Into Every Generation....
Once again, I'd like to share my love of All Songs Considered. The podcast I just listened to about music that defines generations really showcased the qualities I love about this show. It has the extreme music nerdiness factor, a gentle sense of humor, and real conversation, where people actually disagree, but manage to do so respectfully. You could say that it's just a music show, and that it's easy to stay calm about aesthetics, particularly among peers who have so much in common. But as someone who facilitates (a very mellow) book discussion group, my hat is off once again to Bob Boilen for being such an interesting and positive radio host.
This episode about generations brings up an interesting question for me: what generation am I in? I always thought that I, born in '78, am too young to be considered Generation X. My babysitters, yes. Winona Ryder in Reality Bites, certainly. My friends who know all the words to Rio (a song I only heard as an adult on VH1's "I Love the Eighties") yes as well. They may be only a couple years older than me but they have a whole realm of TV and music references I missed.
And Generation Y is defined as being a few years younger than me, born in the early eighties. Shouldn't the generation definitions overlap? Why is there a hole between 1977 and 1980? Are we not men?
I also think that when you say you were born in the late 70's or early 80's people think about what was going on culturally at the time of your birth. But really songs and cultural tidbits that you consider yours are from, at earliest, middle childhood, which starts about seven years later. I may have been born in the late Seventies but the first time I remember knowing what year it was, much less experiencing something musically as being mine is somewhere between 1982 and 1985. And then there's pop culture precociousness and the lack of it to consider. Say you were raised Mennonite or Latter Day Saints (ahem, ladies) are your musical references delayed to when you first got free access to media? Or if you have an older sister maybe you started being into George Michael/Madonna/Deep Purple/Syd Barrett/Led Zeppelin/Guns 'n Roses/Unrest/Beck/Louise Attaque a little earlier than your peers without music lovin' sibs.
All this is to say that I connected more with the cultural moments described by the thirty-three year olds on All Songs Considered than I do with the defining moments given by people a few years younger than me. Maybe it's a case of always wanting to be like the older kids, even when I, like the older kids, am starting to get gray hair. Maybe it's that thing where people are more suspicious of people and culture younger than them than they are of their role models. Kids these days...
Another thing I'm curious about is what happens to your perceptions of your own definitive music if you keep being really into new (and old) music for the rest of your life. Like maybe Okkervil River or M.I.A. aren't the music I listened to when packing for college but they still resonate with me as powerful soundtracks to moments in my life, even if those moments occurred in the last few years, my late twenties. Or maybe young people don't listen to the bands I like now anyway. I get a lot of positive feedback from people for ordering Lupe Fiasco or the Yeah Yeah Yeahs CDs for my library, but most of that feedback comes from people in their mid-twenties and older. Maybe the young 'uns just wish I'd order more Fallout Boy and All Time Low.
Carrie Bradshaw-esque question of the day: If I think the music coverage on NPR is fabulous and ever so slightly ahead of the curve does that mean that I am ever so slightly behind it?
Or did that sound more like Doogie Howser?
This episode about generations brings up an interesting question for me: what generation am I in? I always thought that I, born in '78, am too young to be considered Generation X. My babysitters, yes. Winona Ryder in Reality Bites, certainly. My friends who know all the words to Rio (a song I only heard as an adult on VH1's "I Love the Eighties") yes as well. They may be only a couple years older than me but they have a whole realm of TV and music references I missed.
And Generation Y is defined as being a few years younger than me, born in the early eighties. Shouldn't the generation definitions overlap? Why is there a hole between 1977 and 1980? Are we not men?
I also think that when you say you were born in the late 70's or early 80's people think about what was going on culturally at the time of your birth. But really songs and cultural tidbits that you consider yours are from, at earliest, middle childhood, which starts about seven years later. I may have been born in the late Seventies but the first time I remember knowing what year it was, much less experiencing something musically as being mine is somewhere between 1982 and 1985. And then there's pop culture precociousness and the lack of it to consider. Say you were raised Mennonite or Latter Day Saints (ahem, ladies) are your musical references delayed to when you first got free access to media? Or if you have an older sister maybe you started being into George Michael/Madonna/Deep Purple/Syd Barrett/Led Zeppelin/Guns 'n Roses/Unrest/Beck/Louise Attaque a little earlier than your peers without music lovin' sibs.
All this is to say that I connected more with the cultural moments described by the thirty-three year olds on All Songs Considered than I do with the defining moments given by people a few years younger than me. Maybe it's a case of always wanting to be like the older kids, even when I, like the older kids, am starting to get gray hair. Maybe it's that thing where people are more suspicious of people and culture younger than them than they are of their role models. Kids these days...
Another thing I'm curious about is what happens to your perceptions of your own definitive music if you keep being really into new (and old) music for the rest of your life. Like maybe Okkervil River or M.I.A. aren't the music I listened to when packing for college but they still resonate with me as powerful soundtracks to moments in my life, even if those moments occurred in the last few years, my late twenties. Or maybe young people don't listen to the bands I like now anyway. I get a lot of positive feedback from people for ordering Lupe Fiasco or the Yeah Yeah Yeahs CDs for my library, but most of that feedback comes from people in their mid-twenties and older. Maybe the young 'uns just wish I'd order more Fallout Boy and All Time Low.
Carrie Bradshaw-esque question of the day: If I think the music coverage on NPR is fabulous and ever so slightly ahead of the curve does that mean that I am ever so slightly behind it?
Or did that sound more like Doogie Howser?