Place: Jimmy John's
Lunch: Gargantuan (no tomato), Coke
The staff of roughly ten twenty-somethings crammed behind the counter have the music blaring and some are singing along randomly. Playing is AC/DC's "Hell's Bells", followed by the Rolling Stones' "Shattered", followed by Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall". It sounds like a mix tape classmate Dan would have made for our junior high school home economics class.
(Normally, our junior high home ec class was all girl, and the shop glass was all guy. Dan and I were in home ec because the shop class was too full and they needed volunteers to move over. When the class was told this, somebody exclaimed "No way! That's where all the girls are!" Dan and I gave each other a sudden realization glance and immediately volunteered. Dan, who was the first official ladies man of our class, was fawned over by the girls the entire year. Me, not so much.)
Anyway, the point is that I was in junior high school in 1979-1981, well before any of these kids were born. Why are they listening to this? This would be like Dan bringing mix tapes of Fabian and Bobby Vee to class. The most modern song in this mix has been Guns n Roses' "Night Train".
Why doesn't this generation have its own music?
The downfall of album rock radio in favor of "classic rock", I suppose, is partly to blame I was there first-hand for this back in the early 90's. I know exactly who started it. I know exactly who to blame. It was a terribly depressing time for those of us radio. But today, there are so many ways to access great new music online. Radio has become completely irrelevant in breaking new artists (with the possible exception of Country).
I suppose a lot of available modern stuff is niche. Rap and hip hop are popular but still not mass appeal (and a little too risque for blaring in retail). Rock is all but dead, or worse, Nickelback-ish. The only real rock band out there today doing anything worth listening to is the Foo Fighters.
I don't know...it's just really sad that today's generation doesn't have their own music. That they have to rely on the stuff that was cool when I was a kid.
Really bums me out.
