Song for a future generation… August 3, 2012
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Culture.trackback
I’m part of Generation X. Maybe you are too. That is people born between ‘the early 1960s and the early 1980s, usually no later than 1981 or 1982’. I’m not sure why that should come as a surprise, but it does. I always thought Generation X was those a little younger than me. But no, not at all. It’s people a fair bit, well, two or three years, older than me.
And in truth early 1960s to 1982 is quite a period of time. I was seventeen in 1982, so it’s interesting to see that someone who was born that year has a generational commonality.
Of course that begs the question what that commonality actually is. After all. Let’s look at this another way. It means that someone who is 30 today is of the same generation, or has some linkage to me who is touching on 47. Seems like an huge gulf of time. I mean, I remember 1988, but it wasn’t yesterday. Or the day before.
That’s okay, I can buy that. Sort of. Though it’s all Douglas Coupland’s fault. Or if not his, worse again, Billy Idol’s. Because Coupland copped the name for his book about Generation Xers in the late 1980s, from Idol by way of Idol’s band Generation X, exponents of first(ish) wave punk. That’s oddly appropriate though because punk although even more remote in historical time than 1988 has had a sort of half life ever since. Just this week I sat in a canteen across from someone with a sartorial style rooted in, well, not ’76 exactly, more 81 or 82 when the lesser lights like the Exploited had appeared.
In fact referents to Generation X are tricky. Nirvana? Yep, that’s pretty Generation X to me. As is the early internet. Though look at it a different way, if we’re to take the literal definition is it the fact of being born in that period or what we all did after that is important. In other words do we look back to the 60s and 70s or to the 1990s?
Slackers tend to be conflated with Generation X, but that – even nodding again to Nirvana and Seattle and check shirts, is lazy – perhaps not least because there’s the Richard Linklater connection and his own film ‘Slackers’.
But let’s look at what came before Generation X. Boomers. Though one suspects that for the most part the Boomers in Ireland were a little different to those in the US. Or maybe not. And event that’s not entirely correct. My parents weren’t baby boomers. One was born in 1930, the other 1941 or 2. And from my friends parents I’d judge that that wasn’t that unusual. Here points of commonality break down quite some way. It’s not that I had nothing in common with my parents cultural lives, but they were fairly sharply distinctive (perhaps more so given one side of the family came from Birmingham. Trust me the collision between 1940s and early 1950s English light entertainment and talent shows in Kilbarrack in the mid 1970s made for some unusual combinations).
I’ll go with this from wiki:
When compared with previous generations, Generation X represents a more heterogeneous generation, exhibiting great variety of diversity in such aspects as race, class, religion, ethnicity, and sexual orientation.[22]
It’s probably overstated, as well as being more than faintly smug, and you’d wonder about the impact of the recession. Then again Generation Y (apparently the successor) presumably is equally heterogenous, at least when set against some yardsticks.
And then what comes after Generation Y, because if X was 1965 to 1982 then seventeen years later was 2009. And after that?
I urge you to consider rewriting this post. Perhaps also ask someone to proof read it.
I too have no idea what it’s trying to say. And I was born in 1965.
There isn’t really a point, it’s just I read something somewhere which triggered some thoughts. Not meant to be that serious either. But I’ve got to be honest I get irritated by these efforts in so called popular culture and the media to “define” enormous and generally speaking demographic categories. So if there is a point it’s to tongue in cheek undermine that dynamic.
Jimbo,
And I urge you to shut the fuck up.[accepts yellow card and walks off field]
Yes after Y its Generation Milennia/Milennium I believe, the digital generation.
In Ireland, the commonality from the sixties to the eighties (roughly) is between people who grew up with some sense of `youth culture’ in the rest of the world, and with the expectation of having to emigrate when they left school or (if they had the chance) university.
Isn’t fair to say that the Irish Generation X is also the Irish baby boom?
One consequence of neutrality is that we did not share the same demographic outcomes as belligerent countries. So it’s probably unwise to assume that the demographic, generational categories of those countries can be transferred the Irish case.
Thanks Roasted Snow.
Michael and Dr X your thoughts make a lot of sense. I particularly like the idea that our Generation X ismore recent and our boomers though it raisesissues too.
Caveats entirely accepted.
Being a music obsessive the dividing line for me is how different generations interact with music. I grew up with listening to music on vinyl from Glam rock to Motown, Disco to reggae, from Punk to Hip Hop. And to this day I cannot relate to music which is not on this format. Hence my musical knowledge and interests stop in the early nineties. After that many acts did not even release their music on vinyl. And the political point I am trying to make? ERR, I’m not sure ……
That really resonates for me, though I very unwillingly made the transition to CD. I was watching a BBC 4 documentary on rock and ageing and it seemed to me to be that there’s clear generations in music,McCartney in one along with Animals and Procul harum guys, Shadiws a bit earlier, Suggs in a different one. Richard Thompson oddly a bit difficult to pin dow, Robyn Hitchcock likewise. And noticeable was how they didn’t even touch on people in their forties.
I held out for the best part of a decade. I got my first decent hifi in 1983 for the first Electronic album (my previous record player couldn’t handle the bass) and my first CD player in 1993 (for the Pet Shop Boys’ Very – it was available on vinyl, but I couldn’t miss that box). CDs were pretty niche in 1983, but it was only a couple of years before they were everywhere. But I have to admit I rarely listen to vinyl these days, except to rip it on to the Mac.