The music industry had a lot of bad news in January. Most of you heard the news about Glenn Frey and David Bowie both passing away in January 2016, but just how many of you “knew” who they were? Maybe I’ve finally gotten to the age where barefoot in the snow stories become important, but losing both of these guys, at least to me, signaled the end of an era. It means there won’t be an Eagles Farewell Tour 256 or a host of other things.
Legacy
I was lucky. Probably didn’t think so at the time, but I was lucky. I was born when we only had AM radio. As a kid I got to live through the creation of FM radio and 8-track tapes. It was a good thing many teens smoked back then because you seemed to always need a matchbook to wedge under your favorite 8-track so it would play. At least in the car tape decks. Then we got cassettes and learned you couldn’t play cassette tapes in different car tape decks without them stretching badly. We endured all of these media problems because we actually fell in love with the music of a generation.
Perhaps your generation has music it calls its own, but it won’t be what we had. The 70s was an era before radio stations discovered genres and became market segments. It was before there were national media chains controlling what you heard coast to coast. When it came to radio stations during the 70s, if a song was good, it was on the air. You could hear the Eagles, David Bowie, Glenn Campbell, Niel Diamond and a host of others all without changing the dial.
Admittedly, leisure suits were a very bad thing, but we had many good things.
Sadly, in January of 2016, we lost 2 very good people and that brought an end to many good things.
