Nostalgia just isn’t what it used to be.
By Dave Hamby
Nostalgia just isn’t what it used to be. This truth really came home to roost when my family and I decided to go to Hot Springs Arkansas for a long weekend. Since the drive is a long one and my wife doesn’t enjoy driving our motor home, she got me a four CD set of The Platters, The Temptations, The Drifters and The Four Tops to help me while away the miles. My middle daughter, Caitlin, normally brings a good selection of CD’s for our trips, but my wife knows I find listening to the moldy oldies much more relaxing than I do Smash Mouth, Sister Hazel, Creed, Three Doors Down, and the other groups my daughter enjoys.
On this trip I ended up enjoying my Caitlin’s CDs a whole lot more than the oldies my wife so thoughtfully got me.
The problem was that these greatest hit CD’s from some of my favorite groups weren’t digitally re-mastered copies of the original recordings, they were new recordings from the original artists.
So what’s theproblem you ask? The problem is that as much as forty five years have passed since these songs were hits. I mean it bothers me to hear a seventy five year old man croak out “My Girl”, even if he is the guy that recorded it originally. I can’t help but conjure up images of a crooning pedophile.
Now don’t get me wrong, I enjoy hearing old men sing. Louis Armstrong’s “Wonderful World” is one of my favorite songs and I’ve enjoyed listening to Willie Nelson since the early seventies. (He’s been an old man as long as I can remember.)
What bothers me is listening to an octogenarian Drifter rasp out about how he’ll be, “on the beach with his girl,” whom I can only assume is another octogenarian. This is not a pretty image to be conjuring up while driving a motor home.
Now it’s easy enough to chunk this CD set, but having to listen to the guys I enjoyed in my youth, who are now just a bunch of old men, set me to thinking.
Our Rotary Club is having a Sock Hop fundraiser this coming Valentines Day and while there will be young people there, they won’t be us. The folks that will be reliving the “good ol days” are for the most part, old.
The celebrity from the sixties I’m hoping to get to MC this event is in his sixties. The folks who’ll be twisting to the beat of “Off the Record”, the band that’ll be playing there, will for the most part be twisting around a lot more weight than was ever intended when this dance was invented.
The guys sporting Beach Boys hair do’s will be wearing toupees and we can only hope the women won’t be wearing any of the mini-mini skirts that were so popular in the sixties.
There’ll be some really neat old cars at the car show, but those of us who know about cars can only add a “Thank God” when someone laments that they just don’t make cars the way they used to.
The good news is that the Stony Point High School Interact Club is co-hosting this event. There will be young adults in attendance, but I’m pretty certain they would rather dance to Smash Mouth than to the songs “Off the Record” will be belting out. Most of these kids are polite enough not to say anything about the temporal challenges some of us are facing. I suspect though that “Groovy” and “Far out” won’t be appearing in their vernacular after the dance.
I have the benefit of being old enough to remember those days, but I was a child. Really, I graduated from High School in 1971. I also have fifteen and thirteen year old daughters so I can relate to the younger crowd that’ll be there, but only as a parent.
Actually, we can only relate as old parents. I've often been told how nice it is that we are involved with our grandchildren’s activities. This isn’t my first exposure to the realization that I’m no longer a young man.
Still, the realization that the Four Tops are all wayyy over the hill is distressing.
I’ll need to do something to lift my spirits. I wonder what a new Corvette costs?
This article originally appeared in the Round Rock Leader