As memes go, “Okay Boomer” goes a long way. Though on surface hardly damning or even insulting, it stings precisely because the boomers made such a big deal of themselves. Nothing they did was just ‘okay’. It was meant to be ‘world shaking’, like Cool Hand Luke’s antics. The Boomer Bible would have us believe all previous generations(and cultures) existed only to lead to the Great Boomer Moment, and all successive generations shall live in the shadow of the boomers. So, when a youngster in the Twilight of the Boomers mutters, “Okay Boomer”, it cuts deeper than outright condemnation. At least condemnation implies the boomers still matter, that they are the focus of attention, the center of controversy(as the debates about Woodstock were for several decades). Many boomers probably feel like the overgrown spoiled brat in THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS who gets his comeuppance alright(and many times over), but no one is around to care or even remember why he’s due for a great fall. “Okay Boomer”, slyly more mocking than “Damn You Boomer, You’re the Worst Scum that ever lived”, implies boomers were ultimately no different, hardly special, from those who went before and came after. They had their day in the sun but grew old like everyone else in history. And in the coming decades, they will drop like flies like the generations of World War I and World War II without anyone really noticing or caring(not least because most of them are white, now a discredited people in the West).

Despite their self-aggrandizement, a certain anxiety haunted the boomer psyche. After all, the most emblematic boomer movie, THE GRADUATE, ended on a note of ambiguity. But then, its writer and director were pre-boomers, and indeed so much of boomer mentality was actually shaped by their elders. BONNIE & CLYDE was directed by Arthur Penn, who was born in 1922. Given the difficulty of breaking into the movie business, film culture in the boomer era was dominated by members of the ‘greatest generation’, even if it sometimes pandered to boomer passions. Rock Music was the true expression of the boomer generation because its main trend-setters were either boomers themselves or born on the eve of boomer-dom.

But, Rock Music also poses the biggest challenge for the boomers. A culture so devoted to youth was bound to make the boomers seem increasingly irrelevant and even ridiculous as they aged. Does anyone really want to see another Rolling Stones or Who concert? No wonder Nik Cohn, in his ROCK FROM THE BEGINNING, mused the Stones would have done good to die in plane crash before turning thirty. As it happened, many Rock stars did die young, adding to their romantic mythology, but the details were sordid and ugly, sure signs that the Counterculture was given to self-indulgence and self-destruction(and a hazardous model for younger generations).

Even boomers who steered clear of pitfalls of excess were impacted by the heady idealism. In Albert Brooks’ LOST IN AMERICA, a yuppie couple decides to embark on a journey of self-discovery inspired, rather belatedly, by EASY RIDER. But even the late-blooming idealist acknowledges the guys in the landmark movie had a nest egg: “They sold cocaine”, which gives the lie to the idealism. So, in the end, was it really about dollars and cents, a delusion of searching for meaning fueled by greed and laziness? There is a Jewish angle to LOST IN AMERICA as well, significant as Jews turned out to be the most consequential ethnic group who had most to gain from the vast social and cultural changes wrought between the eve and the end of the Cold War.

In a way, the arch of boomer history has become depressing. Look at the photos of young Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham, and for all their delusions and egotism, one senses a certain idealism, a resolve that their generation will be ‘different’. And John Kerry was part of the anti-war movement. Yet, what kind of politicians did they turn out to be? Just as corrupt, conniving, and slimy as their predecessors. Perhaps, this shouldn’t be surprising to anyone with a conservative disposition: Human nature is what it is and cannot be ‘saved’ or ‘redeemed’ by spurt of idealism or radical will.

Still, the contrast between their youthful dreams and professional compromises are so stark, in a way, worse because the boomer elites seem less reflective and redemptive, more smug in their sense of rightness. And they took fewer risks. After all, the three presidents of the Sixties Era all paid a heavy price. John F. Kenney was shot dead. Lyndon Johnson’s presidency imploded with the Vietnam War and the race riots. Richard Nixon was brought down by Watergate.

In contrast, for all their spectacular failures, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama enjoyed two term presidencies unscathed(mostly) and haven’t shown the slightest hint of self-reflection. The tragic boomer figure could be Donald Trump but for the fact that his presidency was such a clown show that, instead of failing nobly, just fell flat on its ass(though QAnon morons will claim The Donald meant to do it as part of 4D chess). As it happened, the Boomers took most of the credit for the social changes/progress brought about by the Greatest Generation(for good or ill), and this sense of moral narcissism led to an entitlement mentality whereby they felt justified by the virtue of spouting for the umpteenth time some platitude about ‘racism’ and MLK.

At least during the Sixties and perhaps for the first time, there was a sense among boomers that the biggest crimes committed by the US have been abroad, especially as so many natives perished in the Vietnam War. One would think the boomer generation would have been more reflective about foreign policy, but oddly enough, they fell into the groove of post-Cold War triumphalism and committed themselves to new rounds of hegemonism that, steered by the newly ascendant Jewish elites, turned US foreign policy into more wars and/or hostilities against any nation or people on the Enemies List of the Cabal. Muhammad Ali has been lionized over the years for having stood by his conscience in protest against the war. It was as if America’s conscience about its own past was reshaping its place in the world. One would have thought the boomers of all people, in coming to a deeper understanding of the righteous demands of blacks, would have felt likewise about the rest of the world. And one would have thought blacks, whose political culture owes so much to Sixties activism, would join with White Boomers in shaping US foreign policy toward a friendlier role in the world. Instead, something else happened. In sacralizing the likes of MLK and welcoming/promoting sacralized blacks in the military and key government positions, US revamped its image as a reformed nation with renewed moral license to do as it pleases around the world. US went from Ali refusing to serve in the Vietnam War to whites & blacks in the Air Force painting bombs & missiles with BLM signs to justify wars against Arabs(and whomever happens to be on the current Jewish hit-list).

So much of the promise associated with the boomers turned out to be a bummer. Today, the oldest of the boomers are in their mid-70s, and the world they left behind is no better(and in some ways considerably worse) than the pre-boomer world. Boomers were better dreamers than doers, not least because so many of their ‘ideas’ only made sense as fantasy. Try to make real world sense of John Lennon’s “Imagine”. Worse, the generation associated with Anti-War protests and CCR classics like “Fortunate Son” and “Who’ll Stop the Rain” has turned out to be even more nihilistic as global imperialists and warmongers… though globalists are blind to their aggression as their way is to transgress unto others as you allow others to transgress unto yours. A kind of mutual conquest, “We send our sons and daughters(and all the genders in between) to invade and occupy your lands, and you send your sons and daughters to replace our native folks.” A fair-minded kind of mutual imperialism?

Perhaps, most problematic of all is the Teflon nature of the New Elites. If the old Wasp elite power could at least be criticized and checked, this is no-go with Jewish Power shrouded in the Holocaust Cult. Allied with blacks and homos, two other sacralized groups, the most powerful elites in the US now carry on without any criticism. This is surely more a tribal problem than a generational one, i.e. if Wasps or White Americans continued their elite dominance with the boomer takeover, there would likely be a healthier debate about who has the power and what they’re doing with it. But with Jewish domination in key fields, who dares to speak the obvious lest he be labeled with the career-and-reputation destroying charge of ‘antisemitism’? Does the A.C.L.U even stand for free speech anymore?

One take on the boomers is they turned out just like everyone else. That was Mike Nichols’ point in his ending of THE GRADUATE. Older than boomers by a decade and having honed his skills in the cynical world of comedy, he had fewer illusions. Ben and Elaine will become like their parents. Nothing wrong with that but for the fact that the boomers made claims. Wild claims about how they, as a collective, was like the Second Coming, the End of History, the finders of the Fountain of Youth. Just like Christians come across as worse hypocrites with their sanctimony, Boomers seem insufferable for their fabulous claims. It wasn’t long before their self-absorption with youth turned into self-absorption with materialism(especially in the Eighties). In a way, the shameless hedonism so integral to 60s youth culture paved the way for a more brazen ‘rock star’ kind of capitalism.

In the end, the only lasting contribution of the boomers will be their music. It’s so easy to both overestimate and underestimate this aspect because its impact was so sudden & overwhelming. For countless people since the 60s, Rock Music has been the only music that mattered, and it changed fashions and tastes all over the world. But, so much seem diminished in retrospect(not because the newer music is better, which it certainly isn’t, but because the Zeitgeist has not only passed but been forgotten). The most obvious example is none other than the Beatles SERGEANT PEPPER’S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND, which was showered with some of the biggest raves in music criticism, popular and serious. It was as if Beatles united Heaven and Earth. But was the album really that great? Did the Beatles really have anything to say beyond platitudes? Was it all just a collective delusion?

Critical equilibrium isn’t easy to maintain with Sixties Music culture. Just when one’s about to consign it to another category in cultural history, one is struck by the sheer treasure trove of powerful and original songs. On the other hand, the sum total seems less than the extravagant claims made over the years by canonites for whom Rock Culture is Culture, and truth be told, what other living culture is there in the West but popular music, especially with cinema having turned into another category of video-games?

In a way, it is amazing that two decades made such a difference. Rock Music’s been around for seventy or seventy five years, but it’s the first two decades that really mattered, with nothing fundamental added to the template(with the possible exception of rap, but then part of its resilience is the sheer indifference to the very idea of development and growth). Cinema has been called the Art of the 20th century, but one could argue the two decades from 1955 to 1975(or from 1960 to 1980 if to clarify between Rock n Roll and Rock Music) had the biggest impact on the modern culture, for good or ill. In the end, it was probably for ill as Rock Music was like opening the pandora’s box. But same could be said of cinema. Even as there is so much to admire, the overall impact of movies on world culture has been negative, i.e. for every worthy work, there have been not only many more bad ones but downright corrosive ones as, cinema, like electrified popular music, has narco-tendencies toward mass-mindlessness.

History is about all of time, but the minutes fill the hours, which is to say relatively few bright moments serve as beacons for the rest of time. Greek history is long, but just about the only era that matters is a couple of centuries in ancient times. The period was so seminal that scholars still find new meanings and artists continue to draw inspiration. It wouldn’t be surprising if 99% of literature on Greek culture and history is devoted to the Classical period. While it may seem outlandish to compare Rock Culture to Classical Greece — after all, the only lasting contribution of the boomers is to popular music whereas Greeks achieved so much in so many fields — , the music produced in the first two or three decades of the Rock Era will probably be the subject of countless studies and the inspiration for many future artists(though perhaps, it needs to be forgotten and rediscovered for future generations to recapture the sense of adventure and revolution, like Antiquity was given a new life with its reemergence in the Renaissance). Some may argue the boomers achieved much more than music, especially in computers and high-tech. But, boomer contribution to science and technology seems part of the continuum than precedes and succeeds the boomers, whereas Rock Music was a decisive break that defined boomers as a force in their own right.

The biggest passion among Americans, at least since the Sixties, has been popular music. Perhaps, it owes to the intoxicating and seductive nature of music itself, but people don’t just like or enjoy their favorite music but love it, gorge on it, and even lose their minds over it. Boomers had their favorite TV shows in the Sixties, but they swooned over the Beatles and revered Bob Dylan, almost as a prophet. Boomers were called the Film Generation, but cinephilia was a minority phenomenon in college campuses and handful of big cities with reliable flow of foreign cinema.

It was the synthesis of composer and performer that made Rock Culture so potent in the eyes of youth. With TV and cinema, the writers write, directors direct, and actors act. So, who would be the real author? No wonder the ‘auteur theory’ grew out of controversy in film criticism. Even with the director enthroned as the ideal ‘author’ of cinema, no single figure has been as dominant in cinema as the great icons of Rock Culture.

Of course, it wasn’t always so. The general rule prior to the rise of boomers was the composers would compose and singers would sing, a rational arrangement given that most composers weren’t good singers(and lacked charisma) while the performers couldn’t string two notes together. (Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley just performed.) Today, one might even argue that the music scene has reverted or reset to the industrial ideal of composers composing and performers performing: A most workable division of labor.

And yet, the cult of music as especially meaningful and significant to youth culture owes to the Sixties when, for a time, the ideal was the songwriter-singer(to distinguish it from the ‘singer-songwriter’ phenomenon of the Seventies). Bob Dylan, as composer and performer, was regarded as a visionary personal artist. John Lennon and Paul McCartney also wrote their own songs. As such, they weren’t mere cute faces or charmers on stage, but artists in their own right, with something to ‘say’. And the Rolling Stones gained stardom only when they dug hard and unearthed a sound hitherto unknown to blues and rock-n-roll(though owing heavily to both). For the boomer generation, these shamanic rock stars represented a unity, a conviction that an individual could be everything. The personal and popular could be one. By technical standards, neither John Lennon, Mick Jagger, and especially Bob Dylan was a great singer, but it didn’t matter as it was about being personal and distinct. Even Brian Wilson, who could sing, agonized over making music more uniquely his own.

Especially under the influence of Bob Dylan, the Sixties Rockers were no longer content to write mere hits; they had to personalize their material, and this made them ‘poets’ in the eyes of the young(and even older) generation. To be a poet and also to perform, this was prophetic stuff for impressionable youth, and this template never went away(despite the resurgence and even dominance of the Pop Idol who relies on composers, many of whom are more like chemists than artists). The only thing comparable would be the standup comic who writes his own jokes. In the case of Woody Allen, he not only wrote and acted but directed, an incredible feat that explains his assured place in cinema — he may not be the best writer, best actor, or best director, but to be able to do three and churn out one personal work after another, that’s almost unheard of. Still, comedy focuses on the moment, whereas music resonates long after it’s over.

George Lucas is one of the giants of popular culture, a man who changed movie history(for good or ill). But, he remained behind the lens and is nowhere to be seen in STAR WARS. In other words, for all his talent and vision, he’s a geek. In contrast, Harrison Ford lit up the screen with his looks and charm, but what is an actor but a parrot who reads lines handed to him? As such, neither the writer/director or actor makes an ideal subject of cult worship. The creator creates but remains off-stage, and the performer commands the stage but cannot create.

In contrast, when boomers fixed their eyes and ears on their favorite Rock Stars, it was as if everything in the universe had come into singularity. Personality cult is probably wired into the human mind in search of heroes and gurus, and it all came to a heady mix in the Rock Era. The Boomer Ideal of the Rock Star fused the private and the public. Today, that ideal may be embodied by the Rapper, but rap music(at least most of it) seems like cheating. It’s like microwaveable ready-made food. If a Rock Star like Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Neil Young, or Robert Plant/Jimmie Page were like chefs who took raw ingredients and labored over cooking up something unique and special, rappers essentially take pre-packaged material and give it a bit of twist, mainly with more lewdness and foul language(but how many more F-bombs can you load into a rap song?)

In a way, it’s almost incredible. It took Rock Music only a couple of decades to create a whole new universe of meaning and longing. So short a span but so much to understand. Entire millennia can pass without fundamentally altering a culture or even civilization, but short bursts of energy can turn the world upside down.

Rock Culture was like a big bang moment in history, and even after so much of the Sixties has been forgotten(or neglected), the music lives on. And despite the eulogies that Rock is dead, no template has replaced the Sixties Ideal of the Rock Star as a totality, the one who has it all and can do it all. No wonder then that Martin Scorsese, for all his successes as a film artist, defers to Rock Stars of his generation as the true titans with talent that he can’t even begin to fathom. Also, without technology, the film-maker is nothing, but even if all the power plants were to shut down, the musician goes on making music. On the other hand, Rock Music is inconceivable without electricity. For awhile when electric guitar was the king of all instruments in pop culture, it was as if Rock Stars had the power of Zeus. They weren’t merely poets, performers, and prophets but gods as well.

The Rock Star was all the more a figure of awe because of the odds stacked against him. How many in a million have composing skills? How many in a million can sing(even adequately)? How many have stage presence, or charisma? Of course, being part of a band eased the odds. Roger Daltrey couldn’t compose but could sing the songs by Pete Townsend. Paul Simon was a decent singer, but his songs reached new heights with the vocals of Art Garfunkel.

I’m not sure where this blog will take us, but one way is to approach it as a way of understanding how popular culture and popular music(in particular) so profoundly changed the world when something both miraculous and monstrous crawled out of the lab of the boomer experiment of the Sixties.