Baby Boomers celebrate anniversary of their own world again; news at 11

The BBQ Pit
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In this thread begun by ccwaterback celebrating the celebration of the anniversary of rock ‘n’ roll, SDMB guest alison ashley asks

I tried to answer, but I found there was much more venom in my response than Cafe Society normally permits. Nothing against cc or alison, for they are not the targets here, but permit me to transfer my response to the Pit.
How about we focus on the living rather than the dying or dead?

Not to disagree with your general premise here, but how would you think it best to do this?

I’m 32 years old, what must be called a “Generation X-er” by those parts of the media that give a damn about labeling entire generations with handy monikers. I have to admit I am sick to death of the constant celebrations in the media of anniversaries and events and artists only significant to the Baby Boomers. Oh dear, it’s the 35th ½ anniversary of the festival of Woodstock, let us all broadcast 24-hour-a-day reminiscences of the same damn footage we’ve been showing since dirt was brand new, and then get some sun-creased reefer fiends to comment on the remembrance footage from the 34th ½ anniversary commentary we showed last year. Oh my, it’s time for the “where were you when JFK toked up?” retrospective. Let’s all gather 'round the Magnavox and watch the reunion of 30-year-old television shows, and then let’s put on some Beatles music and remember fondly when we were the center of the universe. Wait, we still are.

Despite this, if one is trying to celebrate the anniversary of rock ‘n’ roll, I’m not sure how one does this without celebrating its pioneers. The people who live and play today, the ones on the frontier creating new music and new sounds and new messages, they’re being celebrated every day in the media. Come see Kiddd’d G’tarr, the new grunge/pop/urban star out of Popsicle, Arkansas, a must see event! And don’t forget about that one blonde singer with the questionably real breasts who shakes her moneymaker during soda commercials! Wait, no, not that blonde singer, I meant the other blonde allegedly teenaged pop star, the one with the seventeen navel rings and tattoos on the inside of her pancreas! Watch them now, dammit! Now! You needn’t eat! Call Ticketmaster!

The truth of the matter, as I see it, is that the Boomer generation is seeing its media focus dwindle daily and, for the first time in their lives, they are no longer the 800-pound gorilla darling of the media world. Okay, they’re still 600 pounds, but sort of anemic now and walking with an ankle brace, when the weather isn’t too bad, and only if those electric shopping carts are all taken. They are seeing themselves fade—commercials that feature Boomers today are no longer the young, vibrant, flashback-inducing palette of dangerous rock ‘n’ roll played over rotating fly-eye camera filters, but the commercials that begin with ‘if you think Emesis is for you, please consult your doctor.’ I actually read in a market-focused boomer magazine that they are complaining that they are no longer the primary focus of television and newspapers and they want their screen time back. Sorry, and I love my mother dearly, but no dice: I’ve been living in the Boomer shadow all my life and I don’t foresee this ending until the day the last tottering, diaper-wearing V-E Day souvenir trips over a roller skate during a heroin speedball rush, along about the time I’m 70.

And on that day, every network will run the long-prepared The Last Baby Boomer retrospective. Fifty years after that, you won’t be able to move for Boomer Widow obituaries, like the Confederate War Widows today.

So no, we don’t need another grueling exploration of the lives of the baby boomers, as seen from the perspective of the musical revolution which they were present to witness only by virtue of being lucky enough to squeeze out in time between grandma’s thighs. You want to celebrate the anniversary of rock music, you’d damn well better celebrate all of it, not just those portions of it which appeal to the aging revolutionary who can’t quite comprehend that John and George are, like, way out there.

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I wish I could tell whose side you were on here. I can’t decide if you’re pissed at us Boomers for reliving our youth in perpetuity, or if you’re defending us.

For the record, according to some websites’ date ranges, I am the Official Last Baby Boomer - born on December 31, 1964.

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Harumph. Puppy.

4

Woof.

5

Piss on celebrating “all of it.” There hasn’t been any decent music since the advent of ©rap. All you young’uns are Godless Communist Heathens! Eric Clapton is God! Free Huey! Don’t trust anyone under 30!

Damn kids hid my remote again! Buncha trouble-makers…mutter…mutter…

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LifeonWry, I’m a musician. I play three instruments passably well, and I understand and appreciate the history of rock music. I’ve no objections to celebrating it. I just don’t want it to turn into yet another excuse to pander to the baby boomer generation. This isn’t the fault of the boomers, against whom I have nothing, but of the media, which whores itself out to broadcast programs that celebrate my parents’ generation with the regularity of a kitchy cat-clock.

It’s the same media which hysterically insists that every preadolescent wailer with less wardrobe than talent is tomorrow’s superstar.

Whose side am I on? Good music, of any generation. The music should speak for itself.

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I don’t think you and I (b. 1961) really belong in the Boomer demographic, because the defining events for that generation (Vietnam, Woodstock, Watergate) we were too young for. Sure, we were the tail end of the population spike that defines the Boomers, but that’s all stuff that means a lot more to my mom (b. 1943) than to me. The Beatles and the Doors were ancient history to me in my teens–the soundtrack of my youth includes Van Halen, the Cars, the Ramones, and the Sex Pistols. Live-Aid has more meaning to me than Woodstock does.

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Oh, hell, phish…sorry, Fish…you got any idea how many times some chucklewit tried to make me listen to the drum solo in In-A-Gadda-da-Vida? You ever hear of Strawberry Alarm Clock? Hair?

We paid for our sins. Clapton has forgiven us.

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I have very little claim to any kind of notoriety, gobear. Let me have this one.

It’s… it’s…

it’s all I’ve got. <whimper>

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You got class, podnuh. What the hell you need with notoriety?

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No, yes, and yes. I think I know music from 1955-1975 better than I know the stuff I grew up with. It’s good music, but please don’t make me listen to “Stairway to Heaven” again.

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As one of the first BBs (1946), let me note a few points for you:

No BB has yet reached 60, let alone mandatory retirement age.
We are not yet collecting Social Security due to age.
As a group, we are better educated than our parents’ generation.
As a group, we are healthier than our parents were at this age.
Most of us are still working, and many of us are at our peak of earning power.
As a group we have more money than you do.
Not only that, but most of us have already raised any children we intend to raise, and have more disposable income.
There are more of us than there are of you, you whippersnappers.
We intend to live to be very, very old.
Deal with it.

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This is one point where you’re wrong. You should have written “events and artists only significant to people other than Fish.” I’m not a Baby Boomer but love music from throughout the 20th and 21st Centuries, much of which is very significant to me. It isn’t a generational thing, it’s a music thing. Don’t take it so personally.

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What is your point, MLS? I’ve nothing against baby boomers, just the endless fucking broadcast/print retrospectives that are inevitably geared toward them. Am I going to have to wait until you’re all dead before I can turn on the television and not hear about you guys?

Your generation, like every one before and after, has achieved great things, perpetrated unthinkable atrocities, and enacts small miracles on a daily basis. I would be foolish to say otherwise. But must we only celebrate the boomer generation, ad nauseum, in every medium, every day?

Don’t answer that—I realize it isn’t your fault that the media does this. Because you have grown up as being the center of the media’s attention, you may not even be aware how much focus you have. Trust me—it’s annoying as hell.

I know what I meant, Live Better Electrically!. I have no problem ignoring the Country Music Awards, for instance, or Matrix: Reloaded, or Sex in the City, or Survivor, or any other media event which falls off of my personal radar. This isn’t about me being ignored, but everyone being ignored systematically if they weren’t born the right years. I’m a musician, as I said; I can and do play music from 1910 to the present. I’m all about the music, not just the stuff that came out in 1960. Somehow, that’s all the media seems to think is important.

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I’m in the BB generation, but I was born in 1958. First off, to my mind, that puts me in a completely different generation from MLS, who was born in 1946. The fact is, we didn’t all arrive on the scene at the same instant, listen to the same music, and share the same attitudes. I will admit that my very, very conservative parents forced me into a more confrontational stance regarding such things as hair, music, and clothes (not so much), that I found myself philosophically aligned with the older members of the BB group.

Still, the experience of people who came of age in the 1970s was different from those who reached maturity in the 1960s. What I dislike about the “boomer media phenomenon” is that it’s such a stereotype. And as for “dangerous rock’n’roll”, I can think of at least one example of a commercial where it’s still being used, thus implying that anyone in my age cohort refuses to listen to anything recorded after 1973. I refer, of course, to the Led Zeppelin music being played ad nauseum on those cadillac commercials. The fact is, most BB’s can’t afford an Escalade, and many of us actually do listen to more recent music. Even a little rap, some of us.

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True. I blame Bush.

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It’s not like the older BBs didn’t experience the same disregard by the established media. Radio, TV, and, until the late 1950s music, were entirely skewed toward the WWII generation…not us, but our parents. Given the typical TV offerings of the era, you could argue that much of it was culturally focused on a time decades before. The various late-night movie offerings were usually older movies featuring the likes of Joan Crawford and Bette Davis; this sort of thing was common until the 1970s.

The point is, every generation coming up has to live through this. It may be more extreme in this case, because there are so many of us, but it will pass. It will pass.

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Maybe I’m just more likely to notice, Spectre, because your generation was given a handy handle.

My generation was only given a label because someone thought that generations suddenly needed them. But we’re just as fragmented and hard to define as the boomers. Sheesh, if the BB generation is from 1944 to 1964, that’s a hell of a lot of ground to cover with the abitrary label of a single demographic.

I don’t envy the boomers their childhood, growing up with Mom and Dad’s music and trying to carve out an identity. But since we’ve been seeing the 40th anniversary of the assassination of JFK, the 40th anniversary of the first appearance of the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show, and the 40th anniversary of Mike Shannon’s home run off of Whitey Ford in the 1964 World Series and God only knows what else, I don’t think this 'un is coming to an end any time soon. TV needs to get over itself.

If anything, I think I’m most frustrated at the laziness implicit in “baby boom” shows, as if it’s a magic key to increased Nielsen ratings.

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Well, I was born in 1986, and I feel like just as big an advertising/entertainment target as my boomer parents. And trust, the things being geared towards us are just as inane as VH1’s 24/7 “I Love The 70s Strikes Back For The Fifth Time With Fury For Great Justice”-a-thon. My mom, born in '57, and I can sit on the couch and roll our eyes at programming intended for us in unison, and with about the same frequency.

The Baby Boomers may hold all the dollars right now, but they’re doling out dollars to my generation enough to make us count, too! Bless.

Sorry, Gen X, but take solace in the fact that in a few years we’ll be hearing nothing but Pulp Fiction cast reunions and Nirvana retrospectives. Oh wait.

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I have to admit, the few times that I notice I find it annoying how much attention is given to Baby Boomers.

I was born in 1960 and I think being between the really huge publicized generations gave me the opportunity to work out music for myself without worrying too much what my peers were listening to. And I was of that generation that knew the music preferred by my friends’ older brothers and sisters: CSNY, Jimi Hendrix (who transcends all kinds of categories), the Dead. And I got an appreciation for folk music, especially David Bromberg. We had the Sex Pistols and Saturday Night Fever almost simultaneously.

You know what? I like what I like, and my own generation be damned. I don’t currently spend a lot of time listening to the music that was popular when I was in high school. I listen to new music, and most of that is made by people younger than I am now.