Pop Music

When I was young pop music was a huge part of my life, just as it is for most people of a certain age. Not long after I got married and had to buckle down to earn a living and make a home I stopped paying attention to pop music. It was as if there was absolutely no time at all to listen to it. I quite actually did not have the leisure moments to hear what my old favorites were producing, nor to discover new music. I cast it aside and I was left behind in the wake of the industry.

What time that I did have for myself since those days I have almost always used to spend with my wife and son, or to create stories and novels, or to travel to see places that I fear may not survive the coming years (National Parks and wilderness areas). To put it bluntly, music didn't just take a back seat in the current of my life, it was all but dead to me.

I will admit that I was able to catch the tail-end of the great days of Napster and was able to glom onto thousands of old tunes I recalled and to discover a few artists who had appeared on the scene since I'd stopped listening to pop. But the industry soon put a stop to that and I went back to completely ignoring popular music.

These days, from time to time I will look up a group or an artist whose work I quite enjoyed as a young man. And every now and again I will recall that for a few years I made money selling vinyl records and got a huge kick out of discovering acts I'd never heard of, or musicians whose work I had just never sampled. This made dealing retail music a lot of fun and I looked forward to finding a jewel in the midst of what generally did not appeal to me. And those memories will sometimes spur me to look back at the sounds that made me smile when I was a younger man.

One of the groups that I found in my days as a retailer was The Motors. They were, apparently, a short-lived act who appeared, cut a few records, and then vanished. They had a nice sound, good keyboards with strings and nice vocals (both in chorus and as belted-out blues style solos). I recall them with some good feelings and occasionally pull up one of their old tunes to listen while I write. Here are a couple that I played when I was a youngster in my 20s:

Some Things Other Animals Can't Do

Try this, chimpanzees!

And the brilliant Jim Woodring has created a Moebius strip comic!

Old is New is Old is...

Not long after I got married and began the never-ending struggle to create a home, one of the things that I laid aside and did not pick up again (for the longest time) was music.

I never was a musician. Tried it and realized early that I had no talent in that direction. But like almost all human beings, I developed a love of music. I liked a lot of pop music. Everyone has their favorite type of pop music, I reckon. But I developed a keen affection for rock-a-billy and ska. Relatively disparate types, I know, but I would switch easily from one to the other as I listened to the records on the turntable. (Yes, the old turntable.)

And so, in the early years of my marriage and during the days of raising our son, the music was just something that I never bothered with. Not for ages. Me musical brain was stuck somewhere in the late 80s. I passed through the decades and to me the "new" guys were still folk like Madness, Squeeze, Nick Lowe, etc.

I was, as they say, behind the times.

Eventually, though, I started listening to music again. One reason was the late, lamented Napster. Jove, I do miss that website. I could nab all of the tunes I wanted and all it cost me was time on the www. Alas, it's gone.

So here are a couple of my favorite musicians. Well, groups, I guess. I like them because they understand an older, established type of music, and they have reestablished and embellished that older type. I never get tired of true love, I guess.


And, yeah, they're old news. I know that. But so am I.

The Mighty Mighty Bosstones.

The Great Dave Edmunds.