Hello....Good Buy....

I’ve said for a long time that today’s pop music is basically junk.
I haven’t really been fair.
Today’s pop music is more like junk food.
Something that seems tasty enough at the moment, but nothing that will seem particularly tasty two weeks or twenty years down the line.
And at this point in my life, I often hear the accusation I used to throw at my elders back in the day.
“Well, you’re just an old fart who doesn’t appreciate anything except old fart music.”
No, not so much.
I like a lot of what I’ve heard in every decade since the decade of the sixties, the years that I became old enough to really start paying any attention.
But I hold fast to the belief that a lot of the current stuff wont be remembered much after the kids who are listening to it now have kids who will categorize it as old fart music.
In fact, I’m willing to bet you that those kids wont even consider that music at all.
Because, like most high calorie, low nutrition confections, most of it will have evaporated in time.
The music of my day, though, will remain popular and, no, not because it’s the music of my day.
That’s just a circumstance of timing.
It will be because the music of that period truly is timeless.
Check out this item from the Sunday AP news collection.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Beatles are about to become radio stars in a whole new way.
NASA on Monday will broadcast the Beatles' song "Across the Universe" across the galaxy to Polaris, the North Star.
This first-ever beaming of a radio song by the space agency directly into deep space is nostalgia-driven. It celebrates the 40th anniversary of the song, the 45th anniversary of NASA's Deep Space Network, which communicates with its distant probes, and the 50th anniversary of NASA.
"Send my love to the aliens," Paul McCartney told NASA through a Beatles historian. "All the best, Paul."
The song, written by McCartney and John Lennon, may have a ticket to ride and will be flying at the speed of light. But it will take 431 years along a long and winding road to reach its final destination. That's because Polaris is 2.5 quadrillion miles away.

Now, seriously, ageism notwithstanding, do you honestly think that forty years from now, NASA will be broadcasting “Rehab” to Andromeda?
The noted philosopher and bearded handyman Al Borland put it best when he said,
“I don’t think so, Tim…”
To be honest, I didn’t start this little missive just to extol the virtues of the Fab Four and denigrate everything that comes churning out of the cookie cutter song factory these days.
I was actually going to make the observation that time really does march on.
For there was a time, those of you who werent around in the day, when the idea that The Beatles music would ever be used for anything besides gracing the two sides of each important new Beatles record was simply not something anyone could begin to concieve.
In those days, John Lennon, in particular, made it very clear that he wasn’t interested in hearing Beatles songs selling foot powder.
Some things have obviously changed since then.
First, John is dead.
Second, Paul has proven to be almost as savvy a businessman as he is a songwriter.
He may only be one for two when it comes to picking out wives, but he seems to step into money like it was so much poop in the backyard.
And so, slowly but surely, Beatles music has found its way onto Madison Ave.
Didn’t Nike sell shoes with “Revolution” some years back?
Now, NASA is beaming Beatles music to Polaris.
What the hell. Better Polarans experience our culture for the first time courtesy of the moptops as opposed to, say, Courtney Love.
I just figured that since the bell has been rung anyway and I enjoy both an extensive knowledge of Beatles songs as well as a pretty wicked knack for putting ideas and themes together, I’d offer, at no charge, some suggestions on how we can use the catalog of the most succesful pop group of all times to further the cause of this interest or that….
For example….

“Drive My Car”…the obvious use is to promote whatever brand of automobile first bags the rights…pretty much a no brainer in terms of promo potential…

“I Want To Hold Your Hand”…how about using this one as a little subtler approach to the whole herpes medication marketing effort (think about it for a second…)

“Please Please Me”…gotta tell you, kids, Trojan is missing a sure thing here….

“If I Fell” …a kinder, gentler way to trumpet the virtures of the Medic Alert system….

“Nowhere Man”…can’t think of a better way to sell GPS…..for the man who has everything…and still wont stop and ask for directions…

“Get Back”…just in case they ever decide to start doing PSA’s regarding the border problem, I think we’re right on message here…

And I left it for last, because it seems so delightfully obvious and, at the same time, the one worth saying “okay, that’s enough…”

….when you finally get enough of those warm fuzzies they’ve been using to sell the assorted drugs that conquer erectile dysfunction…”A Hard Day’s Night” should just about do it.

See, that’s what I mean about the music of the sixties being timeless.
Can you even begin to imagine selling Gas-X with “Oops, I Did It Again”?