No foolin’

Welcome to this week’s Reno News & Review, which includes our annual homage to mainstream journalism, the Weekly World News & Review April Fools’ edition.

I finally broke down and decided to accept the new version of New Wave and to come into the Oughts (as in Ought Six), with my music appreciation.

It’s a weird deal, really, and it’s the second time I’ve gone through it in my life. I’m not going to take the easy way out and say it’s a symptom of my age, but I suppose it could be. I developed my musical tastes in the ’70s, and while I liked most kinds of music that were performed up until that point, after about 1985, my musical tastes stopped evolving for about six years. Kind of a personal shame, really, since I’ve always taken pride in knowing who the hot bands are. But then, in 1991 or so, Nirvana reinvigorated punk rock, and until about 1997, I was listening to new pop music, again.

Then music changed directions, and I was mostly out in the cold once more. I’m not saying music sucked, I’m just saying I wasn’t into it for a while. And since I didn’t like the majority, I wasn’t looking for the hidden nuggets, and I had to have my nose rubbed into something new and good to have the opportunity to appreciate it.

But here we go again. The last year or so, I’ve been hearing the twangs of Gang of Four and 999 and some of my other old favorites within the melodies of the songs playing on the radio. So I bought a bunch of the new CDs—Franz Ferdinand, The Killers, Modest Mouse, and eventually Death Cab for Cutie and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah—to see how I like the off-radio songs. Hey, it’s good. It’s safe to come back into the pool.

Anyway, Friday night, I went to see the Franz Ferdinand/Death Cab for Cutie show down at the Reno Hilton. I fit right in—somewhere between my students, the graybeards, the teeny boppers, my associates and the zombies. Made me feel 20 years old again.