Young & Stupid
The number one criticism I get is I’m old.
I don’t only get it from the youth, who cry "OLD MAN" as a pejorative, as if having a wrinkle is akin to possessing a contagious disease that requires you to reside on an island, alone, with your same irrelevant type, I also get it from my peers, instructing me to like the work of pre-pubescents, to revere the money being made.
I’m fifty six. My birthday is April 22nd. Send me a card next year.
Sure, I look in the mirror and I appear different. Yes, I’m closer to the end than I am the beginning. But not only am I older, I’m wiser. I’ve seen more. I’m aware of how much I don’t know. I’m not young and stupid.
Case in point. My criticism of Conan O’Brien’s "Tonight Show". Those under forty came out in droves to tell me I just didn’t get it, that Conan speaks for their generation. And what exactly is he saying? That I watched a lot of Letterman and I’m schooled in adolescent hijinks? We revere the progenitor. Followers…not so much. It’s the raw creativity we applaud. The taking of chances to erect something new. Like the original SNL. How did they come up with the Coneheads? Samurai Whatever. Mr. Mainway. So they’re doing the news thirty three years later? Could be good, but it will never equal what Chevy Chase did the first time through.
This is the scourge of music. Find a formula and repeat it. But now we’re repeating it with ever younger players. Soon we’ll have singing babies. To capture the non-walking set, too uninformed other than to nod their heads when they hear something appealing so that their parents will buy product to keep them happy. And these singing babies will perform for their audiences in Vegas seventy years later, bald and out of shape, singing the same damn nursery-rhymes over and over.
Ever notice that the Clive Davis acts have no legs? That the MTV-era acts draw little audience in most cases? That by focusing on the momentary, the pretty, we’ve forsaken not only credibility, but long term viability? There are no classic acts from the last three decades. Except maybe Def Leppard, and that was built by someone positively steeped in the classic rock era, Mutt Lange.
I knew Craig Ferguson as Mr. Wick. The bumbling manager of the department store on the "Drew Carey Show". Who knew he had any real talent? I groaned when I heard he got the spot after Letterman on CBS. But then I experienced the buzz. People said you had to see him, because he didn’t do a traditional monologue, he came out and riffed. And his riffs were about the truth.
That’s what sells today, the truth. No heaping pile of marketing dung can sell what we don’t want. Perez Hilton can’t sell his tour and Live Nation can’t sell overpriced tickets to geezers doing the same show they’ve done for summers ad infinitum. And this truth must be presented in a palatable way. In an appealing style. Mr. Ferguson is a performer, he is not a boring college professor reading from a script.
The late night talk show format is calcified. It’s not only old, it’s the same as it’s been forever. Well, with a twist. Now everybody’s doing Letterman’s show, the one Merrill Markoe created almost three decades ago. The focus is on humor, not substance. You’ll be stunned to know that Johnny Carson used to interview authors…and not only of comedy books!
When we find something that resonates today, we tell everybody we know about it. Assuming it is available for viral use. In other words, if you don’t post your material online, you stifle its spread, its adoption by many. The key is to get hearts and minds. The old paradigm is through. Where we plunk down dollars for CDs to find out if the act is any good. Convince us you’re good first, then we’ll decide whether we want to give you our money.
Craig Ferguson is 47. He could never get a record deal. Then again, who wants a record deal? Talk to someone over thirty who hasn’t had previous success making music. It’s like they don’t even exist. So, they lie about their age, get plastic surgery, try to appear young…and dumb. This we revere?
Until the latter half of the last century we revered the old. They’d been around, they’d seen more. Maybe those times are returning. Look at MTV’s ratings, no one wants to watch that crap. Hell, we talk about programming on cable, the networks are scrounging in the dirt. Assuming we watch television at all. At least the younger generation knows you can surf and extract the relevant bits online, where the crowd sources what’s good.
I did not see this Ferguson bit on television. Someone I don’t know e-mailed me about it. Craig doesn’t nail the Jonas Brothers until the very end. But just because this religious cult plays real instruments and actually sings we’re supposed to see them as gods? They’re barely better than high school talent show contestants. I’d say no one will want to see them ten years from now, even five, but their audience has already declined. But they’re young and cute and Disney-approved, we don’t care about the opinions of old men who’ve seen this movie before, we’re making money! Oh yeah? For how long?
