Tuesdays with Michael Jackson
For the past several months I've been mostly listening to NPR talk radio in the car on my way to and from work. My commute to work now takes place at 10:30 though and on Tuesdays at 10:30 my NPR station has gardening chat on. So, one Tuesday I switched over to music. The first song I heard was the Alien Ant Farm cover of Smooth Criminal. I was sitting there, at a red light, car dancing, and several things came to mind.
First, of course, I was thinking about what a great cover that is, it might even be better than the original. Then I thought about a good friend of mine who is always saying that every guy she meets is either too young or too old for her. I've come to suspect that she sees an acceptable age difference to be plus or minus one year. I know if she met someone much older or younger than herself that she found she actually had feelings for she'd abandon all concept of what is an acceptable age difference, but I still wonder about what criteria go into determining what is or isn't an acceptable age difference.
Cultural reference points must factor highly. For my parents generation there was the Kennedy assassination factor, i.e. if someone was either not born yet or too young to remember where they were when Kennedy was assassinated they were too young. The moon landing was another. Is music one of those cultural reference points?
My first impulse would be to say yes, definitely. Music is important to me. You don't always have to agree with me about music but I have be able to talk about it using the same reference points. Smooth Criminal for example. Michael Jackson was at the height of his popularity when I was kid. Smooth Criminal was on the Bad album which came out in 1987 (when I was 9 years old). But would I assume that someone of a different generation, 10 years either older or younger than me, would not be able to engage in the argument with me about whether or not the Alien Ant Farm version was better, worse, or equal to the original Michael Jackson version? Bob Dylan's original version of Don't Think Twice, It's All Right came out in 1963 and the Johnny Cash cover was 1965, both long before I was born but I still have an opinion about them.
Then again, I have an opinion about everything.
First, of course, I was thinking about what a great cover that is, it might even be better than the original. Then I thought about a good friend of mine who is always saying that every guy she meets is either too young or too old for her. I've come to suspect that she sees an acceptable age difference to be plus or minus one year. I know if she met someone much older or younger than herself that she found she actually had feelings for she'd abandon all concept of what is an acceptable age difference, but I still wonder about what criteria go into determining what is or isn't an acceptable age difference.
Cultural reference points must factor highly. For my parents generation there was the Kennedy assassination factor, i.e. if someone was either not born yet or too young to remember where they were when Kennedy was assassinated they were too young. The moon landing was another. Is music one of those cultural reference points?
My first impulse would be to say yes, definitely. Music is important to me. You don't always have to agree with me about music but I have be able to talk about it using the same reference points. Smooth Criminal for example. Michael Jackson was at the height of his popularity when I was kid. Smooth Criminal was on the Bad album which came out in 1987 (when I was 9 years old). But would I assume that someone of a different generation, 10 years either older or younger than me, would not be able to engage in the argument with me about whether or not the Alien Ant Farm version was better, worse, or equal to the original Michael Jackson version? Bob Dylan's original version of Don't Think Twice, It's All Right came out in 1963 and the Johnny Cash cover was 1965, both long before I was born but I still have an opinion about them.
Then again, I have an opinion about everything.
posted by Beth at
9:42 PM
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