For Now: The Day the Music Died (Again)

It’s all over your local Schlock Forty AM station, is Don McLean’s song “American Pie,” a capsule history of rock from the mid-1950s to now. Listen to it—onFMoron the record, where you get all eight minutes or so instead of the truncated threeminute version the AMers play. Tucked away in a bubble-gummy tune are Meaningful Lyrics—meaningful, at least, to anybody who was in high school in the Eisenhower years; today’s teenies may think it’s neat, but they got in on rock way late. Most of them weren’t even born when Buddy Holly died.

Which is where McLean begins, delivering papers with the bad news. From there we go through sock-hops in the gym and rhythm-and-blues; then Dylan; then the Beatles; then Woodstock/ Altamont; finally, now. After each of these epochlets, we come back to—“the day the music died.” Leaving the audience waiting for the next round:

CS

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C. H. Simonds

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It’s all over your local Schlock Forty AM station, is Don McLean’s song “American Pie,” a capsule history of rock from the mid-1950s to now. Listen to it—onFMoron the record, where you get all eight minutes or so instead of the truncated threeminute version the AMers play. Tucked away in a bubble-gummy tune are Meaningful Lyrics—meaningful, at least, to anybody who was in high school in the Eisenhower years; today’s teenies may think it’s neat, but they got in on rock way late. Most of them weren’t even born when Buddy Holly died.

Which is where McLean begins, delivering papers with the bad news. From there we go through sock-hops in the gym and rhythm-and-blues; then Dylan; then the Beatles; then Woodstock/ Altamont; finally, now. After each of these epochlets, we come back to—“the day the music died.” Leaving the audience waiting for the next round: