Music can serve to sustain youth

Sometimes I suspect that — 70 years old or not — part of me is still a teenybopper.

Right now as I write this, the stereo is playing a CD by Kaleo, an Icelandic group that simply blows the doors off. The volume is turned up, and I’d like to turn it up louder, but my wife is in another room watching the news.

That’s the sort of behavior that would have gotten me scolded at age 16, let alone 70.

A few weeks back, I learned I am not alone in this affliction.

Connie and I had enjoyed a delightful post-Valentine’s Day dinner at the Inn at Versailles in Ohio. And while we dined, we listened to this amazing guitarist.

For two hours as we lingered over drinks and dinner, this guy entertained us with jazzy, innovative, distinctive music.

It was amplified, but it had the sound of an acoustic guitar at the same time.

Sometimes the arrangements and improvisation had us wondering what the song was for a few minutes until a familiar melody or riff would hit us and we’d smile with recognition and satisfaction for having heard an old tune given new life.

After dinner, making sure to put something in the tip jar, we started talking with the musician.

And that’s when I ran into another perpetual teenybopper.

Eric Loy, the guitarist, is about five years younger than me. But we share a love for great guitar and for that astounding era when rock and jazz musicians were creating things that knocked our socks off.

Connie and I bought three of Eric’s CDs that night.

And within a week, the guitarist and I were trading emails.

On his CDs, Eric had listed his inspirations. 

In addition to Jesus Christ were a number of musicians I’d had the pleasure of experiencing in live concerts over the years, folks like Jack Bruce, the bassist for Cream, and John Fahey, a master of the 12-string guitar, and inevitably Jimi Hendrix.

So I had to share with him that I’d heard all three of those — and more — back in my teenybopper/rock fan days.

Cream — the first “supergroup” with Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce — for some reason chose to play Butler University’s Clowes Hall as part of its first American tour in 1968. My buddy Jim Klopfenstein and I were in the sixth row; it’s a wonder I am not deaf.

John Fahey, far less well known, was someone I encountered when I was on study abroad in England as a college kid.

His guitar always managed to sound like more than one instrument, and Eric Loy’s does the same thing. Finding a Fahey LP was the sort of thing that sent me treasure hunting through record stores in the 1970s.

And Hendrix, of course, I will always remember for a performance at the Delaware County Fairgrounds in the spring of 1968 when there were few people over the age of 25 who had ever heard of him. Yes, he played the guitar with his teeth. And yes, he set his guitar on fire with lighter fluid to finish his act.

In short order, Eric Loy and I were trading stories.

He’d been slated to open for John Fahey at one point but was bumped. He’d seen Jeff Beck at his prime and Duane Allman.

“Kids don’t even know there was a Duane Allman anymore,” he wrote.

None of this was about topping one another.

It was just about the music we’d been fortunate to hear live during an amazing seminal era.

Led Zeppelin above a pub in a place called Klook’s Kleek, the first public performance by Blind Faith, Big Brother and Janis Joplin on their last tour together, the Marquee Club at its prime, Rick Derringer playing a Portland High School prom, it was all grist for the mill for a couple of aging — or maybe ageless — teenyboppers.

The music, I suspect, is keeping us younger than our years.

At least, that’s what I’ll tell my wife when she suggests I turn the stereo down.