Why I love Oldies

Image by Adam Melancon via Flickr

I love Oldies, and I don’t appreciate most music made after 1970. Recently, I contemplated how that could have happened. I’m under 30. I wasn’t even born in 1970.

It all starts in 1985. The movie Back to the Future came out, which contained a number of classic 50s songs. This was one of my favorite movies. For those of you who haven’t seen it, in it, a 1985 Teenager goes back to when his parents were the same age, in 1955. It was in this movie I first got introduced to songs by the Penguins and Chuck Berry.

This is where my love of 50s music came from, especially doowop. It didn’t come from my parents. Their music era was the 60s, and era I also love.  My mother exposed me to a little of that, but my brother introduced me to the Beatles, among others, and I branched outward to enjoy other classic rock.

I realized a few years ago, when I was giving a lift on behalf of a college club to a guest, knowledgeably discussing Leiber and Stoller, and answering trivia questions lobbed at me about the Diablos, that the community for classic media is still alive, and includes people of all ages. More recently, the popularity around the remastered release of the Beatles catalog proves it as well.

So, when people talk about more modern music, I am the one who doesn’t know as much. But I can live with that.