![]() That music was rhythmically innovative, culturally transcendent and perfectly crisp for the post-war isms, from hedonism to optimism. Sounds like the parameters of lounge music to me. ![]() ![]() ![]() The music, you see, was more about the listener’s experience than the player’s. The culture around electronica - an umbrella term for the genre - encouraged dancing, etiquette, fashion, a bit of romance and an emphasis on experience, which, for good or ill, naturally couples with the pursuit of chemically altered states. It beat the hell out of recycled power chords and flailing, greasy hair. The new sounds were rhythmically innovative, culturally transcendent and just crisp enough to appeal to those of us on the optimistic and slightly hedonistic side of Generation X. In the ’90s, though, the bite of new electronic sounds sank deeper and spawned a beast with many heads - trip-hop, ambient, acid house, electronica, techno. Synthesized sounds have been heralded as the wave of the future at least twice before, from the pioneering experiments of Kraftwerk and Brian Eno in the early ’70s to the computer-savvy sounds of synth bands like Flock of Seagulls and Depeche Mode in the ’80s. Look at the latest fixation on electronic dance music. So we did what every generation does when faced with this kind of cultural dichotomy: we looked to the past to usher in an innovative future. ![]() So while the record industry broke out the lobby soda machines for its younger, disaffected clientele and the flannel-shirt brigades hung shapeless, featureless gypsy rags and cover-alls on the unsuspecting youth of America, those of us reared in the neon ’80s and freshly set onto career tracks in a revived economy were left to find other soundtracks for our new, upbeat lives. Indeed, some of us felt downright uncomfortable in a culture chafed by denim and overdosing on heroin chic. Nor did the scores of frowning, moping, slovenly kids who came through the doors that Nirvana fell through - all of them baby-faced, inexperienced and begging us to suck their angst. Kurt Cobain, for all his worthwhile pioneering efforts in rock ’n’ roll, just didn’t speak for all of us. A funny thing happened on the road to nowhere.Ī sizable chunk of Generation X decided that we felt neither stupid nor contagious. ![]()
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June 2023
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