Yesterday, When I Was Young

There's a recent Barbelith topic on hitting your thirties and falling out of touch with the pop music scene: and out of all the blather and self-defensiveness contained therein, the pride of Shrewsbury, E. Randy Dupre was (as ever) the Voice of Reason. Leave Youth culture to the youth, he suggested, and spend some time educating yourself in all the great music you missed the first time around. And so I've been doing, for the last few years, discovering the pleasures of great neglected Pop.

Consequently my love for Dusty Springfield has grown to embarrassing levels, I fear. Couple weeks ago I drove down to the video store in the fine twilight, and was cruising slowly into the parking lot, windows wide, stereo up, the strings and accordion gathering steam under Dusty's burnished wail: now understand I was in a ballcap and shades and hoodie, here—my usual workaday uniform, and not something about which I am in the least self-conscious—and driving a station wagon.

And what was the song that had me lost in rapture?

I ran so fast that time and youth at last ran out
I never stopped to think what life was all about
And every conversation I can now recall
concerned itself with me, and nothing else at all

The absurdity of my situation only struck me when I passed a little know of baggy-jeaned sk8ter types, also in ballcaps and hoodies, and me palpably an Old Fart, apparently aping the fashions of Da Yoof and listening to what is indisputably Old People Music (it is such by design, as is apparent from that lyric). Their smirky heads turned blockily towards me, and I felt briefly like an idiot.

I must have seemed extremely punchable: indeed, had I suspected for a moment that I was listening to this music in some ironic Tarantinoesque space-age-bachelor-pad hipster-flipster way, I'd have been tempted to take a shot myself.

And, you know, even ten years ago I'd have never believed myself capable of falling so in love with a song written by Charles Aznavour: that guy was joke, wasn't he? a cartoon froggie who popped up now and then on Carson, a real-life Pepe LePew, a faded pop holdover from the old days, before the development of the concept of "taste." Or so I thought.

But goddamit, I know what I know, and it's something that a teenager, all jacked-up on adrenaline and aggression, is not yet equipped to understand: that some of this music is really fucking good—that 1960s AngloPop (as opposed to British Invasion, which tended more towards the rock-ist side of things: AngloPop flew in largely under the radar, with the British Invasion vanguard providing covering fire. The distinction between the two genres can be hazy when one gets to the twee fringe of the rock side, i.e., Freddy and the Dreamers or the Dave Clark Five, but a rough rule of division, with many exceptions of course, is that bands = rock, while singers = pop) is astonishingly well-crafted and emotive music, beautifully-arranged and produced.

Seriously. Dusty Springfield's stuff holds up as well as Sinatra's best Columbia work—in fact I would argue it's even better, because (a) it covers a greater stylistic range—Dusty sounded just as comfortable on rock and soul-style material (see Dusty In Memphis for evidence) as well as the big productions, while Sinatra's takes on "the kid's stuff" were always awkward and slightly bizarre: "Ring-a-ding-ding, Mrs. Robinson"—huh? And while Sinatra may have thought, as he said, that George Harrison's "Something" was the greatest love song of the 20th Century, he was unable to convey that connection to the material in a convincing way—some element of the song's essence simply eluded him. Which leads to point (b), namely that Sinatra was already Old, and far more open to the charge of being Old People's Music, when Dusty was in her heyday. He was Old People's Music then, and only Ancient People listen to him now unironically. Well, that's harsh: but I can listen to Dusty without protective irony, and feel like I'm getting quality product. And (c) she lacks Sinatra's odious false bravado, all the baggage of personality that made Sinatra Sinatra and thus easily hatable. Dusty was cool, God rest her soul.

Although it is Petula Clark's "Downtown" that is the Greatest Record Ever Made, bar none. As explained elsewhere Petula has a knighthood, and Dusty didn't. Harsh, I know. But you've got to draw the line somewhere.