Get the Led out

Classic rock is many things, and of late I've hated CHOM because, well, I've heard it all so many times before - but there's a reason why at heart I'm a rocker and it's all tied up in how and when I was raised, who my friends were, and what we came to believe was the essence of manhood or even more broadly the essence of just being human.

It's not for everybody, that's for sure - if EVERYBODY was a rocker then there'd be no room for how it makes those people who are rockers feel special. There needs to be mods and punks and jesus freaks and jazz cats and electronica esotericists etc.
But coming of age in the mid to late eighties, as disco sputtered and died or morphed into pop and dance and emo, we were close enough to the 1970s to look at our cousins, the 'big kids', or whoever, to listen to Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath and AcDc, Skynrd, CSNY, Lynrd Skynrd, bla bla bla, (just turn on CHOM), and want to identify with those people and that music.

There's a willfulness to rock - a lack of pretense - I've always hated prog and even much of Rush for taking the techniques of rock and gussying them up - I suppose it's the equivalent of baroque or roccoco if I could bother to figure out what those words mean. For young males, looking for models on how to assert ourselves in the world, rock provided a model. A kind of balls out 'going for it' that was not as aggressive or based in hurt as punk or death metal (though both genres fill those emotional needs quite nicely thank you), but much more just wilful and intentional. Does it rock? Do you rock? Do you want to rock?

And somewhere along the way, with the three kids, less than satisfying career, and the increasing indignities of middle age, you realize -- Mother Fucker! I have ceased to rock…if I ever came even within the foothills of real rocking I am now dangerously close to the shores of modern pop and similar candy coated cereals. I listen to Virgin in the car! - though granted not when I'm alone - and I've downloaded some of it to my iPhone. (Who doesn't love Gangnam ?)

So turning on CHOM today, and exceptionally not wanting to shoot myself in the head at their whole business model (make geezers like myself and older feel like we're still teenagers or at least aren't listening to AC) and they surprised me. There's no punch line because I forget the name of the song and maybe that's better because you can fill in your own Classic Rock Favourite - but it rocked, and for the few minutes it took to drive the minivan home after dropping off the skates the 8 yo had forgotten after dropping off the 4 yo and 23 mo, I felt like there was a chance I might rock again too. Someday. Maybe not today because there's the doctor and the job that makes me sad, then the stress fest that is dinner etc, but someday. That it was still possible. And that it was important to try, because rocking is how we are meant to live.
So I will leave you with Led Zeppelin.