Geezers know how to rock

The Rolling Stones are knocking them dead everywhere with their new tour, with reviewers like this one in the Ottawa Sun reduced to writing not much more than "Ohmygawd, it was the best concert ever!"

It's the latest evidence that Jethro Tull was wrong way back when - there's no such thing as "Too Old to Rock and Roll." Here are these guys in their 60s blowing crowds away.

It's not just the shows, either, which are heavy on the oldies of course - I've been finding that the older folks are doing some of their best new music ever in what you'd think are their declining years. Johnny Cash is the greatest example of this: His last four albums, and the multi-disk set "Unearthed," show an artist whose voice may have aged but whose ability to create great music was still peaking. The stuff he created the last 10 years of his life was so breathtakingly good, I'm reduced to writing "ohmygawd, it's the best Johnny Cash music ever."

I'm going out on a major limb here, but I think Neil Young and Crazy Horse outdid themselves a couple years back with the "Greendale" album. That's a big statement about a guy who's been making great music since he started recording with Buffalo Springfield in 1967, but these 10 tracks that tell a haunting story take just about everything great about Neil and pack them into 78 just-damn-entertaining minutes. You've got the rambling, jamming Crazy Horse that rolls out 10-minute tunes full of jangling solos; you've got the characters and images and stories; you've got the social commentary that spells it all out in clever rhymes. Who needs "Cinnamon Girl" and "Pocahontas" and "Down By the River" when you've got "Carmichael" and "Grandpa's Interview" and "Be the Rain"?

He must know what he's got, too, because Neil has made "Greendale" a little cottage industry, with a solo acoustic DVD and a performance DVD with actors and a couple of other intriguing projects. I haven't checked out all of that stuff, but I keep playing the heck out of the original CD two years later. I own more than 30 of Neil Young's albums, plus all of Buffalo Springfield and the important CSNY projects -- "Greendale" is my favorite. Not bad for an old guy!

I can't say enough about "Brian Wilson Presents Smile," either, even though technically it's not new music and his band is sprinkled with younger folks (nothing old about Taylor Mills! but I digress). Brian performed a miracle by producing an album that lived up to literally 38 years of anticipation and expectation. It's simply the greatest pop-rock composition ever (there I go again).

When I saw this incredible band perform "Smile" earlier this month, I must have lost a gallon of water, tears sprang to my eyes so many times. It's that beautiful, that entertaining, that inventive, that satisfying, that moving.

Brian put out a fairly disappointing collection of new tunes just before "Smile," called "Gettin' in Over My Head," but he also had a very nice project a few years back called "Imagination." I wouldn't be surprised if the relief of successfully completing "Smile" sparks his creative juices; the best may still be ahead!

I haven't even gotten to Tom Petty's "Echoes" and "The Last DJ," or Springsteen's "The Rising" and "Devils and Dust," or Ry Cooder's "Chavez Ravine," but I've gone on long enough. Bottom line, a lot of old folks are just repeating themselves and resting on the laurels of their greatest hits, but a pretty good handful keeps working at it and producing incredible new music. Geezers rock!