Winter Wasteland
I hate winter, even in cosy old Britain, so I certainly don’t know what I’m doing here, sitting in a motel room in Birmingham, Michigan, watching U.S. football and piles of dirty, halfmelted snow. This city, the whole U.S.A., has the most tired collection of radio stations I’ve ever heard.
Winter Wasteland
LETTER FROM BRITAIN
Simon Frith
I hate winter, even in cosy old Britain, so I certainly don’t know what I’m doing here, sitting in a motel room in Birmingham, Michigan, watching U.S. football and piles of dirty, halfmelted snow. This city, the whole U.S.A., has the most tired collection of radio stations I’ve ever heard. The only one I can stick jwith is the country station ’cause most country songs are mopey and I’m pretty mopey too.
I’ve just, been reading the CREEM poll results eind what sorry reading they make. All the old farts I thought had been fingered in 1977 as terminally boring turn out to be teenage heartthrobs still and I guess teenage hearts will go on throbbing now until these grand old men die. I’ve seen the future of rock ’n’ roll and it’s Robert Plant, a corset-strapped 63-year-old, bleached and browned and staggering through his moves forever. Aging rock stars like to compare themselves to B.B. King and Muddy Waters, men whose music has grown up with them, but the real comparison is John Wayne, still playing the romantic lead even as his bones get as stiff as his boots.