I’ll be dead in my grave before I recognize Missourah!

That pic of H & O makes me think of Henry Rollins’ letter to Carrot Top:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqybDdU4qVk

A couple of weeks ago, I heard “Sultans of Swing” on the radio, and I was transported back to 1979. I was a young Okie wandering the streets of Paris. The song was pouring out of every bar. It was so cool and exotic.
As I listened, I did a quick calculation of how long ago that was. Crashing into my consciousness and destroying any sense of euphoria was a thought about the music that was popular 31 years before I heard “Sultans of Swing” for the first time.
Shoot me now, indeed.

You’re bucking for Andy Rooney’s job, aren’t you?

“Cultural debacle” defined: half a million young people listening to music together for three days without a single documented (or rumored) act of violence.

Funny. I’ve got more than 10 years on you, Rod. Hall & Oates were old by the 80′s.
Now where are you with Girl Talk and NASA? Have your kids teach you who’s hot and who’s not, musically, and you’ll stay young for at least another 15 years.

we are closer to the year 2050 than we are to Woodstock. Fine with me; the further we get away from that cultural debacle, the better.
WTF? The further away we get from the sort of cover-of-TIME-meets-neocons’-culture-war-bitching view of an historical year embodied in cherry-picking one marquee event you don’t like from it as though it were representative, the better. The wide-angle Jacques Barzun in me is spoiling to kick some major historical booty here. Check out what all else was happening in 1969, in all-ages pop culture and in politics and in foreign affairs, and tell me Woodstock was somehow its poster child. Not gonna happen. This set-piece, broad-brush laying of generational guilt trips on the baby boomers – along with self-congratulatory BS coming from that same cohort, or the sickmaking claptrap about the “Greatest” (sic) generation – has got to stop, at least among those with even a scintilla of a claim to urbanity. It’s tabloid laziness of the blood royal. Not to mention the fact that any slamming of a year in which my boyhood beloved, Elizabeth Montgomery, was appearing in first-run prime time AND watched by ONE HUNDRED TIMES as many Americans as attended Woodstock, is an abomination of the sort up with which I will not put!
I was born in 1962, am 48, and so find my opposite number across the historical see-saw born in 1914. Using inverted Woodstock normative reductionism, I’ll say, after Frank, it was a very good year – and after Snagglepuss, it was an annus mirabilis, even. I mean, Ralph Vaughan Williams composed the bloody Lark Ascending! Is that not enough for you? As Benny Hill would say, do I have to draw you a diaphragm?

Hall and Oates were classic – I’d nominate them for Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. For the record, they went from mid-1970s to early 1990s as solid hitmakers. And defined the blue-eyed soul sound of Philadelphia for two generations.
Saw them in concert in Vegas – at Ceasars Palace of all places – and they brought down the house.
NOTHING, aside from U2 or Springsteen, played today even comes close to Hall and Oates’ brand of urban sound. NOTHING! So Rod, forget the aching bones, slap on H2O or Big Bam Boom!, and let ‘er rip.
To quote the boys, “Some things are better left unsaid…”

You’re out of touch
I’m out of time
====
Rollins!
captcha: purim rocket

Another way of looking at it: now is to Woodstock as Woodstock was to the election of Herbert Hoover.
My significant other’s parents were slightly younger in 1969 than I am now — both of them have died in the last decade at ages 87 and 92.

I still count “Your Kiss is on My List” as one of my favorite songs of all time. It brings back memories that put a big smile on my face.

Hall & Oates? Who were they, again? No, I’m not too young to remember them–I’ve just never cared for popular music. I think I might have heard the song Svetlana mentioned when my dad was driving me to school, either eighth grade or freshman year in high school, if I recall correctly. It was the sort of thing the radio stations he tuned in to played–but sadly, I’ve never remembered the names of the artists or groups, which people for some reason find amusing.
Want to feel young? It’s 209 years since Beethoven’s magnificent Piano Sonata #14 in C sharp minor, opus 27, number 2 was composed–otherwise known as the “Moonlight Sonata.” Compared to the Moonlight, most of us, along with any work we’ve done on this earth, are still in infancy.

Moonlight Sonata is a nice tune, but I can never remember the lyrics. I guess I am getting old.

Steven, !
Sadly, (to me, anyway) another of Beethoven’s great pieces, the piano sonata called the “Pathetique,” did suffer the indignity of lyrical addition. The song was called “Midnight Blue” and was sung by Louise Tucker, but the music was based on the ethereal and beautiful second movement of the “Pathetique.”

I remember back in the day, when I was a boy. My sisters and I would sit down in our living room and watch The Little Mermaid from our 24″ screen. Nowadays, the kids have their High School Musical and Miley Cyrus. Disney’s changed, I tell you. But you think that’s bad? In my room I had only a 12″ and a Super Nintendo. No, sir, we didn’t have these new fangled 24 button P3 or Nintendo Wii. 9 buttons was enough for me.
Spice Up Your Life!

They were pretty good, but I never did figure out which one was Hall and which One was Oates.

Erin at 2:12 AM: “Pathétique” is my favorite of Beethoven’s sonatas, ans I wasn’t aware it had been “lyricized”. I guess it’s good that I haven’t heard that abomination. I guess this should go over on the snobbery thread, but I vehemently hate it when they put lyrics to great classical pieces. What’s even worse is when they do it to make a hymn. Look, I’m all for great hymns, but annexing great classical music instead of actually writing music for a hymn is lazy and disrespectful to the source material.
There are actually several hymns to the tune of the Chorale movement of Beethoven’s 9th, which actually has its own lyrics, Schiller’s “Ode to Joy”; and none of them have lyrics one tenth as good as those by that Enlightenment secularist! It may sound odd to say, but it’s nearly sacrilegious to abuse a great classic in such a way! When such a hymn gets played in church, I don’t sing along.
OK, I feel better now….

Rod, take heart– at least you’re not too old to use a Simpsons reference effectively.

Dude, Ringo Starr just turned 70 (though he looks more like 60). My father was born in 1924, and I was born in 1954. Yes, we are old and getting older. Good for us!

I know how it feels to get old. I just turned 27 last month, and i realized with horror that I should be referring to myself as an “adult”, or “grown-up”. It’s not a good feeling.

“They were pretty good, but I never did figure out which one was Hall and which One was Oates.”
Also easy to confuse them with Loggins and Messina or Seales and Croft.
after Archives

WHAT? Unable to tell the difference between the two or Loggins and Messina??????
For the record, Daryl Hall is 6-5 and blonde; John Oates used to have a moustache and is short.
Next thing will be someone unable to tell H&O from England Dan and John Ford Coley. Puh-lese!

Turmarion, I don’t mind hymns set to classical themes all that much–but then again, if we didn’t occasionally get to sing “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee” we’d never get a break from the banal musical dreck inflicted upon a weary Church by people named Haugen and Haas.
However, I once had to sing a dreadful hymn set to Finlandia–the lyrics were all about the planet Earth, and though God was mentioned as Creator the thing had a strong environmentalist flavor. What a waste of a perfectly good piece of music!

Next thing will be someone unable to tell H&O from England Dan and John Ford Coley.
? “I’m not talkin’ ’bout the linen…” ?

Look at the bright side. We are closer to SENS-based rejuvenation than we are to Woodstock.

I was 23 in 1973 and I tended to get these people all confused. Except Steely Dan, who did a song about “The weekends at the college didn’t turn out like you planned; the things that passed for knowledge I don’t understand!” Quite appropriate for me because I came to Christ right at that time – and also ahead of its time as far as academia is concerned.

Daryl is 6’1″ and John is 5’4″ the last I read. They’ve been outstanding for years and are in the Songwriters HOF for a reason. There has been plenty of talk of them being snubbed from the Rock & Roll HOF since they were first eligible in 1997, but they should wear that as a badge of honor.