James Lileks on old fogey music

James Lileks unloads his bile on Deborah Harry:

As for "Blondie," the song was "Tide is High," which I loathe, right up to and including Debbie Harry's yips at the end. Some people said that the song marked the End of New Wave, but for heaven's sake New Wave ended with the first Blondie song. Okay? New York "downtown" ethos meets pseudo-Moroder synths, uses square-headed frontperson for sex appeal, that's it for New Wave. Don't talk to me about this. I'm still bitter.

Not really. Although I do matter when these things mattered a great deal, and how we had to come up with new genres to describe every deviation from the style of the times, since it was the style that nurtured our souls and gave our lives meaning. We are living in an era when New Jersey garage rockers are successfully using the raw, nervy Kinks style and adding post-Beatles sensibility to create an entirely new style, which is as impossible to dance to as its antecedents! Actually, to tell the truth I did think the term "post-Beatles" today, and in the correct sense of "stealing specific chords and/or harmonies." I was driving around Lake Harriet shooting a video for buzz.mn — a big summer-long project about all the lakes, released sometime early in September — and "It's a Livin' Thing" came on the radio. Electric Light Orchestra.

There's always that moment of shame when you find yourself liking a song from a group that has long passed out of favor and into the realm of ignored bands good for a punch line, but not if you're talking to anyone under 20.