Is There a New Generation to Talk About?

My wife and I went to a Who concert a little over a year ago, It was loud. Very loud. Very loud indeed, with an exceeding loudness. Mrs. Cornell would try screaming at me to say something during the show, and I couldn't hear a blessed word she said.

But loud is good.

Half of The Who is dead. Drummer Keith Moon died in '79, I think. (Their new drummer is Zak Starkey, Ringo Starr's son.) Bassist John Entwistle died just a few years ago. So now it's just singer Roger Daltrey and Guitarist/Singer/Songwriter Pete Townshend. Daltrey looked a bit like he’d been reconstructed, but he sounded great. Pete Townshend was just amazing. No guitar smashing, though. Would have liked to have seen some guitar smashing.

My biggest disappointment was that they didn't play a single track from Quadrophenia, which is my favorite Who album. Not one. Not even "Love Reign O'er Me." I would have liked to hear "Real Me" and "5:15," too. Alas, it was not to be. I also kept screaming "Squeeze Box! SQUEEEEEZE BOX!" but they paid no heed. No boxes were squeezed.

Their entire encore was a Tommy medley, though. The visuals were amazing. They had five moving screens behind them. During "Pinball Wizard," a large pinball floated through all the major landmarks of the world.

They also played a bunch of new stuff. I've got the new CD, so I was appreciative, but I was in the distinct minority. You could feel the energy in the room just collapse when they'd launch into something unfamiliar. They played "My Generation," and the place exploded, but then they segued from "My Generation" into a new track, and everyone sat down. (How they can still sing "I hope I die before I get old" with a straight face is beyond me.)

We had really cheap seats. We watched the opening act - The Pretenders, who sucked - from the upper bowl of the Delta Center, and right before The Who came on, we decided to go find better seats. We zipped past an old lady usher and found the only unsold block of seats near the floor. I kept expecting someone to show up and take our seats from us, but no one ever did. I felt like a rebel. A cheap rebel, but a rebel, nonetheless.

To sum up: a fun, loud show. (And I still want to be a rock star. I've sent in my application, but I have yet to hear back.)

I bring all this to your attention because my nephew left on an LDS mission to Buenos Aires last month. Before he left, we had a long, involved conversation about music.

He’s twenty years younger than me. And we like all the same bands. The Who, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Springsteen, Zeppelin, Queen, and Genesis were at the top of his list. I’ve never much liked Zeppelin and, while I respect Queen and Genesis, I’ve never really gotten into them.

But the fact remains – his bands are my bands. And there aren’t any new bands.

There really haven’t been any new bands for a very long time.

Maybe Coldplay, but I’m not convinced that Coldplay is still going to have fans in twenty years when my nephew’s nephew goes on his mission. People still talk about U2, but U2 is an 80s band that has survived. Where are the 21st Century bands? Are there are any worth mentioning?

Part of the problem, too, is that I’m old and I wouldn’t care about a new band even if there were any. I’ve got tickets to go see The Police when they come to Utah, but I’m excited by the fact that they’re going to play nothing but retro crap. If a hot new band appeared on the horizon, I’d savagely ignore them.

The Internet and music distribution channels have fragmented music to the point where it’s next to impossible for a new band to get noticed. It’s very hard to tell what’s a hit nowadays anyway. Top 40 radio doesn’t really exist, and all the rap/hip hop/pop-tart Britneyesque crap out there is just interchangeable noise.

Maybe I’ve just become my parents. Except they loathed popular music back in the day. Dad’s the right age to be an Elvis fan, and Mom’s the perfect Beatles demographic. But Dad hates Elvis. And Mom wouldn’t know a Beatles record if it goo goo ga joobed right there in her living room. They bristled at every attempt by my siblings and me to “educate” them about the latest pop fads of the day.

But my 11-year-old daughter has made no such attempts. She likes The Beatles. And show tunes. And none of her friends have tried to introduce her to any new stuff. It makes me think there really isn’t any new stuff. I haven’t been able to say “Turn that crap down,” because my daughter listens to the same crap I did.

My generation, baby.