It seems to me that the lack of relevance isn't in the music but in the snobbery that tends to come along with everything that we hold sacred in one form or another. There are music snobs in every type and style out there and none are worse or as humorous than the music snobs who, wrapped in the cloak of academia, claim I have heard real music and it is ____________ .

   Relevance is a fleeting and temporary thing at best. But relavance has the habit of coming around again. In the meanwhile the song becomes historic, sometimes quaint, and often nostalgic. Interstingly, much of what Phil Ochs (Phil Oaks in the first posting) wrote is becoming relevant again. "Love Me I'm a Liberal","Cops of the World", "There But For Fortune", and probably a bunch more come to my mind. The need and the sentiment are the same as when Phil wrote those songs in the 60's. Is the relevance of those sentiments only meaningful if someone new writes a song in a new way, in a new style?
Or do Phil's songs still have merit and worth? And if Phil's music is still worthy is the new song simply derivitive? Or is the new song the style and whatever Phil did simply relegated to the quaint and toothlessly historical. And is the replaying of these old songs by me, who is middle aged, simply a nostalgic paen to the past and a refusal to accept the new?
   And will the weight of the music I play only have value when I start to play in the new style?

Don