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What Generation Gap?
Jun. 3rd, 2007 02:29 pmThe other day, in my post gushing over the quality of the recent Genesis remasters, my friend ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
fairmer commented that she thought I would have different musical tastes from her husband, who is at least a few years older than me.
The thing is, I'm getting the impression that age is having less and less of an impact on taste than it used to. That is, this notion of a necessary generation gap in musical taste, especially, is a sort of artificial construct, a product of the rather dramatic changes that rock 'n' roll brought to the music scene about fifty years ago.
The trouble is, you can't reinvent how revolutionary that was. I mean, maybe something will, but the old canard of younger kids liking louder music and all that just doesn't seem to be holding up. As it was, the "loud" genres seemed to face a proportional diminishing of listeners the louder they got--for example, Metallica had much more commercial success when they got more melodic with their self-titled album and the stuff that followed. Noise for noise sake has a niche following, but I find it doubtful that subgenre will ever achieve any kind of broad recognition and success.
That all said, at once I find it interesting and understandable that with the relative unpopularity of the current war there has not been a 1960s-style explosion of protest, anti-war, and peace songs. On the one hand, it's not really necessary to say again what the folks during Vietnam already said. The only really new voice on a fairly popular level that way has been Green Day--and their message, frankly, has been more anti-American than anything else.
On the other hand, there haven't even been any high-profile covers of the big songs of yesteryear, and that seems a puzzling lack. In fact, though the songs are out there, they don't seem to be getting resurrected much. In one of those fun little ironies, that's some of my favorite music to listen to--not so much for what they're saying as their courage and conviction to say it. So why no covers of "What's Going On" or "Age of Aquarius"? Or new songs in that vein?
I think part of the answer is just plain cynicism, and part of it is the lack of a draft, but in all I find it rather puzzling.
fairmer commented that she thought I would have different musical tastes from her husband, who is at least a few years older than me.The thing is, I'm getting the impression that age is having less and less of an impact on taste than it used to. That is, this notion of a necessary generation gap in musical taste, especially, is a sort of artificial construct, a product of the rather dramatic changes that rock 'n' roll brought to the music scene about fifty years ago.
The trouble is, you can't reinvent how revolutionary that was. I mean, maybe something will, but the old canard of younger kids liking louder music and all that just doesn't seem to be holding up. As it was, the "loud" genres seemed to face a proportional diminishing of listeners the louder they got--for example, Metallica had much more commercial success when they got more melodic with their self-titled album and the stuff that followed. Noise for noise sake has a niche following, but I find it doubtful that subgenre will ever achieve any kind of broad recognition and success.
That all said, at once I find it interesting and understandable that with the relative unpopularity of the current war there has not been a 1960s-style explosion of protest, anti-war, and peace songs. On the one hand, it's not really necessary to say again what the folks during Vietnam already said. The only really new voice on a fairly popular level that way has been Green Day--and their message, frankly, has been more anti-American than anything else.
On the other hand, there haven't even been any high-profile covers of the big songs of yesteryear, and that seems a puzzling lack. In fact, though the songs are out there, they don't seem to be getting resurrected much. In one of those fun little ironies, that's some of my favorite music to listen to--not so much for what they're saying as their courage and conviction to say it. So why no covers of "What's Going On" or "Age of Aquarius"? Or new songs in that vein?
I think part of the answer is just plain cynicism, and part of it is the lack of a draft, but in all I find it rather puzzling.