Lately, I’ve been noticing how prevalent loud rock music is. Being old enough to remember when rock music was evil and a certain path to Hell, I now find it amusing that the stuff is almost everywhere we go.
At the gym on Monday night I took notice of some Metallica tune rumbling through the plastic ceiling speakers and just below were several people old enough to be my parents, and they didn’t seem to mind at all. In the 1960s (where I come from) such an onslaught would have elicited complaints to the management and demands that they “turn off this infernal rubbish!”
Today, nobody bats an eye – or ear.
Walk into your local Wawa (or similar convenience store) and the stuff is blasting over their speakers. Go to a sporting event and it’s playing over the P.A. system, introducing players and providing between-innings entertainment. It’s playing at restaurants, bars and places where the majority of the people remember buying 45s and watching Jack Paar on TV.
Rock music isn’t social anathema anymore, and that is peculiar to me. In my youth, loud music provided a buffer between us and them. With the proliferation of MTV and other mainstream outlets, the older generations have been worn down and even (egad) gotten to enjoy bands that they should be marching on Washington to protest. You can’t even get them angry at Ozzy Ozbourne anymore, and he’s older than most of them. Of course, Ozzy is still playing, as is Springsteen at 59, Jagger at 65 and Steven Tyler at 61; so maybe they’re just playing to their audience?
I liked it better when there was a social enemy. After all, what better marketing tool is there than to tell someone that something is bad for them or that they can’t have it? Now, everybody gets it and somehow it has lost its appeal. The Beatles used to be “long-haired mop-tops.” By comparison, they’d look like accountants today and our parents would be shouting at them to “Turn it up!”
People of my generation are old enough to have grown up with loud music, and like most things acceptance comes from exposure, which is why I’m a little surprised that marijuana isn’t legal yet.
Mostly, what bothers me is that I’m the same age as the people who were complaining about the loud music I listened to when I was a kid, and I find that disconcerting.
2 comments:
This leads me to a post I was thinking of which relates to the little jabs of music they throw in at sports arena's.
Is 'Welcome To The Jungle' by GnR even relevant anymore? It almost seems embarrassing some times to hear it being played.
Then again, the majority of people recognize it so they keep playing it, even if it is over 20 years old.
Funny, I just heard that GnR song on a NASCAR ad on TV. I guess the jungle reference is supposed to scare opponents. It just makes us realize how old we are, which is kind of scary, I guess.
Sports have been playing that Queen "We Will Rock You" for a million years. And Fogerty's "Centerfield."
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