I remember reading an interview with John Lydon back in the mid-80s when he was making strange music as Public Image Ltd. (I loved "World Destruction," and the lyrics are still extremely relevant today). Anyway, he was talking about originality and not getting sucked into groupthink, and said "My advice is to not do things in groups!" which has always sort of stuck with me.
In more recent years, I've seen him denounced as a sell-out MAGA fascist; while no one seems to be willing to acknowledge that he selflessly took care of his wife, who had Alzheimer's, until her death. And they were married for 44 years - that's quite an anomaly for a rock star!
I don't know why so many of my generation - I am core GenX, born in 1968 - have embraced censorship and heavy-handed government. Weren't we the ones protesting Tipper Gore and the PMRC back in the day? But now we are happy for the government to censor our news, our social media, anything that might lead to wrongthink...I really don't know what happened to us.
Fucking listening to us drunk rowing with bangin music playing till stupid and the thumping of make up sex through the bedroom wall might be why the kids ended up wanting a bit of censorship. Fucking pussies.
I’m a late Gen Xer, born in 1976, and I’ve noticed that so many in my cohort who used to be edgy and punk are so libtarded out that it’s hard to relate to them anymore. Many are a bit frazzled at having kids in their late thirties and trying to raise them while they’re in their 40s, so I try to give them a pass. Still, it’s annoying.
For example, I was talking with a college friend late last year about one of our favorite early 90s bands, Steve Albini’s Big Black. The first thing my friend said, kind of in memoriam to Albini (RIP), was, “You know, I admire that he acknowledged his white privilege late in life and the harm that he’s done.” Sure, fine, but it’s just so predictable to say that! It was almost like someone pulled a string from the side of his body and those words just came out as if he were a speak-and-spell. What happened to my once-alive friends? I was deeply immersed in the 90s “college radio” / punk set, and most of the people I knew from it have fall into liberal identitarian cliches. Facebook can attest to this. I keep waiting for the spell to break. But I suppose there is no going back…
This is to say that your post really spoke to me.
Also, Morrissey: I was late to Morrissey, being too young for the Smiths in the 80s. But I do remember at my small liberal arts college in the mid-90s the “cool kids” loved him (and the Smiths) and I became a convert very quickly after listening to "This Charming Man." Watching that “Stop Me” video again after many years, I am reminded that androgyny could be beautiful, sensual, seductive. Think Elastica. Think Trinity from the Matrix. And of course, all the androgynes of the 1970s.
In the Morrissey video, the young people are at least lithe, agile, filled with movement (though a bit pasty—but it’s England!). I’ve been teaching college literature since 2004, mostly at an art school in the Midwest, and especially at this art school, the dominant aesthetic is rolly-polly, squishy, squat—a toddler-like featureless, undifferentiated mass. No sensuality, the opposite of erotic. (It’s a bit different at Catholic university I also teach at, where “normie-core” is dominant.)
Even if Morrissey is asexual or something like it, he still acknowledges hierarchies, that some things are more beautiful than other things. I saw him perform near Chicago this past November, and it was glorious. He’s a beautiful 65 year old, filled with energy and life.
I agree. It is interesting because Morrissey being asexual or whatever he is provides a blank canvas for the audience to dream. It is very interesting, he is and has maintained being an enigma as an artist but the one thing he is for sure is so beautiful.
Now we have to deal with overt, pornagraphic sexuality, ugliness, darkness and every single artist just running their political, lecturing babbling mouths all the time. No thanks.
Yes, that's such a great point. He maintains a kind of mystique and thrives in a kind of negative capability. I mean, he doesn't have to try to hard to be interesting because he is interesting.
Proust, or somebody, said "you should never meet your heroes." And I would add, "or know too much about them." I've come to realize, in my far-more-than-Gen-X years, that they are often disappointing. To make things even worse, these days they are in the habit of delivering harangues from the stage, when we just bought a ticket to hear them sing. I stay home and listen to records.
Why can't we all be like Chrissie Hynde? She never agreed with her dittohead parents but loved them so much she let Rush Limbaugh continue to use "My City Was Gone" as his theme song until the day he died.
There's more ideological diversity out there in music than what meets the eye. Of course, those with right-of-center views have to keep their heads down. You know why.
As a 'first gen' Gen Xer (born in '65), I was a Rush fan, and that put me in not-so-much indie alternative ranks, but in the progressive ranks, which were quite small. Spinning Moving Pictures and Yessongs with those gloriously articulated 20 minute guitar and keyboard solos made me less popular with chicks. Yes, I swear it's the only reason...It wasn't the blue jeans and T-shirts and the long, though well-washed, shaggy hair that covered our entire head, neck and upper torso region. That was never a part of it. But you're right, our artists are indeed divided. That's cool--we all have to hitch our wagon somewhere, I suppose.
In retrospect, I think that makes you smart. I was never one to partake very much or often, but I think I'd have been better off to completely abstain.
As a millennial who grew up loving a wide range of music including various punk and offshoot type bands, I can relate. On the plus side, Alison Moyet is a TERF. So she's at least partly sane, and at this point, I don't really want to know anything else.
I think part of the problem is that the youthful rebels of the 20th and early 21st century had a strong framework within in which to rebel. They needed the conservatives and Christians and boring worker bees they mocked. Now that framework has been destroyed, they're all flapping about in the wind and revealed to be intellectually mid at best. Some of my favourite rockers are probably subnormal.
Well said—I was just wondering what these aged rockers think they’re doing, carrying water for the elites like they’re still fighting the man. I believe on reflection, they’ve actually missed the populist thread both then and now.
Grosse Pointe Blank is one of my all-time favorite films. The John Cusack of that era seemed much wiser, spouting dialogue like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-N3-AVJNueY
Maybe alcohol got to him, or "they" did, or he just lost it with age.
Excellent piece, I couldnt have said it better myself! I believe they have deemed Billy Corgan too conservative -- or 'a bad person,' in the superegoic parlance of our times -- as well. I was once scolded for preferring him over Eddie Vedder (I share your feelings about Pearl Jam) because Billy Corgan said something that led them to conclude he 'didn't care about disabled kids'....nevermind that "Spaceboy" is a song about his disabled brother.
I'm a late-model Gen X'er, so I've seen plenty of what you describe here from my younger and even same-age friends. It's equally exhausting and comical, but knowing there are others who relate helps push it towards the latter. Thanks for sharing!
No deep thoughts to share but wanted to say how much I love this post! Late GenXer here but music defined so much of my growing up and coming of age. I was into different groups than what you list here but they were important to my sense of myself. Still are, if I’m honest. Thinking about it now, I remember that sense of the world opening out in front of me in interesting ways, where these days so much is featureless and flat.
My fierce crush on John Cusack started with Better Off Dead. I’m kinda glad he’s aging worse than I am and the crush has died.
Around 2022-23, I couldn’t log on instagram without seeing an old friend post that their kid was now they / them or flipped entirely. It was alarming and distressing. Thank you for including a hypothesis about why these parents were stuck in a cool kid mindset instead of being parents. Pray for these kids.
I love that your essay pivoted on Morrissey because when I was reading, I was thinking "Morrissey, I will always have Morrisey". Perfect.
Watching the video, *sigh* the feelings of my "halcyon days" were indeed immediately present. It is such a beautiful thing but I realize I never took it all too very seriously. It was a deeply personal feeling, so rich and beautiful. My youth. Yes, I felt I had in common with others but it was and still is uniquely mine. You're right, now that the generations have pivoted to political identities it is divided up group think, the lowest of the low, the least sublime, the least artistic, the least freeing, the least unique.
Contemplating the overall theme of your essay it makes me wonder, do people really become famous because they are the most creative or because they can perform (??), they are theatrical; actors essentially, even the musicians, just actors ultimately (who among them could not sing the left side of a menu and make you fall in love)-so therefore we are duped . They sell an image, a thought, a dream so well...but that does not require that they believe, just that they are really, really theatrical i.e. good actors. Maybe those icons of the past knew they were selling just like the icons of today??? Maybe that is why they are all so called total libtards today. Because they kissed that ring from day 1, they would do anything, we just didn't know it back then. But maybe they did.
It used to be all ok even if it was fakery and I do think much of the music was so incredible - the music, art, theatre allowed you to be transported but now we are all transported straight into the communistic mosh pit of "the personal is political" with bad tunes to boot. Yuck.
First year, GenX here. I have to admit I am grateful I am where I am. I did my best to take care of me and mine and I believe I’ve done a good job. The world is no longer mine. I think I owned it maybe right on a high school up until I lost my record deal. I did have a Hit song and I’m glad I did. But I’m also glad to pass along and just enjoy what I’ve got left with as little conflict as possible.
January 1st, 1972 puts me squarely into Gen-X, and like all these other Xers here, I really appreciated this run down, and most especially that it includes people like Lydon who clung to authenticity like a violinist on the Titanic wishing he had a cello to hang onto. ❤️
I remember reading an interview with John Lydon back in the mid-80s when he was making strange music as Public Image Ltd. (I loved "World Destruction," and the lyrics are still extremely relevant today). Anyway, he was talking about originality and not getting sucked into groupthink, and said "My advice is to not do things in groups!" which has always sort of stuck with me.
In more recent years, I've seen him denounced as a sell-out MAGA fascist; while no one seems to be willing to acknowledge that he selflessly took care of his wife, who had Alzheimer's, until her death. And they were married for 44 years - that's quite an anomaly for a rock star!
I don't know why so many of my generation - I am core GenX, born in 1968 - have embraced censorship and heavy-handed government. Weren't we the ones protesting Tipper Gore and the PMRC back in the day? But now we are happy for the government to censor our news, our social media, anything that might lead to wrongthink...I really don't know what happened to us.
Thanks for that PMRC reference. I’ve been railing against the current censorship regime with exactly that same incredulity.
Fucking listening to us drunk rowing with bangin music playing till stupid and the thumping of make up sex through the bedroom wall might be why the kids ended up wanting a bit of censorship. Fucking pussies.
I’m a late Gen Xer, born in 1976, and I’ve noticed that so many in my cohort who used to be edgy and punk are so libtarded out that it’s hard to relate to them anymore. Many are a bit frazzled at having kids in their late thirties and trying to raise them while they’re in their 40s, so I try to give them a pass. Still, it’s annoying.
For example, I was talking with a college friend late last year about one of our favorite early 90s bands, Steve Albini’s Big Black. The first thing my friend said, kind of in memoriam to Albini (RIP), was, “You know, I admire that he acknowledged his white privilege late in life and the harm that he’s done.” Sure, fine, but it’s just so predictable to say that! It was almost like someone pulled a string from the side of his body and those words just came out as if he were a speak-and-spell. What happened to my once-alive friends? I was deeply immersed in the 90s “college radio” / punk set, and most of the people I knew from it have fall into liberal identitarian cliches. Facebook can attest to this. I keep waiting for the spell to break. But I suppose there is no going back…
This is to say that your post really spoke to me.
Also, Morrissey: I was late to Morrissey, being too young for the Smiths in the 80s. But I do remember at my small liberal arts college in the mid-90s the “cool kids” loved him (and the Smiths) and I became a convert very quickly after listening to "This Charming Man." Watching that “Stop Me” video again after many years, I am reminded that androgyny could be beautiful, sensual, seductive. Think Elastica. Think Trinity from the Matrix. And of course, all the androgynes of the 1970s.
In the Morrissey video, the young people are at least lithe, agile, filled with movement (though a bit pasty—but it’s England!). I’ve been teaching college literature since 2004, mostly at an art school in the Midwest, and especially at this art school, the dominant aesthetic is rolly-polly, squishy, squat—a toddler-like featureless, undifferentiated mass. No sensuality, the opposite of erotic. (It’s a bit different at Catholic university I also teach at, where “normie-core” is dominant.)
Even if Morrissey is asexual or something like it, he still acknowledges hierarchies, that some things are more beautiful than other things. I saw him perform near Chicago this past November, and it was glorious. He’s a beautiful 65 year old, filled with energy and life.
I agree. It is interesting because Morrissey being asexual or whatever he is provides a blank canvas for the audience to dream. It is very interesting, he is and has maintained being an enigma as an artist but the one thing he is for sure is so beautiful.
Now we have to deal with overt, pornagraphic sexuality, ugliness, darkness and every single artist just running their political, lecturing babbling mouths all the time. No thanks.
Yes, that's such a great point. He maintains a kind of mystique and thrives in a kind of negative capability. I mean, he doesn't have to try to hard to be interesting because he is interesting.
Yes!
Proust, or somebody, said "you should never meet your heroes." And I would add, "or know too much about them." I've come to realize, in my far-more-than-Gen-X years, that they are often disappointing. To make things even worse, these days they are in the habit of delivering harangues from the stage, when we just bought a ticket to hear them sing. I stay home and listen to records.
Except Bono, right? :)
I have no idea.
He is a full-blown schmuck.
It’s weird that all these celebs think their status qualifies them to proselytize.
"I know how to play a guitar; therefore, I am qualified to lecture the masses about geopolitics, ideology, and how they should have voted."
Yeah, and it's especially galling because they are beneficiaries financially of the system others are protesting by voting opposite.
Great article!
Why can't we all be like Chrissie Hynde? She never agreed with her dittohead parents but loved them so much she let Rush Limbaugh continue to use "My City Was Gone" as his theme song until the day he died.
There's more ideological diversity out there in music than what meets the eye. Of course, those with right-of-center views have to keep their heads down. You know why.
I did not know that about her, and it makes me like her even more.
As a 'first gen' Gen Xer (born in '65), I was a Rush fan, and that put me in not-so-much indie alternative ranks, but in the progressive ranks, which were quite small. Spinning Moving Pictures and Yessongs with those gloriously articulated 20 minute guitar and keyboard solos made me less popular with chicks. Yes, I swear it's the only reason...It wasn't the blue jeans and T-shirts and the long, though well-washed, shaggy hair that covered our entire head, neck and upper torso region. That was never a part of it. But you're right, our artists are indeed divided. That's cool--we all have to hitch our wagon somewhere, I suppose.
You Rush guys were always good for some weed, though.
LOL. It's true--but I wasn't even one of them. Sigh. I missed the whole thing. Except the songs.
In retrospect, I think that makes you smart. I was never one to partake very much or often, but I think I'd have been better off to completely abstain.
As a millennial who grew up loving a wide range of music including various punk and offshoot type bands, I can relate. On the plus side, Alison Moyet is a TERF. So she's at least partly sane, and at this point, I don't really want to know anything else.
I think part of the problem is that the youthful rebels of the 20th and early 21st century had a strong framework within in which to rebel. They needed the conservatives and Christians and boring worker bees they mocked. Now that framework has been destroyed, they're all flapping about in the wind and revealed to be intellectually mid at best. Some of my favourite rockers are probably subnormal.
Well said—I was just wondering what these aged rockers think they’re doing, carrying water for the elites like they’re still fighting the man. I believe on reflection, they’ve actually missed the populist thread both then and now.
Grosse Pointe Blank is one of my all-time favorite films. The John Cusack of that era seemed much wiser, spouting dialogue like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-N3-AVJNueY
Maybe alcohol got to him, or "they" did, or he just lost it with age.
Yes liked John Cusack very much also - even in ‘Must Love Dogs’ … so annoying to hear his condescension now …
Excellent piece, I couldnt have said it better myself! I believe they have deemed Billy Corgan too conservative -- or 'a bad person,' in the superegoic parlance of our times -- as well. I was once scolded for preferring him over Eddie Vedder (I share your feelings about Pearl Jam) because Billy Corgan said something that led them to conclude he 'didn't care about disabled kids'....nevermind that "Spaceboy" is a song about his disabled brother.
I'm a late-model Gen X'er, so I've seen plenty of what you describe here from my younger and even same-age friends. It's equally exhausting and comical, but knowing there are others who relate helps push it towards the latter. Thanks for sharing!
No deep thoughts to share but wanted to say how much I love this post! Late GenXer here but music defined so much of my growing up and coming of age. I was into different groups than what you list here but they were important to my sense of myself. Still are, if I’m honest. Thinking about it now, I remember that sense of the world opening out in front of me in interesting ways, where these days so much is featureless and flat.
Yeah, that’s interesting, isn’t it? I’ve seen that flatness by comparison as well.
My fierce crush on John Cusack started with Better Off Dead. I’m kinda glad he’s aging worse than I am and the crush has died.
Around 2022-23, I couldn’t log on instagram without seeing an old friend post that their kid was now they / them or flipped entirely. It was alarming and distressing. Thank you for including a hypothesis about why these parents were stuck in a cool kid mindset instead of being parents. Pray for these kids.
Same on Cusack! Completely.
We do have Krist Novoselic!
https://www.inlander.com/news/nirvana-co-founder-krist-novoselic-is-forming-a-moderate-political-party-in-washington-state-28264157
I love that your essay pivoted on Morrissey because when I was reading, I was thinking "Morrissey, I will always have Morrisey". Perfect.
Watching the video, *sigh* the feelings of my "halcyon days" were indeed immediately present. It is such a beautiful thing but I realize I never took it all too very seriously. It was a deeply personal feeling, so rich and beautiful. My youth. Yes, I felt I had in common with others but it was and still is uniquely mine. You're right, now that the generations have pivoted to political identities it is divided up group think, the lowest of the low, the least sublime, the least artistic, the least freeing, the least unique.
Contemplating the overall theme of your essay it makes me wonder, do people really become famous because they are the most creative or because they can perform (??), they are theatrical; actors essentially, even the musicians, just actors ultimately (who among them could not sing the left side of a menu and make you fall in love)-so therefore we are duped . They sell an image, a thought, a dream so well...but that does not require that they believe, just that they are really, really theatrical i.e. good actors. Maybe those icons of the past knew they were selling just like the icons of today??? Maybe that is why they are all so called total libtards today. Because they kissed that ring from day 1, they would do anything, we just didn't know it back then. But maybe they did.
It used to be all ok even if it was fakery and I do think much of the music was so incredible - the music, art, theatre allowed you to be transported but now we are all transported straight into the communistic mosh pit of "the personal is political" with bad tunes to boot. Yuck.
Great piece. Also, kudos for “lachrymose” in a sentence.
“I am the son and the heir”
Thanks Jenny. I’m inspired to write some things now. ❤️
First year, GenX here. I have to admit I am grateful I am where I am. I did my best to take care of me and mine and I believe I’ve done a good job. The world is no longer mine. I think I owned it maybe right on a high school up until I lost my record deal. I did have a Hit song and I’m glad I did. But I’m also glad to pass along and just enjoy what I’ve got left with as little conflict as possible.
January 1st, 1972 puts me squarely into Gen-X, and like all these other Xers here, I really appreciated this run down, and most especially that it includes people like Lydon who clung to authenticity like a violinist on the Titanic wishing he had a cello to hang onto. ❤️