When We Breathed, Breathed in the Air...........

I do not wish to sound like a snob, to claim license, or dismiss other tastes and considerations, but I firmly believe that there was a period in music history, excluding the distant classical period up to this "stuff" we are dealing with now, that was the pinnacle of the art, and will never be equaled again.



It began with the Beatles, and ended with Pink Floyd.



I do not wish to dismiss the wonderful contributions by countless artists, both famous and relatively unknown, but no time in history will ever match the emotion, the growth, the message, the pure artistry that this period encompassed. Yes, the Beatles started out with their pop pap (which even as pop pap goes, was pretty damn good for the time), but then they seemed to gradually get serious and what evolved was a whole new idea of what music, much less rock and roll, could become. Just off the top of my head I would say that the "Sergeant Pepper" album made people put on headphones and really pay attention. So much happened after that, but no one could match the Beatles when it came to taking it all to a whole new level with every album they put out.


Then came Floyd.

Just like the Beatles, they fought their way out of relative nowhere, unable to set themselves apart from the wild party that was going on. I had never heard of them until their break-thru album, and it was years before I went back and examined their early works. I was not that impressed. Sounded like pop to me.

Then came Dark Side of the Moon.

WOW!

I wasted what could have amounted to years listening to this shit with my headphones. Just like Sergeant Pepper before it, I couldn't believe what I was hearing and couldn't get enough of it. And, just like the Beatles, they evolved, and boy did they ever evolve! It was like taking music as a sopwith camel and working it into an SR-71 Blackbird. However, the thing about these two bands is that each album they produced did not make obsolete the one that proceeded it. Even as I was trying to catch my breath with "The Division Bell", I could still be carried away by "Breath" or "Comfortably Numb".

As I stated previously, it began with the Beatles and ended with Pink Floyd, but much wonderment of all sorts was created in between by singers, songwriters, and groups of every description. This was a time when motown could coexist with acid rock, Jimmy Hendrix with John Denver, Harry Chapin with Alice Cooper. You could hear and savor it all on FM radio. Hell, even the Carpenters were allowed to make us smile, or cry, or whatever you were feeling when Karen did her thing. It was a new frontier that was pushing and shoving at every boundary it came up against, and man were there boundaries to be pushed!

Well, sooner or later, capitalism gets it's claws sunk deep into a "commodity" and ruins it for everybody. Next thing you know the DJ's are starting to disappear and music is beginning to be categorized by "genre" and before you know it the only mixed bag you can find is on so-called "oldies" stations. The powers that be decided that the grunge group has no use for the heavy metal who doesn't want to listen to Rap who wouldn't know regular rock from gothic. Now you are hunting all over the dial for something you can relate to and it all sounds alike.

Hidden deep in the satellite, college, and internet radio streams, you can find people desperately trying to hold true to that spirit that literally changed this nation, writing music and lyrics that mean something rather than playing to some corporate formula. Remember Jewel? Remember what she once did before some asshole told her she had to sex it up? Sigh. What a waste. Listen to alternative (yea, right, alternative to WHAT?) radio these days and what do you hear? I hate my fucking girl friend and I want to die. Or, you can groove to the beat of some rapper who can't sing but can recite some juvenile poetry about "ho's" and capping some nigga who disrespected you. It's over folks.....I just wish the kids these days knew why.

I'm not saying that it is not entirely possible that one day, Bob willing, a new generation will, simply out of common teen rebellion, rediscover the wellspring of life that serious devotion to honest and real music and lyrics and the feelings they engender can give to everybody. We once listened to music to feel good, not to reinforce our despair. We once shouted out loudly what we thought was wrong with the status quo, but we had one hell of a time while we were doing it. And sometimes we just got silly with it. But, thanks to the Beatles, and Pink Floyd, some of us were taught to think, and I personally think it was a very, very good thing.

I now return you to your "MTV Raps" presentation of Snoop Dog............