On Older Rock Groups Touring

This morning, perusing her e-mail, the Ravishing Mrs. TB said "Hey!  Christopher Cross is touring now. What did he sing?"

I had to thinking for a moment - I remember "Sailing", of course, and "Ride Like The Wind", and "Laura" (had to do a high school report on that song), "Never Be The Same", "Arthur's Theme", and "Leader of The Band".  (Apparently, in an interesting note, his song "Sailing" has now been transferred into is own category of rock music, Yacht Rock [circa 1975-1984)

She has already purchased tickets for the 2020 tour with Foreigner and Kansas and Europe this year.

She had asked if I wanted to go.  I said no, of course - crowds in public pretty much make me nervous now and I hate going to to anything like that - but it was a good moment of reflection about how, in the last five to ten years, almost all the groups from my musical youth have been out touring.

The hey day of musical expertise runs from approximately 1978-1985, which essentially overlaps my middle school and high school years (probably true of most folks, I suspect).  My musical knowledge extends a little farther into the past - for example, Led Zepplin feel into my musical box as well as Ozzy Ozborne/Black Sabbath and ELO - but not really much past 1985.  I believe this is the period of time known as "Classic Rock" - Foreigner, Journey, Van Halen (The original - and only - with David Lee Roth, let us be clear on that), ZZ Top, Genesis/Phil Collins, AC/DC, Styx, Loverboy - you get the picture.   Their music was a large part of my day, be it going to and from school, playing role playing games (with music in the background) or just in my room, listening.

Most of them did not make the transfer, of course.  The sound changed, the groups moved on or fell apart, new styles appeared and then disappeared in turn.  Some groups changed personnel pretty significantly (for me, changing your lead singer is changing your sound.  You do not remain the same group).  For those of us that grew up on them, our lives were relegated to radio and tapes (then CDs, then electronic files), re-runs in the past.

And then, all of a sudden, they started coming out again on tour.

The cynical side of me sees this mostly as opportunistic:  their fan base (like me) is now in the prime earning years of their lives (and tickets are not cheap, do not be fooled by the age of the performers), so it is an excellent opportunity to recharge coffers.  It is also, I suppose a chance for the bands to hear the roar of the crowd and feel the rush of performing in front of larger crowds and for the fans, to feel the way they felt thirty-five years ago. In some ways, for a brief time it can become a time machine reaching back to an early age.

But it also makes me somewhat sad.

For most of these bands, they tended to not produce after their glory years.  The songs they play now are the songs they played years ago. In a sense they are trapped within their own successes, somewhat doomed to play the songs of  thirty-five years ago, unable (I think) to move on at least commercially in these concerts - people are not coming for new and fresh material, they are coming to hear music of the past.  Their past. 

Nostalgia can be a thing of tender beauty, a feeling that takes us back to a happier time or to a meaningful event.  But  I wonder if - by feeding this nostalgia regularly - all involved are not only reliving a time of their lives that they enjoyed but condemning entertainers and the entertained into a loop  which neither can ultimately escape from. 

Surrounded by the past, none are allowed to move on to the present.