I realized the other day...
1. Going by calendar years only (not months), the Beach Boys self-titled album is now THIRTY YEARS OLD!
2. Again, going by calendar years only, and assuming a start year of 1961, the halfway point of the Beach Boys' career as of now is 1988, the year that Kokomo came out! So the first half of their career now covers "Surfin" all the way to "Kokomo". The second half covers "Still Cruisin" to the most recent works.
I'm with you... sometimes I think about this kind of stuff a lot, too. Like for instance, when I was a kid the Atari was ANCIENT, I mean damn it was so old and we all wanted the Nintendo. In reality, the Atari was only 7 years old... and now the Nintendo is 30 years old. Hell the Playstation 3 is NINE years old! The PS3 is older, right now, than the Atari was all those years ago when I thought it was ancient.
Or here's a good one. In 1983, Eric Clapton released "Rock & Roll Heart" on his Money and Cigarettes album. It's about how he's old school, so he's saying to this girl "I get off on... 57 Chevys"
So at the time, a 1957 Chevy was 26 years old. So he was remarking in the song how he likes old, classic stuff... and a 26 year old car was so old in the early 80's that everybody was rebuilding them (Mike Love probably owns one).
So right now, a 26 year old car would be a 1989 Mustang... Can you even imagine somebody singing a song now about how they're old school, so they respect a car that came out in 1989? Nevermind that none of the cars in 89 were particularly special, it's just the thought that at one time, that would be considered so long ago that it's "classic"... I can't imagine anything from 1989 being old enough to be classic and write songs about.
Weird how memories, and time works like that.