We've had a couple weeks since wishing Dick Clark was still around to ring in the New Year. But even with all that time, I know there are more than a few of you living in the past and still writing "2013" on your checks.
Then if you're like most classic rockers maintaining a Keith Moon mentality, you go berserk-o over your annual mistake, trash (tear up) the check and say a few choice words that would get you banned for life on network television - but make you a viral star on YouTube.
Then swearing on the memory of Dick Clark, you promise never to make that mistake again and concentrate on "2014" as you write another check.
On second thought, you must really be a classic rocker if you haven't joined the digital age by now and are still handwriting checks. You're either stuck in a time warp or I'm stuck in a line behind you at the grocery store while you try to use a check for a month's worth of munchies and have no valid ID.
That's about the time my mind starts to warp and I prove why I'm banned for life from network television.
The passage of time is what made our once hit songs now classic rock songs. But who in the past knew what the future held? Wait a second (or minute, or hour) I almost caused myself to go berserk-o with that brain warping thought…
Quite a few classic rock artists must have dissed their lava lamps for the light of a crystal ball when writing songs predicting the future. Maybe they were basking in the heady power that comes with fame, fortune and mass adoration, or just having an acid flashback. For the rockers still pumping out the same messages on the classic rock concert circuit, it could be powered by the lack of an antacid flashback.
A male rock star from any generation will predict the future. He'll tell you he's gonna get the girl or that he'll never get over his broken heart. The females have demonstrated a wider range by crying at their own party to keying her cheatin' man's car door.
The common thread is that they want to tell you what they're gonna do before they actually do it.
The problem is, not everyone can be Joe Namath before Super Bowl III.
Some rockers conjured up deadly predictions with warnings of what's to come if you don't fix it now.
Barry McGuire's
Eve Of Destruction was a pretty grim farewell to the entire world in 1965, while the Beatles predicted that some guy named Maxwell was gonna hit some judge over the head with a silver hammer. If we had only known in advance, the entire final verse could've been eliminated by a smart use of prisoner restraints and an extra guard in the courtroom.
Okay, it's storytelling by song. I get it. But sometimes the artist does it in a very convincing manner.
I've never turned my back on anyone named Max since 1969.
But singing about what's ahead can seem very clairvoyant and even mysterious, until it becomes the past. Future-talk from years ago is remembered differently with 20/20 hindsight.
Anyone younger than driving age won't understand a comedian's punchline if it includes "Y2K" and The Mayan Calendar immediately became last year's news when the world didn’t end on December 21, 2012.
Do you remember both? If you can, then you're also probably good at remembering losing teams from Super Bowls past.
But there were a few rock stars who dared to sing of very specific dates in their future that are still worth listening to. Not that they predicted anything that really happened, but for the time warps they conjure up. When played loudly (as intended) it's easy to shake off the shackles of time and party like it's… well, I'll let the purple one jog your memory on that long-ago prediction.
When the following songs were recorded no one was predicting the artists would end up in a museum called The Rock'n Roll Hall of Fame instead of doing time in an old age home. They were rockers in their prime, contemplated the future, and wrote a song about it.
Since then we've had decades of 20/20 hindsight to realize time waits for no one. But if you're still writing last year's date on your checks, think how berserk-o you'll drive the next generation of Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus wanna'be's by requesting they sing one of these long gone futuristic pop classics at the next iHeart Radio Concert.
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