Old Fashioned and Over the Hill

I haven't always listened to what most people would consider to be popular music. In fact, I rarely listen to music written within the last 15 years. When I was younger, the only music worth its salt in my opinion was classic rock. While my friends were listening to Justin Bieber, Maroon 5, and Miley Cyrus, I was listening to Van Halen, Jimi Hendrix, or Pink Floyd. In my fourth grade class my teacher gave out the assignment to write about on of our life heroes. While most of my classmates chose to write about some of the world's greatest leaders (Ghandi, Washington, etc.) I wrote about Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page.

Eventually my love for classic rock blossomed into a pretty serious guitar hobby. I learned all my favorite songs from my guitar heroes and began to notice patterns in the way they played. I began to realize exactly what it was that I liked about older music: blues scale influences, real instruments with real nuances, stretching of creative boundaries, and the lack of autotune to name a few. As I began to write my own songs, nearly all of my influence came from the goliaths of the classic rock era.

I'd like to imagine that my perhaps cynical view of much of modern music could be likened to some of the Renaissance masters' opinions on the Medieval art that dominated leading up to the Renaissance. Though there is much to be appreciated about nearly all forms of art, there is something special about art that stands the test of time.

Over 60 years later, Hendrix still rocks. I can only imagine how Michelangelo, Brunellschi, and others must have felt as they studied the masterful ancient Greeks and Romans from centuries past. But in a way I can. I can picture the awe, the old world of art breathing new life into their self expression, and the amazement that artists would turn from such a style so as to let it die, and I sympathize with them.