Listening to Music, Then and Now

I'm riding in my car and a man comes on the radio

tellin' me how white my shirts can be,

But he can't be a man 'cause he doesn't smoke,

The same cigarettes as me. 

I like to sit at the kitchen table at the end of the day and listen to music on Youtube, and I marvel at the energy and creativity of the musicians of, mostly, my youth: Emmy Lou Harris, Johnny Cash, Linda Ronstadt, Chuck Berry, Van Morrison, The Beatles, the Stones and Bob Dylan, Marty Robbins, Little Richard, Lightning Hopkins, Doc Watson.   I know that a person has a unique attachment to things from their youth and perhaps that is why I find little or nothing interesting about today’s popular music and so much almost transcendent about the music of the 60s and 70s.

Some of the music I like, that is not from my past: A Southern Gospel Revival,  Fulu Miziki, even Shakira.

Rap, with its in your face attitude and love for the material world, or Cardi B with her Wetass Pussy song and dance turn me off.  The whiny, soft, feely music that pervades the modern sensibilities also leaves me longing for the old times when music was not just emotion but vibrant bursting youthful energy.