{"id":1199,"date":"2008-02-05T10:06:46","date_gmt":"2008-02-05T15:06:46","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2010-07-12T23:02:32","modified_gmt":"2010-07-12T23:02:32","slug":"a-theme-for-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/a-theme-for-today\/","title":{"rendered":"A Theme for Today"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"image_block\" style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/media\/users\/frankenslade\/beardedbates.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"\" width=\"344\" height=\"450\" \/><\/p>\n<div class=\"image_legend\">I spell M-&#8230;<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Last night I was flipping channels, and I came to a screeching halt at the 1978 <strong>Paul Mazursky<\/strong>-directed period piece, <em>An Unmarried Woman<\/em>. Man, I hadn&#8217;t seen that movie since it was still considered mainstream cutting edge. <strong>Alan Bates&#8217; hair and beard<\/strong> were a show unto themselves, not to mention <strong>Jill Clayburgh&#8217;s newly liberated nipples<\/strong>! <\/p>\n<p><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/zT4qUIf59d0?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><br \/>\nAnyhow, I got to thinking how representative that movie was of the &#8217;70s age of <strong>self-discovery<\/strong> and how so much popular music of that time was geared toward themes of post-hippie culture, middle-class self-discovery by women and men in their late-20s and early-30s: Carol King, James Taylor, all that Psychic Oblivion stuff&#8230; What a clear period in terms of cultural themes. My childhood was smack dab in the middle of that period, with my newly divorced Mom &#8220;finding&#8221; herself a few years later than she would have liked. Better late than never&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Then I got to thinking about other periods of music and popular culture, during which clear themes emerged. I lived through some of these periods, as I&#8217;m living through whatever period we&#8217;re in today, but I can&#8217;t put my finger on what our present cultural theme is, circa 2008. The themes an artist like <strong>Beck<\/strong> represented in the &#8217;90s are appearing in the rearview mirror, aren&#8217;t they? <strong>U2<\/strong> and <strong>The Boss<\/strong> already healed the nation post-9\/11. <strong>Neil Young<\/strong>&#8216;s attempts at establishing themes during the <strong>Dubya<\/strong> era were hampered by lousy music, and now Bush is about to appear in the rearview mirror along with Beck and <strong>Alanis Morissette<\/strong>. We may be post-ironic, but&#8217;s not like we&#8217;re living in the Age of New Sincerity quite yet. So my question is, <strong><em>What music today represents &#8211; for you &#8211; a theme you think is particularly relevant to our time?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I spell M-&#8230; Last night I was flipping channels, and I came to a screeching halt at the 1978 Paul Mazursky-directed period piece, An Unmarried Woman. Man, I hadn&#8217;t seen that movie since it was still considered mainstream cutting edge. Alan Bates&#8217; hair and beard were a show unto themselves, not to mention Jill Clayburgh&#8217;s <a href='https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/a-theme-for-today\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[272],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1199"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1199\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}