Teenage Angst Has Paid Off Well ...

... now I'm bored and old." -- Nirvana, "Serve the Servants," 1993.

It never really paid off for me, though. I was, however, able to scratch enough cash together to buy one of these.

Since I've been TCB-in' it over the last decade or so (BTO-style, with apologies to Cat, Elvis and Turtledaub), it's dawned on me over the last several years or so that I'm due to have a St. Elmo's Fire (1985) moment: that is, a pre-40s mid-life crisis. And here it is: a friend of mine recently burned me a copy of the Killers' album Hot Fuss (2004), which is presently the #8 album on the Billboard Top 200 chart. I thoroughly enjoy it--imagine if Duran Duran was good (yeah, I'm hatin' on the 80s!) and you get The Killers. But instead of listening to it over and over, and, in the process, increasing my relevancy cred, I've been playing John Lennon's Rock 'n' Roll (1975) album repeatedly. That album, generally slagged by critics and fans, consists of cover-versions of 50s rock standards like "Be-Bop-a-Lula," "Stand by Me" and "Peggy Sue." I love it--with its mix of Lennonian drunken "lost weekend" pathos, 70s recording "technology" and Phil Spector's misguided attempt to relive his early-60s glory days. On the closing track, "Just Because," a wasted Lennon talks his way through much of the song, and even points out there are two basses on the track.

But Holly, you say, that album is old. But Holly, you add, that album was released about four months before you were born. But Holly, continuing, you're old and irrelevant.

That is possible. Another friend (who knew Holly had more than one friend?) once told me that everybody's music tastes freeze when they are sixteen years old. I always thought she was just talking about herself, because her favorite band (since high school) was the Smiths. But it dawned on me -- there's some truth to what she said. When I was sixteen, my favorite musical artists were: The Beatles, Nirvana, Bob Dylan, the Sex Pistols, Sonic Youth and the Velvet Underground. [Note: this "freeze" might relate to all aesthetic sensibilities, though I have no conclusive empirical data to back it up. I mean, how else can one explain why so many people think J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye (1951) is their favorite novel?] At 29, this list remains the same, though I would add John Coltrane, Charles Gayle, Joy Division and the Stooges to it. The only "post-16" artists that might make the list include the White Stripes, Sleater-Kinney, Erase Errata and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Quoting Dylan: "I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now." Quoting the Killers: "Smile like you mean it."