Above Average White Band

That’s 1977. The Montreux Jazz Festival. That’s in Switzerland. I still confuse it with the Montreal Jazz Festival. I’m never attending either, so you can stamp my visa any which way you like. If you’ve forgotten (or never knew) what seventies fur-bearing musician critters looked like, here’s exhibit A. Their polyester outfits must have made it impossible to sit down. They’d just slither onto the floor from the lack of friction.

I’ve played (badly) many of the instruments you see in the video. I’m a little impressed by the bass player. He’s playing hiccuping funk bass lines while singing. That’s hard, man. I found it vanishingly easy to play the drums while singing, even though I could barely play the drums. The guitar is pretty easy too, because your right hand is just a piston, generally. But playing syncopated almost-melodies on the bass while yelling into a microphone required more cortex than I possess, I guess. I think it would be even harder to sing and play the saxophone at the same time, but I never tried it. Only playing cello in a marching band would be harder.

People have differing, somewhat angry opinions about generational tastes in music. Millennials hate dad-rock, and hate the dads that rock. They’re sick of listening to Rolling Stones clips in between plays at the football stadium, and Bee Gees while they’re shopping at Whole Foods. They don’t see the appeal of sixties and seventies music. I suspect they really do see the appeal, and decide to hate it anyway. This leads to internet wags pointing out that Duran Duran was better than the Beatles. Okey dokey then. You really should find a more intelligent way to gin up enough courage to stand up to your parents, kids.

In many ways, I’m more in tune with generations who came before and after mine. Seventies dad-rock did seep into every nook and cranny of the world’s collective ear, and set up shop there. Rock and roll swallowed everything that came before it, and it’s still swallowing everything that came after it, too. Hell, Deep Purple played at Montreux. I’ve always lived in a nether world of music and other culture that didn’t rely on a time and place. Giuseppe Verdi is the same as Patsy Cline to me. You either suck, or you don’t.

There is a demarcation line I’m noticing in this video of the Average White Band, though. They were harmless fun coming out of the radio back in the day. I’m sure harmless fun comes out of the radio now, too, but how would I know? I’m listening to Verdi and Cline, remember? But a huge gulf opened up in the music industry when you no longer had to know how to actually sing or play your instruments. If you’re old enough, you can find it on your memory calendar the first time you went to someone’s wedding and there was a guy playing records instead of a band.

Live music used to be everywhere. I know, I used to make it. My kids did, too. I watched it withering on the vine for years, until covid panics killed the whole thing dead. I figure it’s the reason you still hear somebody else’s favorite song coming out of the ceiling in the convenience store. No one’s making anything fresh, so they have to play yacht rock standards while you shop for day old donuts. You can’t beat something with nothing. And man, those white faux-silk outfits were something.