A theory: There is an identifiable point in a persons life before which music is considered an "oldie" and after which it is not.
In my case, that line is somewhere in the fall of 1993. It was at that point that I got a Walkman to listen to during the long bus ride to middle school. No longer subject to parental radio dial tyranny (in the car, they were partial to WCBS-FM to the point that I remember all the jingles), I moved on to some more modern fare.
Back then, the station of choice for white teenagers in the New York media market was Z100. They invented the inane "morning zoo" AM drive format and I ate it up, every last prank call, parody song and dumb sidekick. Every now and then they played a song, and it was then and there the non-oldies started for me. It was an odd time in music: grunge was in the process of going mainstream while pop was regaining its perch on the top of the charts. On one top-40 station, you could hear Soundgarden, Ace of Bass, Counting Crows and Naughty by Nature in the course of an hour. The Lilith Fair types were starting to bubble up, with Lisa Loeb's now-unlistenable "Miss You" the forerunner.
Anything older than what I could hear on Z100 in the fall of 1993 is an "oldie" or at least "old school" to me. For example, NWA comes from a different era, but Dr. Dre solo reminds me of where I first heard it (on the Major Deegan Expressway). The Pixies belong to people five years older than me, but I remember being bowled over by the Breeders' "Cannonball" the first time I heard it under the Broadway el tracks.
It's true that what you could hear on Z100 in 1993 didn't represent the pinnacle of musical and cultural achievement, but it was the start of what modern music is to me. What is your "oldies line"?
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