On the 12th, a Facebook posting announcing that the day was Maria Muldaur’s 71st birthday. How could that have happened? Well, we age; I’m now 74. Only slightly less startling is the report in the latest Out magazine that Stevie Nicks is 66.
Back on my birthday, two comments on age: one from my grand-daughter, distinguishing between really old and just old; and one from my first male lover, now 66 (like Stevie Nicks) to my 74, an age difference that no longer seems significant.
I’ll start with Muldaur and Nicks, for readers who might be unfamiliar with them.
On Muldaur, from Wikipedia:
Maria Muldaur (born September 12, 1943) is an American folk-blues singer who was part of the American folk music revival in the early 1960s. She recorded the 1974 hit song “Midnight at the Oasis”, and continues to record albums in the folk traditions.
Muldaur is a quintessential “roots musician”, participating enthusiastically but respectfully in a wide variety of folk traditions and collaborating with a great many different sorts of musicians (including Jerry Garcia) over the years, while infusing the music with some of her own style. Wonderful stuff.
Her big hit song, “Midnight at the Oasis”, is jokey and tremendously sultry-sexy all at once. There are YouTube videos of several different performances, and also of the sexy “It Ain’t the Meat, It’s the Motion” (Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes) and “Don’t You Feel My Leg” (blues singer Blue Lu Barker, from 1938), plus the nostalgic “My Tennessee Mountain Home” (by Dolly Parton in 1973).
Then Stevie Nicks, again from Wikipedia:
Stephanie Lynn “Stevie” Nicks (born May 26, 1948) is an American singer and songwriter who in the course of her work with Fleetwood Mac and her extensive solo career has produced over forty Top 50 hits and sold over 140 million albums. She was deemed “The Reigning Queen of Rock and Roll” and one of the “100 Greatest Singers of All Time” by Rolling Stone
… Nicks joined Fleetwood Mac in 1975 along with her romantic partner Lindsey Buckingham.
Fleetwood Mac’s second album after the incorporation of Nicks and Buckingham, Rumours in 1977, was a huge success. Meanwhile, Nicks continues to record and perform:
In October 2014, Nicks will release her eighth studio album, 24 Karat Gold: Songs from the Vault. She will also spend the Fall and Winter touring with Fleetwood Mac’s reunion tour with Christine McVie, the On with the Show tour.
Really Old? Then on my birthday, at lunch with my daughter (Elizabeth) and grand-daughter (Opal), I confessed to feeling really old at 74. Oh no, Opal objected sympathetically, really old would be 94; 74 is just old.
The child had a great-grandmother in New Zealand who lived to 91, so Opal takes the 90s to be the time of serious old age. Her three living grandparents, in California and Papua New Guinea, are merely old.
Age Differentials. Also on my birthday, greetings from my first male lover, who noted that if I was 74, that meant that he had to be 66, and that was impossible — oh, he was 66!
Back then, 43 years ago (oh my), an 8-year difference in our ages was significant. Now it’s not; we are, essentially, the same age.
September 21, 2014 at 7:58 am |
The Boston Globe has a daily feature in which they list a selection of more-or-less famous people whose birthdays fall on the current date. Of the relatively small percentage of names that I actually recognize, my reactions are often either “I didn’t realize (s)he was still alive!” or “What!? X is younger than I am?” (Today’s instance of the latter was Stephen King.)
As for eight years’ worth of age difference: That’s about how much older John is than me, and it didn’t seem “significant” (to me, anyway) even when we were 35 and 27.