As for this:
This month, a new book, "Kill Your Idols," features essays in which rock critics who are young boomers and Generation Xers tear down allegedly classic boomer albums such as "Tommy" by The Who, released in 1969, and "Pet Sounds" by the Beach Boys, out in 1966.
As if THEY have any good music.........LOL.
C'mon, Howlin! I REMEMBER Tommy, and I remember wondering "Why does everybody think this is so wonderful?". Same could be said for "The Wall". That being said, I have to ask my fellow X-ers, Why oh Why does no one in your/our generation treat the guitar as a lead instrument? Why have a guitar in a song if all you're going to do is strum it (or worse yet, bang the hell out of it)?
I'm a Gen Xer, but I have to admit that the boomers had the better music. Besides, according to another freeper thread, I understand that the book mentioned attacks Lynyrd Skynyrd and Led Zeppelin. Rock critics have *never* liked Skynyrd (they're still not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, for one thing) and the critics only came around on Zeppelin long after they had broken up. It would be more "groundbreaking" in that book if the Gen Xer critics attacked boomer critics for ignoring those bands at their peak. Not to mention, I've been hearing people call Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band overrated for a good 15 years now; it's hardly a new argument.
One other thing -- it makes more sense to consider those born in the early 1940s as being the same generation as the boomers as those born in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Using the traditional standard of what defines a Baby Boomer, being born between 1946 and 1964, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Jane Fonda, Abbie Hoffman, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and John Kerry are *not* boomers! How does that make sense?