Music and the generations

My mum used to be horrified at Mick Jagger.  He was the worst possible influence for young people, long hair, drugs and noisy music.

Well now many years on I find myself working in mum's house with BBC Radio 2 playing - the Rolling Stones.  Mums is humming Jumping Jack Flash.  

I mean, Sir Mick Jagger, Radio 2, what happened to the generation gap?

At home I fire up Spotify with the kids and we play anything from Girls Aloud to Johnny Cash - often my son will pick up the melody on the piano and I will play with him on the Alto Sax.

Music is just not the generational identifier anymore.  

So what is?  What do the kids do that really tick us off?

Well it could very well be video games, but even then I play the odd round of Halo 3 with the lad.  We are happily blowing off the heads of aliens and enemies together.  Maybe its Facebook.  Well at a conference the other day I asked my audience, who was over 40 and had a Facebook account.  Quite a few hands went up.

So a lot of older ones like me have Facebook accounts, so many indeed that we have created what I call 'Aunt's and Uncles Synrdome'.  This is the syndrome where we embarrass our kids, nieces and nephews by trying to be hip in their space.  Its a bit like when we dance at weddings. I have already 'lost' one niece in the last few months.  Others will follow.

So maybe its not them who tick us off but us who tick them off, perhaps the generation gap is there because we refuse to grow up.