|
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
Peacful Easy Feeling?
In 1994 I was 11-years-old and surrounded by many people, all very excited. In that year the one-two punch of the Eagles reunion and The Rolling Stones comeback had hit American pop culture square in the jaw. My mother in particular had expanded her CD collection to include Hell Freezes Over and Voodoo Lounge. My mother was excited about these minstrels whose music she had loved in the past rising from the dead, as was her friends and as were my friends' parents. My friend Brian's father in particular was something of an Eagles expert who regaled us all with trivia about the California popsters during a pool party that year, while the strains of "Love Will Keep Us Alive" could be heard in the background. My brother and I wish to have some simple bit of backyard fun was squashed by the neighbors' insisting that their bar-b-q be supplied by the soundtrack of The Glimmer Twins' compositions "Thru and Thru” and “Brand New Car.” All the while I got my first dose of alienation, as I felt the world swooning over something that seemed so impenetrable to me.
My good friend at the time, television, was expanding this love of all things classic rock so that there was no way I could ignore it. It wasn’t just the adults living in Moorpark, California who were obsessed with Don Henley and Mick Jagger all over again. From the looks of things it was the whole world. The sales of concert tickets were making rich men even richer. Fans would tell the media, in increasing volume, how many times they’ve seen The Eagles (from ten to “never saw them the first time ’round”) and what songs they would like to hear “Keef” bang out on his five-stringed telecaster. It seemed to me that there was all this joy others were experiencing for the arbitrary reason that they grew up in a certain era and have therefore built up a memory bank of how good things were “back in the day,” regardless of accurate those memories were. I was too young at the time to fully understand the word for this: nostalgia. Something that can be quite pleasant when administered carefully but here it was presented in its most dangerous form, “en masse.” I wondered, while I was then just a lad, would I feel such an uneasy feeling amid such behavior in others again.
Today, this comic shipped.
Permanent Link: 6:35 PM |
0 comments
Comments:
-- Home
|
