At the retro concert
I’d never been to one before—you know, one of those concerts that specializes in 60s music. And I probably wouldn’t have gone to this one had it not been free.
But there I was, standing because all the seats were already taken. As I waited for the music to begin, I looked around at the sea of people in the audience. There were some young ones, to be sure, but it was mostly a motley crew of gray-haired or balding and generally-gone-to-seed boomers ready to rock and roll.
Soon the crowd was bouncing around to the music, and singing because we all knew the words. The most active were my fellow standees. A heavyset woman next to me had all the moves of the go-go dancers on Shindig and Hullaballo, a genre I hadn’t thought of in many a long year. She was doing some amalgam of the twist, the frug, the jerk, the mashed potato, and the monkey, complete with saucy head tosses. Don’t ask me to explain, but somehow it all worked.
As I gazed at the crowd, particularly some couples dancing together and smooching a bit, I suddenly pictured these same people, forty-odd years earlier, at a rock concert of ages past. Young, slim, long hair restored to its original vibrant colors, faces unlined and glowing with hope and/or drugs—there they were, the young boomers of the 60s, with their lives all ahead of them and sure to be just wonderful.
Well, they’re still dancin’, anyway; if not in the streets, then in the seats:
Damn, neo, I’m worried about you. /g
It’s fair enough for people to have fun where they find it, but…those PBS concerts, with the audience of ageing liberal hipsters (seated, of course) looking on with faces aglow as Peter, Paul, and Mary sing “Puff the Magic Dragon” for the seven millionth time, make me want to throw a rope over an exposed rafter.
Occam’s Beard: I said it was free.
(It was kinda fun, too. But don’t tell anyone.)
neo, OK, I’ll cut you some slack because of the free part. /g
I like oldies too, in honesty. Not enough to go to a concert, but I use suitable ones for workout music.
But there’s kind of a fine line between enjoying them and (how to put this?) clinging to the past, the sense I get from the PBS concert audiences. Now that I think about it, the distinction may be between enjoying the music qua music and enjoying the music as a symptom of clinging to the past. I find the latter a bit creepy, frankly, and there’s a lot of that around amongst boomers (e.g., the “Recreate ’68” business, and the worshiping of the 60s generally).
On thinking about this still more, I realize that part of my distaste for 60s nostalgia (besides the fact that, realistically, the 60s intrinsically sucked) is driven by my reaction to friends in the Bay Area who suffer from galloping Peter Pan syndrome. They really would recreate ’68 if they could, deprecate contemporary music in favor of the music then (equally crappy, IMO), speak wistfully of the 60s, and just generally refuse to grow up. Probably just as well none of them have ever had kids; they’re effectively still kids themselves.
Occam’s Beard: rest assured I have virtually no nostalgia for the 60s.
But I do like the music.
Same here, on both counts!
Don’t tell anyone?
Neo! This is a blog!
Years ago I went to one of those at the Aragon in Chicago to see the Boxtops.
The warmup act was an all-girl band called Mickie and the Memories that was fantastic. Then came the pore ol’ Boxtops. I’m afraid they suffered by comparison.
So much for Accept No Substitutes.
re: Martha – always thought the smooth, finger-poppin’ Philly Sound had it all over the techno Motown.
Occam – good thing they never had children.
Helvetica, yeah, I’ve thought that. Many times.
From Wiki:
I was only eight then, so I was probably watching Twelve O’Clock High. It had airplanes.
Being born in 1975 I certainly have no nostalgia for the 60’s and I like a great deal of that music. It is interesting to hear the foundations for a lot of modern music in there.
The 60’s saw an explosion in the range electric instruments could produce tones and LOTS of experimentation. The first real pedals, amplifiers where normal people could easily afford and use them, and a whole host of things. Unlike the 80’s and the explosion of synthesized and, shall we say, not to accurate solid state electronics those sounds are still used today.
Indeed, I have several thousand dollars of equipment that does two things very well – accurately reproduce the noise the string makes with no effects and vintage sound. Were I to play guitar (I play bass) I would add a distortion pedal and add a delay and you get 99.999% of all the sounds one needs and realistically want (as a bass player I want one that emphasizes the lows and highs for slap style). I have all sorts of other sound shaping devices (including active pickups on my bass), but reality is that it sets at one of those two settings: accurate or vintage.
I do find it amusing the number of people who want to recreate the 60’s – from someone who didn’t live then they looked like they sucked royally. I guess for many living there it was when “the dream was still alive” (as I’ve heard it put). Yea, I guess so – though I translate it too “I could still pretend I live in Strawberry Shortcake La-La Land”.
I’ve never been been one to look back on any time I was that uneducated and naive and wistfully want to go back. But then I guess that is why I have always been a conservative and why I gravitated towards engineering fields.
Frankly that the so called boomers are in charge of our govt is a large problem because of this. They *still* think they can create the Perfect World and act accordingly. Sadly they have screwed up the next few following generations so badly I’m not very optimistic, but hey, I’ll still try my best to figure out how what I can and can not change, change what I can to how I like, and work within the strictures of what I can not.
I like oldies, too — about 200 years old and older. To be sure, I do listen to some pop music, mostly from the 1960s through the 1980s, mostly when I’m driving, but I find that none of it can hold a candle to classical music. YMMV, of course, and taste in music is about as personal as it gets. But when I hear, for example, a Handel oratorio, or a “simple” little Mozart tune, like the Rondo in D (K382), I know that for me, listening to something more “modern” will only bring disappointment.
I was born during the first Eisenhower Administration. I remember the 1960s quite well, and have no desire to recreate that era. As far as I was concerned, the only good thing about 1968 was that the Detroit Tigers won the World Series, and Bob Beamon launched into the stratosphere in his long jump at the Mexico City Olympics. The rest of it? Good riddance.
“”I find the latter a bit creepy, frankly, and there’s a lot of that around amongst boomers””
OB
I have the same reaction watching the PBS concerts. Theres some sort of weird worship service flair to the whole thing. As if they’ll start speaking in tounges at any minute while pleading to the Gods of indiscriminateness to save the world from the stubborn people who don’t believe round human nature can be forced through a square hole.
If there is a shortage of these concerts in your area you can find the same crowd at a local Renaissance Festival raising awareness of the enlightened dark ages before toilet paper was invented.
Geeze, all this anti-boomerism…
That’s a broad brush some of you are painting with. The boomer generation is said to encompass those Americans born between 1945 and 1965. That’s a lot of people, and those people are not *all* ex-flower children living in a 60’s fantasy-land. Some, of course, are. But I would say that it is a tiny minority of them. (Except in the bay area. But then again that’s a *special* place, isn’t it.) Most of the boomer generation have grown up, raised families while working productive jobs, and now have grandchildren.
I am a boomer – born in 1954 – who was *never* part of that 60’s rebellion. Indeed, I rebelled against that rebellion when I realized that some of my teachers – members of my parents generation – were active communists. In my first ever election, I voted for Richard Nixon, looking in horror at what the Democratic party of my parents generation had become. (…a party which at that time was run by members of the so called “greatest generation”.)
About music, keep in mind that pop music, whether good or bad, for most people tends to define a moment in time.
For example: There’s this silly song called “Brand New Key”, by Melanie Safka that came out in 1972. It’s a lot of things, but “high-brow” isn’t one of them. However, it was very popular on the radio during a happy time of my life, so every time I hear it, I have to smile – I just can’t help it.
Yes – that’s called nostalgia. So sue me. But everyone else on this comment thread – old or young – is guilty of it, more or less. (…except perhaps artfldgr. He’s serious all the time.)
Musical tastes are completely subjective. They are as personal as the clothes you wear. Me? I like a lot of different music, from classical (some, not all) all the way through R&B, Rock, country/western, bluegrass, gospel, and yes, even that silly song about a skate key.
I’m eight years older than the oldest boomer…so I have my polyester shirt, slacks, and “Saturday Night Fever” disco moves and John Travolta stance ready to go for a SEVENTIES concert!
Roy, i enjoy some good 60’s music as well as anyone. Maybe being born in 59 made me too young to associate the bogus political messages in some of the lyrics with what i remember as simply some nice tunes.
But for the boomers i mentioned above, they seem to associate the message first and foremost as though that in itself was what made them appealing.
“Dream,” “nightmare;” what’s in a word?
Pretty accurate translation, strcpy.
Exactly. The world has a chance to be a better place when the last of us is dead and buried. If the WWII cohort was the greatest generation, we were clearly the worst.
Btw, I’d modify your sentence above to read: “They *still* think they and only they can create the Perfect World and act accordingly.” That captures both the moronic messianism and the fulminant narcissism that together so characterize the entire generation. That trait explains the reluctance of so many to have kids, because as we all know, when you have kids, it’s not about you any more. Besides, gotta save the world, man.
Sure, Roy, no one is saying that these generalizations pertain to every individual in the cohort. But the people we’re talking about epitomize the era. Conversely, there were undoubtedly malodorous slackers, druggies, and self-absorbed navel-gazers in the Greatest Generation also, but that generation isn’t known for or by them.
You go, texexec!
Okay – so much for “blockquote cite=”.
None of my quotes came through, but upon reflection, they weren’t really needed after all.
Geeze, I just noticed that my entire comment post came out as one big block quote – except for the actual quotes, of course.
So much for xhtml. I guess it’s back to plain old text for me. (Ya cain’t teach a boomer nuthin! )
Roy: excellent points.
I have no idea why people think boomers are some sort of monolith of the left. They most certainly are not.
Scroll down here and look at the chart entitled “Age and the Issues.” You’ll see that boomers (basically, the 45-65 age group on the chart) were fairly conservative in 2008.
“”I have no idea why people think boomers are some sort of monolith of the left””
Neo
Somethings wrong when any generation of 45 to 65 year old Americans leans even a little toward electing a marxist con man who was going to lower the seas. America has always counted on this age group to be a major offset of the young and dumb plus some elderly and minorities who just worry about entitlements.
So we can say about half of boomers failed America. Which sounds respectable until you figure out America probably needed more like 7 in 10 of this age group to have their heads screwed on straight to avoid our country’s slide into a possible decades long funk.
Okay, SteveH, what about the half that *didn’t* fail America?
Must we suffer the slanders of those who would lump us all into that same 60’s radical group think? (By the way, where do you fall on that time line. How did *your* generation do in that 2008 accounting?)
Voting is done by individuals – not groups.
I pressed the submit button too soon…
“…America probably needed more like 7 in 10 of this age group to have their heads screwed on straight to avoid our country’s slide into a possible decades long funk.”
Then tell me why it is, SteveH, that the boomer generation – all of us – gets saddled with this responsibility, yet the generation that preceded us earns the moniker “greatest generation”, though they were the ones who gave us the “Great Society”? And the generation before that – my grandparents generation – gave us the “New Deal”, which was arguably our first major excursion into socialism. Yet those two generations get a pass, while the generation who gave us Sarah Palin and Chris Christie and the first real push back against this creeping socialism continues to suffer the slings and arrows by people who think that because of our birth-date we are all Paul f#$king McCartney.
“”Then tell me why it is, SteveH, that the boomer generation – all of us – gets saddled with this responsibility,””
Roy
Roy, i never suggested all boomers. In fact i think i noted about half seemed to me to be the problem. But even a baseball player who has a stellar career but does it playing for .500 teams has to suffer through some criticism. That is the way the world is be it percieved as fair or not.
Roy said:
“For example: There’s this silly song called “Brand New Key”, by Melanie Safka that came out in 1972.”
Melanie has described herself as being ” a total Libertarian.”
As for me, let me make a pitch for the time of my own adolescence, the 1980s. If theres one thing I can relate to the boomers about, its that every time I hear some song from my teens . . . in my case the quirky, synth-crazy, melodic music of the ’80s, I do get a bit nostalgic. The ’80s, like the ’60s, had its own “British Invasion,” around ’83, and instead of Shindig, we had MTV, back when they truly were Music Television.
But the songs: “Our House,” “Hungry Like the Wolf,” “Every Breath You Take,” “Karma Chamelion,” “Sweet Dreams (are made of this)”, “She Blinded Me With Science,” “I Ran (So Far Away),” “Promises Promises,” “Don’t You Forget About Me,” “Burning Down the House,” . . . and Reagan in the White House. . . indeed, those were the days.
(For the record: yes, I am into a lot more music than ’80s synth-pop . . .including a lot of ’80s stuff that wasnt synth-heavy stuff. . . but I would be lying if I denied that hearing those old melodic songs doesnt make me feel good!)
J.L., I had to laugh when you mentioned “Karma Chamelion” because that’s another silly song that brings back a happy time whenever I hear it. I was in my 30’s and married when it came out, but still…
I hadn’t thought about Boy George in a long time. I wonder what became of him. (I guess that’s what Google is for…)
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SteveH, I’m not trying to beat you up about this, but I have to point out that I am not a member of any “team”, baseball or otherwise, just because of my birth-date.
And I will again ask you: Where do you fall on that time line. How did your age group do in that 2008 accounting that Neo linked to?
If you are older than 65, then congratulations, you are a member of the only demographic that is more conservative than the boomers. If you are younger than 45, then you are overdue for a dose of the slings and arrows you and your demographic have been throwing at us boomers. And if you are a boomer, well then, all I have to say about that is self-loathing is somewhat unbecoming.
Never mind, SteveH. I see now that you had posted your birth date in an earlier message.
I hadn’t thought about Boy George in a long time. I wonder what became of him.
The less asked, the better! LOL!!
But if youre curious, here are (really) two more recent pics of the forme Culture Club singer:
http://media.onsugar.com/files/images/boy_george.jpg
http://hastyruminations.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/boy_georgerosie.jpg
Yep, he’s probably missing the ’80s too.