Once You Get Started

I’ve caused plenty of intertunnel arguments in my day. For instance, about 12 years ago, I got a footie coach in trouble in Merry Olde for repeating one of my jokes. The Daily Mirror wanted to know what the joke was, and lifted it verbatim from my blog without attribution. Most of the newspapers in Europe did, and nary a one credited me. In today’s internet, it’s far better to be stolen from than to be squatted on by the internet stasi, so I count my blessings where I find them. I imagine I’m in that Harvard lady’s thesis somewhere, too.

So I’m not here to start an argument. But I read this and that opinion about music on the intertunnel from people younger than I am, and older. Both sets of people like to tussle over Boomer music vs. Millennial music. Zoomers don’t have music. They have car door noises looped into twenty-hour ragas they listen to while playing Minecraft, so they’re exempt from these arguments.

The Millenials are sick of Boomer music. They have a point. I was mostly sick of it in real-time, so it’s even less alluring to me fifty years later. But saying Duran Duran is better than the Beatles just because the DJ was playing it while you felt up a girl at your Millennial prom is kinda dumb. All the lists proffered by both sides are kinda dumb, come to think of it, because it’s all usually pretty lousy music. Kansas vs. Coldplay arguments don’t enter into my field of vision, because I’m not interested in either. Most rock music is trivial, and (should be) disposable. Boomers list the same tired arena rock bands, and Millennials counter with the same list of Glam bands, and think the conversation ends there.

I can assure you that the seventies, often rightly regarded as a cultural, economic, and musical trough in American public life, had plenty of good music going on. You just had to poke around to find it. Stop arguing. Poke around. Once you get started, it’s easy.