Sorry, I can’t help myself, I have to brag: I was lucky enough to see the Beatles play at Coachella last Friday. OK, maybe it was technically just an aged Paul McCartney, but if you closed your eyes, opened your mind to a landscape compilation of everything you’ve ever read about the Fab Four and sank into the field of cheering fans the likes of black-and-white Beatlemania film rolls, I swear it was magic.
Stay with me ‘mdash; this is going somewhere. So after the show, as I stumbled dreamily toward my friends at the yellow-tarped star-shaped bamboo edifice that was probably only erected for the express purpose of finding the friends you were separated from in a music-and-heat-fueled delirium, I passed a middle-aged McCartney fan remarking loudly to her festival mate.
Apparently she just couldn’t believe that there were so many young people at the show ‘mdash; how could we even know those songs, she wondered aloud, as they were written decades before any of us were born!
This reminded me of the same mystified inquires I usually get from my mom when she hears me listening to Cat Stevens, or the bewildered face my uncle makes when I recommend a Bob Dylan album to his daughters. It’s as if the idea that one could enjoy anything that came before herself is totally foreign, and almost threatening.
But the Beatles, Cat Stevens and Bob Dylan are all pretty big names ‘mdash; I would be surprised to find anyone living in America who hadn’t at least heard of them.
Plus, thanks to the Internet ‘mdash; a little piece of technology most of our parents still haven’t totally mastered ‘mdash; kids who grew up in the ’80s and ’90s have a way more extensive knowledge of music than any previous generation.
It’s a pretty big claim, I know. But if you don’t believe me, scroll through your iPod. Right now I’ve got a range that includes the aforementioned trio, the Jackson 5, the Fiery Furnaces, Frank Sinatra, the Hold Steady, Beyonc’eacute;, Green Day, the Pointer Sisters, Fela Kuti and Cloud Cult. My mom’s CD rotation? The Eagles, James Taylor and U2 ‘mdash; only.
And anyway, by the this-happened-before-you-were-born logic, people of our parents’ generation would only be eating food cooked in microwaves, seeing as the oven clearly predates their births; no one would read books; most people wouldn’t be vaccinated against diseases like polio; and sex and beer would be unfortunately absent from our lives.
So next time your dad implies you’re a poser because that Ramones album you’re jamming to definitely predates your conception, just tell him those shoes he’s wearing are so prehistoric.