LIFESTYLES

LBANY - The kids of today. Their music. What's with it? It just isn't like the old stuff. The good stuff. The real stuff, like they played back in the late '50s and early '60s. Just ask Joe Glickman.

     "I can't tell you how many times I listen to a song now and I can't understand the words or why they're there," he says.

     The bopping, feel-good numbers from the late '50s - now that's a different story all together.

     "It's melodic and it's feel good, and you can understand the lyrics," he says.

     Joe Glickman has an old timer's contempt for contemporary music.

     Except Joe Glickman is 24.

     "I feel sometimes that I was born too late," he says. "I don't fit in now. I don't fit in nowadays."

     In his room, Glickman has countless books on the 1950s, catalogs of '50s hairstyles, clothes, music and movies.

     "There was something special about it," he says of the lost era.

     Glickman says he hopes one day to build an exact replica of a '50s recording studio and its "warm" sound.

     "They had a warm sound that wasn't as sterile as digital," he says.

     Basically, if he could do it all over, Glickman would rather do it in the late '50s.

     "I'd give anything to be able to go back in time and spend one day in the late 1950s," he says. "I know that's not possible. So the only thing is to try to create it as accurately as possible today."

     In August, Glickman will take a locally recruited film crew of about 20 on a road trip to Coopersville, Michigan, the hometown of Del Shannon, the 1950s songwriter who penned the 1961 hit song "Runaway."

     "They've got the whole sheriff's department coming out to greet us when we get there," he says.

     In a photo album, Glickman has photographs of himself singing at an event in Coopersville last year honoring the late Shannon. He has met Shannon's widow and recorded with his former band members.

     Glickman's road trip with his film crew will be the culmination of an obsession with Shannon and the songwriter's era that began with the short-lived 1986 TV series "Crime Story," which Glickman saw when he was 9 years old.

     "That was the beginning of Joe Glickman. It was the beginning of who I am now," he says.

     Set in 1963, the Michael Mann-produced series focused on Dennis Farina as a cop working his way through the seedy world of early '60s Las Vegas. Shannon's hit, "Runaway," was the show's signature tune.

     In addition to sparking an interest in Glickman for Shannon and oldies music, "Crime Story" introduced Glickman to the world of filmmaking.

     He started at 13 as a production assistant on an independent movie in Troy called "One Night Tan."

     Glickman never attended high school. or went to college, but was home schooled and supports himself today as a photographer and videographer.

     He shoots publicity stills for local performers, industrial videos and East Coast photographic stills for West Coast television and film studios.

     In his spare time, he attempts to revivify the lost songs of the '50s.

     Using his nonlinear, video-based editing system, he can show off part of a video he has shot with Dennis Yost of The Classics IV. He hopes eventually to get the finished product placed on VH1 or a country music channel.

Powerful Song

     But Glickman's real passion is Del Shannon. Two years ago, Glickman unearthed an old Shannon cassette, and played it on the way to his regular Thursday night swing dance at The Fuze Box in Albany.

     A forgotten Shannon standard, "So Long Baby," hit him between the eyes.

     "It was that click," he says. "I'm hoping that's how it will be when I fall in love, except I hope I have more control over this."

     Glickman searched out Shannon's former band mate Max Crook and bought one of only four Musitrons in existence. The Musitron was an instrument that Crook invented for Shannon. It creates shrill cascades of notes familiar in "Runaway."

     He financed and recorded "So Long Baby" with Crook. Next year, Glickman will be featured on a compilation tribute album, singing "So Long Baby."

     Others included on the tribute album include The Electric Light Orchestra; Randy Bachman, formerly of Bachman, Turner Overdrive; and Bobby Vee. 

     Two years later, the son's effect on Glickman remains the same.

     "Every time I hear it, I get that same yearning feeling, that same excitement. It hasn't lost it's flavor," he says.

     What is it about Del Shannon?

     "He's always talking about broken hearts, and I guess I sympathize with it," Glickman says.

     Shannon killed himself in February 1990 after a battle with alcohol and depression.

     "He had problems from the very beginning, and unfortunately he took his life in 1990," Glickman said. "Part of the reason I'm so attracted to his music is I can relate to what he's talking about."

Simmering Anger

     And even on a casual listen, Shannon's songs such as "Runaway," and "Sea of Love" have a murky heartland, darkness pulsing underneath the feel good sound.

     It's the kind of lonely, angry darkness that a listener might find in the novels of Jim Thompson or a more contemporary heartland lyricist such as Mike Ness of Social Distortion.

     Is it the anger Glickman is attracted to in the songs?

     "Yeah, the anger," Glickman answers. "That's what it is."

     The story of "So Long Baby," for example, is based on an event that occurred to Shannon when he reportedly asked a girl out to a dance and got stood up.

     It is about "the small-town flirt who led him on and dumped him," Glickman says. "Boy, can I relate to some of that stuff."

     Again, using his own finances, Glickman will shoot some of the video for "So Long Baby" at the Fuze Box, some at The Malta Drive-In, and some in Shannon's hometown. He has most of the cast members he needs, but is still looking for a number of male leads, he says.

     In the video, which he is also starring in, Glickman gets to be in the 1950s - and be cool.

     "It's that sort of aloof, stand-offish attitude that I've never the talent of doing," he says.

     Glickman has no trouble admitting that he has never been considered cool by most people his age. Almost all of his friends are baby boomers.

     "Ninety percent of my friends are in their 40s and 50s. They're baby boomers. I think they're cool."

     Glickman never went to a prom, listened to contemporary music or was accepted by "cool" groups.

     But not going to the prom, not hanging out with kids his own age or listening to their music hasn't had an adverse effect, he says. If anything, Glickman says he is thankful that it has made him an individual.

     "Thank you for not letting me be part of your group," he says now.

     On his gravestone, Glickman says he wants written: "Joe G. He was uncool, but he liked it."

Copyright 2002 - Gazette Newspaper