Damn, I’m old

On Friday, I was reading the Scarlet and Black, Grinnell’s weekly newspaper [1]. In it was a short interview with the Overcoats [2], a band who are playing Grinnell on November 16. The first question is What kind of music did you both grow up listening to? Hana Elion’s response starts I liked the classics like […].

Now, that’s a phrase that many pop and rock musicians say. In the 60’s, the classics typically referred to artists like Elvis, Howlin’ Wolf, Hank Williams, Junior Parker and such. By the 70’s, the classics were artists like The Beatles, The Stones, The Who, Motown, Otis, James Brown, Dylan, Aretha and perhaps even the Velvets. Moving forward a decade or two, one would probably add artists like Springsteen, Fleetwood Mac, Prince, and Michael Jackson. I’m not sure that anyone ever referred to the late 1970’s punk and new wave acts as classics. However, by this time, it seems that Patti Smith, the Ramones, Hüsker Dü, the Jam, the Beat, and other such acts are classics.

But how did Elion continue their [3] response? I liked the classics like Britney Spears, Backstreet Boys, Dixie Chicks, stuff like that.

And now I’m left wondering

• Am I just old?
• Is Elion just really young?
• Is Elion so sick of that question that they come up with absurdist replies?
• Is the world ending?

I’m probably just old. I think I’ll just go listen to some Ella Fitzgerald.

[1] I was going to say Oldest continuously published student newspaper west of the Mississippi, but it no longer puts that in the title line. I’m not sure why it got dropped.

[2] No, not the Raincoats. Didn’t they break up like thirty years ago?

[3] I do not know what Elion prefers as a pronoun.

Version 1.0 of 2017-11-13.