You know you are getting up there when the members of bands that peaked when you were already in your 30's start looking like the old codgers standing in line at the Golden Corral Buffet.
One of the huge benefits of being the show person at the Santa Cruz Civic in the 80's was I got to see a lot of the popular bands at a time and age where I probably would not have otherwise. By age 30 most people's musical tastes have calcified. By the 1980's the old school punk rock had pretty much morphed in a much more codified Hardcore scene and melded together with thrash metal, got very technically orientated and self-conscious, and I lost interest. I was even a little too old for the old school punk rock, but I always had cultural maturity issues. Even now I have the musical taste of a teenage Hispanic girl.
I worked the REM show in '85 at the Civic. Then 'Alternative Rock' was the big deal, born in the dying embers of punk rock as a tagline the major labels could capitalize on. I never quite figured out what it was an alternative too. The audience was classic 80's UCSC students, all moody and somberly dressed like REM. To my ears REM just sounded like a jumbled mess of influences from all the different genres of past rock music. They even did a few cover songs in their set, from Creedence to the Velvet Underground, just to be sure we knew who their influences were.
True West and The Three O'Clock opened the show and were much more interesting sounding bands to me than REM, but that was just because I was a little older and they reminded me of the San Jose garage bands of my youth. They were both part of the short and ill-fated LA based 'Paisley Underground' scene, which patterned their music on the 60's psychedelic sound. The Bangles was the only band that managed to crawl out of that musical genre with some fame and Billboard success. Pop music was recycling itself like crazy right then. The Boomers was such a huge generation that our influence lived on way longer than it should have. We are finally dying off as a pop culture influence. Good riddance.
True West and The Three O'Clock opened the show and were much more interesting sounding bands to me than REM, but that was just because I was a little older and they reminded me of the San Jose garage bands of my youth. They were both part of the short and ill-fated LA based 'Paisley Underground' scene, which patterned their music on the 60's psychedelic sound. The Bangles was the only band that managed to crawl out of that musical genre with some fame and Billboard success. Pop music was recycling itself like crazy right then. The Boomers was such a huge generation that our influence lived on way longer than it should have. We are finally dying off as a pop culture influence. Good riddance.
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