Am I Old?

When does one realize that they are getting old?



Chorus:

"They said all
Teenagers scare
The living shit out of me
They could care less
As long as someone'll bleed
So darken your clothes
Or strike a violent pose
Maybe they'll leave you alone
But not me"

The lead singer who wrote this song after being on a subway train with a group high school age teenagers. He said,

"That was the first time I felt old...I was nervous and I was a target. I felt like I had become a parent figure or part of the problem."

The lead singer at the time was probably around 28 years old.

It suck when you begin to realize you’re not a teenager or even 25 anymore even though in you’re mind you think you still are. But one day you look around and see young people looking at you as if you’re old. I know I could go to a Alice Cooper concert or a Rob Zombie concert and there will be young people looking at me like what you doing here old man. Even though I was listening to Alice before they were born and Alice is 63yrs old or that Rob Zombie and I are the same age. Fact is that if I sat down with Alice or Rob I would have more in common with them than some 20 year old.

The song “Teenagers” to me is about the violence in the youth culture and that adults are to blame due to their lack of involvement in teenagers life and that we should be more involve in their lives even if they don’t want it. But involved not has either a policeman or as a best friend but as a parent or as a mentor. To me a parent’s job is to teach your child how to survive with out them, to understand the rules of one society and prepare them to be able to cope in the real world. To learn from mistakes and if they fall to always get back up.

When I was a school age teenage in the late 70’s and early 80’s I knew kids who had parents with guns and they would have never touch them nor would have brought them to school no matter how angry they were. We did carry pocketknives to school, which could be confiscated if a teacher saw you playing with it but usually you were warned to put it away. If it was confiscated you could get it back at the end of the day. Fights were rare and usually quick and weaponless. Most of the time students would jump in and break it up before a teacher got there. Reason is because their fellow students would break it up so the two who are fighting wouldn’t get in trouble. Teacher had no problem jumping in the middle of a fight because typically a student would not dare hit a teacher because they were taught at home and school to respect their elders. Don’t get me wrong I’m sure a few got hit in the heat of things.

But today it seems when a fight breaks out the surrounding students standby with their cell phone videoing it for the Internet. I too think adults are to blame because we are the one making the rules and produce media programs showing insane drunken behavior of reality TV. I believe children and teenager needs rules and boundaries that will allow them express themselves and be themselves but not violate others rights or peace. But adult need to lead by example especially by parents and teachers. It seems today there are parents and teachers who don't think they have an obligation to be a moral role model without regard of how it's going to influence young minds. Truth is those adults are lazy and self-centered.

I do understand how teenagers can scare me. We fear what we don’t understand and where I once could relate now I wonder who are these people. I’m sure all the things I felt then is about the same as today teenagers do. Most teenagers tend to be idealist because the lack experience in being in the real world unless they are in a very poor gang control area then its just a form hopeless survialism. Maybe what happens is as we get older and go through life we begin understand more and life becomes less fearful and more secure in our own skin and we begin to understand our parents better. As I say to my young adult kids, just because you’re an adult it doesn’t mean you’re grown up. The day you grow up is the day you realize you have responsibilities. Responsibilities to work, to family, to friends, to community and even responsibilities you don’t even want to have but you do. That’s the day you grow up whether it be at 20 or 50 and I know some who are in their 40s and still haven’t grown up because the won’t take responsibility and I’ve know 16yr old who had to grow up because they had to become responsible to support their mother and siblings after their father died.

But the real question is; have we let an untrained dog off the leash? Many “parents” today will allow a minor do things that in my day we couldn’t do until you were over 18 and living in your own place unless your parents were old hippies even then they would draw a line. Will young people today be able to grow up?

I think it’s important to be young at heart but be real about it. There just some things our aging bodies can do anymore. I use to be able to stay up all night and then go to work but oddly it just doesn’t seem to be the smart thing to do anymore.

UR

Musical Interlude

Reflection

Time for Halloween

It’s October which means Halloween. Halloween is my favorite time of the year.

So here is a few of my favorite Halloween stuff.

A haunted house story I heard when I was a kid by Brother Dave Gardner



Bobby (Boris) Pickett



Ghoultown with Elvira, The Mistress of the Dark



Zombie Ghost Train



Rob Zombie a true Halloween master.






And what would Halloween be without Alice Cooper.









HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Return of the Record Album?

So I was reading this article on CNN.com “Who's still listening to vinyl?” and it took me back. In my life time I’ve seen record albums (LP, 78s & 45s), 8 tracks, cassettes, CDs and now MP3s. Well I haven’t done the MP3 thing yet. I know some twenty something(s) who are now into getting records and enjoy listening to them. Of course to me it would be nostalgic to them it’s “Retro”. Ah getting old.

I remember when records were thought to be replaced by 8 tracks. This how my first record collection started, I got them handed down to me from my older brothers mostly Beatles, Rolling Stones and The Who, but I also got 8 tracks. 8 tracks had a great sound and you could take them with you, if you had an 8 track player in your car or a portable player. You could even select a song by clicking thru tracks if your player had that capability. The draw backs of the 8 track was many times it had to change tracks in the middle of a song and they were kind of cumbersome to carry around and of course if the tape broke. First 8 tracks I bought with my own money I saved from doing chores was an Alice Cooper album.

Then came the cassette, it was smaller than an 8 track but the sound quality was not as good a record or an 8 track but as teenager who cares. It was portable and you could play it anywhere there was a cassette player. Plus you could take a blank tape and copy a record album to it and play it in your car. But again a draw back with a cassette tape was if the tape broke or got tangled up in the player. Probably the biggest problem with cassettes is you couldn’t select a song. You had to either fast forward or rewind and keep hitting play until you find the beginning of a song. First cassette was a Beatle album. Needless to say I had many 8 tracks and cassettes but it was records that favored.

Record LP albums were great. First you had a great sound but what was even better was the covers and sleeves the records came in. They had either photos or cover art and sometime you found a poster or a collectable photo or a gift certificate. I remember how I would slide the record out, put it on the turn table then set the stylus (aka needle) on the record and sit back looking at the album cover as you waited for the song to start. Your eyes fixed on the cover you ears listening to the low hiss and crackles or pops of the grooves; I was just waiting in anticipation of the first note or sound. Then lost in the sounds of the record and lost visually in the cover or the slide out the sleeve which usually had liner notes and read it over and over. I remember I knew an old man who had a record player set up in a laundry room of an apartment building in the apartment complex I grew up in and I would go over and sit with him as we listen to old 78 records. These records were heavier feeling than modern vinyl records and if you drop them they would break. But I would sit there with him listening to old operas, classical, big bands and crooners. To me this was just as magical as listening to my contemporary vinyl records. The great thing was the imaginary journey you take through the music and even the covers of the records. You couldn’t take the music with you. You had to stay in one place, you could only go as far has you could hear it. Oh and my first record album I bought with money I saved was a David Bowie album.

So the draw backs for records was not being able to listen to it on the move but the other draw back was that you wanted to listen to just one song you had to careful place on the right grooves which could be a pain. But you could usually find a 45 record and even cooler was sometimes lucked out and got a good song on the B side. Another problem was your records had two sides and when one side was done you had to go over and flip it over to listen to the rest of the record. And having the same problem with 8 tracks and cassettes what is one going to do?

Well, the answer was the CD. The CD seems to be the answer for uninterrupted play. That was the selling point. Oh yea, and you were saving trees. CD’s were small and come in plastic cases with less paper. Of course later it became bad to have all those plastic cases floating out there and getting thrown away, so then CDs came in hard paper sleeves and then back to plastic cases. Anyway, CDs sound isn’t bad but not quite same as records and you could take it with you and play it on a portable CD played then CD players became fashionable in cars not to mention if you had a disk drive in you computer. You can select song tracks and even select random play. But what I didn’t like about CD’s was that it comes in a case that is like 5” by 5” give or take an inch. Sure it’s convenient but you can barely see the cover and if you open it you either have fold out or a booklet which either way even with young eyes you need a magnifying glass to read it. Unlike the 12” by 12” record album cover. Oh well as disappointed as I was with the demise of records I accepted it and began getting CDs. But so far I have resisted MP3s which to me is nothing but creations of an A.D.D. society. My first CD well not sure those days are little fuzzy but it might have been a best of ELO or Brian Eno or maybe Ramones.

But I am hopeful with an apparently resurgent of the record albums I won’t be the last generation to enjoy the magic that comes with whole package of a vinyl album and the imaginations that is inspired.

A friend the other day told me he heard a report that our future will lack American inventors because today’s youth lack creativity and imagination. I’m sure there more to it than the lack of records but that’s a post for another day.

I may venture deep into the back of my closet and bring out what few records I have left and play them. Oh wait I don’t have a record player anymore. Rats, screwed again!

UR

Ray Davies Live Winter 2010

I saw Ray Davies the other night in Atlantic City NJ.

I saw Ray about two years ago and I saw the Kinks in the mid 80’s when they were doing the Think Visual Tour. I’ve had at one time or another most of the Kinks albums. I’ve been a long time Kinks fan.

Anyway Ray has kicked off his 2010 winter tour at the Music Box in the Borgata Casino. He basically was doing a Storyteller show that was mostly acoustic sets with the assistance of a wonderful guitarist Bill Shanley who played acoustic, electric and back up vocals. The opening act was an LA band called “The 88” who were young and really good. They also joined Ray at the end with a full electric performance of three Kinks songs.

Now Ray always likes to get his audience involved with the performance. He likes to get them to clap to the beat of the songs and even sing along and have the crowd do the chorus refrains and this performance was no different. Ray was great as usual and he really wants the crowd to be a part of things even though he was doing less known Kinks and solo stuff. Basically you really had to know your Kinks and Ray’s solo stuff. Even for me who has most of the Kinks albums and two of Ray’s albums there were two or three songs I didn’t recall but it didn’t matter- it was about having fun.

So Ray was great but I was disappointed in the audience. I was center and a few rows from the stage. Age of the crowd was mainly in their 50’s and 60’s. There were a few of us 40 something and younger. But in my section I was surrounded by corpses and I’m not referring to their age but their attitudes. It was like they were watching TV. I saw Ray two years a go in a small theater setting and everybody was rocking and having fun. But this group seemed totally lost. Now there were a couple sections being more involved, like the section to my left. They were up and participating and Ray would keep looking over to them and smiling and almost started playing to them.

I don’t know why they seemed lost and just sat there. Maybe, because it was a casino and most of the people who came in thought it was a lounge act or if they as middle age people who were scarred as little kids by seeing their parents dancing and having fun at parties swore they would never act that way when they get old or they only knew three Kinks songs is why. But even in the end when “The 88” came out and joined Ray on stage to rock out, the crowd in my section just sat there and eventually got up and tried to participate. But man it was sad.

There was this couple in front me and you think they would be rockers. She had blond hair and was wearing a little leather jacket with Harley Davidson spelled out in rhinestones. I would say they were in there late forties to mid fifties. Well, they were corpses, occasionally looking back at me when I would softly clap to the beat or sing along (because Ray asked us to) as if I was bothering them. I was getting annoyed with them and I was wondering why they even came and not just go buy a DVD of him and watch him at home. I said to my wife we should go sit in the fun section to the left. I mean I’ve seen more active crowds at an André Rieu classical music concert with an older crowd.

So look you old hippies and rockers if you think you’re being cool by not being part of the concert, you actually are being boring and looking like a bunch of old folks. Ray is 65 and had more energy and youth than what I saw around me.

I encourage you, if you have chance to see Ray Davies, go! For you young ones you would be seeing one of the great artists that have influenced many bands to this day. And as for you old ones, go and enjoy. Advice to young and old don’t get drunk. One, you might not remember the concert. Two, chances are you’re going to yell things that don’t make sense or interrupt the performance. But you old ones don’t be afraid to let the teenager out in you. You just might have a little bit more fun and fonder memories.