Tag: 1980s

April 23, 2025 – The Anthem Of a Generation

April 23, 2025 /

Sometimes I get in a mood. It seems to be particularly on Fridays where I just want to listen to music and set the podcasts aside. I was thinking about the song Uninvited by Morrissette but I couldn’t remember the song name. So I started listening to the song catalog to figure out the right song. Of course I remember Hand In My Pocket but all of the sudden I wanted to hear it again.

Fresh off of the Fourth Turning and reading the lyrics of this song I realized why all of the sudden I liked it. It was the anthem of my generation. “One hand in my pocket, and the other one…” (doing something else). It was smack dab in the Generation X summer by a singer of the generation. In one way holding back and in another way moving on with what needs to be done.

I thought about picking and linking other songs for other generations. But, I am not sure that totally appropriate. I could certainly do that based on my opinion and impression of the generations. Then I thought about adding more songs that I think represent Generation X but then I thought why muddy the waters when I think this song just describes the generation.

Hand In My Pocket was never a song that when I heard it, I said “turn up the radio!” In fact if you would have asked me in 1995, I would have said that this is a ‘chick’ song. I would have been much more likely to crank up Tom Petty or Firehouse when it came on the radio. The music reminds me so much of the beat of Hootie and the Blowfish or Blues Traveler or even Beck in Loser. There were so many songs that had this pop-y, low key music.

I would call the 1980s more of Baby Boomer generation of music. There is a particular sound that when I hear it I say, that screams eighties. One song I like particularly is a-ha’s Take On Me. When I hear that song, my mind instantly goes back to what the eighties felt like. But, it doesn’t speak to my generation. There is no angst or uncertainty.

Don’t get me wrong, I could rattle off a whole list of songs from the 1980s that I think are great. But, I think that because we grew up with that kind of feel good, everything is alright music, it was a natural transition for Generation X to assume the culture mantle with music that more represented who we were.

I do think that the eighties sound influenced that 1990s music in two ways. In one way there was a whole Morissette/Hootie/Cranberries vibe in popular music that sounded very similar in the way that the 1980s sounded similar. But when I look at the top 100 songs of 1995 I see a lot of songs that shared other things in common. Coolio, TLC, Boys II Men was the shift of hip-hop assuming popular music. So the conformity of the sound was familiar but the divergence of the happy-go-lucky lyrics swung the other direction.

I know that I shifted over to primarily listening to country music at that point. I think the reason being is that hip-hop did not speak to me or my experiences. For that reason, I guess that I have to be careful labelling one song as a total overlay of a generation. But every population is a bell curve. College bound/educated, middle class seems like the peak of the bell to me for the time.

That was all great and all but 1995 was thirty years ago now. Looking forward I think we can still call Hand In My Pocket a generational anthem. As I have talked about multiple times in the Fourth Turning series, Generation X may be the generation that got skipped with the oldest Millennials now in their mid forties. In theory, Generation X should be solidly in charge now. But are they?

I see Generation X having one hand in their pockets and the other doing what needs to be done (for themselves). This is the very behavior that is going to let the Millennials assume leadership and supersede Generation X. And you know what? That suits me just fine.

End Your Programming Routine: I spent the day listening to all kinds of music that I pretty much forgot about while I was writing this. It is funny how a song can transform you back to a time and place. This song puts me squarely in my dorm room as a sophomore wondering what 2025 would look like:

[Verse 1]
I’m broke, but I’m happy
I’m poor, but I’m kind
I’m short, but I’m healthy, yeah
I’m high, but I’m grounded
I’m sane, but I’m overwhelmed
I’m lost, but I’m hopeful, baby

[Verse 2]
I feel drunk, but I’m sober
I’m young, and I’m underpaid
I’m tired, but I’m working, yeah
I care, but I’m restless
I’m here, but I’m really gone
I’m wrong, and I’m sorry, baby

[Verse 3]
I’m free, but I’m focused
I’m green, but I’m wise
I’m hard, but I’m friendly, baby
I’m sad, but I’m laughing
I’m brave, but I’m chicken shit
I’m sick, but I’m pretty, baby

May 29, 2024 – Rambo… Was It That Bad?

May 29, 2024 /

The year was 1985. We didn’t even have a VCR yet. We were still renting a suitcase to be hooked up to the TV on the couple times a year occasion that we would get to rent a movie. I was in the fourth grade so we certainly weren’t watching rated R movies. It was more like Herbie the Love Bug or at best Empire Strikes Back.

By the fifth grade, Rambo was all the rage and so was the survival knife. It was typically a chintzy, fixed blade knife that had some crappy survival gear in the handle and a compass on the butt end of the hilt. If you had one, then you were definitely a bad ass, like Rambo. I can’t say that I was the only one of my peers that hadn’t seen it, but I was amongst a small group.

I missed the Rambo craze. The first one was inaccessible, not old enough for the second one and ambivalent by the third (and fourth). With Pluto TV, I occasionally scroll through ‘Only This Month’ and the ‘Last Chance’ categories. I happened to see that Rambo I – III was available and so I thought that I would finally fill the gap and see what I was missing all those years ago.

What I expected was cheesy 80’s action with an A-Team plot. I have to say that it didn’t disappoint. The truth is, First Blood (the first one) was not half bad. If you haven’t seen it then let me quickly summarize. A Vietnam vet (Stallone) was looking to reunite with a former service brother. Walking into town as a loner or drifter draws the ire of local law enforcement who wrongly portray him as a bum. This ignites a war for Rambo to avoid being captured.

Being filmed in 1981, it was just six years from the evacuation of Saigon and twelve years from the Tet offensive and the escalation of conflict. There were plenty veterans that were under the age of 30 and permanently broken that felt like John Rambo. That would be lost, misunderstood and looking for normalcy in some way. It struck me as connecting to a generation in a much softer way than I expected.

Once the action started, the poignant part of the plot was mostly finished. It wasn’t terrible though. The action was overstated for sure but eventually his magazine was empty in the M16. Rambo II wasn’t nearly quite as good but it did start out with promise. Going after prisoners of war in a clandestine action is admirable and maybe almost believable. Exploding arrowheads and a grenade blowing up a waterfall is less so. The helicopter that blew-up from the two rockets shot from a Soviet gun ship was safe in the river.

Truthfully, I found the third one better than the second. The action was akin to something like John Wick or anything modern. The funny thing was that the movie was dedicated to the good people of Afghanistan. This was ostensibly a middle finger to the Soviet Union in 1988. Kind of ironic watching it in 2024. That being said, it wasn’t what I expected. Better in many ways.

I fell asleep in Rambo 4 when it was on Pluto a few months ago. This is what ignited this idea of watching the series. Unfortunately, it is no longer playing and I am too cheap to rent it. From the thirty minutes I saw, it is in line with contemporary action movies. I am looking forward to catching it when it is on again.

End Your Programming Routine: It is kind of fun going back and reliving movies that I never saw. Like all things, I probably would have been much more complimentary if I ‘remembered’ it to be better than it was. There have been many movies that I watched again later in life and wasn’t as fond of with perspective. Sometimes it is best to leave them where they were. But, it doesn’t hurt to see what all the commotion was way back when…

November 15, 2023 – Just the Good Old Boys

November 15, 2023 /

Maybe I shouldn’t even be writing this but I have a hankering to watch The Dukes of Hazzard lately. It was on TV from 1979 to 1985 and it was definitely my favorite show on TV. In fact, it was the only show on TV that we were permitted to watch. I was four when it started and ten when it ended.

Until around middle school, my brother and my bedtime was 8pm. That means that any prime time TV was out of the question. TV was also severely restricted in our house as well. We got to choose one TV show a week that we were permitted to watch. This is what we chose of course.

Even Saturday morning cartoons got the boot early in my life. My mom thought that my brother and I got too wound up after watching them. I knew that was the edict but I still liked to turn on the TV in the morning before anybody was a up. With the old manual TVs, you could turn the volume down and then turn on the TV. One morning I woke up and the cord was cut on the TV. That ended that.

I think I know the trigger here. I have been looking at CB radios a lot lately. Since CB became super popular in the 1970s, it played a prominent role in the Dukes of Hazzard. All the vehicles, including the General Lee had CBs and the characters communicated via radio during their hijinks. You also had other souped-up cars like the 1976/77 Pontiac Firebird on Smokey and the Bandit during that time that were using CB radio.

This is not to forget the General Lee is a 1969 Dodge Charger and I am helping my son out with his 1969 Mercury Cougar here and there. I was running errands a couple weekends ago and I saw a 1969 Ford Ranchero and all the sudden I was looking up prices of project cars. It seems like my destiny is colliding with The Dukes of Hazzard.

The truth is, as much as I liked the show, I remember very little. I love car chases and jumps. Put a brush guard on a hot rod/race car and drive it like you stole it. Who can resist siding with Robin Hood. I might remind you that Bo and Luke were (wrongly) convicted felons and so firearms were prohibited, that is why they used bows. My brother and I ate that stuff up. Western wear and Daisy Dukes… I am talking myself into buying the entire show since I cannot rent it and it is not streaming anywhere.

Finishing the highlights, the theme was sung by Waylon Jennings, one of the outlaws of country. This was also a time of peak popularity of Hee-Haw. The show reeks of the era of late seventies/early eighties. It was a simpler time, my wife would say a ‘whiter’ time. I can’t argue that, but what I am saying we were all united by less choices.

A few years ago, I was looking for something family friendly and I did end up buying the first episode on Amazon. I don’t think my kids enjoyed it as much as I did. But, it is a new day. My older son has a new appreciation for cars now and he is liking the idea of CB radio and driving passenger cars off-road. So, maybe we can try again.

End Your Programming Routine: After living in the south for a couple of years, The Dukes of Hazzard is not as big of a stretch as people living elsewhere might believe. There are still moonshine runners, there is a lot of debate over the confederate battle flag and racing is popular. I have heard of more than one person outrunning the cops when the ‘blue lights’ come on. But , so is doing the right thing when it matters. Big heart leaves me smiling after thinking about my time in the south as well as the Dukes of Hazzard.