Written By Sherwood Kohn
The other night, Monna and I were watching late night television, and at the end of the show — it could have been Leno, Letterman or Saturday Night Live — a rock band came on. It was called “Death Wrench” or “Red Vermin” or some such catchy name and featured a pretty blonde, albeit somewhat disheveled, as the lead singer.
But that’s beside the point. The point is that when the girl sang (actually, she was shouting or raving uncontrollably, bumping and shaking her hair at the cameras), what came out, at least to my ears, was something like “yoto margin,” “moo shoe vastly” and “dilly bort.”
I turned to my wife, and I asked, “What’d she say?” Monna shrugged.
“Whatever happened to diction?” I asked, somewhat futilely, remembering that the Masterworks Chorale people (see story, Page 12) practice for weeks to properly enunciate German, of all things.
Now, I am the first to admit that I am not cool. I mean, how dorky do you have to be to own a half-dozen sweater vests? But c’mon. Those kids are not even trying to sing real lyrics. I know what they’re doing.They’re singing something subversive, or maybe profane, and they don’t want geezers over 20 to understand.
“That’s not true,” my children tell me. They understand. “You’re just too old, Dad.”
Okay. Maybe they have something. I know, for instance, that kids these days have programmed their cell phones to emit high frequency ring tones so their elders (teachers in particular) can’t hear them and they can text message each other without fear of getting caught.
So maybe I just have presbycusis. That’s a natural state that comes with age. It means we don’t hear as well as we did when we were kids. But what the hell, dogs hear better than any of us, and nobody thinks they are putting on airs.
I can remember that when Frank Sinatra sang, you could clearly understand what he was crooning. And besides, he had guys like Cole Porter, Harold Arlen and Richard Rodgers providing the words.
We have definitely lost something. It’s not only the music (was there much after the Beatles?), it’s the lyrics, too. I ask you, what rock band’s songs (or for that matter, rappers’) are better known than “You’re the Top” or “Hard Day’s Night?”
Never mind. I’m probably making too much of a passing fad. My kids are probably waxing sentimental over Kiss or The Rolling Stones.
Heaven knows why.
