Adventures in Television

So I have this rule and it’s the no band past it’s prime rule.  Let’s say there’s a band you love and they’re total badass absolute classics.  No matter how much you dig the early records, no matter how sick they were at your age, do not, for the love of god, ever ever ever go see them past their prime.  It ruins everything.  G’n’R with Tommy Stinson and Buckethead is not G’n’R and it’s never gonna be.  You can stick John Bonham’s kid on the drums and call it The Who but the fact of the matter is the r-and-b in your maximum r-and-b is still two dead guys, so what’s that make your band?

Lightning can’t live in bottles.  But on occasion it gets captured on our lovely mass media toys.  If you’re looking to experience the best of a great band from the wrong side of several decades, I say save your money buying tickets to the reunion tour.  Go to the source material.  See what great actually looks like at it’s greatest.  Don’t even bother pretending now was then.  Forced nostalgia only disappoints.

I came up with the “no band past it’s prime” when I saw the Rolling Stones ‘Rock and Roll Circus’ for the first time.  It’s hard to argue that there was ever a better rock band then them at that moment.  And I’ve seen a lot of rock bands at their best.  But goddamnit, are they fucking cool.  And no amount of bell and whistle filled fast-twitch muscling across a stadium stage in custom fitted, extra-shock proof, I-just-turned-60-save-my-knee-cartilage Nikes is even gonna come close to that.  Hence the rule.

Why do I bring this up?  Because Sir Michael Philip ‘Mick’ Jagger turns 68 today.  Not even a pack of … I guess … wild horses could drag me to see the Stones now.  Judge me for the following statement: if I was going to see a concert that horrible, take me to Miley Cyrus.  At least I know I’m catching someone in their now.

But you say you’ve got a copy of the ‘Rock N Roll Circus’ and you wanna toss it on on the way home from the bar at 3 AM so you can smoke cigarettes and come down off of whatever it is that sent you barreling into your weekend in the first place?  Hook it up.  Because, at the peak of their powers, there was literally no rock band in the entire universe even close to cooler than the Rolling Stones.  And to pretend otherwise after the fact is to thumb your nose at actual greatness, even if that flash was a moment you missed.  Sometimes you get stuck on the wrong side of timing.  So be it.  It’s folly to pretend otherwise.

Anyway, Happy Birthday, Mick.