This week's Doonsbury strips bring up ideas rarely talked about in the music scene.
When you're young, you listen to "your" music. Everything else is Oldies, or fogey music, or uncool - whatever.
Around the age of 25, though, you start to notice a few things.
1) Covers. The new artists are doing songs that YOUR favorite group did. If you're savvy, you investigate at this point and find out that your favorite artist was covering someone even earlier.
2) The new guys aren't as good as the oldies. That's because you've forgotten most of what was playing back then. Sturgeon's Law states that 90% of everything is crap. The difference between old music and new is that the new music's 90% is on the air. The oldies stations are playing the 10% that made the cut.
3) They had good music before you were born. If you're REALLY into music, you eventually learn that there's a good reason why Sinatra was a star, and that those reasons are still valid today. You start listening to Everything, from Latin to Classical to ethnic, and you find good tunes everywhere.
And finally,
4) Half your friends/acquaintences never learn this. They cling to their oldies, or continue to sneer at anything not on MTV.

In Africa, there are people who have never tasted real candy, and don't know what they're missing.
Pity them too.