just out of blues

i was recently reading a few reviews of rock music through the ages by an obvious fan of sixties music. he certainly had well-informed and interesting insights into the music of that era but somehow adopted a patronizing attitude about musicians from the later decades. led zeppelin, iron maiden and dream theater were all dismissed as superfluous. similarly fans of bands from the seventies and eighties seem highly critical of any bands of the nineties. in the midst of all these opinions i’ll add my own two cents worth. to evaluate art is to demean it and so essentially all these ratings of bands or albums on a scale of 5 or 10 is meaningless. i feel it’s important to remember the context of art and also the limitations of the artist whenever it is being examined. how can someone who grew up in the sixties truly appreciate what iron maiden meant to the generation of the eighties? similarly how can someone who grew up in the seventies understand the reverence that the youth of the nineties have for eddie vedder? in the same vein the younger generation can probably never truly estimate the impact that hendrix or the who had on the hippie generation. even so, it’s pretty sad that the appreciation or tolerance for music from another age is so negligible. i can talk or write about this for hours but armed with the knowledge that what i have to say is essentially going to fall on deaf ears, i shall do what most geniuses fail to – edit themselves!!