Uncool Things About Being 30
Submitted by lbangs on Tue, 06/24/2003 - 10:52
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- VH-1 markets right at you, assuming that you lost all interest in new music several years ago and will wallow in utter crap if it might remind you of your high school days (as in the annoying 80s shows and the sheer shame of their crappy 'Best Songs of the Last 25 Years'; yeah, wonder who they made that list out for...).
- Friends of your peer group will try to convince you that Motley Crue and Poison were classic bands (nope, they sucked then and they suck even more today).
- Friends of your peer group will try to convince you that Top Gun and Better Off Dead were classic films (nope, see above).
- Young friends are often convinced you don't dig Blink 182 and Evanescence just because you are old (could be, but I seriously doubt it).
- Older friends assume you know nothing about music past early U2 or films before John Hughes.
- Classic rock stations ease off of 60s classics to find room for awful 70s one-name arena rock bands because, hey, you're supposed to dig it (Journey, Foreigner, Styx, etc., etc.).
- Younger people start calling you 'sir' (they mean well, but my, it just seems so wrong...).
- True story - When telling a younger friend about how much I love Bringing Up Baby, said friend replied, "Yeah, but that's just because it was big when you were a teenager."
- You suddenly realize that younger friends consider Nevermind and Achtung Baby 'classic rock.'
- You suddenly realize that friends your age consider The White Stripes and The Strokes 'noise.'
- You suddenly realize that Nevermind and Achtung Baby ARE 'classic rock,' both being well over a decade old.
- You realize as much distance separates today from The Joshua Tree than separated The Joshua Tree from Who's Next. You also realize that more distance separates today's teenagers from the 70s than separated your teenage years from the 50s.
Author Comments:
Truth is, I love being 30. I never really thought I would last this long. The mileage, however, does not come without a few drawbacks...
More as I think of 'em.
:)
Shalom, y'all!
L. Bangs
Fun list, sir! (not that I'm qualified to use the appellation, given the "younger people" requirement)
:-)
"It's not the years, it's the mileage."
New Item: Your seniors call you sir.
;)
Thanks!
Shalom, y'all!
L. Bangs
Well, if it makes you feel any better, there is nearly no cultural perks to being a teenager today. Besides computers and DVD players, and the few great films that have come, my generatio is saddled with (though most seem to be okay with it) some of the worst music, movies, and TV shows of all time. I'm only 17, but I'm gonna look back on movies and albums made before I was born more than I am on the "art" of my generation.
Oh, I agree, that VH1 list was wretched.
Wasn't it though? Yuch!
Shalom, y'all!
L. Bangs
I think there is still plenty of great art being produced, but the media consolidation of the last decade have made much of it pretty darn difficult to find! Pop radio was certainly better in the early 80s than it is now (I'm not sure that New Wave wasn't the last great singles era), although rock radio in the late 80s was even *worse* than it is now. (Now we have horrible post-grunge, but then, pre-Nevermind, it was even worse hair metal bands...)
I think many of the past few years have been quite full of great films, and I've heard several promising albums this year, even if I never hear them on the radio.
One of the illusions of looking back is that it is easy to believe that much of the great art of the time was recognized as such. Sure, I remember Purple Rain as a number one album, but I also remember flipping stations searching for a decent song and only hearing, "Every Rose Has a Thorn." God knows the radio didn't play REM before Document, and I never heard Sonic Youth on the air outside of college radio, and that was in the early 90s.
I'm not saying it all evens out, but Paula Abdul, Michael Bolton, and Rick Astley sold a lot of albums in my high school days...
And I won't even mention Milli Vanilli ;)
Shalom, y'all!
L. Bangs
I would gladly trade in Staind, Disturbed, Papa Roach, Hoobastank, Nickleback, Puddle of Mud, Korn, Kid Rock, and Limp Bizkit for nearly anything from the 80's. For every Outkast, The Strokes, The White Stripes, Coldplay, and Lauryn Hill, we've gotten 30 bands or artists on the radio that make me want to put a bullet in my stereo. Of course, when it comes to film, we've got things like Being John Malkovich, Requiem for a Dream, Talk to Her, Dancer in the Dark, and Moulin Rouge!. But (and it's a big but) we've also got things like The Fast and the Furious and 8 Mile passing themselves off as acceptable pop art.
While there are certainly bright spots (Finding Nemo is one of the best animated movies I've seen, and the new Damien Rice is brilliant) every once and a while, our modern pop culture seems to be imploding.
Boy, I don't know. Putting that crew up against Poison, Motley Crue, Winger, Warrant, White Lion, Ratt, Lita Ford, Twisted Sister, Skid Row, and Great White, not to mention Taylor Dane, Paula Abdul, Rick Astley, Michael Bolton, Jody Watley, Debbie Gibson, Tiffany, and New Kids on the Block makes me think that this is a choice no human ever should be forced to make! Maybe we tend to hate what we had to put with from our friends more, but I'll take Kid Rock over almost any of the above. Still, something of a stacked deck either way, eh?
AS for film, hey, I chose a year (1985) at random and looked up the top grossing films. I see Rambo: First Blood II, Rocky IV, The Goonies, and (!) Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment in the top ten. 1986 gives you Top Gun (the top grosser), The Karate Kid Part 2, Back to School, and The Golden Child. Sadly, I bet Top Gun did at least as well with the critics as The Fast and the Furious did.
So far, I think this decade has been very fertile for films, and I'm not sure music is far behind. As I said, though, most radio stations are worse, making the good stuff harder to run across.
I don't know. Most of my friends my age will agree with your final sentence, but I'm not quite so convinced...
Shalom, y'all!
L. Bangs
Now that you mention it, I like this decade's films much more than I like the 90's. Well, maybe not MUCH more, but I have a feeling that by 2009, I will be quite happy with the films of the decade. Unfortunately for us Yanks though, the best seem to be coming from across the sea.
Add to the Poison-ish bands and the Tiffanyesque crowd the Spandau Ballet-type bands (Spandau Ballerinas?). I don't think the peaks and valleys are any higher or lower when you compare the two decades (i.e. the best music from one probably stands up to the best music from the other), it's how crowded the peaks and valleys are that distinguish the decades. The 80s is very crowded in the valleys and more sparse up top, IMO.
I just discovered this list and its discussion (I think it originated while I was in London). I have a question though. Lbangs, you say that "I think there is still plenty of great art being produced, but the media consolidation of the last decade have made much of it pretty darn difficult to find!" And I agree - it's true that MTV and current radio generally focuses on bands that suck but are fairly popular among the masses, such as N Sync, Staind, Britney Spears, 50 Cent, etc., etc., etc. I'm not old enough to remember what the media consolidation focused on in the 1980's, but I guess you attest that it was pretty much the same back then.
But let's look at artists from the late 50's, 60's, and early 70's. The artists that are today considered the best of that era are the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Who, Elvis Presley, etc. But weren't they wildly popular, and frequently covered by the media, back in the 60's also? This begs the question, did the masses have better taste in the 60's than they do today? If not, what's going on here? Since when is what's popular equal to what's good?
AJ, perhaps there's a bunch of really awesome stuff from that time period that was as good or better then the stuff that we associate with that time period now, but we don't know anything about it now because it wasn't wildly popular and hence didn't get reprinted decades later.
Heck, I even know of great music from 15 years ago that you can't even find on disc anymore.
The media consolidation I am thinking of happened in the 90s. For example, in the 80s, the great majority of the radio stations in my town were independents. They responded to requests because the only people they had to answer to were their listeners. That is not at all the case now. Most stations are owned by one of two large networks. These networks have payola-like relationships with the record companies and largely allow them to dictate what gets played and what doesn't.
An entirely different radio world. My local station wouldn't play a request for a new single today if I called them up a thousand times.
Shalom, y'all!
L. Bangs
I'm an uber-philistine when it comes to music, but I personally think that people had better taste in music in the 60s. I do think Sinatra and Presley are in the same league as Britney + clones (though far more tolerable), but The Beatles and Led Zeppelin are among the greatest musical artists of the 20th century, imo.
I also think that more great music is being made today than in the 60s-80s, but that it's generally not what's popular. The reason more great music is being made today is that the tools and knowledge usually required for an artist to compose and record great music is more accessible and less expensive than ever before. Due to the information age, these great musical artists aren't horribly difficult to find for those who truly love music and want to look despite no radio/MTV play or shelf stock.
What's popular is not what's good. Just as with movies, what's popular is what's safe. Just look at Shrek 2: second highest grossing domestic single-release film of all time and possibly the safest movie ever made. Or the #1 selling album of last year: Confessions. Speakerboxxx/The Love Below is #2, but the rest of the top 20 is filled with pretty boring (safe) music.
That's my theory, anyway.
I agree with much of what you say, even if I tend to love both Presley and, especially, Sinatra.
Of course, even Britney has some singles I like...
I suspect we could agree even more if I adjust your "more great music is being made today" to "more great music is being recorded today". That's just a quantity measurement; the cynic in me suspects the percentage of crap to gold is still the same - around 2%/98%.
Shalom, y'all!
L. Bangs
Sure, I guess that's what I meant anyway. There's no way for me to know about great music that was never recorded.
Slacker! Why not?
:)
Shalom, y'all!
L. Bangs (who is a bit goofy today...)
I would never think of the cutoff line for "classic" rock being 10 years. 20 years yes. 10 years no.
Hey, I love Motley Crue and Better Off Dead!
It's not just because you're 'old,' regarding Blink 182 and Evanescence, if 19 isn't 'old.'
Re: Bringing Up Baby. Ouch, but I'm not sure if it worse for you or him.
Great list.
Re: Crue and Dead, I assure you, you have my deepest sympathy.
;)
Shalom, y'all!
L. Bangs
Well, I'm a couple of years too late. But this is a fantastic list. (Though if current critics retain their trends, albums take about 10 minutes to become classics - look at the acclaim Franz Ferdinand's debut and the Streets' A Grand Don't Come For Free got).
And of course, Blink 182 and Evanescense suck -- and I'm less than half your age. ;)
Thanks! I threw this list together on a whim a month or so after hitting 30, but I still like it.
And you are right; increased critical interaction via internet seems to have created a number of 'instant classics', some of which might stand the torrents of time and many of which will not.
Thanks for the affirmation on the bands. While I do not like Blink 182, I can only laugh at Evanescense, one of the worst bands to win some sort of acclaim in some time (unless we're counting that Grammy Maroon 5 stole from Kanye).
Shalom, y'all!
L. Bangs
Try being fifty. Oy! I could make such a list :-)
Are you kidding? I'm still trying to be twenty!
(and failing miserably...)
Shalom, y'all!
L. Bangs
You realize that supermarket chains have begun to play good music.
LOL!