Peak Time
M. has related the theory to me regarding fashion that one tends to continue wearing the kinds of clothes, hairstyle, etc. that we did during the decade which we remember as being our best, unless we get wise, in which case we tend toward what was hip during that same period, although God help us if we mistake hip for trendy, in which case there’d be a lot of us out there looking like Huggy Bear, the pretend pimp from Starsky & Hutch. Nick Hornby adds music to the mix. Sure, I went through a period of time when listening to rock ‘n’ roll wasn’t working for me and graduated through country to blues to jazz, getting all growed up an’ such. It didn’t really take, however, and I listen to more rock now than I have over the previous ten years or so. It’s frustrating, however, because I still don’t listen to radio, and I can’t bring myself to trust what I read in the papers, not to mention I don’t have the bandwidth to be downloading MP3s, and this means I buy very little new, and even then it’s by the same musicians I’ve been buying for the last twenty years or more. (I did buy the new CD from Fountains of Wayne, but I haven’t even listened to it yet.) The newest things I’ve listened to and liked remain the Flaming Lips’ “Yoshmi vs. the Pink Robots” and “Unit” by Regurgitator, both of which do for me what Hornsby reports Marah does for him, although each in different ways. Of course, I enjoyed Big Black and Throbbing Gristle in their day, too, so although I’m listening to a lot more Lucinda Williams than I would have twenty years ago, I have growing up to thank for that. Perhaps I just haven’t hit my stride yet.