When I had the job in the toy store where I pushed a broom up and down aisles and straightened the Barbie section, I was somewhere around sixteen. My manager turned twenty-five and I made fun of him for it. “A quarter of a century, huh?”
The fifteen year-old joined in. So did the seventeen year-old. He, playfully, told us all to shut the heck up.
That was a million years ago.
Anyway, I am now on a team with a couple of Millennials and a member of Generation Z (apparently called “Zoomers”). We were killing time in one of the labs with my Gen X co-worker and they started talking smack about us being old. The line that did the most damage:
“Did you have a Def Leppard t-shirt?”
And, while I never had a Def Leppard t-shirt, that line drew blood on me. (I did have a WrestleMania III t-shirt.)
And now I am thinking of other good lines that the Millennials and Zoomers could use to bust on Gen-Xers.
“Did you buy Alanis Morrissette on tape or on CD?”
That was the best one that I could come up with. My answer? On tape. I wanted to listen to it in the car, you see, and if you hit a bump while playing cds in the car, they’d skip like a record.
So, this weekend, I will be boggling at how, holy cow, it’s 2019 already. We’ve got a number of events scheduled. Saturday Night Regularly Scheduled Game Night. Friday Night Housewarming for Zoomer co-worker. Chores, errands, laundry.
So… what’s on your docket?
(Featured image is “Heavy Metal: TDK MA-R90 Cassette Tape” by Scott Schiller. Used under a creative commons license.)
A confession: the *ACTUAL* question was “Did you have a Bush t-shirt?”
But I didn’t think that that was funny enough. Did you mean the band or the President and if the latter which one? Gen-X co-worker told me that I should use the real question because my artistic license made it a little too “on the nose”.
Who was right?Report
It occurs to me upon reading this that a far better answer to the question, “Did you have a Def Leppard tshirt?” would have been (and this is the truth), “No, but have you seen the sleeveless Union Jack shirt that the lead singer wears in all the videos for the songs on the Pyromania album? I had one of those.”
In the ’80s when Def Leppard were at the height of their powers, I wasn’t one who could afford to go see them in concert. Now? I’ve seen Def Leppard in concert twice (they’re pretty damn good, still) along with various bands who’ve opened for them, including Tesla, Poison (meh, their music hasn’t aged well), Styx, and REO Speedwagon. And I do wear the Def Leppard shirt I bought.
This is one of the great things about being Gen X.Report
What is more fascinating is who opens for whom now. I wonder if it changes depending on the venue? I will have to investigate.Report
Hmmm…I’ve got some bands mixed up there and I’m not sure where…the two times I’ve seen them, it’s been Tesla—-Def Leppard and Tesla–Poison–Def Leppard.Report
Never had a Def Leppard t-shirt; never wanted one. We were into Judas Priest, The Scorpions, and Blue Oyster Cult back then (and not BOC’s top 40 stuff either).
I have no real plans for the weekend, but now I’m thinking about a good session of YouTube deejaying. Also, I finally got the vacuum cleaner fixed, so I should probably do some cleaning.Report
Yeah, Def Leppard was always borderline pop, especially with Hysteria. I’m seeing Priest in June. Saw them three years ago, and they put on a hell of a show.Report
(Last time I rummaged through my older brothers CD’s I found the album that preceded Hysteria. Mildly surprising, but then I remembered that he is of the Night Ranger generation.)Report
Judas Priest…we wore out Ram It Down back in the day (their cover of Johnny B. Goode was a particular favorite off that album). Scorpions is another band that I feel hasn’t aged well, but I suspect I’m in the minority with that opinion.Report
They’re the perfect generations for YouTube gym fail videos. That and given that I get to observe these generations when I go lift, they can hate on the fact that I still listen to Def Leppard while I ask them if they got their arms out of a box of spaghetti.Report
Sounds like we ran in different musical circles… I will neither confirm nor deny that I ever owned a Smiths t-shirt (mostly because I honestly can’t remember, not being a t-shirt guy). I might have given Gladiolas to a girlfriend or two (and can report less than stellar results); but then, I’m not sure that I’d feel all that burned; more likely I’d launch into a Musical Intellectual History lecture on the importance of Alt-80s bands on in genealogy of Irony in music… until they all voluntarily left my lawn.
Now, if they were somehow to ask about sock ties I might have to wander off murmuring things about work that needed to get done.Report
“The Lost Boys Soundtrack pretends that it’s goth, but it’s not goth. It’s not goth at all.”Report
Heh…(no politics)
Robert Smith [lead for The Cure], 2011Report
Disintegration was the best album ever.Report
That was my younger brother’s signature album… I think I hit peak Cure with Head on the Door.
But then I was always on the high-irony side of things… Marr rather than Morrissey – preferring the songs that clip along incongruously to the lyrics.Report
HE DOESN’T RHYME!
My cohorts purchased copies of Bona Drag on cassette (natch) and cut out the picture of Morressey from the liner art and pasted the picture over their school ID picture.
Anyway, here’s Hippiechick.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILaTgQBKRbEReport
“Contrary to rumour, The Smiths didn’t sue Soho – they didn’t need to as Johnny Marr, The Smiths guitarist, was happy to receive 25% of the song’s royalties. The ‘Hippychick’ riff was originally recorded by Bo Diddley (on a track called ‘Hey Mona’) but Marr ripped off the Rolling Stones’ version of the song, although neither were credited on The Smiths’ version.”
And dang if they aren’t right… especially the Rolling Stones version.Report