Please don't offend snowflake boomers

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By not including the 90s I think you are going to piss off a lot of Gen-X fans of the alt-rock and "grunge" music of that era, which to my understanding is generally considered a version of rock.

In particular, I am wondering if a band like Rammstein should be thought archaic because, although they arose in the 90s, they are still producing highly relevant work and still have some influence over folks under 40.


Although "dead" may be hyperbole, it does raise some interesting questions about white people in general and also the USA in particular.

Regarding white people, I can distinctly recall the backlash against Disco in the late 70s as an expression of white resistance to non-white influence in popular culture. In fact, Rock (as opposed to "Rock'n'Roll") has arguably been the theme music for white experience over the last 60 years at least, ironic because of its black origins but I believe Rock turned its back on its black origins decades ago. It's no coincidence that somebody like Rush Limbaugh uses "classic rock" as the intro music for his radio show. If Rock is dead or dying, then that tells me that White culture as a dominant force in the US is probably also dying, which is fine by me because I think it's high time somebody else got a chance (and in fact I think this is coming about at a far greater speed than "traditional" media understand).

As for the USA, clinging to Rock as the only "respectable" form of popular music and rejecting genres popular in Europe and elsewhere, for example Techno and a lot of other things I've never personally heard of, as well as the fact that the sort of "club culture" found in Europe is almost unknown in the US, has been a major cultural discriminator between the US and the rest of the Western world (sorry but not sure where Canada fits into all of this). So the decline of Rock, if real, could also signal the decline of the US as a dominant cultural force elsewhere in the world.

A part of “Boomer Music” anyways
Cock Rock


I disagree that the “Boomer Music” of Fleetwood Mac, James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon, Heart, Joan Jett, Gary Numan and other new wavers promotes toxic masculinity. In other words if you have met one boomer, you have met one boomer.

It should also be pointed out that toxic masculinity in music predates rock and roll. Does the “Rat Pack” ring a bell?Rock and Roll just continued the perviously existing gender roles in music


Rock and Roll made things more explicit otherwise despite all the rebelliousness as the iconic boomer rock band The Who noted “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss”

The thread is about boomers so why not focus on boomer music?

The anti disco backlash of the late 1970s was a later boomer generation thing so it is somewhat related. Going back to toxic masculinity there was a significant homophobic element to it. The music was born in gay and black clubs. To say that it was a racist and homophobic phenomenon only oversimplifies things. There was over saturation and the ensuing dumbing down of the music, synth music and music produced for DJ’s not live bands was brand new, Celebrity disco Studio 54 the most famous disco of all time and Bands with names such Chic and Evelyn “Champaign” King gave a perception of elitism to the whole thing. What factors predominated in causing the backlash still causes angry online arguments, that is a reflection of our times.

We'll have to agree to disagree somewhat on this. It takes racism to inspire people to publicly pile media up and torch it. Nobody ever destroyed piles of Polka albums just because they don't happen to like that kind of music.

I also don't entirely agree with calling the phenomenon "late boomer". I suspect the demographics of the crowd that participated in Disco Demolition Night encompassed the entire age range of the Boomer cohort at the time. Rolling Stone commentator Dave Marsh said (from Wikipedia):



It so happens that I personally prefer to think the people born after 1959 aren't real Boomers, but another facet to this is demographic in that, in the US, blue-collar whites of that generation had a vastly different experience growing up than did the élite that "went to college" but the media seem always to focus on the latter. Older boomers of that élite cohort are known to have rejected racist attitudes, but they also don't represent most baby boomers.

All of these factors combined to produce the backlash. Polka music was not only associated with white people it was not ubiquitous in the culture as disco was. There usually is not a backlash against the obscure. All these factors combined to create the backlash. The controversy is over what was the driving factor. What I find striking is that the issues or claims of homophobia, racism, elitism, classism from 40 years ago are so relevant today.


There is the whole notion of Generation Jones being a separate generation from the boomers. Being born in 1957 I see both sides of the argument. I was too young to have participated in anti war demonstrations, drop out and become a hippie, lose my girlfriend to Beatlemania etc. But I remember those events and those touchtones were still driving the culture in my teenage and college years even if we were experiencing the immediate after effects, not the events themselves. The Beatles, Grateful Dead, and The Doors were as or more popular then the then current rock bands. Drug use was widespread etc. And the post WWII baby boom peaked in 1957. My preference is to create two main subtypes of baby boomers in the USA. Vietnam era Boomers and post counterculture boomers

Keep in mind, culture diffuses slowly so some regions were still birthing the 'Jones' cohort while others were already giving birth to the counterculture era boomers, in some areas the counterculture barely made an impact meaning there was very little period between Jonesers and Xoomers, with no real 'hippy boomer' cohort. The late-Jones and early-X folks are still demographically part of the Boomer cohort, but they're less firmly rooted in it culturally. I think this happens with most generational cohorts and why there's so much bickering over their boundaries.

Kids who are socially precocious might align more with an older cohort, young adults who mature slowly might find themselves embedded in a younger cohort; some folks show both traits and spend their whole lives unrooted.

Artificially created generational boundaries will always be at best the least inaccurate. And there will always be people that don't fit in with "their" generation as most on this board can directly attest to.

I should have noted in my description that a lot of Vietnam era boomers were not hippies or protesters, they fought in Vietnam and voted for Nixon. At some point they had to have heard about the hippies and protesters, formed opinions about them. "Acid Rock" or hard rock music more casual dress, hippie influenced presentation and drugs became popular among all types of young people. In some areas it took longer than others and in some areas it never happened but by 1973 those areas were the outliers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8A4QVop3-8
1:12

i am a g-jones-er and not a boomer, but i've always gotten along better with boomers than with jones-ers. in terms of the various intergenerational epithets (such as the toxic "snowflake"), i think john cleese put it best, when he said, "Yes I've heard this word. I think sociopaths use it in an attempt to discredit the notion of empathy." and whether you like him or hate him, the late lamented Rodney King also said what needed to be said, "Can't we all just get along?"
in my childhood i still saw 78 rpm records and the odd victrola still in working condition. the better of the victrola-type [acoustic] reproducers sounded as good as the electrical reproducers, at least if cactus needles were used. those old jackhammer-ish steel needles just shaved off all the musical treble and were noisy as hell. i remember LP phonograph needles on the cheaper record players were sapphire and not diamond. ceramic cartridges were much more common than magnetic. so the records of my era sounded mostly mediocre. i remember reading a MAD magazine blurb picking fun of how much distortion those old cheapo record players put out. as far as 8-tracks are concerned, i didn't see too many of 'em back in the day that dumped unceremoniously on the side of the road with their tape spilling out, but i did see countless compact cassettes in that condition, moldering in gutters and ditches all over. for a long time, 8-tracks [in good players] actually sounded BETTER than most cassettes, they had twice the tape speed affording more room on the tape for the music, than cassettes.

Last edited by auntblabby on 12 Jan 2020, 9:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.

some 8-track tapes are worth their weight in gold, such as the original Harvest (UK) quad-8 of Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon."

I agree with all of that, but at the same time would suggest that by '73 hippies as a movement were slowing down, with far fewer new ones replacing the ones who 'grew up and made peace with the man', especially where they had significant numbers early on.

A toned down version came in their wake, but I'd suggest that these rockers weren't really part of that movement, it was more like how 'regular America' imitated radicals.

The Acid Rock movement, the hippie movement, the protest movements, the casual sex movements were not the same things although there was significant overlap. They all were considered part of the counterculture.

By '73 these things were mainstreamed, people who wore crew cuts, did not wear casual clothing, waited until marriage to have sex etc were outliers.

You are correct in that by imitating the original trends had mutated/evolved but the close ties to what had just recently happened were still unmistakable but it was not the same. That is why I Iabel it the post counterculture era. Elements of Acid rock evolved split into post counterculture genres of Progressive Rock and Heavy Metal, hippie do what feels good, casual sex, and loud fashions evolved into the post counterculture disco scene. While different it is hard to imagine them happening without "the 60s"

Kids do things to offend their parents when they grow up. This is just part of growing up.

They often look at things that their parents consider "taboo," and ask themselves if it is really so bad?

Boomers often have issues with crossdressing. Say a husband comes out and says that he wants to crossdress.
Divorces have resulted, while the kid say, what the big deal?

It goes way beyond crossdressing to non binary gender identities. A lot of boomers will say there are two genders, that is a biological fact, all of these gender identities are mental illness or a fad or brainwashing etc etc, this will draw the “Ok Boomer” retort because over a third of Generation Z knows somebody who uses gender neutral pronouns to describe themselves. That has not been my generations experience, to put it mildly. It should be noted that as with autistics I might have known non binary people but the person did not know themselves, denied it, or hid it due to the binary gender identity beliefs of the times we grew up in.

But why would people who are dismissive of safe spaces want safe spaces?

In that case you must have had three or four 8-track players in your car.
And probably a reel to reel tape recorder, CB radio, color TV and shag carpets.