Loud Love Blog: The Lost Generation
by Drew Wilson on Jul 24th, 2011
Drew Wilson, the man behind the curtain of WRVU’S “Loud Love” Show, is a punk rock connoisseur from New York City and one of the last of a generation who can say they grew up going to CBGB's. He moved to Nashville to get into radio and found a spot at the Vanderbilt station in 2008, where he put his training to use and took over the waves of Music City with the only punk rock show on the radio at the time. Now, in 2011, he's still playing the best of new and old punk, hardcore, and garage rock, and he's a fixture at the local shows as well as booking and promoting local bands, and keeping the volume turned to loud.
We start thinking a lot about legacies and generations when we start getting older. What have we done that matters? What will we leave behind that gets remembered?
The question I’m pondering is what the hell is wrong with kids today? It seems like the crux of getting older is when one can’t even relate to what the younger generation is doing.
Skype makeouts? Texting in class? Heroin making a comeback among teens? Really? This is stuff that happens? How stupid are they?
Most of it we can’t control, only hope there are good examples and role models out there and that the people closest to you are brought up right.
Rebellion is a word that gets tossed around way too easily in regards to younger generations with skewed definitions. South Sudan rebelled; little Johnny wearing eyeliner and writing horrible poetry is just trying to make a statement and find a place in the world.
Henry Rollins, in his excellent second career as a spoken word artist/comedian, once stated:
“This is first generation in history that will be more hardcore than our children. I just know one day a son is going to rebel against his parents by blasting Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance in his room thinking ‘Yeah, Dad won’t understand what we’re listening to’ until tht Dad bursts in and says ‘You think that shit is hard??’ and cranks up some Black Flag and some Misfits until the kid starts crying for him to stop playing that loud abrasive noise.”
That joke really connected with me. In the current adult/starting-to-have-children generation, grunge, hip-hop, punk, alternative and all their offshoots really became the music to grow up on, and well, parents just didn’t understand. Those same parents grew up listening to the Stones and the Doors and the Dead and their parents hated it, the same parents who pissed off their own parents by listening to Chuck Berry and rock ‘n’ roll while their own parents were playing Perry Como and Sinatra.
This goes all the way back throughout time, along with Mozart, Beethoven and others, C.P.E. and J.C. Bach helped usher in the classical period of experimentation that ended the Baroque period of strict-form classical that their own father J.S. Bach was a champion of along with the likes of Handel and Vivaldi.
So yes, throughout history music has been a major factor that allowed each generation to find it’s own identity, it’s own voice and continue to push the evolution into new eras. Parents yelling at their children to “turn that noise down!” is a long standing tradition that I would argue is one of the more influential themes throughout history — tracking time periods and national attitude shifts, polarizing ideologies and inspiring change and new nontraditional thought, which drives progress — all through music.
What does that mean for the kids growing up today? Rollins is right; is today’s music really anything that is going to shock parents and drive them crazy?
Avenged Sevenfold and Lady Gaga aren’t going to completely confuse and disorient parents. They’re just lite-fm versions of Dio and Madonna and other artists those same parents were listening to in order to drive their own parents crazy — nothing to shock and anger.
When the Sex Pistols sung “Anarchy in the UK” half the clubs in their country banned them from performing. Black Flag inspired California police to show up in force to shut down their shows. Fear supporters from Dischord house and beyond caused nearly $10,000 in damages to the Saturday Night Live set when Fear played, causing a total shift in policy for TV shows booking bands.
Today, Kings of Leon quit their set when they noticed birds crapping on the stage; Justin Bieber can close down a mall for a day; autotune killed talent and vocal experimentation; and#1 singles have lyrics like “call me up if you a gangasta, don’t get fancy, just get dancey, why so serious.”
This is uncharted territory. As a whole, this generation will be harder than their kids.
What that means for the world is yet to be seen. All we can do is make sure to expose kids to a broad spectrum of music. The radio sure as hell isn’t going to help, but with the internet, iTunes, YouTube and a nationwide golden-era for touring bands of all sorts, it isn’t asking too much.
The effort will be worthwhile, and who knows, maybe your grandchildren will thank you.
D.Rew
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