Rock and roll was for the Kids. Teens: rock around the Schoolhouse Clock. Chuck Berry sang their songs without them knowing the source, and added cars, Buddy Holly followed: others, yes + surfing.
Teenagers grew up and wanted their Childhood Music to follow them into Adulthood. This, inevitably, led to Crosby, Stills and Nash. Then: Young. The difference between songs for children and childish songs for young adults blurred into an amiable drugged haze. Children Love Purple.
This, somehow, led to Emerson Lake and Palmer. Welcome Back My Friends, to the Childhood That Never Ends + Moog Solo.
The Seventies came, and the Boomers wanted their Childhood Music to follow them in Opposing Nukes and being Desperadoes, like the Desperadoes they saw in Western movies as a child, but with Tequila.
Coincidentally, Franchising of T.G.I. Friday's began in 1971.
Punk came in the later Seventies to take the energy of childhood rock and couple it with the passion of modern kids' grade-school politics: baby-boomers did not see their children's stove calling the kettle black. Anyway: Rock and Roll for White People -- Karl Marx had a Red Guitar, Three Chords, and the Truth. Also: Free Mandela.
So here we are: the Baby Boomers now have a palette of decades' worth of Child Music to accompany their fears of inconsequence and impending death. Beethoven, of course, already pulled this off, without even needing lyrics.
Still: I bet Mozart would've quite enjoyed Nena's '99 Luft Balloons.'
I am Laslo.
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