Guitar hero, part II

Enjoyed your piece on Big Head Todd and modern relevance. Got me thinking about "that time of life" and the role music played. Funny, I find myself trying to squeeze music back into my daily life as it was back in the day. It's hard.

I think the BHT story is interesting, why didn't they go bigger? Bad marketing, bad label, volatile lead singer or the simple lack of desire for a 80-90's alt-power-trio. But was it that or was it us? A generation unable to organize on a musical level. Post Dead, although I'll argue to the death that I saw the light, could I really be part of something that was well under way while I was reading the liner notes of my first album, "Frampton Comes Alive"?

I saw Phish in a dorm at UVM and they played the UNH area often, pre-hugeness, didn't get em. They filled a void left by the Dead, and thousands of hungry wanna-be deadheads created something of relevance.

But did you ever say, "wow that tune really spoke to me" or was it more about the psychedelia? I think the window has closed in the itune singles world that we've created.

I see the lifties with ipods stuck in their ears and I can here the rage music or the hip hop thump, they are all in their personal story made almost singular by the privacy of the medium. Oh, give me the days when a worn out boom box played whatever the local station was offering at every lift shack on the mountain...

Then again, maybe it should stay personal (if not micro-communal), those bands that filled that ski-bum, Europe-backpacking, cross-country-driving parts of our lives should really be parts of our own stories.

As much as I want to, maybe I shouldn't feel bad that Truffle, BHT, The Subdudes, and The BoDeans never made it real big. Maybe it would have spoiled it, shared our story with too many people.