On My Continued Love Affair With Classic Rock — “Ok, Boomer” The Boomers, Love The Music
So a friend and I were talking about the latest clueless boomer — well, technically a boomer icon, given he’s turning 80 this year — and his negative reaction to Phoebe Bridgers’ guitar-smashing performance on Saturday Night Live. That clueless boomer is none other than David Crosby, who first rose to fame with The Byrds in the 1960s and later joined Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young with three other boomer icons. Now this isn’t the first time that he’s sounded completely out of touch on social media, as a few years ago, he implied that pro-wrestling fans are illiterate nitwits by tweeting that WWF stands for “Words with Friends, to those of us who can read.” But that discussion also got me to thinking about this one particular dilemma in my music fandom that has been bugging me for a while.
There’s so much good music out there, and it’s not just old bands I grew up with (Tool, Foo Fighters, System of a Down, etc.) releasing new albums and songs or young kids (Suspect208, the ever-divisive Greta Van Fleet, etc.) whose sound hearkens back to past generations. I won’t deny that I like some Billie Eilish songs, and many of you are probably aware of my status as a latecomer to modern rap fandom, e.g. Kendrick Lamar and RTJ. So why this continued love for 1960s and 1970s rock? Why keep listening to the music of an ultimately toxic generation and creating original songs inspired by those boomer heroes?
The answer to that, I realize, can be quite complicated. Perhaps it’s my ability to compartmentalize my fandom in most cases, save for the extreme. For example, I’m certainly not singing accused sexual abuser Marilyn Manson’s praises more than two decades after his songs were so relatable to teen outcasts like myself. However, I can still separate Chris Jericho the wrestler from Chris Irvine the Trump supporter, because as far as I know, he hasn’t publicly endorsed QAnon or the Proud Boys or completely inundated his Twitter feed with far-right propaganda like Val Venis did.
Likewise, not all boomers or boomer icons are toxic and out-of-touch, and for every David Crosby, I’ll bring up Sir Paul McCartney or, if you want to stick to American rockers from the ’60s, Howard Kaylan of The Turtles. For every Mike Love of the Beach Boys, there’s a Brian Wilson, and it’s no wonder they’re still feuding to this day. And while many of my dad’s peers were gleefully rioting and brawling during and after NCAA basketball games in the late ’60s and early ’70s, one of them — who sadly passed away due to COVID-19 during the early stages of the pandemic — condemned such actions as what we would now call toxic masculinity in an editorial on the school paper.
Additionally, you don’t need to have been born between 1945 and 1965 to merit an “ok, boomer” rebuke. All too often, I’ve seen people from my age group take to social media and complain about how all music released in the 21st century is utter shit or wistfully, yet passive-aggressively, wish for the music of the ’90s to make a comeback. Age-wise, you may be a Gen-Xer, but with those comments, you’re giving off major Abraham Simpson vibes and sounding like an old man yelling at cloud. And I haven’t even mentioned how these fellow Gen-Xers (or Xennials) can sometimes post casually homophobic content and espouse the same backward views of their parents’ generation.
Last, but not least, allow me to say that it’s all a matter of taste and the fact I grew up with those boomer sounds. I was exposed to the music of The Beatles at a very young age, and when I grew slightly older, I quickly learned to appreciate other British Invasion bands as well as the American acts of the ’60s and a whole lot of (no pun intended) ’70s rock. While I publicly — and genuinely — enjoyed new wave, heavy metal, grunge, and alternative in my youth, I privately rocked out to the music of my parents’ time until becoming more open about it in college. Furthermore, for much of my adulthood, I’ve sought to play in a band that hearkens back to the ’60s as well as Ryan Ross and the Young Veins did, much to the chagrin of many a Panic! at the Disco fan. Sadly, I realize that probably won’t happen, given how in this country, you’re either The Bloomfields or in the same age group as Spirit of ’67 if you like playing that kind of music. But that’s why I’m thankful Apple has GarageBand, and why I continue making digital music as a solo artist.
Now that we’ve gotten all that out of the way, what do I think about Bridgers’ guitar-smashing? Granted, I’m not fully familiar with her music just yet, but I thought it was fucking AWESOME. To briefly paraphrase Beck, women have never been alone in the new pollution. As I’ve interpreted his lyrics, that new pollution can be rock ’n’ roll, and women have often shown they can rock as hard as the men — not just musically, but also in terms of attitude.
Okay, boomers? Probably not okay, but you do you. As my band, The Mox, sung last year, “the only thing I love is your good old rock ’n’ roll.”
