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I despise the contemporary notion that one way of spelling is as good as another, that subject-verb agreement is unimportant, or that the street argot is a reasonable substitute for proper speech.
I’m pleased to hold the door for a lady, but am always happier to get a “thank you” than an offended scowl.
I’ve been employed more than 50 years without missing a deadline or taking a sick day. My father set an example of dependability. So far I’ve followed it.
And when it comes to popular music — vocal music — I want to be able to hear a melody and understand the words, not have to settle for a discordant racket or a garbled shriek.
Alright, I’m old-fashioned. And proud of it.
For instrumental music, Gerry Mulligan, Stan Getz, George Shearing and Dave Brubeck, Oscar Peterson and their sidemen were the favorites of my youth. Late in life, they still are.
Where pop and jazz vocals are concerned, mine is the generation of Ella Fitzgerald, Billy Eckstine, Mel Torme, Sarah Vaughan, Tony Bennett, Nat Cole, Billie Holiday and their contemporaries.
Backward as it may seem to younger audiences today, we preferred music — whether of horn, piano or voice, and whether in concert or a more intimate setting — that told a story or evoked a mood.
I’m struck, while watching some performers today, including some of the most popular ones, that what I’m witnessing is more a display of deranged athleticism than of musicality.
They flail their arms, shake their copious manes of hair, jerk their torsos as though wracked by ungovernable spasms — all the while delivering vicious blows to their guitars or keyboards.
It is behavior which, if it were observed in any other setting, would cause that individual to be confined for his own and the public’s safety.
If in that display a singer is involved — and I use the noun loosely — the sounds emitted cannot be classified as true communication.
The mouth opens and closes and the face is contorted in alternating expressions of agony, ecstasy and rage. But if, indeed, there are lyrics, they are inaudible due to the overriding din.
I don’t mean to seem arbitrary and unreasonable. For it’s true, I do occasionally happen across performers whose work reminds me of certain artists of that earlier time, a few of whom still are active.
And my tastes haven’t been entirely impervious to change. For with the seasoning of age and time, I’ve come to appreciate a genre that in earlier years interested me not at all.
If one of the great virtues of popular music is storytelling, no other form does that better than country and western.
It’s not the product of any conservatory’s master class. It is only the stuff of common experience, rising out of the joys and hopes and heartbreaks of ordinary Americans — people of the steamy South, the lonely badlands and mountain hamlets, the hill farms and broken coalfields of Appalachia.
But listen to the classic “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” recorded by George Jones. Or “The City of New Orleans,” sung by Willie Nelson. Or “To Daddy” by Emmylou Harris. Or the tragic “El Paso,” written and performed by the late Marty Robbins.
Hear those and you’ve heard some real stories, ones told with insight and perfect clarity, set to music that lodges in memory and invites replaying.
It’s the kind of music that heavy metal and punk rockers might make if they weren’t tone-deaf and brain-dead, and had achieved fluency in even one of the world’s 6,900 known languages — preferably one with which the audience is familiar.
Probably there are readers of a different generation who do not share my point of view on these matters. But disagreement I can handle. Contempt I can live with.
My only fear is that I may not have made my position entirely clear.
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