"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.
