"What is it about men your age and Dillon?"

It was a defining question one character asked another in the popular TV series The West Wing.

Men my age... Well; perhaps not my age- but those in their late 40s to early 50s I suppose.

Yeah- I'll just keep believing that... One of the ailments that defines what many elitist FemaNatzis believe to be this disease called The Human Male is a certain dellusional quality to his frame of mind.

As I'm often heard joking to friends and collegues alike- quite tongue-in-cheek- I have no frame of reference, so ipso-defacto, no frame of mind to be catagorized.

But there-in lies an important question if one looks beyond the tangential 'slam' of the forementioned comment. If you have the want, desire or ability to enjoy music to the extent that there are scores that symbolize your life; what would they be?

Obviously, I'll make my case for this whimsical point simply by refering to myself. You'll have to decide on your own who you are and why the music that stands out as a favorite has such meaning in your life.

I was literally born into radio.

I grew up the son of a career radio man. My father, was involved in small market radio ever since he was in high school [this was around the 1950s]; but his is a story I'll share in another post.

Suffice it to say I was born wrything and squeeling into the world of music from the very beginning.

Now- here's "what it's all about with me".

Music as I can best describe it, is this etherial fog that offers sollace, and yet bolsters, it regales refinement, and at the same time presumes debauchery. Once you think you have a grasp of what you've known to be unconventional- someone else steps up to the plate and tosses conventionality out on its ear [pun intended].

What's new, innovative and 'out there, man' becomes 'a sell-out' once it clears its first real paycheck.

So, in this instance- let's just say I see music as a fog, the same way John Carpenter [and this new remake] did- it's there, it defies analysis, and there's spirits in there.

With this definition, we then have to ask- "What defines me?" within the parameters of this phantom. Now- even though you may presume to know me one day- which will be totally farscical we'll 'define' me- and maybe gain some insight about Russ...

Growing up, I had the opportunity to hear it all. In the mid-to-late 1960s music, much like the culture was changing what seemed almost daily. Being around music as ecclectic as Jimi Hendrix and The Who, were met with equally innovative yet not nearly as longevital as The Carpenters and The Association.

Kids- you may laugh at them now- but acts that included Tom Jones and Engleburg Humperdink had women throwing their panties on stage long before Prince and Madonna had us questioning our social moores...

My original thought was that I could rattle off some tunes- but all that would do is boor you. Instead- I'm going to rattle off some feelings contained in the tunes and the lyrics that help me define, well; me...

When I was around 6 years old, I remember my mother playing a certain set of Tom Jones records over and over during the day. Foregoing the notion that many a nightclub singer [and you know the type that I'm loosely- [very loosely] basing this characture] has trashed what used to be a legitimate form of higher classed entertainment- Tom Jones was a staple both on radio, record and eventually TV back in the day- but there was one song that would make me cry as a kid- Help Yourself...

To listen to it now I can understand the mechanics of the song, welling up emotions in a little boy that as yet wasn't even sure how to define his emotions let alone comprehend or understand their implications. But here's the clincher-

I still define part of my life by that number. I can no longer look in a mirror and see a little boy- I'm well past that now- but I can see a phantom in the fog of that music that holds premonition to the heartache and pain that little boy will experience in another 2 or three years as his parents divorce- again, another story for later... Take a moment and remember an 'adult' tune from your childhood and how it affected you...

Let's fast-forward a little and into the 1970s.

Coming into older boyhood, enjoying the spirit of lingering pieces of The Space Race, and the wonderful implications of masturbation- there's another change...

The writing was on the wall when GI Joe was no longer an acceptable toy figure- soldiers coming back from some place called Viet Nam didn't appear to be too happy and then there's that boring presidential stuff with Pres. Nixon that seemed to cancel all a kid's favorite programming...

And the music- everything had a strangely morose or heavy tone. Jim Croce's Time in a Bottle fought for space next to Pink Floyd's Money. Then, God Forbid, came Disco.

Now before we move on to the 1980s, let me be the first to say that Disco as a whole was bad- BUT; it wasn't THAT bad. When I made reference to styles and types of music earlier- in my view Disco as a genre of music was innovative at first- the idea of a throbbing drum beat that you could dance to is not new- but how it was introduced was- and Disco first set out to do just that.

Then like anything else, the shlock masters turned a good thing into ubercrap.

By the time I was fully into the 1970s, "having found my nether regions" [as my Grandfather called masturbation] and Star Wars were all I thought of, so thankfully other than some jousts with ELO, Kansas, Chicago, Bachman Turner Overdrive- and a few others, I managed to get through the 70s reletively unscathed.

By the late 70s and early 1980s, music was now becoming important again- as there was now the personal intellect allowing me to ponder the lyrics of hits to see what I could identify with. Anything that was later than 1979 was considered old- a casted holdover thought from the mid/early 70s that said "anything played once immediately goes into the oldies collection".

This led to a mixture of conventional and 'alternative' music being my mainstay. Blondie came with Talking Heads [Peter Gabriel] and you might even find a John Hall number along with Billy Joel and U2 [if you could find U2 at teh time]. God help me I often identified with the one hit wonder machine that was the 80s- more because I PLAYED them at that point on radio and tape both as a DJ and as a casual listener. I dare say that if you'd heard it, I'd know it back in the 1980s and up until about 1995.

And it's there that I'll hold you mystified- because, you see, "what it is" about me and the here and now- is that "now" still isn't written- guys my age listen to Dillon not because it's old, but because his music offers the clarity of hindsight now that it didn't then.

Much like that little boy I see crying in the mists of time, music allows me a gateway to both memory and forshadow.

"Guys my age" no longer seek validation that the music of our times represented- remember that I noted earlier the grail search then was for something to identify with- eventually music becomes something you identify to and then even further still, the music seems to seek and identify you.

Again- think The Fog.

Music is that etheral flotsom of codified and conjectured noise that becomes spirited, living, perhaps both beckoning and equally repulsive in it's ability to have you account, recount and wish to forget.

Dillon?

Perhaps he's not a legend- perhaps he's as mythical as the songs he's written/sang- perhaps he's as much as or nothing more than the fog of our dreams, memories and wishes- our loves lost, and our desires met.

I'll sum it up in a simple Zen answer.

"What is it about men your age and Dillon?"

"What isn't it?"

I continue to be RusS