Generation Over And Rock And Roll

Is rock and its myriad offshoots no longer a young persons game.? I've always assumed and hoped and, even if it means that I am left out, supported the heart of rock and roll to be eternally youthful. It has always seemed capable of renewing itself, sucking out the life of the old, regurgitating, and spitting it out in a roar of rebellion.

I love music for many reasons but I love music most for its ability to be echo the future in its very being.

But maybe it can't now.

I listen to tons of modern music and as much as I love a lot of it, none of it seems, well, really new. Even dance isn't really new. All the blokes making it are in their 30s and 40s and the chicks singing it are all in their mid-20s, and whether you love or hate it, I tend to the former, it isn't rebellious. It isn't THE VOICE of young America.

When did we last have a voice of…? The 90s it seems to me -somethings a revolution is musical (sampling in hip and metal meets punk in grunge) and sometimes it is elsewhere (videos and file sharing) and when it is musical it can be partisan. "Oh well, whatever, nevermind) was the eoitome of a generations rbellion into deoderant.

The 40s were the kids who survived WWII

The 50s rock

The 60s hippies

The 70s punk

The 80s -the 80s were videos and the generation were really nowhere -a world of latckkey kids.

The 90s had grunge and

The 00s really didn't define themselves in the middle class white youth for once.

I think the numbers agree with me here, that there are less kids, they are less important, and they don't own their own culture. I am 54 and there is nothing about the youth of America that makes me shrug. I don't want what they have. Or rather, what they have I want I take.

It sure ain't fashion.

Or heroes

Sometimes its music but my expectations is as low as theirs is.

And when I go after their rock star heroes, they come after me.

I find it baffling that anybody would jump to the defense of a Springsteen or Jay-Z. A Weezy or A Dweezy, a Rivers or a Bethany: there is something so apathetic about them. So smug, self-rightous and contended. A kid straight outta the hood bragging is one thing, a middle multi-millionaire doing the same thing, is something else again.

But those are the musical heroes. And since the playing field is so wide the semi-populists where the revolutionaires lurk are just another distruction. They can't get heard.

Maybe being a teenager is over. Maybe rock music as the savior of youth from mediocrity is a dream that died.

Rock and roll has been going downhill ever since Buddy Holly died.