Something else often occurs to me lately probably due to talking to random twerps in dive-bars over the past few years (after I hit the skids, ha)

When I was a twerp myself, even though I was a hard rocker, concert-attendee, nonstop, lived-eat-slept-breathed rock, I still was never *uninformed* about a lot of other kinds of music.

Even as a pre-teen, I had some familiarity with classical composers, I knew the names of famous operas, I knew swing-era bands from the 40s; I knew a little jazz and a little folk and a little blues. I knew 1950s rock and Mo-Town.

But if you talk to a kid in his early 20s today --for instance, you might happen to be ordering a drink and a kid steps up beside your elbow and conversation springs up--he usually doesn't know anything about the history of any other music... other than what he specifically listens to.

It doesn't matter if 20 million songs from around the globe are available, he is usually still just listening to what his friends listen to.

He somehow assumes that the current infrastructure and the current state of affairs has somehow always been prevalent. It boggles the imagination; it doesn't even make sense.

You point out some casual factoid to him, say something about the British Invasion or the Stones at Altamira Speedway. Alan Freed. Elvis Presley. Black vaudeville.

It doesn't even register. Whatever the feat was, whatever the accomplishment was, it doesn't penetrate. Everything was always "just as easy as it is today". Everything was always just as automated and slick and fast. He won't even grasp that there was a period in American history where guitars weren't electrified or portable music players weren't in everyone's pocket.

In other words, accidents never took place; no one ever got electrocuted, no one ever O.D.'d on drugs, police never beat anyone, there was never any unrest, no one ever rioted. Music never changed history; "everyone always got along". If there was ever any hard work that needed to be done, well anyone who let that happen to them 'must have been stupid'. (Just my paraphrase here, but that's the general attitude I see).

Now, when I make this observation, I allow for a certain amount of 'generational mis-perception'. But I don't think its a factor; because there have been massive and rapid changes in this era which dwarf the rate of progress people experienced before.

You follow? I'm not lapsing into cracker-barrel rubrics, claiming a previous generation always had it harder than a current generation. For instance I never grew up with 'milk truck deliveries', or 'iceboxes' rather than fridges; but just because I didn't experience them personally, doesn't mean I never heard of them.

I don't assume milk was always available from a 7-11 three blocks away and I don't assume cars always had moon-roofs and airbags and electronic locks and I don't assume that people in every era had it exactly this way as we do now. And the reason for that is that I recognize that plenty of things around us took a long time to develop and there was a lot of obstacles and delays.

In the same way, I don't enjoy music without also enjoying knowing how we come by it, how it got here. But I just don't see that same perspicacity in the bubblegum crowd today. I find myself explaining really basic stuff to them as if they're only 5 yrs old instead of 25.

It represents a deeper lack of knowledge about the world around us, than it is just a "hey well, i'm into my own thing, see?" If you can;'t even explain how what you hold in your hand came-to-be manufactured, no idea when did it start to appear on the market, that is deeper ignorance than just being 'clueless'.

Why I mention all this? Because debates about music trends often depend on people possessing shared history.