I'm saying this with a smile, but
geez...kids these days.
When I last left you I was about to
head over to a taping of “High School Bowl”, and that's where
this story takes place. We were doing a couple of practice questions
before taping starts, a necessity when you have a dork as the host of
the show. The practice question I asked regarded a luminary in the
history of pop music, someone so important that his music has been
sampled on hundreds of songs, a movie has been made of his life, and
an entire generation of singers, everyone from Prince to Bruno Mars,
has called him a major influence on their careers.
Yet none of the eight students to whom
I posed the question, eight of the brightest young people on the
planet, had any idea who James Brown was.
I know, right? How can you NOT know
who “The Godfather of Soul” was? “I Feel Fine”? “Papa's
Got a Brand New Bag”? Even “Living in America” if you around
during the 80s? But nope; the question had all of them stumped, and
out of the corner of my eye I could see the coach of one of the teams
just put his head in his hand and shake it a few times, as if not
believing what he had just not heard.
I felt his pain. I really did.
Now, I guess have two thoughts about
this. Part of me really can't blame teenagers for not knowing
exactly who James Brown was. After all, his last big hit was 30
years ago and he himself died a decade ago. But the other part of me
just wants to shout out “You HAVE to know who James Brown was. His
musical DNA is part of almost every song recorded since the 1960s.
How can you NOT know who James Brown was?” The students knew who
Prince was, because I asked. They certainly know who Bruno Mars is.
But they had no idea about from whom those two artists drew (or draw)
their inspiration.
I did leave them, though, with the
promise that they'd Google James Brown, and find out a little about him. Maybe, just maybe,
they'll then realize what an influence he was on pop music the last
50 years, and maybe, just maybe, they'll be ready to then answer a
question about the Godfather of Soul should it ever pop up again.
That's the least I could do.
Kids these days...
8-)
No comments:
Post a Comment