Old Rock-n-rollers often share a combined condition of remembering most of that they need to know about a specific song and a stubborn streak that obviates any ability to let things rest until they have everything they need to know about it.
Anyone “of a certain age” has had the experience of hearing vaguely familiar notes while sitting in a movie theater, walking through a shopping mall, or being at a stop light alongside a teenager’s hotrod Honda (when the tune is usually accompanied by a bass thump that one might associate with a bad tequila hangover). And the questioning begins: What’s the title of that song? Who sang it? Who wrote it? When did it come out? Ad infinitum. For many years, this created painful gyrations of seriously disused portions of the brain as those who loved the song but were – for one reason or another – short on details strove to answer those questions.
In the pre-internet days, it was necessary to strain the brain, call a friend who was doing his own brain less damage at the time the song came out, or dig through ancient issues of Rolling Stone for a clue. Enter first the internet, and then the new and improved search engine.
The days when one needed virtually everything but a musician’s Social Security Number to get any information about a song are happily gone, and hopefully forever. Today you just enter a few remembered lyrics, the name of the artist, or if you’re lucky enough to remember, the title of the song into a good search engine for range of helpful information. You’ll find fan sites, ancient rocker sites, and even YouTube for faded videos of the aforementioned rocker when that rocker still had hair (usually too much of it), and even shots of the kids who have made everything new by doing a cover of that old song. Now all a fan of ancient Rock-n-Roll need do is remember the question long enough to get to a computer or pull out his/her phone for instant answers to once all but unanswerable questions.
