Conundrum

For as long as I can remember, I have been against music nostalgia, especially in people who didn't experience particular bands in their initial heyday. Specifically I am talking here about Deadheads.

(Aside, people who like music that sounds like it ought to be from another period, e.g. jam bands, also annoy me. On the other hand, people who like Yma Sumac, the Limelighters, Julie London and Mario Lanzo do not annoy me. So maybe it's just Deadheads and jam band fans who annoy me. But that doesn't let me address my conundrum so my aside is not relevant.)

Let me start again. I've always thought that people should like the good music that is being made "now". At least, I thought that until I thought the music that is made "now" is not as good as the music that was made "when it was good." I think the late 80s through mid-90s were a particularly golden period for music, both rock and rap, and my musical tastes haven't evolved much past that time. I hadn't really noticed that I had become a music nostalgic though, until a friend sent me a link to Riot on the Dance Floor, a documentary about City Gardens, a punk club from my youth. The interviews are with bandmembers from some of my favorite bands, and wow, does everyone look old. Okay, so they were older than me then, but it didn't seem like it.

I'm not gonna go on punk nostalgia trip here. Actually I am worried that the strict cultural moral code of my youth now requires me to reject myself, hate me, find me to be stupid and flaccid and lame. Which of course I don't, but out of affection for myself want to embrace. Does that make any sense? I love my younger self like a child, and like the parent of that child want to agree with her!