Long vs Short Past

I had a conversation with a friend recently in which I tried to make a point about the age of artists we see now versus the ages of artists we would have seen when we were younger. I failed miserably - she didn't "get it" and maybe neither did I. This started with Bright Eyes' remark at the show last week that some of the songs he was performing were older than some people in the audience (only certain songs and only the youngest members of the audience, but still). This struck me as odd because artists like Bright Eyes, and much of the artists I listen to seem like they are of a different class, type, or order of artists than those whom I could have seen at age 16. I saw the Who at 16 for example and certainly many of the songs in that set are older than me. I thought that maybe the difference is that artists like Bright Eyes are still a going concern - they haven't broken up, reunited or otherwise taken long absences unlike say, the Who or Pink Floyd (another oldie I saw when still "young"). I also thought maybe I'm classifying bands pre and post punk? So any artist that started releasing records prior to 1977 is old, and after are "young". Maybe it is just my own age - the Who are old because they are older than me and Bright Eyes are younger because they are younger than me? A thought that hit me today was that maybe the Who and their ilk are part of my "long past" and Bright Eyes are part of my "short past" - an idea I stole from Tom Ewing over at Pitchfork. Basically the long past is the time period before I got into music and the short past is the period since. It is more recently and vividly experienced so feels "recent" whereas the long past feels like history even if the actual dates might be very close together. I think some of this carries over too though because an artist can get classified into these groupings and it can carry forward into the short past. For example, even though the Rolling Stones still release records and have had a longer career since I got into music than before I did, they will always seem part of the long past to me.