Are You F’ing Kidding Me?!
Warning: I’m gonna cuss. So’s Ms. Miller-Heidke. Cover your children’s eyes and ears. Maybe the cat’s, too.
My parents were born in 1949 and 1951; they are Boomers. Like, hardcore Boomers. Dirty hippies, the both of ’em! (Actually they’re pretty well-groomed.) Growing up I heard a lot about the Age of the Boomers (or Aquarius). A lot. Like, a whole hell of a lot. Ugh, soooo much. The fucking 60s hung over my head like an apple just out of reach, but which managed to keep hitting me in the head anyway.
When I was finally old enough to do something about it, I rebelled against the 60s and everything they stood for… by doing drugs and going to protests. Probably in a Hendrix t-shirt. OK, so I’m not very good at rebelling. But fuck it, I felt really apathetic while I did drugs and went to protests, so take that, 60s!
Why am I telling you this? Like I need a reason to talk about myself. Come on, don’t ask silly questions.
Actually, I do have a reason. One day not so long ago, while I was wandering aimlessly around the web in a decidedly non-60s way, I stumbled upon this:
“The sixties were 50 years ago, you know? Get over it!” Yes! Yes, yes, yes! A thousand times yes! Fucking yes! (I told you I was going to cuss.) This may be the best Gen-X theme song ever:
Are you alright?
Pretty much.
Are you okay?
Pretty much.
You got your health?
Pretty much.
You know the way?
Pretty much.
You know your limit?
Pretty much.
You understand?
Pretty much.
Are you the man?
Pretty much, pretty much.
and:
I’m not gonna be polite anymore
Cause everybody’s got bad manners.
I’m not gonna make any plans anymore
Cause the works are full of spanners.
I’m not gonna meditate anymore
The revolution is off the agenda.
I’m a baby boomer’s daughter
And I’m never gonna reach nirvana.
Also, what the hell? Was she opera singing? On Congress Avenue? Yes she was, and I was in love — in a purely Platonic, music-fan sort of way.
So who is this Kate Miller-Heidke, and how does she understand me so well*? Turns out she’s a classically-trained (aren’t they all) song-writer from Australia, some placed called Brisbon, but spelled Brisbane (not as bad as Wuster, spelled Worcester). And she’s really talented. Plus, and this may be her most important trait (other than getting me), she has a sense of humor:
If there’s one thing I find really annoying about Boomers, it’s that they take them self soooooooo seriously, and think that their time was soooooooo important, what with its major advances in Civil Rights and ending the Vietnam War (in the 70s, damn they were slow; No Politics!). So I definitely appreciate artists who don’t take themselves too seriously.
That doesn’t mean she can’t be serious, of course. And it’s beautiful when she is:
Sometimes really serious:
But most of the time, ya just want to have fun, right?
If that doesn’t do it for you, try rocking, with the same song:
Or all accoustic-y:
These three versions are so different that I don’t feel at all bad posting all of them.
That guy killing it on the guitar, by the way, is her husband Keir Nuttal, also Australian, though he doesn’t do opera. He’s got his own band called Transport, with a sound straight out of the 90s, which weren’t the 60s, so that’s cool:
Anyway, I like his wife better:
Definitely better:
So, how much do you hate the 60s and Boomers? Got any good Generation X theme songs? Pop songs with opera singing?
You can see a lot more of K-M-H and her husband, including an interview, here.
*Adorno, in his writings about music, talks about how one of the ways we fetishize music is by thinking mass-produced music is speaking to us, individually, but Adorno was really popular among intellectuals in the 60s, so screw him!
This is great stuff, thanks for posting it.Report
You’re welcome. Glad you liked it.Report
The “Politics in Space” video is excellent, thanks for sharing this stuff. Though it’s quite dated at this point, Richard Hell’s “Blank Generation” is the earliest song I know of that captures that feeling of wanting to be a part of the counter-culture while simultaneously recognizing it’s aimlessness and futility:
More recently, I feel like OK Computer is basically an album-length ode to gen-X self-loathing, with lines like “concerned (but powerless) / an empowered and informed member of society (pragmatism not idealism) / will not cry in public / less chance of illness” delivered through a Speak-N-Spell, but it’s really about turning the angst inwards. I’m actually having a hard time digging something up that really hits the boomers where it hurts.Report
wanting to be a part of the counter-culture while simultaneously recognizing it’s aimlessness and futility
And of course the Pistols used “Blank Generation” as a template for “Pretty Vacant”, also in 1977. But the concept curdled even further 10 years on, in 1987 – I linked Replacements’ proto-slacker howl “Never Mind” here recently, but that song always struck me as an acknowledgment that, just as the hippies failed to change the fundamental human existential issues (namely, that we’re all alienated and alone) through their flower-power idealism, so had the punks failed with their fire-breathing nihilism, and now all that was left to us was apathy (“All over but the shouting, just a waste of time“). The only bit of true human community left to us was that classic “at least we’re all f*cked together” line: “And I suppose your guess, is more or less as bad as mine.”
And that uncertain line, seems almost to echo one from 1967. In one of the many Lou Reed tributes recently, I stumbled across the observation that for all Reed’s way with words and images, his most enduring and perversely-eloquent statement may have been “And I guess, that I just don’t know.”
I’m not much of a fan of OK Computer, but the fact that it came out in 1997 makes a neat symmetry here. What do we have from 2007 to continue the run? 🙂Report
What do we have from 2007 to continue the run?
Neon Bible?
For all of their overhypedness, The Arcade Fire do a pretty good job of talkin’ about the angst-inducing aspects of the modern world. This is not from Neon Bible, but yeah:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awHWColYQ90&noredirect=1Report
I’m a bit on the fence about AF, but I did like this comment on the new album I ran across over at AVClub.
Sound of Silver was 2007 – inasmuch as “All My Friends” has a little bit of “Once In A Lifetime” in its DNA, it’s got a bit of that “alienation in the modern world”, but more from a personal history/universal “growing up” perspective, not so much a social/cultural one.Report
Coincidentally, Dito Montiel’s “1987” just popped up on my mp3 player. Unfortunately, I can’t find a video, but you can hear it here. Definitely appropriate. “You gotta believe in something in 1987.”Report
I was moments away from posting Blank Generation!Report
Right there with you, Chris. Though I have to say, I’m pretty down with a lot of Boomer music. If they could just limit their self-congratulation to the perfectly defensible claim that the best of their music pretty much clearly bestrides the rest of American pop music (certainly that which followed it) like a colossus, (This music did have the advantage of being born out of the first wave of real development and experimentation in rock music after its invention, it should be noted – everything thereafter had to contend in various ways with that formative era.), I’d be cool with Boomer chauvinism. But as you say, it goes so, so much further. To the point where you just have to look away. So that’s what I do.
Anyway. I also propose that this post becomes the first in an occasional series here under the same title, which authors can take up as needed to deal with subjects appropriate for the title. Because the title of this post is, as they say on the Golf Channel, …useful.Report
Candlemass is one of those Swedish metal bands that I asked to listen to when my dear friends said “I want to listen to my music rather than your crappy Boomer crap.”
The lead singer (“Messiah Marcolin”… that’s the 80’s metal scene for you) uses an operatic style.
Though I could see how someone could say it’s more “Meatloaf” than “Opera”.
http://youtu.be/-3uvf0cn0jo
I have dear friends who would explain, at length, the differences between, say, Black Metal, Death Metal, Thrash Metal, Doom Metal, and on and on and on and on. To the point where I feel I need to point out that this is Doom Metal.Report
I read this comment at the gym this morning, and then spent the whole bus ride to work thinking about it, and I’ve come to the conclusion that metal really is the purest form of anti-60s rebellion. I mean, punk was more a response to the 70s, and its solution was to go back to the 50s, which is silly, and grunge was basically rebelling against the 60s by trying to emulate them, but with a mood disorder. Hip hop might be seen as a rebellion against the 60s if it didn’t constantly sample the 60s and throw in R&B hooks between the rapping. But metal, even if it has its origins in late 60s rock, is pure anti-60s in spirit. Add opera singing, and you’ve reached anti-60s perfection.
Also, that’s Doom Metal? I’ve never been able to sort out the differences.Report
I looked up “Doom Metal” on Wiki, and apparently the subgenres I like are “Stoner Doom” (Kyuss, Sleep, Electric Wizard) and “Drone Doom” (Earth, Boris).
I’m holding out for “Doomstep”.Report
Wait, Kyuss is Doom Metal, subgenre Stoner Doom? I guess in the early/mid 90s I was a fan of Stoner Doom.Report
According to wiki. I thought they were just “stoner rock” (which wiki does note has a lot of crosssover/popped up around the same time). But I guess the common element to all “doom” is the downtuned/sludgy/Sabbath-y guitars.
Hey, someone should write a post about that….Report
If the WWII generation was America’s greatest generation, the Boomers are its worst generation.
And let’s keep in mind that simple math tells us there’s nothing wrong with Social Security and Medicare that wouldn’t be solved by elimination of all the Boomers. (No politics! It’s ok, that’s just math.)Report
For the most part, your individual Boomer is just fine. For instance, my parents are Boomers, and I like them. It’s when they’re considered as a whole that they get bothersome.
Most Boomers I know do not wax rhapsodic about a 1960’s that I always suspected was the embellished version and rare have been the Boomers I’ve encountered who really did. “The 60’s were awesome, man!” is a media meme, just as much as the aging long-haired hippie who won’t shut up about how awesome the 60’s were, man.Report
With my parents, it was more that the life of the 50s and the 60s was an ideal, and it was certainly an ideal, that the life of Gen-Xers simply count’t reach. It wasn’t so much, “Wow, the 60s were so awesome, man!” as just a constant reminder that the life of the 60s is how things are supposed to be. And it wasn’t just my parents, it was pretty much everyone, including the media. This is youth! This is activism! This is progress! This is what world-changing events look like*! This is music! This is the 60s!
*Before 9/11/2001, what sorts of world-changing events did we have in our lives that compared to the Kennedy assassination, the Civil Rights movement, MLK’s assassination, the second Kennedy assassination, the Vietnam War, and the Counter Culture with its Woodstock?Report
Uh, Chris, how about the collapse of communism?Report
I should say, then, nothing happened here.
I mean, Vietnam may have been over there, but it was also over here. The wall going down? That was entirely over there. It had an impact on us, but only over time, and still from a distance. Same with the coup in the Soviet Union. I mean, I can vaguely remember Peter Jennings talking about what was happening in the Soviet Union when the coup attempt was underway, and I remember seeing video of tanks in Red Square, but it’s not a Flashbulb Memory moment for me.
Same goes for the day we began to bomb Bagdad in the Gulf War. It’s not a good sign when the way the event was covered, and what it meant for news coverage from that point on, is as memorable as the event itself.Report
And let’s keep in mind that simple math tells us there’s nothing wrong with Social Security and Medicare that wouldn’t be solved by elimination of all the Boomers. (No politics! It’s ok, that’s just math.)
Well, in the sense that if the Boomers simply disappeared the trust fund surplus they paid for would last longer. Chart B in this document from the Trustees tells a different story: even after the Boomers are gone, the expenses remain at a level higher than revenues. The real math problem goes like this. When Congress implemented the Greenspan Commission plan in 1983/4, the base on which the payroll tax applied was almost exactly 90% of earned income. The purpose for the increasing salary cap was to keep on taxing 90% of the country’s earned income. The formula was flawed, or at least, it didn’t account for the possibility that increases in earned income wouldn’t be uniformly distributed across income levels. The tax base is, today, down to about 80% of earned income, and continues to drop. If the tax base had continued to cover 90% of earned income, the economy has done so well on average for the last 30 years that the Trust Fund would be embarrassingly large and we would be discussing modest decreases in the tax rate rather than solvency.Report
That’s good to know, but seriously, no politics!Report
Michael,
I just mean that this huge generation that is expected to be our longest-lived generation to date would no longer be an outflow expense to be borne.
But I’m not actually advocating that, so it’s not politics!Report
Man, that Transport song sounds familiar. Maybe it just sounds like Blur or Franz Ferdinand or something.
Here’s a song that, although its references were specifically “80s”, seemed directed at the revived spirit of the Boomers:
That song is just so snotty and juvenile, you gotta bust it out once in a while.Report
The whole Transport album is familiar like that (I’d never heard them until I started writing this post, and listened to the whole thing a couple things over the weekend). I was trying to pick out a 90s band that it sounded like, and I couldn’t, because it sounds like them all.
Also, Faith No More is probably the best example of Gen-X snottiness. It’s not a coincidence that the guys who gave us Faith No More gave us Mr. Bungle. Oh, and I was playing GTA: San Andreas recently, and the Radio X DJ gave me this little gem:
“If old people keep harassing me at family gatherings asking me about the music of today, and the rock of today, what I tell them is three words: ‘Faith. No. More.’ And then I get drunk.”
Exactly.Report
This version of FNM is pre-Patton – Chuck Mosley was rumored to have been given the boot for, variously, narcolepsy or drug problems.
Weirdly, Courtney Love was also briefly FNM’s vocalist. Speaking of drug problems.Report
Courtney Love was FNM’s vocalist for a time? I did not know that, and for some reason it has absolutely blown my mind.Report
So, how much do you hate the 60s and Boomers?
Remember, we kill X’ers children and use their blood to make lava lamps.Report
Lava Lamp Libel!Report
Mike, just in case it’s not clear, I don’t really hate the 60s, or Boomers. In a sense, I and just about everyone I know my age has spent most of their lives emulating them. The drugs and protests in a Hendrix t-shirt thing was only partly a joke.Report
I feel your pain, mostly while remembering English teachers I had in High School. However, just imagine having parents who were squares in the 60s and who were overjoyed when Reagan came along and then spent three decades acting like every issue was Reagan vs. Carter all over again. Yeesh!Report
I now have a smile from the Facebook Song that may last me all day long.
“Click Like!”Report
Oh, I’m very glad you liked it.Report
Did she come to SXSW this year? Is she coming next year? Will she be doing non-SXSW shows during it? If yes on the last one, you better fucking tell me when she shows up.Report
She wasn’t SXSW this year, and she’s just touring Down Under right now, but she’s got a new album, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see her at SXSW this March, or coming here on tour by spring. I will definitely let you know if she’s coming. I’m on her mailing list.Report
Gen X theme song: Once in a lifetime. I think we were the first generation not expected to have the quality of life of our parents.
Opera-ish singing (not really opera) that I’ve thought of through a couple of threads now would be from Lena Lovich.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mSWYiRkOqQReport