Boom!
Tom Brokaw, the former NBC Nightly News anchor and author of the best-selling book The Greatest Generation , has just written a new book about what another author has called “The Greater Generation.” Boom!, a collection of I-was-there reminiscences, explores the pop culture of the sixties. It is subject matter that would seem to require some knowledge of, you know, pop culture.
Or maybe not.
In an interview in this week’s Entertainment Weekly, Brokaw offers this as one of his “defining memories” of the music of the sixties: “I remember the first time I heard ‘Lay, Lady, Lay’ by Bob Dylan, played over and over one night. Everybody has those memories.”
Yes, but not everyone has a book contract.
Even more baffling are his comments about jazz. “I was a child of the ‘50s, so I was a student of cool jazz,” he says. “I was with a friend yesterday and we were at a restaurant and he looked up and said, ‘Hey, they’re playing Miles Davis and John Coltrane.’ And I thought, ‘We’re the last generation that still recognizes that.’”
It’s perhaps churlish to mock the musical commentary of a guy who never claimed to be a music critic, but this quote is just baffling. The mere fact that this stuff is programmed at all suggests that there’s a demand for it–and one that extends beyond folks like my boomer dad, who owns several CDs by both Miles and Coltrane, but probably couldn’t ID them if he heard them outside of his living room. How far out of touch–or self-aggrandizing–do you have to be to think that only the Boom! generation knows what Miles and Coltrane sound like?
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December 10th, 2007 at 5:25 pm
This is Tom’s way of saying, “If I were Pitchfork, I would’ve given The Complete On The Corner Sessions a rating of at least 9.3.”
December 10th, 2007 at 9:53 pm
a new book about what another author has called “The Greater Generation.”
Why don’t we be COMPLETELY accurate and call them “The Most Self-Important Generation”?
December 11th, 2007 at 10:24 am
I actually think that the biggest problem with Generation X (m-m-m-m-my generation) is that it’s always using the “Class of ‘68,” as Brokaw calls them, as some kind of yardstick. You see it in music (revivilism), politics (these-kid-don’t-know-how-to-protestism), what-have-you (Madison Ave. ads that make the Kent State era seem all touchy feely).
There’s very little sense that what happened then was appropriate for, or a response to, that time, not the standard for all future generations.
I mean, really, haven’t we had enough of baby boomers?
December 11th, 2007 at 10:33 am
Give them their props. They were the last generation of white people in America to throw a decent riot. And if you don’t think there’s anything worth rioting about now, well, you’re just not paying attention.
Who’s Miles Davis?
December 11th, 2007 at 10:37 am
Ah, yes, romanticizing riots. Exactly what I’m talking about.
December 11th, 2007 at 11:01 am
Oh, now you’re against riots, eh Brent? Keep listening to your loud music with your headphones, friend. And keep pontificating on the shortcomings of a generation that at least had the gumption to throw bricks at cops. It will make everything all right.
December 11th, 2007 at 11:12 am
Somehow I’m reminded of that Mark Twain quote, where the Devil is talking to the Chicagoans in Hell: “The trouble with you Chicago people is, that you think you are the best people down here; whereas you are merely the most numerous.”
Yes; not only am I sick of the Baby Boomers, I’m sick of the ’60s. Fuck the ’60s. If us Gen X-ers are as “apathetic” as the Boomers often accuse us of being, perhaps it’s a natural reaction to having their “involvement” and “activism” rubbed in our faces since birth.
December 11th, 2007 at 11:13 am
So this is what would make “everything all right”? Throwing bricks at cops? Go for it. Please report back you when you’ve accomplished your task. I will be listening to music on headphones until then.
December 11th, 2007 at 11:51 am
Everything’s futile, Mr. Burton. Throwing bricks at cops solves nothing. But it at least produces brained cops. All activities being equally pointless, there is nothing wrong with sitting around listening to music on your headphones. It’s as good as joining a boy band or committing suicide or (god forbid) becoming involved in Positive Force. That said, the boomers at least kept things interesting. You have to hand them that. They paraded about in their risible clothing, waving their freak flags and chanting their risible slogans. They had inestimable spectacle value. Which is more than can be said for today’s youth. And…they hit a few cops with bricks!
December 11th, 2007 at 11:58 am
the boomers at least kept things interesting.
The key word there is “kept.” Past tense. The boomers stopped being interesting in about 1972.
Hasn’t stopped them from touting themselves and their “accomplishments” for the subsequent 35 goddamned years, though, has it?
December 11th, 2007 at 12:05 pm
Here’s a boomer (and greatest generation) accomplishment: global warming.
That is, unless it’s a boomer (and greatest generation) hoax.
Should I go on?
December 11th, 2007 at 12:29 pm
Don’t expect me to defend the boomers. Fuck global warming… let them explain Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. They did plenty of terrible things, such as perpetuating the insane notion that human beings should be naked in public. That said–and Michael, you’re totally right about the pastness of it all–they sure knew how to keep a guy laughing. The unfortunate thing about them was that they inspired people like Ian MacKaye to adopt the most insipid parts of their value system, while all the best and funniest parts (Charles Manson, bad acid, hitting cops with bricks, the SLA) got left behind. The other unfortunate thing about them is that they’re still around. David Crosby is a walrusy abomination. Patti Smith is a boring shuck. As for Bob Dylan, well–when people talk about how good his recent albums have been, I feel like telling them to report to the freakout tent.