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Post by webm@ster on Aug 31, 2003 15:54:03 GMT -5
New York Daily News
The torch has been passed to a new generation of rock concert fans.
But it's the same old torch.
This summer's top concert performers include such veteran acts as Jackson Browne, Chicago, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Def Leppard, the Allman Brothers, Bob Dylan, KISS, Steely Dan, Tom Petty and Crosby, Stills and Nash.
While they can still draw 5,000 to 15,000 fans a night, that number includes more than the now-middle-aged fans who remember when music could be found in the grooves of 12-inch vinyl disks historians now call long-playing albums.
A look around almost any concert crowd today shows fans who were not born or were too young to notice when some of these artists wrote and recorded the music they now enjoy.
And they show up -- with or without their parents -- in preppie attire for Ringo Starr concerts and in makeup and studded chokers for KISS.
Brian Levinson, a 25-year-old New Yorker, recalls that "while all my friends were into Duran Duran and Culture Club, I was discovering 'Sgt. Pepper.' I didn't start listening to contemporary music until high school, when Nirvana came out."
Ian Graham, 32, who grew up in New Jersey, says he started his musical retro-journey when he found his parents' copy of the Stones' "Between the Buttons" album. His parents also liked Dylan, his older brother had a friend who liked the Who's "Pinball Wizard," he had friends who liked the Allmans, and before you knew it, he was mixing Dylan and the Grateful Dead in with his Nirvana CDs.
"I'm constantly amazed at concerts to see how many 19-year-olds are wearing Led Zeppelin T-shirts," says Maria Milito, midday host on classic rock radio station WAXQ in New York. "We did a Doors show, and I kept looking around at the young fans and thinking, 'My God, a lot of you weren't even born when Jim Morrison died.' "
James Taylor says he became accustomed years ago to seeing his fans bring their kids to his shows.
"It's nice when that happens," he says. "It's flattering."
Lately, though, he's seen a new twist: those original kids now bringing kids of their own. "Suddenly it becomes sobering," Taylor jokes. "You start to think, 'Am I that old?' "
The answer is, well, yes.
But what happened to the conventional wisdom that rock 'n' roll was born partly as a way for young folks to declare their independence from the music that came before?
"That's still true to a large extent," says Gary Bongiovanni, editor of the trade magazine Pollstar. "Kids need to find their own music. One reason rap has been so popular among white kids the last 10 or 15 years is that their parents don't like it."
"But I took my son to a Rolling Stones concert and while his real interest was Pearl Jam, who were opening, he liked the Stones, too. He also discovered Led Zeppelin on his own."
Some of this isn't just random serendipity, Milito says. Aerosmith and Ozzy Osbourne, for example, have become hip for more than one generation.
Contemporary artists can turn their fans onto their predecessors.
"When Eddie Vedder plays with Pete Townshend or talks about Jim Morrison, that makes them cool," suggests Milito. "Oasis did that with the Kinks and the Beatles. Kid Rock talks about Aerosmith
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