During the summer of 2004, I worked with children at a summer
camp. While I enjoyed this job, working with children eventually
took its toll, and I decided to try something different this
year.
It’s only fitting then that while working at the Glendale
News-Press this past summer, nearly half the stories I covered were
about summer camps.
Unless you’re gifted at talking to children (in which case
your name is likely Bill Cosby), you can imagine how difficult it
is to write a 600-word story using mostly kids as sources. Usually,
getting them to state their favorite color is a tremendous
accomplishment.
My experience covering a Glendale arts camp, however, was quite
different. At this camp, kids were learning how to put together a
play and write their own songs for musical numbers. When I say
write their own songs, I mean that they were taking pop songs and
changing the words to fit their theme. You can imagine my surprise
at walking in and hearing 9-year-olds singing a song to the tune of
the Violent Femmes’ “Blister in the Sun.”
Of course, you can always count on artsy kids to have something
interesting or substantive to say. These kids were no exception, so
I figured a good question to ask would be a simple one: “Who
are your favorite musicians?”
After posing this question to a group of eager 9- and
10-year-olds, however, I found myself reflective.
They didn’t all give the same answer, but three artists
were consistently named: Green Day, Weezer and Gwen Stefani.
At first I didn’t catch the significance of this. But when
one of the campers said he liked Weezer, “even though some of
their songs are about taking apart sweaters, and that’s
dumb,” I did a double-take, and not because he was dissing a
classic.
I was more intrigued that these children all liked the exact
same artists I did when I was their age.
Well, maybe not exactly the same.
Looking at the charts now compared to 10 years ago, there are
distinct similarities. Green Day has a top-selling album
that’s a hit with young and old alike. Weezer is drawing in
fans with poppy songs (recent quality notwithstanding), and Gwen
Stefani is once again singing catchy songs on the radio and hanging
out with Gavin Rossdale. What’s changed?
Simply put, these kids may like the same artists I did at their
age, but they’re truly not the same artists. Their version of
Green Day is punk rockers who have conquered the airwaves and feel
they should devote their music to a higher cause. These kids watch
MTV to see a video of their heroes walking together down a lonely
road with purpose.
My Green Day sang songs about masturbation and named their
major-label debut after feces. And sure enough, I spent New
Year’s Eve 1995 waiting to see MTV’s No. 1 video
““ Green Day sauntering down a street like a cool bunch of
misfits, a retrospectively bizarre parallel.
For these kids, Weezer is all about “Beverly Hills”
and “We Are All on Drugs.” They were too young to see
Rivers Cuomo go bonkers, and to them he must seem like a pretty
cool guy (he hangs out at the Playboy Mansion!) with a responsible
stance on substance abuse.
Most of all, the Gwen Stefani they know is a hip-hopping party
girl. For them, the thought of Gwen Stefani not only having a band,
but also having said band play horns and not be composed of a bunch
of Japanese schoolgirls, probably makes about as much sense as
dial-up Internet.
A lot of the time, music is shaped by the moment just as much as
overall quality. Depending on when someone discovers a band, they
could have a completely different perception. For us, the Rolling
Stones are aging rockers. For our parents, they’re simply The
Stones. Iggy Pop was one of the original punk rockers to my
parents, while I was first introduced to him as Michelle
Trachtenberg’s wacky dad on Nickelodeon’s “The
Adventures of Pete & Pete.”
Now kids are being introduced to the same artists that we
discovered when we were their age. Yet when they grow up and tell
their children about “the good old days,” they’re
going to have vastly different stories. Our “Just a
Girl” will be their “Hollaback Girl.” Our
“Longview” will be their “Holiday.” While
music can bridge generational gaps, it affects these groups of
people differently due to the time of introduction.
Though the fact that kids today will associate Weezer with that
god-awful “We Are All on Drugs” song still makes me
throw up in my mouth.
If, like Humphrey, you also wonder what today’s
10-year-olds would make of pogs, e-mail him at
mhumphrey@media.ucla.edu.