It’s time we take the pulse of our respective generational experiences. If you don’t know the Dugout Chatter drill already, you are about to be asked some hard-hitting questions that require your gut answers. Then we all take it from there. This rare thematic edition should elicit some thought-provoking chatter. But enough of my yapping…
The Who’s “My Generation” or Generation X’s “Your Generation”?
What two rock ‘n roll artists represent the range from best to worst among the music of your generation, that is, your formative rock ‘n roll years?
Musically, did/do you feel attuned to what might typically be thought of as your generation, both in its time and since that time?
What was the most significant contribution your parents’/family’s generation made on your musical upbringing?
What positive aspect of your generation’s music do you feel has been lost in the critical profile that’s since developed around that era?
At what point in rock’s development would it have needed to die to avoid getting old?
If there was one musical value from your generation that you would hope will be passed down through future generations, what would it be?
I look forward to your responses.
The Who’s “My Generation” or Generation X’s “Your Generation”?
The Who one, because its only slightly more ennucniated.
What two rock ‘n roll artists represent the range from best to worst among the music of your generation, that is, your formative rock ‘n roll years?
Um! that’s a hard question to answer, at least when i’m still in my ‘formative rock ‘n roll years.’
Musically, did/do you feel attuned to what might typically be thought of as your generation, both in its time and since that time?
I have no idea. my generation doesn’t have much of a concensus on what’s good. I’m afraid Green Day’s ‘American Idiot’ may end up being its defining moment.
What was the most significant contribution your parents’/family’s generation made on your musical upbringing?
My dad always played Close to the Edge and Magical Mystery Tour in the car when I was younger.
What positive aspect of your generation’s music do you feel has been lost in the critical profile that’s since developed around that era?
Too early to say.
At what point in rock’s development would it have needed to die to avoid getting old?
Prior to hitting 35. I mean, that’s when people become old!
If there was one musical value from your generation that you would hope will be passed down through future generations, what would it be?
Obnoxious use of auto-tune, clearly.
it’s kind of frustrating how few of these i can actaully answer. I think my generation’s to lost in some confusing post-modern joke for there for music to be particuarly uniting, or defining of us. I don’t listen to much popular music, so might just be missing out. But i’m not particuarly hip with the stuff pitchfork pushes either.
1. I suppose I should be picking the Gen.X song, as it was written by people of MY generation, But I have to go w/THE WHO, always. I can’t help it. They just ‘speak’ to me. Always have.
2. Paul Westerberg & Paul Westerberg
3. DIY Punk Rock, Yes. Did & Do.
4.I like traditional Irish folk music (yet, could never get behind the tenor singers. It always came off overblown to me. I have the same problem w/opera)
5.That it wasn’t about 1 sound.
6.1967
7.DIY
The Who’s “My Generation” or Generation X’s “Your Generation”?
Well, you probably know MY answer to this one, but I must go with Petey here.
I’m not sure what I would call “my” generation. I’m going to say the 80s because that’s when I really began listening to music in earnest. I’m 33, so the early to mid 90s would have been my formative years, but most of the stuff I had heard is what I grew up with: 80s radio.
What two rock ‘n roll artists represent the range from best to worst among the music of your generation, that is, your formative rock ‘n roll years?
Because I’ve been listening to alot of their stuff lately from this period, I’m going to go with R.E.M. They were consistently great throughout the 80s. Maybe the worst music of my generation would have been anyone getting involved with the “production”. There’s a general sound during the 80s that date those records badly. More on that later…
Musically, did/do you feel attuned to what might typically be thought of as your generation, both in its time and since that time?
No. I’ve always preferred older music. It’s not that I am opposed to new stuff, because I quite enjoy alot of newer records, but the older stuff does it for me. The sounds, the way the records were made, the songs…
What was the most significant contribution your parents’/family’s generation made on your musical upbringing?
I’d always wondered if I was adopted. My parents had a few cool records, but I have to take the credit for discovering alot of what I love on my own. My dad had the American Hey Jude Beatles LP in his collection. I remember thinking it was cool that Paul McCartney was in the band. So perhaps that love affair with that band began with that record.
What positive aspect of your generation’s music do you feel has been lost in the critical profile that’s since developed around that era?
As I said earlier, I feel that there were some decent songs still being written and recorded during the 80s that are dismissed due to their terribly dated production values. “Melt With You” is one example. The songs sounds of its time and era, but damn, I think it’s a fantastic song. I think alot of great ttunes got covered in production values of the day which make it hard to listen to. 80s music sounds shitty to me. It’s about the songs, man!
At what point in rock’s development would it have needed to die to avoid getting old?
Um…1972? I don’t know.
If there was one musical value from your generation that you would hope will be passed down through future generations, what would it be?
I might have to go with Bobby on this: The 80s gave way to the cassette and a more DIY approach to writing and recording music. Anyone can do it. All you had to do was copy it and pass it along. There was some cool bands that able to build a buzz because folks were passing tapes around. Anyone could be rock star.
TB
latelydavidband, Did you ever hear the Nouvelle Vague cover of “I Melt With You”?
Totally different production & arrangement(& also a woman singing it, but that’s neither here nor there), & it proves your point completely, that the original WAS a really good song ruined by the lousy 80s production style (the dawning of the sequencer & drum machines taking over).
I’d like to change my answer to question # 2, about the best & worst of MY generation. I would now like to place Mr. Mike Watt in the category of representing the best, as he is the personification of the DIY aesthetic, & a stand-up dude all around. In the classification of the worst, I’d now place Axyl Rose (did I spell that right? Who cares?), just for being SUCH a primadonna jerk-off. His music never meant much to me, but he did come out of my generation.
I felt I had to disqualify Westerberg (& I’m a big fan) for lack of effort. Though I really love a lot of the guy’s music, he just never seemed to try hard enough one way or another to fall into either extreme category for me.
I’ll check that Nouvelle Vague cover out. As I said, I adore that tune, but it sounds so…80s. There are others, but that one springs to mind.
TB
PS–Off topic, but anyone hear about Kelly Groucutt from ELO?
http://kellygroucutt.sitesled.com/
Good stuff, hissing fauna! I hope you find your musical generation while you’re in the thick of it, and I hope it’s a good one.
To answer some of my own questions:
“My Generation”
Best: The Clash
Worst: Journey
This does not mean, necessarily, that these are my favorite and least favorite bands of my formative years, although Journey is my least favorite band ever and The Clash is one of my all-time faves, but I think each of them brought something special and distinctive of the late-70s to the table.
No. In high school I was too far removed from wherever punk rock may have actually been thriving (if anywhere) to feel like I was a part of that scene. I was surrounded by kids into Zeppelin, Broooce, Yes, and other bands I didn’t like at that time. I stayed in my little world of ’60s music and punk/New Wave, with a small handful of friends who also dug that stuff. Then, just a few years later, when I was free to fully engage in my generation’s post-punk landscape, I still felt slightly out of tune with most of my peers. I never got into hardcore or most of the SST and Minneapolis stuff that would be playing at a lot of parties with cooler people who’d congregated from their various hometowns. At least they were interested in stuff beyond the arena-rock scene of the ’70s.
My Mom turned me onto Motown and her brother, my uncle, turned me onto all sorts of ’60s rock and soul.
The nihilism of the punk era is what gets way more play than I think is deserved, as if critics were taking the lyrics of the Sex Pistols to heart. It was actually a very hopeful, exciting time for rock.
1983.
The belief that rock ‘n roll could communicate intelligently and energetically to a broad audience, even at the risk of creating a bunch of musicians who come off sounding like Springsteen in interviews.
The Who’s “My Generation” or Generation X’s “Your Generation”?
WHO
What two rock ‘n roll artists represent the range from best to worst among the music of your generation, that is, your formative rock ‘n roll years?
best: THE POLICE
worst: TACO(but i still like him)
Musically, did/do you feel attuned to what might typically be thought of as your generation, both in its time and since that time?
No. At the time, I felt I had been born 20 years too late. Now I feel I was only 10 years too late. Hopefully in 20 more years, I’ll be right on time.
What was the most significant contribution your parents’/family’s generation made on your musical upbringing?
The love of the Beatles.
What positive aspect of your generation’s music do you feel has been lost in the critical profile that’s since developed around that era?
The idealism that went along with MTV’s original perspective. There was a utopian vibe to it as if to say the future would be brighter and more exciting than right now, even if we have to survive a nuclear war to get there.
At what point in rock’s development would it have needed to die to avoid getting old?
Pink Floyd The Wall.
If there was one musical value from your generation that you would hope will be passed down through future generations, what would it be?
It’s wild. It’s hot. It’s Video Rock!
Man, I never thought I’d see someone giving the “big ups” to eMpTyV! I always thought of it’s rise to prominence as the main outlet of exposure for music to be a truly distasteful turn of events, as it placed primary emphasis on the visual end of things. Let’s face it, there were very few artists who ‘made it’ through MTV that did anything truly interesting with the medium (the only two coming to mind right now are Devo & Madness). Most of what we got were badly acted, interchangeable little ads with little or no imagination involved, or Madonna & her ilk, & hair metal bands pushing the T & A. If it had become a medium where filmed live performances were the norm I’d probably feel differently, but as it played out it was about as interesting as watching paint dry.
i’m not tryin to cause no big sensation.
just talkin bout my g-g-generation.
This is very, very close, but I’d have to go with Generation X.
Since I came of age in the early ’90s and thus really started getting into music around that time, my answers will be in accordance with that time period. This is a question I hadn’t thought much about until I saw 1991: The Year Punk Broke at a screening at MoMA about 3 years ago. Watching not only Nirvana, but other bands featured in the movie like Dinosaur Jr and Sonic Youth, it then hit me that this stuff is the music of MY generation or at least some of the good stuff it produced. Like what Mr. Mod said about the late ’70s, I think that the early ’90s was a hopeful time in rock and that the dark lyrics of the grunge era bands get too much play. It was hopeful in that for a brief few years, all sorts of acts who never would’ve stood a chance were suddenly selling records and courting attention from majors and what not. I think that Cobain’s suicide and the emergence of Bush and later Creed and the nu metal bands sort of killed off that hope, if that makes sense, but for a few years we had Cobain spread the gospel of groups like The Raincoats, Scratch Acid, The Vaselines, The Meat Puppets, et al. and bringing it as close to the mainstream as it would ever get.
So anyway here are my choices.
Best = Sonic Youth (for reasons I can elaborate on if anyone cares)
Worst = no one band in particular but all the post-grunge, alt-rock radio drivel that emerged in the wake of Nirvana, etc.
Musically, did/do you feel attuned to what might typically be thought of as your generation, both in its time and since that time?
What was the most significant contribution your parents’/family’s generation made on your musical upbringing?
What positive aspect of your generation’s music do you feel has been lost in the critical profile that’s since developed around that era?
At what point in rock’s development would it have needed to die to avoid getting old?
If there was one musical value from your generation that you would hope will be passed down through future generations, what would it be?
I forgot to answer the other questions before hitting send, so here’s the second part.
You know, even though I’d gather that for most of us, our tastes are far outside the mainstream and thus most of our peers and though I’m certainly no exception, I’d have to say yes. When I first got into music in the late ’80s, I listened to Top 40, hair metal and the like. Getting into Led Zeppelin made me discover classic rock and then by the time I was 15, I got into stuff like The Cure, Jane’s Addiction, etc. This, of course, led me to punk, hardcore, new wave, indie and just about everything I listen to today. Anyway the timing here is significant. In 1990/1991 (when I was 15/16), that was when mainstream taste was shifting from hair metal to what would be called alternative and just by coincidence, my taste was going there as well.
There’s also a corollary here regarding the music of this decade. By the time stuff like The Strokes, the Mod-derided White Stripes and others came into the pop consciousness around ’01/’02, I was in my late 20s and my tastes were, of course, much more developed. The success of these bands was sort of a victory, in that many of them go back not to the late ’70s, but to that aforementioned time period (the early ’90s) when stuff that was way out of the mainstream was getting a fair shake. I mean The White Stripes took as much from Nirvana as from Led Zeppelin or ’60s garage rock. And I bet The Strokes had more than one Sonic Youth record in their collection.
The desire to innovate. So much of what I hear are weak retreads of stuff done better in earlier eras. I don’t mind this as long as the songs/hooks/something else of interest are there, but in many cases they’re not, so that’s another thing that’s been lost. I’m not philosophically opposed to the sheer number of folks making music, but I think the internet and home recording has made it almost too easy. Many bands record before they’re ready and many have little to offer IMO.
I can’t really answer that, but I think it should be accepted that rock has gotten old. I mean it’s in its 50s now, you know, and that’s OK. I think there’s a tendency, especially amongst boomers or even folks in my generation to assume it’ll always be young, full of life, rebellious, etc. but in many cases it’s not and hip-hop (at least to some extent) has taken on the mantle that rock had in the ’60s and ’70s.
DIY
Great answers, Berlyant!