This rainy January morning, with lots of turmoil in the news, has got me thinking as I listen to the great album known as Chicago 2. I can recall hanging out with my friends, especially on the staff at Camp Palmetto during summers, where the little phonograph in the staff lodge was cranking loud with the sounds of "Wake up Sunshine" or "Magic Carpet Ride" or "Eli's Coming."
The key being we were in this together, doing things together, and listening to music from the LPs or the radio together. No "personal isolation devices" with our own curated personal playlists put together by some computer algorithm. The conversation was "did you catch that bass riff," or "what an awesome drum fill," or "those lyrics were awesome."
During my second class (junior) year at Annapolis, my black roommate, Paul Davis, and I grew together and learned about each other and our wildly different cultures because we had a stereo. One stereo. I listened to and learned to love funk and harder core soul music than was played on Top 40 radio, and heard for the first time the raunchy but incisive and insightful comedy of Richard Pryor. Paul heard Flatt & Scruggs and Reno & Smiley, and we listened to Chicago and Grand Funk and The Guess Who, all together.
It seems to me that our personally curated reading lists and playlists don't encourage sharing what we like in meaningful ways with other people. And they certainly don't support expanding our horizons in music or books or politics.
Maybe our parents' generation had the same kinds of complaints, bringing even more meaning to the great lyrics from Pete Townshend: "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."
