All We Are Is Dust In The Wind, Dude

Take a quick glance through any critic’s notebook, list of favorites, compendium of reviews and nearly every time you’ll notice that a reviewed musician’s initial offerings or works are somehow of more cultural importance than those coming late in their career. It’s an interesting thought – that all works, particularly those in the rock and roll genre, need that youthful energy and pop. Those coming later on always tend fall short of the promise hinted at early on, wishes left unfulfilled, somehow blanded out with age. Is rock music a young man’s game, so much so, that rock’s elders have no chance of keeping up?

The first records in bands or musician’s careers are their defining period, it’s impossible to capture that mindset for subsequent releases. Add to that, the early innocence and ignorance of youth that gradually disappears and is replaced with deeper knowledge and understanding. It’s strange that experienced mindset isn’t embraced but shunned in favor of ignorance-is-bliss mentality.

Obviously, I’m speaking in sweeping generalities, but it’s interesting. Consider Elliot Smith: as a young man he produced some incredible records, records that to this day are deemed his most important, essential listening. Smith matured as an artist, introduced incredibly developed arrangements on XO and Figure 8, something most young artists just couldn’t do without years of experience. But critics looked the other way, preferring his early work. For his last record before he took his own life, From a Basement on the Hill, Smith came with something grimy, curt and unpolished – a return to his early underproduced days. The record seems to be trying to capture the essence he exuded early on.

I could be thinking too much into this, and it could essentially be a case of the critics, or minority VIPs, saying “I was there before you, thus these are better.” Or could it be that youth is just so attractive and incapable of ever being achieved again? After all, knowledge can be gained over time. Age is just lost, never recaptured. Either way, it’s time to respect my elders in case I ever get old.