Rock Which Town? And When?

I was listening a rockabilly program on Princeton college radio (WPRB) and the DJ was playing classic stuff by Carl Perkins, Eddie Cochran and Bill Haley, but then he played "Rock This Town" by The Stray Cats-- which is in some ways indiscernible from the other, older music-- though it is from 1982 . . . and my post-modern dilemma is this:  "Rock This Town," which I consider somehow disingenuous and satirical because it is from my youth, a period of punk-rock, synth-pop, and Men Without Hats-- and though The Stray Cats made great music, there was an element of parody in their dress, their musical style and their lyrics . . . but they sounded like they were from the '50's, and now the song is so old (and regarded as one of the 500 most important songs of all time by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame) that it has become classic, so "classic" that the DJ didn't point out the difference between "Rock this Town" and the other "authentic" songs he was playing, and I know this shouldn't bother me and maybe it's because it makes me feel old, that I can make the distinction between an eighties band and real rockabilly and it's so far in the past that no one else seems to know or care . . . but it is scary that the eighties are the same amount of years from the fifties as they are from the present.

2 comments:

zman said...

I didn't realize there was a temporal requirement for music to be characterized as rockabilly.

Professor G. Truck said...

that's why you read this sentence each day.

A New Sentence Every Day, Hand Crafted from the Finest Corinthian Leather.