In the ear of the beholder

I don’t always live up to my name. Well, here’s making up for lost time.

I don’t think I am imagining this. Today’s music seems to be lacking something. A very strong indicator is that commercials are still using stuff from the 1950s, ’60s and to a lesser degree, the ’70s and ’80s, to make their point. They must feel that the rest of the years just don’t have the same impact. Somehow, all of the new music seems to be dribbling out of the same mold.

Granted, I do not regularly listen to the popular music stations anymore. I do, however, watch “Dancing With the Stars,� which, in a desperate move to attract a younger audience and fill time, features some of the current pop icons performing their latest hits.

I cannot tell one from the other; not the songs and not the stars. The musicians are still hopping up and down like The Who. It was new when they did it. It is very, very old now. Where is your Buddy Holly, Bob Dylan, Robert Plant, Queen, B 52s? (I just kind of threw in the B 52s. I really liked “Rock Lobster.�)

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Another feature of current bands seems to be dressing like you are going to either clean out the garage or, alternately, troll for “dates� on Second Avenue. Take a tip from The Beatles. Start out in nice suits and haircuts, work your way to Sergeant Pepper Uniforms, then quit while you are ahead.

And about your “dancers.â€�  The crudeness of their suggestive gyrations is not to be believed. The costumes are worthy of the performing members of a gentlemen’s club. I am embarrassed to watch this with my children in the room and the youngest is 33. When Ike and Tina Turner and their troupe did something like this, it was unique and daring. Now it is just trashy. Does this make me uptight? Possibly. Do I care? Not really.

When I was growing up, rock and roll was just coming on the scene. My father, a full-time/part-time musician during his lifetime, was horrified at the over-simplified arrangements and the skimpy bands compared to his day. Most of his generation was shocked by the explicit lyrics of many of the songs, which were basically salvaged from old rhythm-and-blues numbers as sung and played in the brothels of New Orleans. They just cleaned them up a bit, for the kids.

Well, here we go, doing it again, the old folks criticizing the music of the young folks. It seems to be a never-ending cycle. The kids won’t listen, of course.

So what makes anything different? Well, this time, we’re right.

Bill Abrams listens to that ‘ole time rock and roll’, with a discriminating ear, from Pine Plains.