Failure Is Freedom

Generation Jones may have been cynical because they came of age during the 70's economic downturn and after the failure of the Hippies to produce a revolution, but they weren't reactionaries. Their most enduring musical productions, Glam Rock, Punk, Disco, and Hip Hop were testaments to openness, inclusivity, and exuberance. It was the reactionary Boomers of the Love Generation who tried to squelch their high spirits by proclaiming, "Disco Sucks!" The "Disco Demolition" at Comiskey park in Chicago witnessed the destruction of records that had little to do with Disco per se, and more to do with a barely disguised hatred of Black and Latin music, and of the Queer Culture that these bigots associated with Disco. Unfortunately, the 80's also saw a growth in the reactionary punks of the "hardcore" scene who just like the reactionary bigots of the Right sought a return to some sort of lost purity. However, the Disco and Funk party of the 70's couldn't be stopped. Dance music went underground and became house music, and Funk and Jazz got sampled and became Hip Hop and Electro. And Punk fractured into a million difference "Post-Punk" subgenres that you were only allow to like with something like detached irony rather than direct enjoyment.

https://www.martinessig.com I mix the mixtapes that I post here but...,

Baddass vibes mixed by James Reeves of Midnight Radio: jamesreeves.co for the intro and outro music of most episodes.

Generation X includes those folks born between 65 and 80. But the stage was set for the new forms of art and music that defined us in the 70's. Particularly by the "deterritorialization" of cities affected by the death of manufacturing jobs and "White Flight" to the suburbs. Punk, Disco, Hip Hop, and Electro were all birthed in the 70, and not by Generation X. It was the generation in between X and the Boomers, called "Generation Jones (54-65)," that made something beautiful and new out of the urban squalor and general failure of Hippy Culture that they inherited. The famous economic down turn and stagflation of the 70's became the ground of one of the most intensive inflows of new forms of expression the world has ever seen. Let's explore the causes and conditions.

https://www.martinessig.com I mix the mixtapes that I post here but...,

Baddass vibes mixed by James Reeves of Midnight Radio: jamesreeves.co for the intro and outro music of most episodes.

Sometimes the things that don't work right, work perfectly. Artificiality used to be the measure of inauthenticity, but "synthetic" sounds became the currency of Generation X's triumphant failure to repeat the music of the past. Electronic equipment at the beginning of the 70s did not do well at replicating "real" musical instruments, and it cost a shit-ton of money, just ask Rick Wakeman. But by the early 80's there was cheap and readily available electronic equipment a plenty at the local pawn shop, "readily available" because it sounded artificial, and "real" musicians didn't want it. How did artifice become the "authentic" sounds of the future? 

https://www.martinessig.com I mix the mixtapes that I post here but...,

Baddass vibes mixed by James Reeves of Midnight Radio: jamesreeves.co for the intro and outro music of most episodes.

How did Generation X's obsession with authenticity turn us into a bunch of posers? The 50 year old dude who demands that a 20 year old wearing a Nirvana teeshirt name three songs is a poser, and he has been made such by his obsession with authenticity. The trick about "being-real" is that it can't be too intentional; otherwise, it looks like the "trying-too-much" of a "phony." Unfortunately, Holden Caulfield's ability to pick out phonies became essential to Generation X's definition of itself, and we suffered for it. Come with me on a journey to find out how Generation X's desire to be free of the values and conventions of white-bread, consumer culture became yet another failed attempt to get free. However, this retrospective doesn't end in the cynicism so associated with my generation. We will be learning from the artists, musicians, and philosophers who influenced Generation X about what freedom, authenticity, and love can mean for our desire to be made new.

https://www.martinessig.com I mix the mixtapes that I post here but...,

Baddass vibes mixed by James Reeves of Midnight Radio: jamesreeves.co for the intro and outro music of most episodes.