Dewey Martin died.<\/p>\n
Hopefully that rings a bell if you’re a baby boomer.\u00c2\u00a0 He was the drummer for Buffalo Springfield, a band whose true greatness wasn’t recognized until Crosby, Stills & Nash broke through and the masses, wanting more of this incredible sound, went to the store and bought "Retrospective", Buffalo Springfield’s greatest hits.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s how many discovered Neil Young.\u00c2\u00a0 Via "Broken Arrow" on that album.\u00c2\u00a0 Don’t forget, Stephen Stills sang the hit,\u00c2\u00a0 "For What It’s Worth", conventional wisdom was Buffalo Springfield was a one hit wonder.\u00c2\u00a0 But it wasn’t.<\/p>\n
But Dewey Martin is not the only one.\u00c2\u00a0 Sixties stars have been dropping like flies.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe before their time, but not by much.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re all sexagenarians now.<\/p>\n
The sixties were forty years ago.\u00c2\u00a0 But you can still hear Cousin Brucie on Sirius.\u00c2\u00a0 His voice a bit hoarser, but he does bring you back to way back when, when we were addicted to the transistor, when we lived for the Tuesday night countdown.<\/p>\n
And the stars are not the only ones on the way out.\u00c2\u00a0 The baby boomers themselves are reaching their sunset years.\u00c2\u00a0 They thought they were going to rule forever, Gen-X was pissed they stole their thunder, but ironically it’s the boomers’ kids who are rejecting them, who are making them irrelevant.\u00c2\u00a0 If you find a boomer who’s computer literate, he’s the exception.\u00c2\u00a0 We could never understand our parents living through the birth of television.\u00c2\u00a0 But now we’ve lived through not only big screen HD, but cell phones and the Internet.\u00c2\u00a0 Boomers may text, but kids did first.\u00c2\u00a0 And kids don’t even send e-mail anymore.<\/p>\n
But we’ve still got our memories.<\/p>\n
Will the Doors live on forever?<\/p>\n
Maybe.<\/p>\n
How about Jay & the Americans?<\/p>\n
Doubtful.<\/p>\n
I heard "This Magic Moment" the other day.\u00c2\u00a0 And then "Come A Little Bit Closer".\u00c2\u00a0 And the Four Seasons’ "Sherry".\u00c2\u00a0 They’re in my DNA, they made me feel good.\u00c2\u00a0 But when the fifties channel spun the Coasters, I was flummoxed.\u00c2\u00a0 I didn’t know this.\u00c2\u00a0 This music was for oldsters.\u00c2\u00a0 But "Searchin’" was pretty good.\u00c2\u00a0 Do our kids think our music is pretty good?<\/p>\n
The media says no, but iTunes libraries and concert ticket sales say otherwise.\u00c2\u00a0 Still, so many of the old acts are on their last legs.\u00c2\u00a0 Like the Ad Libs.<\/p>\n
Is there even an original Coaster left?\u00c2\u00a0 Weren’t they suing over bogus Coasters back in the seventies?\u00c2\u00a0 Were there even any original Ad Libs?\u00c2\u00a0 Was it a studio concoction?<\/p>\n
I hated "The Boy From New York City".\u00c2\u00a0 But I know every lick, I had to listen to it in order to get to the latest hit by those British Invasion acts.\u00c2\u00a0 Like Gerry & the Pacemakers.\u00c2\u00a0 I heard "I Like It" the other day.\u00c2\u00a0 But I know now it’s not as good as "The Boy From New York City"…<\/p>\n
Maybe I was too young to understand.\u00c2\u00a0 The derivation from doo-wop.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe Cousin Brucie and Murray the K talked over the deep vocal intro.\u00c2\u00a0 But when I just heard that solo vocal akin to a kid blowing into a Coke bottle, I was enraptured.<\/p>\n
And when I used to listen to the song, I focused on the boy.\u00c2\u00a0 But all these years later, what caught my ear was the boys singing about COOL COOL KITTY!<\/p>\n
Is that where the Boss got the name for one of his best songs?<\/p>\n
She’s strutting down the avenue, parading for the neighborhood, telling her story.\u00c2\u00a0 She may not have much money, but she’s got something better.\u00c2\u00a0 She’s got LOVE!<\/p>\n
They call them oldies for a reason.\u00c2\u00a0 Because not only are they not current, they come from a time way back when.\u00c2\u00a0 Which is now a LONG time ago.<\/p>\n
This is our music.\u00c2\u00a0 So much the younger generation understands. But so much will be lost to the sands of time.\u00c2\u00a0 Like our parents’ music before us.\u00c2\u00a0 The doors are closing, we boomers are entering our time capsule.\u00c2\u00a0 Do we fight it, or own it.\u00c2\u00a0 Do we get up and dance in the retirement home when "The Boy From New York City" comes through the speakers or do we spin the latest hip-hop record in our painted-on jeans, just in case the younger generation takes a peek inside.<\/p>\n
Actually, nobody’s looking.\u00c2\u00a0 Everybody’s living his own life.<\/p>\n
Which is hard for baby boomers to understand.\u00c2\u00a0 We’re used to the attention. <\/p>\n
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Dewey Martin died. Hopefully that rings a bell if you’re a baby boomer.\u00c2\u00a0 He was the drummer for Buffalo Springfield, a band whose true greatness wasn’t recognized until Crosby, Stills & Nash broke through and the masses, wanting more of this incredible sound, went to the store and bought "Retrospective", Buffalo Springfield’s greatest hits.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","category-the-music"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-qO","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1662"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1662\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1670,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1662\/revisions\/1670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}