""When I hear yet another adolescent declare that his/her highest aspiration is to 'be-in-a-band', I despair!"

I depair over people like you. When I was a teenager, low thses many years ago, that's an aspiration that many of had, to be in a band. Don't denigrate those who actually have some ambition, and, who knows, some vision."

When I was a teenager, from a working class family, I aspired to become a scientist (in my opinion, one of the highest callings a human being can have) and I became one.
Now I'm sure that there are plenty of teenagers today who are aspirational and ambitious - and, generally speaking, I support them. But wanting to be-in-a-band and make loud, incoherent, unintelligible 'clone noises' is, again, in my opinion, an unworthy aspiration - a symptom of our dreary, trivial, dumbed-down, money, fame and celebrity obsessed culture.