Elmore Magazine - Kickin’ in Your Stall
Wednesday June 1st, 2005 @ 8:59 PM
Filed under: Everything, Publications
Generation Blues
My father’s eyes twinkled as he staggered into the living room under the weight of our first television set. He was giving his four children a literal window to the world and never again would we be confined to the mundane monotony of Laramie, Wyoming. The busts of Mozart and Beethoven, which sat atop the piano, stared stoically at our new contraption as my father adjusted the rabbit ears.
We children sat cross-legged before this fantastic device, excitedly praying that our dad could perform some wizardry with the antenna and knobs. When the picture finally came clear my father could not have looked more shocked if a Giant Iguana had crawled out of the screen and started humping his leg. It was Little Richard, precariously pompadoured, prancing about in frilly, open-chested, sartorial outrage, and absolutely violating my father’s beloved eighty-eight keys with rock ‘n roll triplets. He shrieked blasphemous values about taking Long Tall Sally back into the alley while undulating in front of screaming white girls.
It was more than my father could take, let alone Mozart and Beethoven. His face was freeze-framed in electric-chair horror. While impaled by culture shock, his four children bounced on their haunches aglow in jack-o-lantern grins. None of us would ever again be satisfied by what we found in John Thompson’s piano book lessons.
My father thereafter banned us from anything Little Richard-a fight he couldn’t win because the opposing army had too many weapons. Elvis brought his pelvis, Jerry Lee stomped on the keyboard with his boots, James Brown could moonwalk an entire stage in seconds, and the Beatles and Rolling Stones were waiting in the wings to introduce long hair to a crew-cut culture.
But doesn’t every generation fight a losing battle with its children? For it is the tacit task of young people to challenge the tastes and values of their fathers, lest the status quo petrifies the growth and creativity of the human race. My father’s generation horrified their elders by jitterbugging in Zuit suits. My grandfather’s crowd danced the Charleston in Speakeasies. It goes way back because the pilgrim’s brought over Victorian virtues so severe that piano legs were wrapped in gaiters to avoid the possibility of arousal.
Today we’ve reached a strange chapter in America’s perpetual rebellion of youth. It is getting hard to find ways to alarm the last generation. The baby boomers blossomed into hippies who fornicated at festivals, ate LSD for breakfast, set fire to guitars, draft cards, flags, and bras, and used body odor as their cologne of choice. A musical hero might chase drugs with Southern Comfort and a dash of Tabasco sauce.
Music serves as the bellwether for rebellion. The lyricists of my generation had it easy because late fifties folk were listening to the Chipmunks singing ooh eee ooh aah aah, tang tang, walla walla bing bang, and Sheb Wooly had a number one hit with these famous words: it was a one eyed, one horned, flying purple people eater…
But today’s youth has to really work at troubling the hippies and then the eighties rockers. Recently I heard this line in syncopated rhythm: beat the bitch with a rat… I wonder how that would sound in Chipmunk?
The gym is an amusing musical matrix. Young males get to play the music and they like it loud. One day after an hour of listening to the unintelligible screaming of a band called Dumpster Juice, I announced that it was only fair if someone representing us older folk could play some music, and to my surprise they agreed without me having to confront some musclehead with his pants hanging down beneath his underwear and his hair spiked stiff enough to aerate my lawn.
My music was on trial. I got out The Best of James Brown. After a couple of songs the boys were nodding approval. “Nice Screaming,” they said. Until then I had never realized just how much screaming James did. I guess old or young we aren’t that far apart, about two octaves I’d guess.
Posted by Carl