The recent Taylor Swift threads got me thinking about how different it is today to be coming of age than it was in my youth.

When I was 13, we lived about an hour north of NYC. We could hitch hike so I was mobile. Me and a couple of my friends would take the train into the city, ride the 6 down to Chinaatown, have a feast at the Hunan House which was the greatest Chinese restaurant on the planet. Then we'd take the 6 back to Astor place and head over to the Fillmore East on 2nd Avenue and 6th St. We'd get there right at 7:30 when the box office would release any unused house seats and for the early shows, that was almost a gaurantee we'd be sitting in the first 12 rows dead center.

To add to the scene, one of my friends older brother was going to Boston College and his room mate was a chemistry major who made all of our acid. His brother would come down from Boston about once a month with bags of pills and tabs and lots of hash. We never worried about bad acid.

We're talking 1970 and 1971 so we got the last year of the Fillmore and we got to see so many wonderful acts. When we hit the late shows, we'd take the subway back to Grand Central Terminal and sleep in the big marble shoe shine thrones and in the morning when the early trains came in, we'd bum money and buy Nedicks Hot Dogs and Pastries for the trip back up north.

These days, young folks are not mobile like we were and it seems to be a much more dangerous world. Now kids spend time starting at cell phones. I'm sure they find ways to enjoy themselves but I don't know, it seems like a much different time and I think back then we were still more innocent than we are now. Yeah, some times bad shit happened but I guess I was lucky because other than almost getting busted for possession, I escaped mostly unscathed with a ton of fabulous memories of some truly magical experiences.

I miss those days and felt like taking a walk down memory lane and sharing some of it here. Hope y'all don't mind. I'm sure others have stories so feel free to share.

Catchin’ shows at The Fillmore and crashing at Grand Central until the morning sounds amazing. Thanks for sharing.

You still in NYC? Ever pop into Smalls for some jazz?

No, I am in the southwest now and I do not like flying commercial airlines anymore so my NYC days may be memories. My brother is there.

I did see Joe Pass at a small club back in the day - I actually sat at a table with Gram Parson's sister Avis - probably just before she died in a boating accident. I also got to see Bucky Pizzarelli - can't remember that club either - he joined me and a friend for dinner between sets. Super nice guy and of course a great player. I do miss NYC. I always felt comfortable there.

I think it's a universal theme. Everybody thinks their generation is better than the next's. Kids these days are homebodies, but they've also got access to way more porn and music software than we did, so I think they've got it better.

In that sense, perhaps, but I think the music of my youth was far more creative and interesting. Compare the output of Taylor Swift to that of the Beatles? Big difference. Of course today's kids might disagree but 100 years from now, it will be quite obvious. Of course this is my opinion so...?

:-)

You know what I've learned about the kids of today? They don't listen to mainstream garbage. That was manufactured for and by bland adults. If you want to hear what the kids are really listening to, check out edgy older teenage shows like Heartstopper, Young Royals, Thirteen Reasons Why, and Bodies Bodies Bodies. In these shows where teens are the target audience, you find out that they music that the kids actually like is really freaking good and imaginative.

maybe You want to post some examples

I think humanity has always been mostly bland and uninteresting. Which is fine, not everyone has the time and energy to be an artist, we'd collapse if that were the case...
I think what you and I are aware of is the ultra pop garbage, but to that end, also your parents likely hated The Beatles too. If you spent some time digging in places that aren't delivered to you, I think you'd find plenty of new music to get excited about, but also we're getting older and it may be so out of our wheelhouse we'd not recognize it, much as my parents didn't get 80s thrash, and their parents though Zeppelin and The Beatles were hippie Satanic garbage.

I'm pretty happy to enjoy what I enjoy and scratch my head at the other stuff.
I saw a show out here in the high desert last weekend and one of the acts was in from LA, very young band, and it sounds like well executed and uninteresting to me indie-pop. She announced her first record comes out soon, and well, we looked her up on Spotify and she has 200K monthly listeners... without an album out! Times have changed.

And I'm cool with that. (Until all my heroes die)

There is stuff out there that I bump into that I like but the melodies of today's pop music are generally weak compared to the melodies of the 60's and 70's. Even country music has become somewhat mundane in that vein - and the formulaic arrangements doesn't help.

I must admit I do not listen to much current music anyway. My car radio is tuned to NPR and when I listen to music it is usually something from my collection of CDs. I do hunt around Youtbe sometimes and like I said, I occasionally stumble onto something I really like but most of what is out there commercially these days is dull to my ears. Pop, Hip-Hop, Country - they all suffer from the "blahs".

Oddly, in my family, the folks liked some of the music I was listening to. They definitely liked the Beatles and Dylan and I remember them liking some of the cuts from "Tommy".

I took my father to see The Mothers Of Invention and while the volume was a bit much for him, he thoroughy enjoyed the concert and of course the theaterical aspect of it (he was an actor).

Of course the trend is always that older generationations dislike their kids music but I do think we grew up with really great music and it is just hard to follow in those footsteps.

I may be a bit of an odd duck but I never liked the music of the 50's either. I respect Elvis but would never even think to listen to his music. I have always found the music of the 50's to be pretty dull as well. I however love a lot of music from the 30's and 40's.

And, like you, I listen to the stuff I like and for this time in my life, that is just fine. I do not need new music as I have enough of the old stuff to cling to.

Most of Taylor Swift’s fans are in their 20s. I made the same argument once about how it’s just soccer moms listening to her. Not so.

The reality is that life was better back then. It’s hard to say when it began to turn.

My view is that it has been a steady slow motion catastrophe since WWI.

I'd say that for the US, WWII and up until about 1980 were the great years. Things started going downhill in 1980 and that trend has continued ever since. There were bad moments during this span of course but overall these were good times.

My opinion of course.

Not if you were brown, black, latino and even asian.

It was hard then and is still hard now.
The whole " America was great back then thing" didn't apply to everyone, which is why when i hear people say that I always think "It might have been great for your family, but definitely not for mine".

I hate to think what my teenage years would have been like if those things were available. (Shudder)

As they weren't available I had to learn an instrument, form a band and get the courage to talk to that stunning girl in art class.

I am happy I got to see the end of the 20th century with no internet and no constant distractions or mobile phones in everyones faces when you could still not feel weird saying hello to strangers at the bus stop or train station, I do miss it, there was more respect, I'm not even particualrly that old either but do have a lot of respect for the elderly and think it must be awful for them having to adapt to all this modern technology nonsense that's imposed upon us by the powers that be, they want you depressed, constantly distracted and to never speak up for yourself, that's the impression I get anyway. I 'log off' as much as possible now, and barely use a smart phone.

Yes, I agree 100%. Nonetheless, I still hold to the opinion that in general, America's best years were those following WWII until they started to go downhill in 1980 or thereabouts - at least for the majority. We had our problems for sure and certainly racism has always been a black mark on the country.

I am now 67 and retired and I spent about 40 years as an IT professional. I was a mainframer though which is totally different than today's technology and since I have no interest in having a cell phone or spending my day on social media or using modern gizmos, I am totally out to sea when it comes to the majority of today's technology. This causes difficulties for sure. Everyone expects everyone to be technologically savvy these days and for folks like me, there are hurdles that we have to find ways to jump through without using technology. Sometimes that means having to go to a store when most folks do it online. I ran into this recently when I discovered my drivers license was about to expire. DMV requires folks to set up appointments now for this service where I live and I do not do anything online because I want to minimize my footprint. I had to go into one of the DMV locations and have them make an appointment for me. That was a PITA. Luckily for me, they were able to fit me in with only a short wait. Another issue was when I had to buy a new television. It required a cell phone for setup. I do not have a cell phone. That too was a PITA. There should be ways to bypass things like connecting to the internet. On the TV I bought, that was not possible so I had to send it back and then go to a Best Buy to buy a TV that did not require having a cell phone. And, I am guessing that if I bought a new TV today, there would be no more brands that can handle bypassing the interent connection. At least I have my laptop and my studio computer but there are folks older than I am who have no computer at all and I imagine it is even more frustrating for them at times.

1945 was the end of the project begun with the Reformation and codified at the end of the 30 Years War (1618-1648) as the Westphalian Nation-State System.

It’s over. Welcome to the past.

well, justin timberlake didn't bring sexy back, but goddamned warmongers tried to bring the cold war (and WWIII threats) back LOL
so kids these days can still be afraid of dying in their sleep before getting old enough to vote due to threat of nuclear annihilation.

may peace prevail on earth.

Crazy. The TV manufacturers have been spying on their users for years, so this is just another avenue for collecting info from your device too.

I dont have a TV since mid/end 90s, but that TV sets nowadays have builit in microphones that permanently listen and spy into peoples homes is one of the most unbelievable dystopian things that happened. Besides of telephones and computers with cameras that spy on people of course, and every thing else that spies on people, like networks of cameras and even scooters in the streets.

I dont even know when and how this transition happened.
I had been one of those who resisted the trend, up to the point where it stopped making sense, way beyond the point where you become a suspect if you dont participate in passive survaillance.

They say young people are depressed, psychotic and share a feeling of hopelessness like no generation before them ever.

I am not surprised. We basically took everthing from them. Every chance, every freedom, any future, any purpose. Culture even.
I am surprised they dont run amok in numbers. Well they do, occasionally.

But now, after Corona, which is now "officially" considered haveing been lab created most likely, it seems we are at a slow mo tipping point.

Climate change is a thing of the past, climate has changed and is now about to tip over completely, catastrophically. The so called West is going downhill at increasing pace. Homelessness is so widespread its become a new stratum of societies. Ressources are running out. Billionaires are about to reshape societies to their demands and take over Governments. Increasing regions are considered "failed".
Genocides are considered a feasable way of politics again. People fund their own private rockets while their employees are forced to piss in bottles and shit in bags during shifts to press out max profit. The piss-in-bottles is offered on that very market place and ranked up by bots by pranksters. Europes main energy carrier is blown up and there is hardly a raised eyebrow, let alone a reaction.
The orbits are being polluted by ten thousands of micro stattelites on purpose.
Crops are genetically modified to become sterile.

I assume things are going to happen ever faster now, and in ten years time we everything will have changed so dramatically that post generations will give this very period of change a unique name.
Like, the pivot decade, or similar. The tipping. The crash.

There'll be riots/havoc before a financial crash.

When it comes to resetting balance, along comes something to keep the facade running. Look at the fanny and freddie thing... Along comes the Fed with free money to keep them a float so you keep paying. If they went bust you would have no repayments to make. Can't have that for the 99%.

The capabilities are there for hackerspies with TVs and phones whatavia ... But really who's intrested in someone just living their everyday life's,

I'm boring... If someone spies on me they're wasting their time being more boring than I am.

I mean you don't really need to spy. A lot of people just put their shit online anyways. Look at YouTube, pictogram, Facebook and all that.

They'll collect all this "data" to be not able to sell anybody anything as everyfker is on the breadline. With no expendable dosh to give. So the data is pretty much wothless/useless

uh oh.