What’s with kids and their music these days?
Sound like a familiar refrain?
Right. It’s what our parents said about our music when it arrived, rocked a generation, and disrupted popular music.
“It will never last,” they said.
Not according to Neil Young, who wrote: “My my, hey hey, rock and roll is here to stay” in My My Hey Hey (Out of the Blue).
And rock and roll still thrives sixty-plus years later.
Our parents didn’t get it. And certainly not our grandparents. How could they? They were looking at it from the outside.
For them to not think and say, “That garbage doesn’t make any sense,” they would have had to come with us to the Filmore, or, heaven help us, to Woodstock to see for themselves.
They didn’t.
But I just did.
This is an intelligence debriefing from my accidental incursion into some of the younger generation’s very popular music – a concert at Madison Square Garden filled to the rafters with mostly teenaged and twenty-something girls there to see boygenius and MUNA.
There was a smattering of slightly older fans, but still very young compared to me. Like my 40+ year-old son and my 40+ daughter-in-law, whose desire to attend was why we were all there (I had no idea what I signed up for).
There were a few boys (men?) with their girlfriends maybe, and a lot of really interesting looking individuals of various persuasions. The crowd was also clearly heavily gay.
Here and there were a few parents who were there to chaperon their very young music aficionado daughters. (Good idea, by the way.)
Ever felt like you stuck out as if you were dropped onto an alien planet made up of creatures two feet high?
That’s what I felt like walking through that crowd. Except for one thing…
I was invisible.
Nobody looked at me, nobody spoke to me (other than my family), nobody moved out of my way even though I somehow floated through (above?) the crowd, and even the men’s room bathroom attendant in the totally empty MSG bathroom (almost all girls there, remember?) didn’t acknowledge me.
But I knew I was there.
Which, as it turned out, was a good thing.
Because I am so glad I was there.
The main act was boygenius and the opening act was MUNA. Both are made up of three women headliners and their women backup musicians. MUNA is hard-driving indie pop, while boygenius has a softer sound with beautiful vocals.
Joan Baez heaped a ton of praise on boygenius when she presented them with Variety’s 2023 Group of the Year Award. They have since been nominated for six Grammys and won three in February’s 2024 Grammy Awards. Not bad.
Both groups celebrate being female in a male dominated world. Also being gay in a straight dominated world.
Hence the audience of mostly females, many of them gay, loving the music and its message to them and for them.
They all sang along, rocking the house.
It was quite a scene. It looked almost out of control, what with thousands of young people responding to artists speaking for a generation looking to find their way in this world.
I could say something like, “I never saw anything like it.”
But I’d be wrong.
I was part of something just like it. And so were you if you are part of my generation.
We’re the “generation lost in space” that Don McLean sang about in American Pie.
We’re the ones the Who told, “I hope I die before I get old,” (Oops, too late) in My Generation.
We’re the ones who Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young warned “tin soldiers and Nixon coming” in Ohio.
We’re the ones who were taught countless lessons by Bob Dylan.
That roaring spectacle witnessed by this outsider at The Garden that night was not an other-worldly apparition.
It was a flashback to us embracing our music at a critical time in our lives.
As much as I didn’t feel like I belonged there, I have to say it was inspiring.
I got an intimate and unexpected look at the younger generation in their own music venue shouting out their hopes and dreams with smiles beaming.
I was the proud Grandpaw to every one of them there that night for being who they were and expressing what they felt.
After seeing the younger generation through the eyes of someone who long ago went through what they are going through now, I can tell you that the future looks bright.
And that’s what’s with kids and their music these days.
They get it.
Same as us.
***
Marc Axelrod retired from the ABC Television Network after 37 years, starting as a Technical Writer and then filling various Training and Development roles in the Broadcast division. His writing has ranged from the technical all the way to Hollywood screenplays. He is currently a Professional Writing Consultant to the US Military Academy at West Point and the US Army War College. His favorite role by far is being Grandpaw to two amazing little grandchildren.
To read more of his thoughts on grandparenting, Marc encourages you to visit his website The Grandpaw Chronicles at: https://www.thegrandpawchronicles.com