The Ebbing Of The Tide

"For long you live and high you fly

But only if you ride the tide

And balanced on the biggest wave

You race toward an early grave."

    from Breathe (In The Air) by Pink Floyd

The rising and falling of the tide is a great metaphor for the rock music era. My generation came of age just as the music world was changing from  soul and motown into the era of classic rock. We didn't know it at the time but we were experiencing the rising of a great tide. So many great artists and bands caught their wave and rode it. Too many of them went to an early grave.

As my generation ages we have gained the perspective to understand a little better just what it was that we lived through.  Now that great tide of rock music is well into its ebb phase.  When I ponder what that means I realize that, as the tide goes out, we begin to see things on the shoreline that were covered by the high water but now are visible. We may recognize some things from before but others we may be seeing for the first time.

I see this happening in the music that I listen to. Recently I was in my car listening to a local radio station that plays a lot of new music. A song came on that I liked a lot. I thought it was a new artist but it turned out to be a band from the 1970's that I had never heard of. I listen to satellite radio a lot, especially to the Deep Tracks channel, Tom Petty's Buried Treasure Show, and Little Steven's Underground Garage.  These channels have made it their business to sort of scour that shoreline and turn over all the interesting rocks and shells. For my part I'm getting to enjoy a lot of great music that I missed out on the first time around, and the old familiar songs too.

A Matter Of Time

Time and timing is a critical part of playing music, especially in a group. You can get away with playing out of time by yourself, but when others are involved everybody's got to move to the same beat. That's true not just for music but for organizations of all kinds, big and small. But I digress.

In music (and in life) time is also important on a macro level. What I mean is that popular music is generational. I know I didn't care too much for my parents' music, and they didn't care too much for mine. Most of us still like listening to the music that we grew up with, and for the most part we find it hard to relate to the music of the younger generations.

Every really successful artist that I can think of achieved success at a young age. That seems to be the way the music business works. If an artist can achieve success at a young age he or she can go on to have a life-long career. It's practically unheard of for a musician to finally achieve success later in life. As we age our contemporaries are less interested, they don't buy records, and they don't go out as much.  So what was difficult when we were young becomes even harder the older we get.

So where does that leave those of us who still like to play music as we get older? At what point does it become just a fool's errand? These days I play just for the joy of it. It's still fun.  Hopefully that comes across to whoever happens to be within earshot. When the joy is gone, then it will be time to finally hang up the old guitar for good.

So Far Silence

Since I'm not posting any music right now, I've decided to put up some blog posts instead. In this first post I explain why I'm not posting any music.

The two main reasons are space and time. Sounds existential, right? It's actually pretty simple. The good news is that at long last I'm in the process of acquiring some space that will allow production to go ahead without getting me evicted. So now it's just a matter of time. Stay tuned.