Late Boomers, early Generation X and music. And SNL

Two things on my mind these last few months: the varied music my generation was exposed to and, since this year was the 50th anniversary of the cultural phenom that at one time was SNL, how those two converged in some interesting ways.

Generation X music-

A confluence of styles, genres, influences, delivery options: 8 track cassette, 45 and 33 rpm records, cassette tapes, CDs, Walkman, Discman, radio, TV,  MTV, mp3, ipod, Spotify, SiriusXM, iTunes, Apple Music, wav, Napster, Limewire, Tidal.  What am I missing? 

Gen X music was shaped by Elvis, Buddy Holly, the Beach Boys, Motown, the Beatles and the British Invasion, hard rock, acid rock, folk rock, disco, rock, soft rock, punk, heavy metal, New Wave, alternative, R & B, hip-hop, rap, Americana. Country & Western, Country, Outlaw country, etc., etc..  During our formative years, nothing was curated, we listened to it all!

I’d been pondering what I think is a uniquely Generation X experience: that my cohort was exposed to more musical genres than any other modern day generation.  We were shaped by a unique set of circumstances and cultural influences that intersected in ways never before or since.  Watching old clips of SNL I was reminded of how eclectic the show, and entertainment in general used to be when television was almost the only access we had to the entertainment culture at large. And how much we were influenced by television and radio culture. Especially if you grew up in a rural or semi-rural area like I did.  As a kid you’d watch SNL on Saturday night and then Lawrence Welk on Sunday night.  Sonny and Cher and Donny and Marie. Sha Na Na. You’d catch Hee Haw and then Soul Train. And on the UHF channel, channel 29 here in the 716, there were always ads for records.  K-tel compilations like Music Express! Rock On! Music Machine! Disco Fire!  Star Power! These compilations exposed us to an interesting width and breadth of music styles and genres. How about Sessions 5 album or the 8 eight track tape collection Cruisin? They covered literally every performer from the 50s through the 70s. Remember Nana Mouskouri? Boxcar Willie? Slim Whitman? Money back guarantee. Pay by C.O.D.

One of the first albums I ever bought was Dick Clark’s 25 Years of Rock and Roll.  I was completely captivated by the decade and music of the 1950s, the influence of watching Happy Days and Laverne and Shirley. Carl Perkins’ Blue Suede Shoes and The Kingsmen singing Louie Louie (a song to which I once participated in a drunken toga wearing air band performance in college), The Crew Cuts Sh-Boom were and still are some of my all time favorites. The McCoys’ Hang on Sloopy was a classic!(I wrote this well before Rick Derringer’s recent death). I’m currently trying to teach myself the guitar part.  This double album collection is a lesson in the greatness of 50s and 60s rock and roll. It’s got everybody from Fats Domino to Johnny Cash to Otis Redding and Brenda Lee. Al Green and Curtis Mayfield.  What a spectacular collection of songs.  So this was one of my earliest influences. The album opened up to pictures and headlines of major events from the 50s and 60s so it provided a history lesson as well.  Another great history music lesson was actually the album Grease, the major motion picture soundtrack which included gems like It’s Raining on Prom Night, Blue Moon, Those Magic Changes, Rock and Roll Party Queen.  To prove my point that Gen X had a virtual panoply of brilliant music  bombarding us all at the same time, this album came out at the same time at The Cars, Van Halen, Springtseen’s Darkness on the Edge of Town, the Rolling Stones’ Some Girls, Patti Smith’s Easter just to name a few of the varied and amazing releases from 1978.

Being forced to listen to your parent’s music was also an education. Oftentimes you had to listen to what they listened to. No earbuds, no Spotify, the Walkman hadn’t yet been invented and parents simply ruled the car radio. The local rinky-dink radio station played polka music on Sundays, a mix of country and AM hits during the weekday- think Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head from the Butch Cassidy soundtrack and I Never Promised you a Rose Garden by Lynn Anderson.  Billy, Don’t be a Hero segued into Harry Nillson’s Everybody’s Talking About, and those were interspersed by Paul Harvey and The Rest of the Story. One station would play country, rock and roll, oldies, AND disco.  You’d hear a song by Debbie Boone played after a tune by Fleetwood Mac, and then the Eagles and ABBA. Then some Barry Manilow and The Four Seasons. Neil Sedaka got tons of AM radio play as did Barbra Streisand. You heard The Streak from Ray Stevens and David Essex’ Rock On. Very, very eclectic.

My music education began way before I discovered rock and roll.  I loved listening to Peter and the Wolf and Tubby the Tuba when I was really little.  I remember those LPs spinning on my dad’s record player.  He was a music teacher and band director, so I also remember him playing his saxophone and clarinet.  He had a copy of the Broadway performance of West Side Story that I listened to over and over. I loved it. From there I moved on to The Partridge Family and the Osmonds. 

Once I outgrew the Partridge Family and the Osmonds, I moved on to those late 70s teenybopper idols; Leif Garrett, Shaun Cassidy, Andy Gibb, Rex Smith.  Couldn’t get enough of them and read every Tiger Beat I could get my hands on.  Then I became aware of Rolling Stone magazine.  I have a distinct memory- which I think I mentioned before, of going to Beck’s newsstand downtown after church on a Sunday morning and seeing the iconic RS cover with that photo of Fleetwood Mac, lying in a bed, all twisted in the sheets.  Completely intriguing to an 11 year old me. 

Once I was able to control the stereo in our living room to my liking, usually when I was doing my required Friday afternoon chores dusting the furniture and vacuuming the carpeting, there was the King Biscuit Flower Hour and Dr. Demento on FM.  My adolescent brain was filled with all kinds of images and ideas about what they were talking about and playing. They’re coming to take me away, haha, they’re coming to take me away, hee hee! To the funny farm, where life is beautiful all the time….. And living so close to the Canadian border, we had a very special affection for the McKenzie Brothers. Take off you hoser!, and other Canadian radio programs and music.  I don’t think it’s even possible to listen to much Canadian FM radio anymore, the signals have become weaker. 

SO MANY DIFFERENT INFLUENCES

Let’s go back to SNL for a minute.  In the first year the show aired, 1975-76, here are the musical guests that we were privileged to experience:

Billy Preston and Janis Ian

Randy Newman, Phoebe Snow and Art Garfunkel, Paul Simon, the Jessy Dixon gospel singers

Esther Phillips

ABBA and Loudon Wainwright

Howard Shore and the All Nurse Band- Shore was the musical director for SNL is famous for scoring films like The Dead Zone, After Hours, The Fly among others

Gil Scott-Heron

Martha Reeves and the Stylistics

Ann Murray

Bill Withers and Toni Basil

Neil Sedaka

Jimmy Cliff

The Preservation Hall Jazz Band

Leon Redbone

Season two included among others:

Kinky Friendman

John Prine

James Taylor

The Band 

Ry Cooder

Frank Zappa

George Benson

Santana

Tom Waits

Joan Armatrading

Other performances in succeeding seasons included Captain Beefheart, Kid Creole, FEAR.  To me it seems as if they were more willing to have controversial or unusual musical guests decades ago.  Not all of these guests were received well by the audience but rewatching them now gives a completely different perspective and more appreciation. Wildly different genres and styles.  Very eclectic.  What a musical education for young people. And of course as the culture changed, so did the musical guests. But the absolute fearlessness of Lorne Michaels and NBC to have controversial, not necessarily commercially successful acts would be unheard of today.  

The other kind of amazing thing about Boom-X music is that so many of the artists are still performing and in some cases still making new music. Mavis Staples, Willie Nelson, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, The Rolling Stones, Stevie Nicks. Heart is touring, Rick Springfield tours, Cheap Trick tours, Patti Smith just wrote another book, and is going on tour soon to perform Horses in its entirety.  Bruce Springsteen is in the middle of a European Tour. Daryl Hall is on the road, as is Elvis Costello. The Eagles and Dead and Company and U2 have residencies at the Sphere.  Was there ever a time where 70-80 year olds were still going this strong?  I guess two things are at play here.  Advances in health and healthy lifestyles for one.  And two, the record industry seems only willing to spend money on known quantities- which happen to be older performers rather than young, new talent.  Which is unfortunate.  If the music industry hadn’t been willing to invest, and of course reap millions of dollars from, all of those musicians fifty and sixty years ago, my Gen X friends and I wouldn’t have had the cornucopia of musical abundance we did.  We were so damn lucky.