Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Electronic Fountain of Youth? OLDIES?

The iPod, an Electronic Fountain of Youth by Annabelle Gurwitch
Actress and Day to Day contributor Annabelle Gurwitch has discovered an electronic fountain of youth -- it's called an iPod. But like most miracle elixirs, Gurwitch found that the personal music device has some nasty side-effects...

Annabelle Gurwitch (IMDB, Wikipedia) is 44; she'll be 45 in November. During the piece she refers to 80's music as "oldies." To be fair, there are a few Bowie songs from the 70's, but I wouldn't consider these "oldies."

Are "oldies" in the eye of the beholder? Can "oldies" to her be the same as "oldies" were to my parents (who are in their 60's)? I'm pretty sure that their parents didn't have "oldies," but I'm also pretty sure that their parents didn't have a culture that revolved around the radio for MUSIC in the way that ours does.

To me, "oldies" always reflects the music that was available on the radio when radio started to become a popular device for distributing music. That is, I think "oldies" should always be music from the 50's and 60's and some of the music from the 70's. After "oldies" we have "eighties music" and "nineties music" because, really, those decades had very distinctive sounds. I think that's fair. Isn't it?

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