Tom… it’s not a “generation thing”… it’s a “where you are in life thing”.
Like you, I’m 42, and of course grew up in an entirely different world than today. TV: first it was black and white… then crappy color… and you had to (gasp!) get up out of your chair (no remotes?!) to twist a dial (what’s a dial?) to change to another of the only THREE channels (no channel 145?). Music: well, that’s pretty much been covered in the foregoing threads.
My father was born in 1922, fought in WWII, and “his” music was swing, big-band, classical “old fogie” stuff. An entirely different generation… the GREATEST GENERATION. Still… when my sister and I were in elementary school in the 60’s and started to listen to the Beatles, etc. … he got into it. As we got older and our musical tastes “matured” our parents came along with us. My parents are dead now, but I remember my mother, almost 70, dancing with my sister and her two elementary-aged children in the family room to one of the pop bands and she actually knew the words and was obviously loving it.
As I take my kids and their friends to soccer or swim practice they ask to put in their “pop” music and, truthfully, I enjoy it. I’ve taken them to some of “their” concerts and they were pretty good too. And there were plenty of us oldies at those pop concerts, and a lot of them were not with kids.
A month ago I took my 7 and 9-year-old to an Earth Wind and Fire concert, and we sat in the center, four rows from the stage, watching Verdine White pluck that bass and never stop moving, and listening to Philip Bailey sing “Reasons” in a falsetto only he can pull off… and after the concert as we were walking out holding hands they said “Papa (that’s what they call me) that was cool… we need to go to more concerts like this!” It made me smile.
Music crosses generations.
But the rest… I agree with you. Think about it… training for a marathon was on MTV!
There was a good post on another website on this topic, and I really liked it:
“The one thing about our sport that I think is great is that we are all athletes first, irrespective of sex, age, race, political affiliation, music preference etc. P Diddy trained and finished a marathon in a respectable time and for that he is one of us.”
Life’s pretty complicated, and that kind of attitude makes life just that much simpler.