{"id":77993,"date":"2021-05-28T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-05-28T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=77993"},"modified":"2021-05-23T07:51:53","modified_gmt":"2021-05-23T12:51:53","slug":"the-case-against-indulging-four-decade-old-curiosities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=77993","title":{"rendered":"The Case Against Indulging Four Decade Old Curiosities"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

We didn’t have access to a lot of contemporary popular music in the home I grew up in . It’s not that my parents discouraged <\/em>it, but they discouraged it; I’m pretty sure my Mom wanted me to be a classical musician. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That started to change, a bit, in sixth or seventh grade. I got a cast-off sixties-vintage Emerson transistor AM radio, and turned into WDAY in Fargo and, eventually, KFYR in Bismarck. Through junior high, I taught myself guitar by learning to play by ear along with the “Torrid Twenty” on Tuesday nights. If you tell me the top couple hundred songs from about 1977 to about 1980, I pretty much know them all. Try me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I was a reader. So I took a little time off from reading history at the high school library (which I went to when I couldn’t get away to go to the city library), and read whatever I could find. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There wasn’t much. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I remember one book from the early seventies – I couldn’t begin to remember the name of the author or the book but it was some pop critic and cultural academic who bemoaned the vapid excesses of glam rock – he didn’t much care for Elton John, as I recall…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

…and in the last chapter, made his case for the future of popular music. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that future was…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tubular Bells <\/em>by Mike Oldfield. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Truth be told, I got put off the song so hard by that particular book, I have somehow managed to go, lo, these past four or so decades without hearing it so much as once. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it popped up on Youtube last weekend. And curiosity overcame me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nhttps:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=KXatvzWAzLU\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

On the one hand, now I can see where “punk” came from. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other hand, that’s (checks video)…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

…twenty five freaking minutes <\/em>I won’t be getting back. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We didn’t have access to a lot of contemporary popular music in the home I grew up in . It’s not that my parents discouraged it, but they discouraged it; I’m pretty sure my Mom wanted me to be a classical musician. That started to change, a bit, in sixth or seventh grade. I got […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=77993"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77993\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77994,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77993\/revisions\/77994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=77993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=77993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=77993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}