Gen X cynicism is a hand-me-down albeit more intensified and "what about
me" attitude from the Baby Boom generation.
>>Tera
>
>Then why didn't the Velvet Underground sell more records??
>Lance . . .
>
A good and rarely made point from Tera--as far as it goes--and a reasonable
question from Lance.
First off-the Velvets were on a label unprepared to sell anything to
anybody in the entire rock and roll arena (they couldn't sell people like
the Stonemans in country either)--but also, no doubt about it, the STYLE in
which the Velvets expressed the. uh, dark side, certainly was out of
keeping with the moment on the broad level. A few Eastern cranks (like
myself for one) might have bought those records--and even played some of
'em on the same radio programs as Gram Parsons (I'm, uh, guilty there
too!)...but the style so broadly beloved later was largely against the
grain.
So point proven, right--the audience of 1969 were therefore all spoiled
fuckin hippies obnoxious Pollyana sunshiney fake "love" promoters with
irony deficiency anemia, who knew nothing about life--unlike the
generation to follow who would be born with natural perspective , hard
knocks realism, and louder speaker banks.
But NO!
You have to be able to see irony in places where it's not dog-marked with
today's style, and therefore obvious in retrospect; you have to deal with
a time and place that actually were different, and styles that reflected
that difference--and maybe explore it as an interesting undiscovered
country.
We've been through this on P2 before--with post '82 hardcore punkers
automatically offering the expected opinions about that awful "hippie"
Jefferson Airplane, for instance--cause that's the take now, influenced by
that truly awful latter-day Starship which had nothing to do with them at
all. Get past the labels and listen with fresh ears--and you can
rediscover that they, sticking with the example, were the dark,
intellectual and cynical band of the tim, --though those attributes did NOT
then prevent anybody from suggesting the possibilities of either politics
or even some hard-won love. It was 1969, not 1999, and there were smart
people and shallow ones afoot then too. White Rabbit is not a hippie song
about bunnies, as someone here actually once called it--but one that begins
"When the truth is found to be LIES..and all of the joy, inside you
DIES..." And they'd really smash those chords, and the clashing harmonies
that resulted --obvious on certain cuts of "After Bathing at Baxters" that
followed just months later--are absolutely the pattern built on by X some
years later.
So the unpleasant truth for boomers and X'ers and Y'ers alike is that
evolution keeps on evolving--and the radical breaks each of these groups
imagine are their "accomplishment" are often not that radical in
retrospect.--whether that's pleasant to swallow or not.
I've come to a firm belief that Boomer Bashing is surviving now as the
nostalgia of today's 30 somethings. Who are getting a little long in the
tooth for it themselves!
And basically--who gives a damn what they call alt.country--which I believe
has been there as long as country has.
Barry M.
