(January 27, 2006) — To be quite frank about things, life is sad. Not to say there are not joys that make it worthwhile and euphoric, but we live in a very sad world, a sad society, and if you haven’t figured it out yet, like Peter Pan (a.k.a. Michael Jackson), we get old and we die. Death, an afterlife, and reincarnation or not, humans are mortal. At some point, you die, unless you’re a vampire or Tupac (and I’m still waiting for this resurrection business and a new LP…). One thing we seem to always get wrong, though, is the “age” we put on music. Music always has its particular audience and age groups, but it’s not a valid boundary. There is a common love for baroque music years after its prime, ancient folk tunes still circulate in many cultures to this day, and I wound up in a session band with a repertoire of classic soul hits that made the Top 40 decades before I even was an idea. Music is immortal, timeless. I buried my grandfather, but I never had to bury his vinyl. If anything, I always saw the classification of music by time and age very faulty and segregating, even more so than branding genres. Naming this and that punk, rap, classical, leaves much room for error, at least there is substantial backing to the content of the record and what you’re listening to, as opposed to classifying it by subjective opinion of what’s hip, what in style, what’s cool, and (this one I absolutely hate) “old person music.” We do it all the time and you can’t deny it. Whether it’d be other things like cars and clothes. I give you a M3 and for some reason that’s “ pimpin ”, but if I mention a classic Fleetwood, “that’s old sh ** my grandma would drive.” Clothing fads tend to come and go as well, and what’s currently in is “ vintage, ” or should I say newly fabricated materials intentionally hand-destroyed in return for a higher asking price. Age always seems to be the doctrine of teenage society: the struggle to seem older than you actually are but maintain the youth slowly slipping away in some hourglass. For some, that struggle to keep things young and fresh plagues them their whole lives. Case point: The Rolling Stones. The Rolling Stones recently announced for their Superbowl halftime performance this February, that they were going to ban all over-45 year olds from hitting the field during their performance. The reason: to supposedly keep the image of a young fan base, full of stamina. The problem: the main demographic of Stone’s fans are middle-aged men, well above 45. This is a prime example of the mechanics of age classification. At one point, their fans were young, as were the members of the band, but this generation grows, and has even been argued that the death of it was at Altamont in 1969. However, the audience they have maintained are the now middle-aged demographic which may even include our parents, not to say that they have also attracted other later waves of younger fans, but never to amount to their primary fan base. Although the NFL will allow 45 year olds on the field overriding the Stone’s controversial decision, what remains is the fact that a certain group of musicians had tried to assimilate the commercial potential of a new generation with this “smoke and mirrors” tactic. If this is going to be the direction music is heading in, we might as well change the sections in record stores from rock/pop, rap/ r&b , classical to “ teenie bop,” mid-life crisis, old fogey and beyond the grave. Take the integrity of music down another notch, how ‘bout that?