is even a CD that I jacked from someone else. For all of my love of music and bands, I don't support them very well financially. But then again, it's the retailers-- not the bands themselves-- who are gouging the prices. Thank God Napster and Kazaa scared the record retailers into dropping their pants on at least a good portion of the available product out there.

As you can see, I make no claims to being avant-garde or cutting-edge. My tastes are pretty much set in stone, and new bands are hard for me to fathom or absorb quickly. But this has always been the case for me. When everyone was into punk and new wave, I was listening to Motown and R&B. When everyone was into college rock, I was discovering classic rock. When the trend winds changed direction and landed on hair metal, I was investigating thrash and speed metal. Then things went "grunge", and I took that time to go back and bone up on all the punk, new wave, college rock and hair metal that I'd missed the first time around.

The whole entire time, I only kept my finger on the pulse of rap, because it was entirely new and fresh. Even when they started sampling, it coincided with my time-traveling, crate-digging, neurotic-music-fan tendencies. Rap is the only music genre that I can safely claim to have been in on since its inception.

But as I get older, I look back and wonder what the point of all of it was. So many people were into "scenes" and specific kinds of music. They were very disciplined, very strict and narrow concerning the definitions of good music. Before Nirvana, kids in my 'hood didn't listen to rock unless they had some crazy whiteboy friends. Now, when I roll through Pacoima to visit my younger cousins, I can hear them riffing away on not only Nirvana but Sublime, Bad Brains and Black Sabbath in the garage as I approach the curb.

These are bands that were around when my cousins were sucking their thumbs. I know, because I saw them grow up before my eyes. I jam with these kids now, hoping to stay young, and I appreciate when they know songs that I grew up playing also... but I'm also smart enough to know that it's a young person's market.

I try to keep an open ear to what's the newest thing, but since I've always gone against the grain and kept my ears open to only particular types of music, I still come off as an old fogie, trying to stay hip.

The reason? All I can say is, when I was young I didn't trust any adults. They were all rats, in my opinion. No matter how "cool" they came off as, they were The Enemy, and I had more respect for those who acted their age than the ones who tried to get on "my level", like I was some kitten that needs to be acclimated with his environment in the first two weeks of life.

So now, as an old man, I look at the kids today and say to myself, They hate you. No matter how hip you think you are, they unconditionally hate you. They don't want to be you, even if they end up being exactly like you... Don't try to reason with them. Just be who you've always been...

I think it's more important to think young than to try to act young anyway. I prefer jamming with people my own age, with people interested in playing at a certain level, who are not just experiencing the rush of freedom as they play but are also traveling down a path that they've paved for themselves through years and years of rehearsing and jamming and playing in bands.

They have Experience, as Jimi might've said once...


*/*


Last week I was on The Who's tip, reliving past memories while driving and bumping their CDs. There's that classic line from Pete Townshend: "I hope I die before I get old..." rendered absurd by the fact that it was sung decades before I was even a tadpole in my dad's crotchbags.

I was singing that (and believing that) when I was 16, unaware of the irony of going to see a bunch of 40-somethings play ancient songs in an overpacked venue. My friend Mike and I were by far the youngest people in attendance out of our own volition and not dragged there by their parents.

Now I'm old. And I didn't die. I was hoping that I would, but it didn't happen. Good thing, too, because adulthood is turning out to be better than adolescence in so many ways.

Maybe, when I was younger, getting old was the same as dying. Maybe that's what The Who's "My Generation" was talking about: I hope I'm dead before I get boring and settled. Of course, there's no limits on when we have to settle down. Even a man like my grandfather, who has been married for over a half a century, still comes off as a young man with a lust for life. I don't think he ever had a midlife crisis, or even a quarter-century crisis. I think that kind of thinking is pure bullshit to a man like my grandfather, who can drink me under the table and outsmokes me by two complete packs.

Maybe that's why old people get a bad rap for not liking anything new and cutting-edge: because they've seen so many things come and go, and they can sniff out the bullshit immediately. And let's face it-- even good bands come equipped with a fair amount of hype and bullshit, thanks to their PRs and agents, thanks to the media machine, thanks to ratings and dollars and greed...

Greed...


*/*


The kids always accuse the adults of selling out, of getting soft, losing their edge. But really, it's when they get greedy that the kids revolt. When they have it all, and still want more... that's when you see the kids talking about ousting the existing order and turning everything upside-down.

When the hippies became yuppies, people screamed, "Sellout!" but this is what they should've been screaming: "What, you're not rich enough?"

Nowadays, there are kids who are greedy, and want to be rich, for sure. There always has been. They are tempered by the ones who notice a lack of care and quality control when the paychecks get bigger. I was once one of the latter category of kids, and now I'm one of those adults who is caught between the pressures of aging and the urge to throw caution to the wind...

When U2 did Achtung Baby, I didn't know what to make of it. Years later, I accepted that it was a good album, but I still wanted to cry "Sellout!" I realize, now, that I was on my guard, hoping that U2 wouldn't get too greedy. They did, of course-- who really needed a giant lemon as part of the Pop Tour, even if it was supposed to be ironic? But it backfired, and now they've settled somewhere in the middle, like rock and roll grandpappies who still like to kick out the jams every now and then.

Now they are inductees into the Hall of Fame, where so many others have been passed by. Bono could possibly become the World Bank director, and he can learn all the secret handshakes, his fingers cupped over the hands of the beneficary...

He's had Experience. He paid his dues.


*/*


One last thing: I taught Language Arts at a Pasadena middle school about five years ago. It was a short-lived stint, to say the least, but Clay's post reminded me of when I was asked, by a girl in the class, if Jay-Z really lived in the 'hood.

I said, "Jay-Z makes a lot of money. I don't think he'd want his mama living in the projects while he's got all this cash."

"But he said in that one song that he still keeps it real..."

"That's what he said. It's art. It's for fun. It seems real, but it's not. He's not a fake, per se, but he stopped doing the stuff he says he does in his raps a long time ago..."

"But he almost got busted for stabbing that one dude in a club in New York..."

These kids had read up on things. I was with it. "Yeah, and they didn't have a case against him."

"How do you know so much about rap, Mr. L______?" one kid asked.

I was tempted to school the kid, but after a while I just relented and said:

"You'll understand what I mean when you get to be my age..."

...rather than going the easy route and saying:

"When I was your age..."

...because I don't want to turn my back on the new stuff. I don't want to seem like I'm clutching on to the past.

Plus, those kids would've thought I was a joke if I tried to be "down" with them. I think they ended up liking me better knowing that there was a possibility that I listened to rap music. I was an adult who didn't want to wear it on my sleeve, and I remember when I was their age thinking that adults like that were cool, because they were "down" with the new shit but didn't want to let on as much.

They knew how embarrassing it would be if I acted like I was still a teenager. So did I.

And I answered their questions to their satisfaction. They opened up to me a bit more, because I didn't hit them over the head with it.

In their eyes, I had Experience.

I was 26 at the time, and it was the first time that I felt really old... and I liked it.