John Turner

I bought Yet Another Song From A Commercial (YASFAC): this one is the Flaming Lips’ “The W.A.N.D.” from another Dell Inspiron commercial. Someone at Dell’s agency has pretty good taste in music. Hard to believe The Flaming Lips are still going strong…I remember buying their CDs back in the 80s.

I realized the other day how to tell when you’re old. You’re old when you hear a Top 40 band cover a song that you saw the original band play live. Case in point: I was at Best Buy the other day buying a new Netgear router (802.11n if you care) and the store was playing Gnarls Barkley’s cover of “Gone Daddy Gone“. I’m sure most of the people who would listen to that version of that song have absolutely no idea that a) it is a cover, and b) the original band is one of the best bands of all time, The Violent Femmes, and c) it was originally released 25 years ago. In other words, the original song is older than most of the people listening to the cover.

I remember seeing The Violent Femmes live at Todd’s in Detroit, probably ‘82 or ‘83 (those years are kind of a blur). It was a crazy show, one of the best I’ve ever seen. I had snuck in as my friends and I typically did back then…Todd’s was THE place for the alternative scene and none of us were 18 yet. The concert blew my mind…I can still see them on stage, Gordon Gano’s guitar was some sort of huge beast of a guitar, or at least it looked that way. The bass player broke out a washtub bass for a couple of the numbers, too. Todd’s was packed, standing room only, I just remember the entire place jumping up and down and writhing as some sort of single entity. It was crazy. And that’s how I know I’m old…instead of listening to the original version, kids these days are listening to a cover of a song I saw performed live when I was a kid. Wow, that’s sad.