Born in 1961 but, my parents Records included Dave Brubeck and Pete Seeger. My folks were pretty subversive.
It seems easier, cheaper, and more convenient than ever before for anyone today who cares about, say, classical Chinese music, to go online and gain an encyclopedic knowledge of it. Same for classic rock, rap, or whatever. So, if anything, I would argue that the younger generation has a better knowledge of “older” anything.
I’m not a Van Halen nutswinger or anything, but they are not an '80s hair metal band and they had commercial relevance at least through the '90s via the Van Hagar version and still commanded plenty of press and attention with their DLR reunion and subsequent recording and tours. EVH at least for some time was considered the best current guitarist and way up there in discussions as an all-time great, DLR was everywhere throughout the 80s, and Sammy is a celeb (and accomplished musician and entrepreneur) in his own right with and without the brothers. Even to the extent they would get lumped in with '80s hair bands (though their output preceded and outlasted that genre) no one would refer to them as a “random” one.
The number of people who get it when I say: “The answer is 42, you just have to figure out what the question is” is dwindling compared to those who got it in the '80’s and 90’s.
Not about a movie, but from a movie that I can’t remember the name of. I worked with a guy in his twenties who lead a very sheltered life because of his Mom. We were talking about a movie in which a dorky white guy gets into a rap battle in a black club and is doing well until he pulls up the hood on his jacket and it’s a cone. My co-worker said it was funny because the white guy looked like a Conehead the the black audience was scared of Coneheads! :smack: Gobsmacked, I corrected him and said it was because he looked like he was in the KKK. My co-worker had no clue what the KKK is! 
At least for me, the power of the internet has caused me to lose knowledge of “newer” things that I have no interest in because I’m able to find so much about things that do interest me. Last week, three Hollywood celebrities, Ryan Reynolds, Mélanie Laurent, & Adria Arjona (had to look up their names) appeared on my favorite Korean variety show. Of the three, the only one I recognized was Ryan Reynolds. I know his name and face, but have no idea of any movie he’s appeared in.
“Don’t call me Shirley!” 
In a similar vein, and even older, when DesertWife and I were active in the Libertarian party the county organization was putting on the state convention one year. We wanted the Saturday banquet to be memorable but were struggling to bring it in under budget, food-wise. Somebody on the committee made a quip about loaves and fishes and everybody laughed but one fellow who had no clue what it meant. His parents were free spirits* and apparently he’d been exposed to Christian stories even less than the rest of us heathens.
*Both were the basis for two characters in On the Road.
He’s not wrong…
You do realize that if ABITW came out during your adolescence, so did Frank Sinatra’s *New York, New York *? Both came out in 1979.
More more-or-less forgotten history:
One of the last Traditional Pop songs (if not the last) to chart was “Hello, Dolly!” by Louis Armstrong, which was the number three song of 1964, behind the Beatles’ “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and “She Loves You”.
“The Ballad of the Green Berets” isn’t even a novelty song these days. It’s almost completely forgotten. It was number one for five weeks in 1966. It’s up there with “California Dreamin’” by The Mamas and the Papas for being the top song of the year.
The younger generations don’t know all of the old stuff. The older people don’t remember all of it, judging by what’s made it into the Consensus History of the Rock Era. It’s lucky if the next generation knows the high points of the previous era, as the era recedes into the past, the high points become fewer and fewer. We can sum up whole eras in a few works, once they’re distant enough.
I’m sorry, but that’s rubbish. *One *Sex Pistols concertprobably spawned more worthwhile bands than the entire Ramones oeuvre.
And the only two of those *most *young people might know or care about are *Carrie *and Rocky. And only because of the CGM redo and Creed, respectively. “Culturally important” is a moving target.
I think this is an inborn predator reflex.
Now, if you played Madonna to a bunch of *Malawian *children…
Of course as time goes on people know less about previous decades. Time is limited and the amount of new stuff is large and being made at a faster rate than the old classics.
How much do most adults know about jazz, silent movies or classical music? Not so much. Same idea.
The Sex Pistols was a boy band created by Malcolm McLaren.
He turfed Glen Matlock out in favor of Sid Vicious purely for the image of the thing, and then proceeded to fuck around with them until the whole thing ended up in court. All over a band with precisely one real album.
Doesn’t make (some of) them) not real musicians, and at least one of them was brilliant at doing what he did - as evidenced by the greatness that is PIL.
Also doesn’t make them any less influential.
How much knowledge did younger generations in the '70s have of ‘30s music and entertainment? I suspect more young adults today would recognize ‘Another Brick in the Wall’ than young adults in the 70s would recognize "Puttin’ On the Riz" by Fred Astaire (this was before the 80s cover) or more socially conscious songs from that time like “Strange Fruit” by Billie Holiday or Lead Belly’s “The Bourgeois Blues”.
So did you correct them and point out that an album is a collection of multiple 78rpm records stored in a single book of folders, much like a photo album? Or did you stick to the newfangled format that you grew up with, where an album was a single 33rpm record stored in a cardboard sleeve, with only the occasional ‘double album’ or ‘boxed set’ containing more than one record? I’m guessing you tend to stick to the definition of album that was current when you grew up instead of the older one.
As I said, Rock is still a popular genre, whereas Traditional Pop isn’t. Therefore, good Rock songs hang in there, and good Traditional Pop songs fade out, and were fading out as early as the 1970s.
Counterpoint: More stores around me specialize in selling vinyl than CDs. The CD store is a general tchotchke store which has a few racks of CDs, whereas the vinyl stores either sell only vinyl or sell vinyl and CDs. Also, Barnes & Noble, a major chain bookstore, sells vinyl now, although I don’t know if it did when this post I’m replying to now was made.
OK, so you’re saying that you agree that the generation that was the ‘younger generation’ in the 1970s had significantly less knowledge of ‘older’ music than what qualifies as the ‘younger generation’ to them now? That’s the question asked by the thread, after all, and you seem to be agreeing that Boomers defnitely qualify as having less than the ones that are ‘younger’ now. That they aren’t as interested in traditional pop as people today are in rock is true, but isn’t really relevant to the amount of knowledge of older music.
Also Billie Holiday is generally considered ‘Jazz’ (which often gets lumped into R&B) and Lead Belly is solidly in the ‘blues’ category, neither of which are Traditional Pop, so I’m not really sure what the decline of popularity of Traditional Pop has to do with those songs being unfamiliar to the young adults of the 70s.
I believe we were discussing the effect on the younger generation 