{"id":2076,"date":"2009-07-08T11:47:10","date_gmt":"2009-07-08T19:47:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/?p=2076"},"modified":"2009-07-08T11:47:57","modified_gmt":"2009-07-08T19:47:57","slug":"old-man-dreamin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/2009\/07\/08\/old-man-dreamin\/","title":{"rendered":"Old Man Dreamin’"},"content":{"rendered":"

My dream is bittersweet<\/span>
Cause I’m an old man dreaming in a young man’s world<\/span><\/p>\n

Ageism.\u00c2\u00a0 You think it’ll never happen to you.\u00c2\u00a0 Then you reach a certain age and your opinion no longer counts, the kids control the music and those aged executives still in power wear baseball caps and try to act like kids themselves.\u00c2\u00a0 If you don’t look the part, don’t play hit music, you might as well be dead.<\/p>\n

But it’s baby boomers who grew up with music at the center of their lives.\u00c2\u00a0 There were no cell phones, there was no MySpace.\u00c2\u00a0 We lived to twist the AM dial in the car, if we were lucky we had a phone in our bedroom.\u00c2\u00a0 The glue that kept us together was the music.\u00c2\u00a0 They call this music "classic rock".\u00c2\u00a0 Classic, as in aged, as in done.<\/p>\n

I was watching Billy Bob on Bill Maher.\u00c2\u00a0 He posited that none of the acts of the last twenty years would be remembered after they were done.\u00c2\u00a0 In other words, the youngsters have taken over the business and killed it.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s not what it once was.\u00c2\u00a0 Now it’s something you do to become famous, to tie in with corporations.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s all about raining money.\u00c2\u00a0 Or, you’re one of those individuals with little talent foisting your wares upon an uncaring public complaining you’re not getting your due.\u00c2\u00a0 And those of us who lived through the revolution, that period in the sixties and seventies where acts wrote their own material or reinterpreted the works of others to the point where you could barely recognize the tune, scratch our heads and wonder where it all went.<\/p>\n

You can go see a classic band in concert.\u00c2\u00a0 But you don’t want any of their new music.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s the opposite of what once was.\u00c2\u00a0 Rather than being vital and from the heart, it’s mannered and bland.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s actually creepy.\u00c2\u00a0 About as bad as their efforts to resist aging.\u00c2\u00a0 Do they really think the audience wants to see old performers who appear younger than they are?<\/p>\n

Going to the show today is nostalgia.\u00c2\u00a0 Or, in the case of the newbies, a train-wreck, something that grabs your attention for an instant and is then removed from the tracks.\u00c2\u00a0 The vibrancy, of a building career, by someone who’s practiced, who has something to say…this is what the aged audience wants, but is not getting.\u00c2\u00a0 The kids are out of the house or close to it, but no one is singing about their plight.\u00c2\u00a0 You hear songs about teenage concerns constructed by those burdened with adult issues in their real life.\u00c2\u00a0 It would be like Congressmen debating student council issues, debating who should be in charge of prom decorations as opposed to fuel mileage rules.<\/p>\n

On one hand you’ve got a business driving towards a cliff.\u00c2\u00a0 Pissed that the CD isn’t as cool as an iPod, wanting to eviscerate the Internet.\u00c2\u00a0 On the other, a desirous audience.\u00c2\u00a0 An unfulfilled populace.<\/p>\n

I’m gonna tell you a well known secret.\u00c2\u00a0 The reason those classic acts can’t write any good new material is because they’ve lost the hunger, the desire.\u00c2\u00a0 The belief is if you just write a great song, become a star, then your life will work.\u00c2\u00a0 But it doesn’t.\u00c2\u00a0 You can get laid by good-looking people, but you’re still the shy outsider you always were.\u00c2\u00a0 So, assuming you’re still alive, and you wrote enough great tunes in your desire to make it, you can still tour playing those oldies, but your creative well is dry.\u00c2\u00a0 But what if you never made it?<\/p>\n

What if you had a recording contract way back when, made a few albums, but no one cared?\u00c2\u00a0 Do you still have the creative spark?\u00c2\u00a0 Do you still have the talent?<\/p>\n

You don’t lose the talent.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ve invested all those hours, learning how to play, how to write.\u00c2\u00a0 But can you get the motivation?<\/p>\n

Prior to the Internet era, we couldn’t own all the music we wanted.\u00c2\u00a0 You made choices.\u00c2\u00a0 So I never owned a Batdorf & Rodney album.\u00c2\u00a0 Don’t even remember hearing the act on the radio.\u00c2\u00a0 Saw their albums in the bin, but just like most people don’t have twenty cell phones, we couldn’t own 20,000 albums.<\/p>\n

But a few years back, I went to a house concert in the west valley and I heard Mr. Batdorf do some new material. And I was stunned, it was good!<\/p>\n

My kids focus too much on pleasure<\/span>
They think dad’s sittin’ on a buried treasure<\/span>
I gotta message that might surprise them<\/span>
When their old man can’t subsidize them<\/span><\/p>\n

The recession is blowing the younger generation’s mind.\u00c2\u00a0 They used to pooh-pooh working at McDonald’s.\u00c2\u00a0 Now they can’t get a job there.\u00c2\u00a0 Can’t get a job at all!\u00c2\u00a0 Dad has had his hours reduced, maybe Mom’s lost her job, suddenly there’s no money for the latest video game, movies seem too expensive, the world is no longer easy.<\/p>\n

We kept reading about these entitled worldbeaters.\u00c2\u00a0 You know these kids, you hate ’em too.\u00c2\u00a0 But I’ve never heard a song about them.\u00c2\u00a0 But that’s what opens John Batdorf’s new album, "Old Man Dreamin’", the song "What D’Ya Got", which delineates not only the plight of the younger generation, but the older:

What d’ya got when it turns pitch black<\/span>
What d’ya got when there’s no Prozac<\/span>
What d’ya got when you ain’t got jack<\/span>
Can’t you see<\/span>
What d’ya got when your dreams get squashed<\/span>
What d’ya got when your wires get crossed<\/span>
What d’ya got now that won’t get lost<\/span>
Baby you got me<\/span>
Ain’t that enough<\/span>
You got me<\/span><\/p>\n

That’s got to be enough.\u00c2\u00a0 After you’ve turned in your Mercedes-Benz and leased a Hyundai.\u00c2\u00a0 After you’ve sold your vacation home.\u00c2\u00a0 After you’ve put the kids in public school.\u00c2\u00a0 We’ve got a society based on shopping, on possessions, can you still be happy without them?<\/p>\n

There’s another song about the craziness of today’s world:<\/p>\n

Work two jobs just to buy gas to get to one<\/span>
Takes three cars just to guarantee that one will run<\/span>
I bought their lousy cars and yet<\/span>
I’m payin’ off their corporate debt<\/span>
It ain’t my debt<\/span><\/p>\n

Okay, that’s not a new concept.\u00c2\u00a0 There are even lame country songs espousing the same anger.\u00c2\u00a0 But how about this?<\/p>\n

A hundred bucks buys a torn up pair jeans<\/span>
Twice that much if you saw ’em in the magazines<\/span>
With clever ads, sales are strong<\/span>
Sellin’ girls with barely nothin’ on<\/span><\/p>\n

That don’t seem right to me, as the title of this song says.\u00c2\u00a0 You convince the girls their butts look better in this pair as opposed to that and you charge them up the yin-yang.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s illegal to leave the house without makeup, to look human.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s why we loved our musicians.\u00c2\u00a0 They didn’t wear spandex, they didn’t spend hours in the gym, they looked like us!<\/p>\n

The piece de resistance is "I Thought I’d Try A Love Song".\u00c2\u00a0 This is one of those seventies numbers that catches your ear through its magical changes that you ultimately catch the lyrics of and then smile.<\/p>\n

That’s the way the whole "Old Man Dreamin’" album is.\u00c2\u00a0 You put it on and you like a few tracks and then you play it again, and after each and every play new nooks and crannies are revealed, you like it more, and then play it more.\u00c2\u00a0 This is the classic rock experience.\u00c2\u00a0 Coming home, breaking the shrinkwrap and dropping the needle and being drawn into a whole new world.\u00c2\u00a0 Amazingly, this concept lives on in the twenty first century, with John Batdorf’s new album.<\/p>\n

I give him credit for soldiering on.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s hard to break through, especially when you’re used to having someone else do the business.\u00c2\u00a0 Now you need an MBA to make it.\u00c2\u00a0 Unfortunately, too many of those people with degrees have the skills but are purveying substandard music.<\/p>\n

I could sell this album out of my trunk to baby boomers.\u00c2\u00a0 This is what they’re looking for.\u00c2\u00a0 Youngsters will laugh and say that the record is wimpy, but they never lived through an era where you could love both Joni Mitchell and AC\/DC.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s nothing wrong with soft, there’s nothing wrong with tuneful.<\/p>\n

My second favorite track on the album is "Ain’t No Way".\u00c2\u00a0 I say that because we aged don’t get to talk about music, not in depth, because no one cares.\u00c2\u00a0 They care about SoundScan numbers, tour grosses, but the underlying premise, what those numbers are built upon, that’s not a discussion that happens anymore.<\/p>\n

Forty years and I’m_<\/span>
Finally in my prime_<\/span>
This should be my time_<\/span>
Or could it be it’s over………No way<\/span><\/p>\n

Enough horseshit that people over fifty can’t write and perform vital material, that the audience should just retire. People are hungry for fulfilling new music.\u00c2\u00a0 And John Batdorf has delivered it.<\/p>\n

\n
MySpace John Batdorf<\/a><\/p>\n

John Batdorf Website<\/a><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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My dream is bittersweetCause I’m an old man dreaming in a young man’s world Ageism.\u00c2\u00a0 You think it’ll never happen to you.\u00c2\u00a0 Then you reach a certain age and your opinion no longer counts, the kids control the music and those aged executives still in power wear baseball caps and try to act like kids […]<\/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":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-music"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-xu","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2076","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=2076"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2076\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2078,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2076\/revisions\/2078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}