Where’s My Remote Control?

Could it be that the music that I consider classic, the music that changed the way the music scene was going and moved it towards a better direction has become irrelevant? I don’t want to admit it but I think that for many it has.

Go to any high school and just look around, look through the sea of black and take note of the t-shirts many of them are wearing. Bands shirts obviously, but look closely at the shirts the males students are wearing. No, you’re not seeing things they are actually wearing Led Zeppelin, The Who, Pink Floyd and AC/DC shirts.

Now at first I thought that this was a product of parents who grew up in the 1970s and continue to listen to “classic rock” in their children’s presence. An after thought to that was that perhaps these band logos have become the new “in” thing and that these kids didn’t realize that the names and logos were actually artists and album covers of bands that existed in the 1970s (not unlike the clichéd image of Bob Marley, but I’ll save that for another post).

I believed these things right up until one of the aforementioned kids ventured into the record store I worked at on his lunch break and actually purchased an album that was released in the 1970s, I wish I could remember what he bought. “They actually listen to these bands” I said to myself. It really is surprising how many kids have “Highway to Hell” loaded on their iPods. I don’t ever remember a time when teenagers liked or would admit to liking their ‘rents music. I certainly didn’t, at least not until I matured musically and realized that not all of what my parents were listening to was crap. The 1970s carried a lot of truly fascinating and great musicians. Could it be these kids are more musically mature than most of the people I know when they were that age? Hmm, I think not.

Now back to the issue at hand. Who I was referring to in my opening statements about music that I consider classic were bands like Nirvana and The Beatles. These bands are considered classics even beyond me, on a much larger scale yet there are still people out there who have no idea who they are. HOW CAN THIS BE?!?!?! This truly blows my mind. Kids spend a high percentage of their time on the internet; do they not browse the internet and read while they’re myspacing and chatting? Do they not watch Much More Music or MTV? There is even at least one person out there (who lives in Fredericton) who doesn’t know who U2 is. Have these people lived their entire lives in monasteries with no access to the outside world? Even if you don’t listen to music you have to know who these bands are, they’re mentioned in movies, on TV even on talk radio programs. Everyone should know who these bands are and what they did for music.

It makes me sad that Nirvana has become irrelevant for this generation of music listeners (at least some of them). I liked it better when I was naive and believed that the legend that is Nirvana would live on and everyone would know and remember them for years to come. Reality bites!