In the sixties, cars only lasted a few years.\u00c2\u00a0 Assuming your automobile did not need repairs when it rolled off the truck, like the Chevy Lance’s father purchased that had no reverse pin, or the Chrysler my father bought that caught fire on the way home from the dealership, it was only a matter of time before you ended up at the gas station, where there was a mechanic to change belts and perform other surgeries required to keep your motor running.\u00c2\u00a0 And although we occasionally hear of cars overheating on the Grapevine, the needle on most cars’ temperature gauge barely moves.\u00c2\u00a0 Despite Toyota’s recent woes, cars, if not quite bulletproof, are expected not to break.\u00c2\u00a0 You can drive Hondas for 200,000 miles trouble-free.\u00c2\u00a0 Automobiles may be expensive, but you can keep the same machine for a decade, quite happily.<\/p>\n
But those days of the lame Vista-Cruisers were half a century ago.<\/p>\n
Let me put that in perspective.\u00c2\u00a0 When my family owed lame cars in the sixties, they’d only been making cars for sixty years.\u00c2\u00a0 Now, they’ve been making them for fifty years more!\u00c2\u00a0 Those cars of yore were only halfway through the life cycle.\u00c2\u00a0 Those pieces of shit were a long time ago!<\/p>\n
Just like classic rock.<\/p>\n
Yeah, yeah, yeah.\u00c2\u00a0 I like classic rock as much as the next guy.\u00c2\u00a0 I saw the Who perform "Tommy" at the Fillmore East.\u00c2\u00a0 Did you?<\/p>\n
But that was back in ’69.<\/p>\n
And that was forty years ago.<\/p>\n
And now it’s 2010.<\/p>\n
Yup, TWENTY Ten.\u00c2\u00a0 So many years have gone by that we now know how to pronounce the year, we’re in the teens in case you weren’t paying attention.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, no one could come up with a name for the first decade of the twenty first century until it was over, and if you call them the "aughts" now, you’ll still get mostly blank stares.<\/p>\n
In other words, it’s time for new music.<\/p>\n
Let’s be clear.\u00c2\u00a0 Kids know nothing.\u00c2\u00a0 They listen to the hit parade before their pubic hair grows in.\u00c2\u00a0 If you’re that young, or a parent subjected to Radio Disney, you know a lot of current material.\u00c2\u00a0 Most of which will curdle the milk of an oldster.\u00c2\u00a0 But oldsters want new music.\u00c2\u00a0 Something more than the bland Susan Boyle, who proved that we’re willing to lay our money down, if you just tell us what to listen to.<\/p>\n
And that’s the big problem.\u00c2\u00a0 Not so much the lack of good music, but the inability to find it, to connect with it.<\/p>\n
Which brings us to the Gorillaz.<\/p>\n
Not a big fan of Damon, not a bit fan of the band.\u00c2\u00a0 But searching for something new on the satellite yesterday, I heard "Stylo".<\/p>\n
Have you heard this track?<\/p>\n
Dial it up here:<\/p>\n
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