And this week, we’ve had anyone who remembers reminding us that last weekend was the 40th anniversary of Woodstock. And that made me think I might post a song I wrote in the 90s as an answer to baby boomers’ constant overstating of their achievements and importance.
The day after I finished writing this, I read that Allen Ginsberg had died. That made me feel a little bit guilty for a moment about some of the things I’d said until I realised that the song really isn’t about people like him. It’s about the ones who sold out their values, if indeed, they ever had any.
The thing that insulted me most about the whole baby-boomer attitude is the way they sneered and looked down upon the next generation as being inferior in just about every way –the exact same thing they moaned about in their parents’ generation. I don’t begrudge them growing up and getting jobs. I begrudge the hypocrisy of not wanting the next generation to have their own voice the way they did. They took the best of everything and whatever they couldn’t blame on the previous generation, they blame on the next.
My general disagreement is mainly to do with selfishness and lack of perspective. And I’ll admit to having a distaste for some attitudes in the younger generation as well. Every time I hear someone under 25 start moaning about the “crippling debt” their generation has been lumbered with in order to drag us out of the GFC™, I want to slap them and say,
Listen, you smarmy little shit, my parents’ generation paid off World War II! They got by. They survived. So what the hell are you worried about?
While debt should be avoided where-ever possible, sometimes you do have to spend your way out of trouble. And if it means you’re going to have to wait a few more months before you get that new iPhone, or a few more years before you build that McMansion in Fountain Lakes, then that’s just tough titties! If that's the biggest sacrifice you're ever called upon to make for your country, then it's a charmed life.
See? I can do “old fart” too.
But I disgress....
So yes, this song is less about people like Allen Ginsberg and more about the ones who went on to be insurance agents. Less about the ones who genuinely changed their minds, and more about the ones who kept taking all the world had to give and more, while still affecting the tone of moral and intellectual superiority to all who came before and after.
By the way, Woodstock was originally supposed to be a charity concert – the Farm Aid of its day – but so many broke in that eventually the organisers gave up and declared it a free show.
Read into that what you will.
YOUR GENERATION
They say if you remember, then you weren’t really there
You danced and sang and made love, you lived without a care
Your generation....
Now your kids are grown up, and living without hope
Still you wonder why they only care about MTV and dope
Your generation
Talkin’ ’bout your generation
Your generation got old
Your generation’s gone cold
You tell us of psychedelia, and boast of your free love
Then you tell us we should just say no, and always wear a glove
You fear the carnage on the streets as the cartels ply their trade
But they’re just doing business in a market that you made
Your generation
Talkin’ ’bout your generation
Your generation got old
Your generation’s gone cold
By the time we got to Woodstock, Pepsi ruled the world
Our playground was Nintendo, and we went to war for oil
Some values die quicker than others, but the truth doesn’t change
If peace was a good idea back then, well why not so today?
Your generation
Talkin’ ’bout your generation
Your generation got old
Your generation sold its soul
What happened to the revolution? Where did you go wrong?
Did you think you’d make it happen just by singing protest songs?
Do you really think that Woodstock made the world a better place?
Just a hundred thousand muddy hippies getting off their face!
And you have the gall to tell us that our music has no worth
Should we let your surrealistic pillow smother all the earth?
Your generation
You still talk about your generation
Well, your generation got old
Your generation’s gone cold
So don’t you try to put us down and tell us what to do
As if you wouldn’t do it just the same if it were you
’Cause the selfish generation is still alive and strong
Your ignore it when your children show you how you got it wrong
If you think today’s youth culture is your vision of hell
Then I guess you understand now, just how your parents felt.
Your generation
Talkin’ ’bout your generation
Your generation got old
Your generation sold its soul
Your generation
Is gonna fade away
gonna fade away
HWS April 1997
If anyone is interested in hearing the song, I played it on Strawberry Fields Radio last year. You can play or download the show HERE.
If you would like a higher quality, stand-alone copy, then I accept cash, paypal and women’s underwear.
If you would like a higher quality, stand-alone copy, then I accept cash, paypal and women’s underwear.
I don't think you would like to have my underwear. I'm the last person in the world you would want such a thing but I want the stand-alone copy with autograph.
ReplyDeleteI think this "my generation, your generation" is so separatist...
"Do you really think that Woodstock made the world a better place?"
The Woodstock DID make the world a better place. If you analize the whole generation based on what you watched at the Woodstock, you will find everything nonsense and stupid specially. If your only perspective of the 60's is based on what happened in US and UK, it's a limited perspective. Look at the whole picture.
The 60's continues to have a profound impact on our society today - from American foreign policy to the birth of the environmental and gay rights and women's liberation movements.
Some facts:
In the 1960s, blacks made a transition, especially on the college campus, from being Negroes, to being black, to being Afro-Americans. When they said, 'I'm black and I'm proud,' that meant something. Would this transition happen if the white youth weren't supportive?
At San Francisco State University, students held a 134-day strike in an effort to draw attention to the university's diverse population and the need for ethnic studies departments. In the end, their struggle led to the creation of a black studies department, but at a cost of 700 arrested.
The counter-culture reached its high point with Woodstock, the largest and last rock festival of its kind.
The Woodstock inspired many South American artists.
In my country, many artists were "invited" to leave the country because of the censorship. The logo was "Brazil: love it or leave it".
Listen to this song.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DM_2EdyytaU
The song was written by Caetano Veloso when he was invited to leave Brazil and exiled in London. The song is not what it appears to be. It's not a love song about London. In the song, Caetano Veloso talks about the freedom he had in London, how kind the policeman was. The "Flying Saucer in the Sky" verse is not a trippy thing. In the 60's, the government started talking about flying saucers to change the focus, they were killing people and they didn't want people to know it. Caetano sings "While my eyes go looking for flying saucers in the sky" and that means "Where are the flying saucers?".
Now tell me, how didn't they change the world? They failed in some things but they did their best in the name of a better, fair, equal world. If today we talk about peace, it's beacuse of the 60's generation. If today we have ONGS, it's because of them. What the next generations did was to keep the what the 60's generation did. I was born in 1982 and the Military left the power in 1985, that means a lot to me. I applaud the 60's generation. My generation fortunately didn't have to make anything.
Expand your world
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWZDqHe3Tws
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzDmvlmBWwQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0h7QCXV8rc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANModWL1R78
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjWynMA2-Y0
Stalker
Great Post Bill.
ReplyDeleteI think the person who has no guts to comment under their real name has kinda missed the point of your post. I can't seem to find the part where you said that the 60's generation 'didn't change the world' and that their achievments weren't important. Maybe we are reading a different post? May I suggest Anon read through the post again, paying particular attention to the paragraph that says...'the song really isn’t about people like him. It’s about the ones who sold out their values, if indeed, they ever had any.'
Mrs.P, do you know who Allen Ginsberg was? You're here to defend your friend and you don't know what you're talking about. Bill is adult and he can defend himself. By the way, he knows who I am. ;)
ReplyDeleteGinsberg was a POET born in 1926. It's OBVIOUS that the song isn't about him! It's not a song about HIS generation.
"I can't seem to find the part where you said that the 60's generation 'didn't change the world' and that their achievments weren't important"
Read these lyrics again:
"What happened to the revolution? Where did you go wrong?
Did you think you’d make it happen just by singing protest songs?
Do you really think that Woodstock made the world a better place?
Just a hundred thousand muddy hippies getting off their face!
And you have the gall to tell us that our music has no worth
Should we let your surrealistic pillow smother all the earth?"
It's a contradition to say that the song is about this or that hippie that sold out his values. The 60's was all about THE MASS doing everything together. If you talk about the few, you're talking about the many. There's no separation.
Information is available for everyone today but if people prefer to remain ignorant, it's their option. "Surrealistic Pillow" is a great album,it's better than everything made in the 80's but I prefer the childish playful Britsh psychedelia.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taAyi_LRFDA
It is true that defining and contrasting generations in such a narrow way is divisive. I am using it as a conceit to highlight the hypocrisy of those who said "never trust anyone over 30" and "hope I die before I get old."
ReplyDeletePete Townshend said as early as the 70s, "I'm an old fart too - but not boring!" I can get into that.
The civil rights act was not passed by a bunch of idealistic dropouts. It was passed by a congress full of mostly ageing white men and the president who signed it predicted with depressing accuracy that it would lose them the south for a generation. But they had the courage to do it anyway because it was right. Had it been up to Johnson alone, it might never have happened, but he was obliged to finish what Kennedy had started.
Allen Ginsberg was a generation removed from the hippies, but became a voice of that culture. I've already stated that I have nothing against the ones who stuck by their story.
That brings us neatly to Jefferson Airplane. I don't need Grace Slick lecturing me about the drug imagery in Lewis Carroll like she was the first one to notice. Yes, he's smoking a hookah. We get it! But it was that band who eventually morphed into the band that gave us "We Built This City." Of course, many better artists lost the plot in the 80s too. That's why I spent most of the 80s listening to the Beatles and Pink Floyd.
Woodstock didn't change anything. It was an amazing conert with some legendary performances. What's wrong with just calling it that? As I wrote in another unrelated piece, attempting to overstate achievements only ends up diminishing them. Self-indulgence is not political activism.
And if the 60s vets are pissed off because the younger generations don't understand or appreciate the battles they fought, well isn't that ironic?
I do agree that British whimsical psychedelia is preferable to the po-faced American brand.
I think this is just inevitable. We're going to lots of 40th birthdays at the moment - so yes, it's the time for it!
ReplyDeleteWhat will be gen X claim to fame?
We lived though the Newcastle earthquake, the hawke/keating years? I suppose there's also the twin towers anniversaries...
There's something about '69 that has people excited.
ReplyDelete