The Kids Aren't Alright

While many of the friends that i banged heads with in my earlier years have grown up and grown sensible, some of us refuse to wield to the pull of music that isn't likely to damage your brain cells and prematurely destroy your hearing. In another joint posting, my fellow blogger Cody and i disagree on the merits of the music of today.

A recent phenomenon in the college is that my students have began wearing T-shirts of bands that, when they were in their pomp, the students themselves were still just learning to walk.
Nirvana and Ramones seem the most popular but there is a fair sprinkling of the likes of Pearl Jam, Guns 'N Roses, Sex Pistols, Soundgarden and Carter USM which only confirms two of my beliefs.
One is that music peaked in the late 80's and early 90's with the likes of Nirvana and Guns N Roses and secondly that if the music being churned out today was a dog, it would be kinder to put it out of its whimpering misery.
Bland could not begin to describe the state of music today and it is telling that the most eagerly anticipated album of not only this year but of the past few years, is a band that last charted in 1994 with a cover of a Rolling Stones song.
In the UK, boy band Take That split up in 1996 and came back 9 years later to top the charts with their first two singles as if they had never been away but in truth they had very little competition from the groups that had stepped into the void they left in that decade. The charts are dominated by bands following the Simon Cowell formulae of good looking singers belting out saccharine covered ballads who are tucked up in bed by 10pm.
Gone are the days when you would have to lock up your daughters when a rock band came to town, far from an evening of whiskey and debauchery in the back of the bands trailer, it would be an evening of chaperoned scrabble and a friendly hug.
Despite the best efforts of bands like Green Day who put out arguably their best album a few years ago and the constantly excellent Kaiser Chiefs and Fratellis, the charts are just full of similar acts singing similar songs and bands like REM and the Stones that are just going through the paces to keep their bank balance topped up.
Music has a history of bursting out from a mind numbing dip with new, rebellious music to inspire the youth and get the blood flowing. Punk in the 70s, alternative rock and grunge of the late 80s and early 90s so we must be due a doozy of a new musical genre to belatedly shake us out of the slumber that has fallen across the ears of non-pubescent music lovers everywhere who can only repeat the wise lyrics of King Kurt when he said 'Here we are now, Entertain us'.

Cody at It is What It Is blog is putting forward the opposite view that when it comes to music, we have never had it so good.