But the fact is, their music was good, at least some of it. I came to that conclusion at, of all places, the Bolton Fair in Massachusetts. (they have been doing that fair for something like 130 years)
Anyway, I was there a few years ago and I heard a guy playing "Stairway To Heaven".
I know, I know.
Thing is, the guy was playing it on a homemade hammer dulcimer. He had just finished a song, and had two or three people standing nearby, when he began playing again. I stopped to listen, and after a few seconds I realized what song he was playing, and kind of inwardly raised my eyebrows. It just seemed like a weird choice.
But the more he played, the more amazing it got. And the crowd watching got bigger and bigger in a very small time frame. It seemed like musical flypaper. Nearly every person from the age of eight to eighty that walked by, stopped in their tracks to listen. In the space of a few bars, a small crowd of about twenty formed up.
It was amazing. I found myself grinning as I listened, as nearly everyone else watching was, too.
He got a vigorous ovation when he finished, and people lined up to buy his homemade CD. I didn't and often wished that I did.
It may be that nearly every song played on a hammered dulcimer may sound celestial, but that version gathered people of all ages.
Since then, I realized that music is like food. If you don't have good basic ingredients, you can't have great food. If that song, "Stairway To Heaven" wasn't good, no matter how well that guy played it on his homemade hammered dulcimer, it wouldn't have grabbed people like that.