nellorat just went to Cleveland on family business, and she bought me a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame T-shirt, which I am now wearing. I feel a bit funny about that because I am one of those cranky old farts who believe the music died around their thirtieth birthday, and here I am displaying the names of a lot of postmusical losers who make that noise the kids like.
One sign that the music was dying (this was around 1970) is that singers and groups who didn't yet have an album's worth of good new material decided to do a double album. I believe the Beatles started it, but the worst example was Bob Dylan's
Self-Portrait, based on the ludicrous idea that people would want to hear Dylan singing other people's songs.
( offensive image ) If I'd wanted to do an ultimate musical insult, I hope I would have managed to come up with "like
the stuff that was rejected from Self-Portrait."