One of the weirder parts of growing up is what stops being important as you grow older. Once upon a time in my life, I could tell you who was in what band in what year and if I didn’t know, I wouldn’t rest until I found out. Rock’n’roll took up a huge part of the data storage space in my head. Debating over which was a better album, “Greetings from Asbury Park” or “Born to Run?” was my version of, “who was the better player, Jordan or Pippen?” Some folks are into sports in a maniacal way where they can recites seasons and stats, I was good at bands and songs and who wrote what and what was happening when they wrote it.

Bo Diddley died on Monday and I didn’t know about it until this morning. I found out while surfing more blogs that I haven’t visited in awhile. Apparently he’d been ill for a good while. I didn’t know that either. I may have heard about it, but it obviously didn’t stick with me.

I’m sad about his passing. His shave and a haircut rhythm was stolen by just about everyone who tried to play the blues or blues rock. I’ve got four different versions of “Who Do You Love?” in my iTunes collection. I was relieved to find out that his original is among them, my favorite being from The Band’s “The Last Waltz.” I can’t begin to tell you how many songs I have that use shave and a haircut.

What hits me even stronger is the fact that it took two days for me to notice. There was a day when I’d be so tuned to what was going on in music that if I didn’t know about from the radio station I was perpetually listening to, then I would have found out because a friend would have called me to commiserate about the loss.

I’ve become one of those, “it’s just music” people. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t consciously think, “I don’t have time for all this music stuff. I’m going to listen to less music as I get older.” It just happened. And while the grownup I’ve become acknowledges that it’s only natural for such things to go by the wayside as “real life” takes up more of my time, my inner rocker is terribly disappointed in me.