To add more texture to yesterday's post, I don't hate all Boomer music. I don't even hate the Beatles, who are the most emblematic of Boomer music. In fact, I kinda like a lot of the Beatles songs, especially from the earlier years before they got super hippified.
But the "older" music, and by older I mean before my time (since I remember the mid-70s through the 80s, that doesn't count) that I quite like is not associated in any way with the counterculture movement, and mostly predates it. The chronologically latest that I really like is the California sound, or surf rock stuff, as best represented by The Beach Boys and Jan & Dean. I also quite like stuff like the Everly Brothers, some of the doo-wop songs—even though that was mostly made by black people or Italian immigrants rather than Heritage Americans, so arguably isn't really "our" music.
One of the things that I love about the California sound, is that it is emblematic of an America that has been stolen from us. You listen to some of that stuff, even the corny songs like "Be True to Your School" and it just makes your heart ache and yearn for that lifestyle that we can't have anymore. This goes back to my hypothesis that there is more nostalgia towards this type of music, and 80s music, then there is for the counterculture anthems of the Boomers from the later 60s and the 70s, because they represent a time when America was confident in itself, largely uncorrupted by foreign influence of those who hate and resent Western civilization and want to see it torn down, deconstructed, and looted and taken from those who built it. And we should all just should die off, by the way. Arrgh! Who could have thought when the Beach Boys were singing about the joys of high school, surfing and cars that a movement that wanted to destroy all of that was right on the horizon?
That's what I hate. The arrogant, smug, self-righteous narcissism of the Boomers. I couldn't articulate that in the 80s when I was a teenager, because I was still swimming in the sea of blue pills that we tend to be surrounded with in our culture, but the counter culture music usually turned me off big time. And to help with that, my dad didn't really listen to much of it either, so my exposure to it was limited. I still haven't heard more than two or three Rolling Stones songs even now, for instance. I heard the Kinks because I actually went out and bought one of their discount cassette tapes in the 80s. Mostly just so I could hear "You Really Got Me" which is still the only song of theirs that I care for at all. I didn't hear Clapton or the Doors or anything like that except incidentally here and there. My dad was a Beatles fan, but even he checked out when they got too deeply into their hippy phase, and I think the latest Beatles album he had was either Help! or Hard Day's Night. Rubber Soul was his favorite of theirs.
Curiously, in spite of my rather pointed disinterest in the British Invasion and the pop culture influence that came with it, I had the exact opposite reaction to the Second British Invasion of the 80s, based on synthesizer new wave bands, mostly, but even getting into hair metal and rock like Def Leppard, Billy Idol or Robert Palmer, and settling down into regular 80s pop outfits like The Outfield, The Police, Simple Minds, etc. Of course, those acts, while not necessarly overtly political or social (and often representing things that were anti-western civilization when they were asked) did, in a way, represent a normalization of counter-counter culture; a kind of reversion to something that rejected, and yet also made peace with some of the upheavals of the counter culture crap. Which is probably why they went down so much easier. As much as there was a lot of wrong-headedness in the 80s too, at least most of these bands knew who they were and weren't trying to hide from it or bemoan their nationalism, race, or birthright. The British bands of the second British Invasion were unapologetically British, for instance.
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