Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for April 21, 2016

I’m going to go burn my Doors and Van Morrison albums.

Music tastes do date you. Little Richard, anyone?

I’ll take “oldies” over any of the new stuff, because they’re just plain better.

Elvis, all the way! (does that date me?)

But if you don’t tie your tastes to a particular zeitgeist, no problem. Everything old (such as, heh, New Wave) can be new again. I love singers and musicians and songwriters who were popular before I was born and I’m sure I’ll love someone who’ll debut later this year. I love hearing teen shoppers in the vinyl aisle talking about the Stones and the Beatles. My current pleasure is working my way through the boxed set of the complete Bob Dylan (commercially released) albums on CD. Ah, brothers, can this really be the end… stuck in Marietta with the Paris blues again?

I was always a fan of Oldies. I still remember back when I was barely a teenage in the mid 80’s when I got bored with all the (back then) modern stuff and decided to try a Beatles tape in my Walkman. Boy did it make an impression: Since then it’s Beatles, Yardbirds, Kinks, Joan Baez, Elvis, Little Richard, etc for me. From the swing of the 40 to Beat, Blues, rock’n’roll, Psychodelic rock, 60’s and 70’s pop, etc. I still have some song that i like that are from the 2000’s and 2010’s. But not as many as I love from the old times.

everything beats bieber.

Golden oldies to me are the 40’s 50’s and 60’s.

That was right before the music died!

First concert: I had just turned 16, and the first group that night was one I’d never heard of, Humble Pie. (This was just before the recording of ‘PERFORMANCE: Rockin the Fillmore’, and Peter Frampton’s departure from the band.) They opened for Black Sabbath, on their ‘71 tour to promote their second album, "Paranoid’.

Now Peter is a bald headed old man, Steve Marriott is gone, and Black Sabbath is on what will likely be their last tour.

I still love my classics from when they were new in the 50s, 60s and early 70s, but a lot of my favorite music is from the 90s. Not much worth listening to in the last 15 years.

Stephan it had to happen some day :-(

At a Jethro Tull concert, Ian Anderson said, “We’re now going to play you one of the old songs. As you know, it’s the old songs that are… well…. old!”

I listened to a lot of 80s music and 90s while in high school, college and beyond. Most of it I now consider garbage. (not Garbage, but there was some of that, too). I listen to very very little of it now. There is a LOT of music out there and I think many people limit themselves to what’s on the radio (which is horrible). I never did that back then and I still don’t do it. There is some really awesome music out there right now, put out in the last decade. You just have to have a desire to find it, instead of condemning something that’s not part of your generation.

Call me a relic, call me what you will Say I’m old-fashioned, say I’m over the hill Today’s music ain’t got the same soul I like that old time rock ‘n’ roll

Things went downhill pretty quickly after psychedelic rock started to fade out. There were still the Moody Blues, Yes, Wishbone Ash, Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead, but everybody knew it was over.

@BrassOrchid,

Ah yes, those were the days, my friend. We thought they’d never end. We’d sing and dance, and play a song or two.

See, once upon a time, there was a tavern…

I’m still listening to Annette Hanshaw.

The rare case when Pearls characters open their mouths when speaking…

That’s “MOLDY Oldies” to you, bub.

I like ALL genres of music: 70s pop, 70s rock, 70s prog rock, 70s hard rock, 70s R&B, 70s Disco Sucks but I love it anyway, 70s C&W…

Classic Rock is the Only Rock!!!

still a whole lot better than the music you hear now. and I’m 28. No one even uses a horn, or play the piano in today’s music

And the old country music, too. Hank Williams, Kitty Wells, Patsy Cline, George Jones,etc.

I feel your pain Stephan…

I wish I could be there when they start playing “rap” or “Hiphop” on Muzak (you know, Elevator music)

Do Billy and The Boingers count?

@ebsan: Thank you!! I’d add Charlie Pride to the list.

Oh Steph….so true, so true.

Excellent! I laughed out loud.

Jackson Browne, Statler Brothers….

To most people, MOR means ‘middle of the road’ music. To DJ’s, it means ‘moldy, old, & rotten’. (From an MOR DJ.)

Neil Sedaka all the way! (And I wasn’t even born in Sedaka’s heyday.)

Since Prince died today, this is even more fitting. Nothing like the death of favourite musicians to make one feel old.

I’m 21 and I love Golden Oldies!Much better than the so called “music” we have today.xxx

When I was in HS and music was on LPs and 45s, Golden Oldies albums were usually music about 2 years old.

I’m going to embrace my Thompson Twins cassettes. I can’t play em, but I can embrace em.

P.S. RIP Prince

The 80s had the best music. No discussion there. How many recent movies have at least one 80s song playing in a scene? I know I have seen plenty.

Switched to classical in the mid-1980s, for the obvious reason.

The Daddy’s Home strip had the definitive word on the issue:

Dad: “Our music was tremendously better than yours.”

Son: “Yes, but we found a way to get it free.”

Every old fart rolling their eyes at the ephemeral crap on the radio today needs to go back in a time machine to realize most of what was popular then was ephemeral crap. Your elders were grumbling & rolling their eyes at “that awful noise”, too.There’s still great music being made today in more variety than ever before. I feel bad for anyone who doesn’t take advantage of the fact that we as consumers can go around the radio stations & record labels to support the musicians that appeal to our tastes.

Interesting timing. RIP Prince.

Stephan, Love today’s strip. But that’s probably because I can get a free plug in for my website and steer you to it to listen to your favorite music while you slave over your funnies. Check out www.radiogeorge.com and go to the Classic Rock Live channel. Let me know how you like it.

To misuse a maxim: “It’s the exception that proves the rule.”

Look up every adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo and you will find Revenge ain’t nothing new. The MCU is based on the various comic storylines rather than being entirely original. Nothing wrong with that, especially if you don’t read comics, but don’t think their original. Same for Game of Thrones and True Blood which are based on a couple novel series.

If there was a station that would play Guns’n’Roses and Nirvana and the likes permanently, I’d listen to that instead of the MP3 on my phone.

I feel his pain! Can you imagine telling your grandchildren about listening to Metallica and the Beasty Boys? They’ll laugh at you and call you an old fogey.