Yesterday I received my bi-weekly temptation, the Guitar Center advertisement catalog, and featured in it was the supergroup, Chickenfoot. Somehow I missed an announcement about this band coming together. Maybe it was during all of the excitement of traveling to Australia and Fiji in May and through mid-June. Maybe I've really stayed away from the mainstream too long. Whatever the reason, I was honestly shocked to see Sammy Hagar and Michael Anthony of Van Hagar fame, Joe "Surfin with the Alien" Satriani, and Chad Smith from the Red Hot Chili Peppers as the band, Chickenfoot. Who the hell knows from where the name came, but that's what they are calling themselves.
I need to confess to something. As big of a fan as I am of Indie/Alternative, New Wave and Punk Rock, my teenage years were full of heavy doses of Van Halen and similar acts. I love Led Zeppelin and Rush too. Yes, you can love The Clash, and still be fully into arena rock. From what I understand, it's indicative of my age cohort. That's another story that I will get to later.
Last night, I downloaded the album from Itunes and listened. I wasn't blown away, but I can't say I hated it either. I was very surprised that Joe Satriani could play in a band like this. He always struck me as a guitar tech geek with amazing chops, who was more about guitar wizardry than anything else. The album is harder than anything Sammy Hagar recorded with the Van Halen brothers. To an extent, it was similar in style to the David Lee Roth era Van Halen, just not as good. I need to listen to listen to the album a little more. I can see it creeping into my workouts. The pace is fast and furious, and the music is big and not very cerebral, a perfect escape? Who knows?
Here's a sample:
Age Cohorts
Back to the age cohort thing. I am very interested in age cohorts, and the subcultures that develop within them. Age cohorts are often defined as specific generations. Tom Brokaw called my grandparents' age cohort, "The Greatest Generation." My parents are baby boomers, and for years I believed I was part of Generation X. Well, that might be wrong.
Joshua Glenn, the writer of the Braniac column in the Boston Globe, labels the generations differently. I won't get into the entire piece, but his major assertion is that the Original Generation X are those people born between 1954-1963. This makes a lot of sense to me. First, punk rock (which was in opposition to the values, beliefs, and music of the Boomer generation) emerged at a time when the Original Gen-Xers were coming of age. Another point made by Glenn is that the term Generation X was a label stolen from Douglas Coupland's book of the same name. Coupland was born in 1961 and it is reasonable to assume that the young people in the book Generation X are people from his age cohort and not mine. Although, he is only seven years older than I am.
The second piece that convinces me that Glenn's categorization is more precise than previous pop-sociology, is how he segments the former Generation X. My cohort (born between 1965-1973) is the PC Generation, and those born between 1974-1983 are the Net Generation. According to Glenn, PCers are not as passive and apathetic as portrayed, rather, we PCers are ambivalent to commit to something that embraces one form of dogma or another. The characters in the Breakfast Club, a PC Generation classic, are perfect examples of this. No one is committed or even believes in the identity into which they have been pigeon-holed, and it appears that each deals with the anxiety of trying to live life on their own terms, as opposed to what cliques or adults expect from them. As someone who studies adolescence, I know that these experiences are common to this particular developmental period. I also know that it is a phenomenon that endured well past the age of twenty for many of my generational cohorts.
To a lesser extent, this explains my taste in music, which can best be described as an eclectic, moving target. I grew up loving arena rock, but I also loved the Talking Heads, The Clash, R.E.M., The Smiths and other bands that blazed the path for indie and alternative rockers I love today. I can experience nostalgia when I see a band like Chickenfoot, but I still want to throw on the new Deerhunter album when it is released. Don't get me started on hip-hop and country, because I like my share of that too. I guess I am trying to close the loop I left open in the preceding story on Chickenfoot. My taste in music was partially influenced by my generational cohort, and there are many people my age with similar tastes. I think...
I have thoroughly beaten that horse, and I am heading into rambling territory. So now have a look at Joshua Glenn's piece. This article gives the entire idea behind the generation renaming. This article explains the age cohorts in depth. You'll learn a lot more from his column than you will from me. Enjoy!
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