Nothin' But a Number

Two great new songs and videos from folks old enough to know better

“You’re about my age, right?” Steve Wynn asked me the other week, during our interview for The Forward about The Baseball Project’s new album. “How old are you?”

“57,” I replied.

“Oh, you’re much younger than I am,” he laughed. “I’m 63!”

If not quite as old as Steve Wynn, I am, at least, old enough to have seen him play at Chicago’s Aragon Ballroom on July 7, 1984, when his band The Dream Syndicate opened for R.E.M. (Five songs from that night’s set would wind up on their 1984 “mini-album” This Is Not the New Dream Syndicate Album... Live!) I could have hardly imagined while watching him perform that night that we would, decades later, become friends at the intersection of baseball and rock n’ roll; but it would have been even more difficult for me to believe at the time that he (or any of the other people on that night’s bill) would still be playing rock n’ roll well into their sixties.

Now that I’m a few years away from the Big 6-0 myself, it seems absurd to have ever doubted that one could indeed rock into middle age and beyond — Paul McCartney just turned 81, and he’s still playing marathon concerts. But back in the 1970s and early ‘80s, when I was becoming a music fan, age was very much an issue. Every Rolling Stones tour was rumored to be “the last time,” because nobody could imagine that Mick Jagger would still be prancing around in tights and a half-shirt past the age of 40. The first time I ever saw The Kinks, back in 1983, I watched Ray Davies pogo-ing around onstage and marveled to my friends, “Can you believe that guy is almost 39?”

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There was also the pervasive sense — at least in the music press of the ‘70s and ‘80s — that rockers should, if not exactly die before they got old, then at least retire before their relatively advanced age rendered them an embarrassment to all concerned. Bob Dylan and Neil Young were cool/canny enough to largely sidestep any age-related scrutiny or criticism; but even into the ‘90s, many members of rock’s over-40 brigade were regularly dogged by questions about whether or not they were “aging gracefully” and whether or not they should simply pack it up and find something more age-appropriate to do, like becoming a cobbler or hustling shuffleboard games down at the retirement home.

Happily, a whole lotta folks didn’t get that memo, including Steve Wynn and his Baseball Project bandmates — his wife Linda Pitmon, Scott McCaughey, Peter Buck and Mike Mills. Individually, they’ve all been continually rocking since the ‘80s or even earlier; and together, they just released the best BP album yet, Grand Salami Time. (Additional material from my interview with Steve about the making of the new album will be posted here at a later date for my paid subscribers.)

“Disco Demolition,” a standout track from the album, takes a hard look at what remains perhaps the most infamous collision of baseball and pop culture, and does so from the perspective of someone who was actually around in 1979 to witness the controversy in real time. The video for the song, animated by James Blagden of “Dock Ellis and the LSD No-No” fame, is also pretty damn great.

Some of us, on the other hand, did get that memo… or at least, we let other things in our lives convince us that making music should no longer be a priority. I’ve been digging Tony Fletcher’s wonderful music writing for years — including the NYC music history All Hopped Up and Ready to Go and Dear Boy, the greatest Keith Moon bio ever written — but had no idea until we recently became friends that he’d been in a really cool British band called Apocalypse back in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s.

Tony, who’s a few years older than I am (59 to be precise), got out of the guitar-slinging game for various reasons (I’ll let him explain why on his own Substack, which is coming very soon), but he’s happily started making music again with his old Apocalypse mate Tony Page in a band called The Dear Boys. They’ve just released a fantastic single called “Blink Of An I,” which tackles the pitiless passage of time with witty lyrics and clattering ‘70s-style UK punk rock, sounding (to me at least) like a cross between Buzzcocks and early Television Personalities. The song’s video, filmed by Jeni de Haart, is a high-speed delight as well.

So yeah, if I could go back in time to have a word with my 18 year-old self, I’d tell him there’s no reason that you can’t rock just as hard and as well in your fifties as you did in your teens (though wearing the same clothes you did back then may no longer be advisable).

I’d also warn him not to let life get in the way of making music, which I did unfortunately allow to happen. After writing songs and playing in bands for years — which I found an enormously fulfilling, if not exactly pocket-filling, pursuit — I allowed a combination of personal pressures and songwriter’s block to convince me that I had nothing left to offer in that realm. It was only during the first year of the Covid pandemic that I finally started teaching myself how to use GarageBand, and to actually start writing songs again after a self-imposed silence of over two decades.

Some of those songs are now available on Bandcamp under my nom de rock The Corinthian Columns, and I’ll be playing a short set of material old and new this coming Friday at the Morton Memorial Library in Rhinecliff, NY, as part of the monthly free acoustic night there. My very talented singer-songwriter pal Paul Clarke — another gent who thankfully didn’t get the memo to pack it in after a certain age — will also be on the bill. So if you’re in the vicinity, come on out and have a listen.

And hey: If you enjoy creating, be it music or art or pottery or podcasts or whatever, please know that there’s no cut-off date for creativity; don’t shut off that spigot just because someone tells you you’re too old or too out of step with whatever else is going on. We may as well make the most of our limited time here — which, as The Dear Boys remind us, is over and done with in the “Blink Of An I”.

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