121212 And The Baby Boomer Soul

Mick Jagger’s no Baby Boomer.

 

Too old, just like the 78 million born between 1946-1964. He showed up in 1943.

 

This is what I heard from Mick Jagger, “We’re glad to be here, but you’ll have to do us the same favor if it rains in London.”

 

He gets it, but it’s still only rock and roll and we get that.

 

The Who cranked their set. Roger Daltry made every Boomer commit to more push-ups with his open shirted buffness.

 

Pete said, “Have an f-ing beer” just ahead of the censor’s button.

 

No one drove the music like Sir Paul breaking out Helter Skelter and adding a Manson vibe to the show. The cute one started raw and kept a sharp Jack Black guitar sound slicing riffs.

 

This is what Paul said, “I love New York.”

That’s 8th grade in rockin’ 1969. These bands and musicians were old by then. They’d peaked.

 

Who knew they’d peak so long?

 

The twenty-somethings watching the 121212 concert beside me asked the Boomer question, “Is this the music your parents made you turn down?”

 

They asked when Kanye West took the stage in a leather skirt, as if I grew up on Bing Crosby and might recoil. Don’t they know David Bowie already beat Kanye to that dressing room?

 

“You’ve never liked rap,” they said.

 

If the question is to rap, or not to rap, I don’t like Kanye’s act. Until he started singing through an auto-tune and sounding like Cher believing in love after love, his greatest hits medley seemed like too much for one superstar.

 

Most of the rockers Wednesday didn’t fit their songs. Boomers get the same feeling in every mirror they pass. Billy Joel came out looking like the first piano man on the first harpsichord, then hit the song of the night.

 

“I don’t have many reasons,

left them all behind,

I’m in a New York state of mind.”

 

The surprise of the night  came when Sir Paul took over for Kurt Cobain in front of Dave Grohl’s drums and screamed through a song that sounded like part John Lennon’s primal howl Mother.

 

For Boomer musical references, Paul is platinum. Every yeah, yeah yeah yeah, and oh yeah sounded like the Beatles. Seeing the Foo Fighter frontman on drums with Krist Novoselic on base was rock history. Paul’s voice as flexible as Billy Joel’s with the volume turned up had a Nirvana sound.

 

Dave Grohl has a certain John Lennon vein running through him. He’d fit the Keith Moon kit with The Who. As a frontman he’d be a good Rolling Stone. As a rocker he showed Boomers the sort music that’ll never die. The energy he drove his song with made us ask ourselves, “Maybe I ought to turn this down.”

 

But we don’t this time.