When did "my" music become grist for the Oldies Station?

Apparently, the definition of Oldies is the music grandparents remember jamming to when they were young. Three of my first cousins and many of my classmates are proud Grandparents! I am not quite ready to join the AARP generation, at least not mentally. But seriously, Talking Heads, U2, Bruce Springsteen and the Police are featured on BIG 100, the local Oldies station.  Really?

Recently I responded to one of those Facebook "tag" games where you list your favorite albums or whatever, and then you tag your friends to see their responses. Here is my entry:

My Fifteen Albums reflect a certain nostalgia for my own coming of age in the late 70s and early 80s, from a time when words were harder to find and music was a form of expression. This is not desert island discs, nor my all-time favorites, nor even the albums I would grab for a road trip mix CD.  It’s just the first fifteen albums that popped into my head, along with a brief explanation.

1. Three Dog Night, Joy to the World: This will always be the first album I ever bought. Jeremiah was a bullfrog! I liked Credence Clearwater Revival and Pure Prairie League, too.
2. Elton John, Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy: Someone saved my life tonight. My 7th grade music teacher asked each student to name his favorite artist, and this was my immediate response. I was too young to understand the lyrics and I never appreciated Elton’s flamboyantly over-the-top, Liberace-esque outfits, but the music and the melody moved me. I was also into Neil Diamond at that time, and I tried to sing like him. I liked Rod Stewart, too.
3. Styx, Grand Illusion: not my favorite of the big hair rock bands (That would be Journey, of course, but I also enjoyed Aerosmith, Boston, REO Speedwagon, Kansas, and even KISS), but this album stands out because it was the theme for prom my junior year. This 8-track may have gotten a bit of play in my gold Plymouth Satellite that evening.
4. Rush, 2112: All the world’s indeed a stage, and we are merely players.  References to Shakespeare and Ayn Rand make this concept album important, despite Geddy Lee’s often irritating voice. Tom Petty has an irritating voice, too, but his music never made me want to read Atlas Shrugged.
5. Pink Floyd, The Wall: this is as close to psychedelic rock as I ever came, unless you count The Doors or some Beatles tunes (I am the Walrus). Speaking of the Beatles, “Right here on our stage tonight, …”
6. The Beatles, Blue Album 1967-1970: Sort of a greatest hits compilation covering the Sgt Pepper / Abbey Road / Let It Be era. This is my way of getting more and better songs onto a list of 15 albums! I was too young to “discover” the Beatles. Their music inspired many fan clubs, hair styles, and Sunday night radio shows long before I tuned in. I bought both the Red and the Blue albums, and liked the Blue better.
7. Cars, Candy-O:  This music is beat-driven and aimed straight at the hormonal impulses of the adolescent American male. I loved the Vargas cover art, right out of Playboy magazine, and tried to copy it in my Art class drawings. The music doesn’t pretend to be important. Candy-O, I need you so!  
8. Elvis Costello, Get Happy!: After listening to Alison, Watching the Detectives, Red Shoes, and Pump It Up! on Jim Loisel’s mix tapes, I was hooked. This was the first EC album I bought—the first of many. Many, I tell you.
9. XTC, English Settlement: And I’ve got one, two, three, four, five senses working overtime. When they said, “And all the world is football shaped,” I thought they meant it was oblong. Other danceable mentions: Romeo Void, Ramones, Joan Jett, B-52s.
10. Bruce Springsteen, Born to Run: The man, the myth, the legend. The best concert experience ever was Bruce at Notre Dame sophomore year. No opening act, just pure joy and energy for 2-and-a-half incredible hours.
11. U2, Joshua Tree: Music can move your body, or it can move you mind. In the case of U2, it can do both! Consider also: REM, Joe Jackson, Squeeze.
12. Ravel’s Bolero: Soundtrack for the Bo Derek movie, 10. It’s just fascinating to me that a piece of classical music can transport me back to my High School era bedroom wall, adorned with Farah Fawcett and Bo Derek posters and the Cheryl Tiegs collage I made from old Spiegl catalogs and Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition magazines.
13. Van Morrison, Hymns to the Silence: I picked this 2-record album over The Philosopher’s Stone in a blatant attempt to jack up the quantity of art from this iconic artist. Van Morrison taught me that music is not about the record company and not even about the audience. In its purest form, it’s about the artist’s discovery of his own poetic soul. I want Be Thou My Vision played at my funeral.  
14. Billy Joel, 52nd Street: This is the album I listened to over and over again with headphones, as I dreamed of a life very different from the one I would likely know if I remained in my small Midwestern town. The teen-aged fantasy of bright lights, big city, skinny Beau Brummel ties, Italian restaurants, jazz clubs, and Christie Brinkley.
15. Police, Greatest Hits: Here’s another blatant move to jack up the signal to noise ratio. I don’t really have a favorite Police album, but I really like about a third of the songs on all of them!  Greatest Hits includes Roxanne, Wrapped Around Your Finger, Every Breath You Take, Walking on the Moon, and the song infinitely more interesting than its baby talk title would suggest, De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da.  

When I was younger, music was a driving force in my life—and a big chunk of my budget. These days it’s more of a Muzak soundtrack for myriad activities. I infrequently play music from my collection and rarely add to it. Instead, I spend a lot of time listening to classical, jazz, and talk programming on public radio stations. My Pandora radio stations (Elvis Costello and Roadhouse) play music I like even though I never have to change a CD. The only non-Elvis Costello CD I bought in the past two years is a recording of my oldest daughter’s High School Chorus concert.

Times change. Once I had a Columbia House membership and danced in front of MTV. Today, if not for the car radio pre-sets for my teen-aged daughters and their friends, various movie soundtracks, hints from Kyle (Scary Dave, Flight of the Concords) and Mary (Mason Jennings, Citizen Cope, Kings of Leon), and the occasional YouTube jag (I found 20 versions of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah), I would not spend much time thinking about modern pop music.

I enjoyed reconnecting with my musical past. Isn't it funny how some things just stick with you for years? I look forward to seeing your Fifteen Albums!