We Can Indeed Work It Out

I play music with young men sometimes. It’s fascinating to see what they like.

They have their own musical worldview, open-minded or cranky to taste, filled with contemporary things. Rock music isn’t all that complicated, and me and my hoary old friends generally don’t have too much trouble kenning what’s going on in your typical Weezer song and bashing our way through it. There really isn’t all that much difference between any two guitars/bass/drums/two-or-three-guys singing stuff. If you can play the Dave Clark Five, you can play Radiohead.

Since I play the bass, mostly, I’m often pressed into service as there’s regularly a shortage of that. My friend’s sons are college age, and some of our co-workers and friends aren’t yet thirty. They all play better than we did, or do. It’s funny to see them pawing through crap from my high school years like we pawed through Animal House flotsam for oldies.

In pick-up situations, you have to find things that everybody knows, or can fake or figure out in a hurry. You end up playing everything they play during time-outs at football games, and you always play the Beatles.

The Beatles were my older brother’s vintage. They were gone before I was in high school. But an archaeologist could take a sample of all the layers of Beatles stuff I’ve played, and make a series of geologic Beatle eras.

1. The Beatles any song
2. Beatles raves like Twist and Shout
3. Mature pop songs like You Can’t Do That.
4. Arena rock progenitors like Back In The USSR
5. Silly stuff like Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da
6. Back to Twist and Shout for bald men and women gone thick in the middle

But this is what the young fellers want to play now. Good for them. It’s lovely: