Boomers need a new tune so kids can make own music

Why talk about the just-published music book pitting The Beatles (first album in 1963) vs. The Rolling Stones (first album in 1964), when November gives us new albums to discuss?

Debuting on the radio this week, the newest album by Elvis, who would be 75 if he hadn't died 33 years ago, will hit the stores in two weeks. Titled “Suspicious Minds” (after a song written the year we put a man on the moon), it no doubt will get stiff competition from 65-year-old Rod Stewart, who went on Good Morning America this week to hawk his new “Fly Me to the Moon” album featuring the cover song written in 1954 and other ditties from the last millennium.

Speaking of the moon, the most recent album bought by one of our 14-year-old sons was “Dark Side of the Moon,” a Pink Floyd album that came out in 1973, nearly a decade before Lil Wayne was born.

A 14-year-old buying “Dark Side of the Moon” in 2010 is like a kid walking into a record store in 1984 and walking past the new Run-D.M.C. release to grab the latest offering from George and Ira Gershwin. It's the equivalent of me rushing to the record store in 1971 to buy Shirley Temple's chart-topping “On the Good Ship Lollipop” song from 1934. I was aware of that song as a teen, but I certainly didn't advertise that knowledge, let alone prefer it over Three Dog Night, Alice Cooper or even Rod Stewart. Nor did my friends and I take part in any Frank vs. Bing debates.

Do today's kids really have an appetite for songs recorded in the decade before Justin Bieber's mother was born?

Yep.

“It's always funny to hear a 12-year-old ask, ‘Have you ever heard of Pink Floyd?'” says Tim Wille, owner of Vinyl Frontier Records, 1326 N. Riverside Drive in McHenry. “When a kid asks for ‘Dark Side of the Moon,' you know you've got a customer for a year because they are going to want everything that band has ever done.”

A 42-year-old father of two, Wille hadn't yet started first grade when that album came out, but he says it is one of his best sellers for his young customers.

“It's a lot of kids, 12 and 14 years old. They are finding the turntables in the basement and dragging them upstairs,” Wille says. “They are buying Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin. Boston, I've always got to restock the Boston. I still get asked for ‘Frampton Comes Alive' about three or four times a month, Steppenwolf, Black Sabbath, they are liking all of that. Even a clean copy of a Monkee's album will find a buyer within a week.”

While Wille can order up the newest releases on vinyl, he says most of the sales from his 50,000 LPs in stock are from the previous century.

“A majority of those could have been bought in 1970,” Wille says. “Everything I listened to (as a teen) is here.”

But there are limits to mining musical memories. With an OK Go song playing in the background at his store, Wille says he can't understand why the record industry isn't pushing newer bands such as Tool instead of promoting The Beatles, Stones and Elvis.

“The market is down, way down on Beatles and Stones. They've been repackaged and reissued so many times and every other Christmas,” sighs Wille, who is a weary Beatles fan. “They are a fantastic band and I love them to death, but you just have so much to listen to. They are selling the same record to you 50 times.”

“Sinatra we do leave on the shelves and it does sell,” he says. “Some of the younger kids want it because they think it makes them look cool in front of their friends, but I don't see them taking it home and playing it.”

Other crooners from that era can't even muster a shelf life.

“Every Bing Crosby Christmas album ever made,” Wille says for example. “I'm actually trying to drive up the price of Andy Williams LPs by throwing out every one I can find.”

And the King is dead at Vinyl Frontier.

“Elvis Presley doesn't sell. I couldn't give an Elvis record away,” Wille says of the artist who died the year Ludacris was born. “His fans are close to 70 years old and older.”

Which make me wonder what will happened when today's teens become senior citizens. When they crave the music of their youth, does that mean they will be longing for the music of their parents' youth?