ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: The New Wave Generation Gap: Can the Boomers win a rhetorical battle with the Millennials?

When was the last time you heard or read the once-common term “generation gap”? No, I can’t remember either. Perhaps, if we’re lucky, in a short period of time the noxious three words “not so much” will be consigned to an even worse category of forgotten clichés. I thought about this last Friday when my 20-year-old son Nicky wrote an exuberant article about the wretched “classic rock” band Fleetwood Mac (the Nicks/Buckingham/Christine McVie version, not Peter Green’s). Attempting to stifle acute nausea upon reading his praise for this “amazing” band that featured “brilliant popsmiths,” I realized that this was an example of a present-day “generation gap.”

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And there were worse bloated and outrageously substance-abusing groups in that time period. It could be my contempt for Fleetwood Mac is rooted in the 90s, as my son points out. He writes: “Maybe that’s why the music of Fleetwood Mac is seeing such a strong surge in interest among the Millennials. A friend made a good point: ‘Don’t Stop’ is embedded in the consciousness of 90s kids from the ’92 and ’96 campaigns, so the sound has been in our heads even if we didn’t know the material well.” Well, there’s another reason to dismiss the Bill Clinton nostalgia.

Rumours was just for pikers. True lovers of avant-pop much prefer Tusk.

(And thank God for small favors: As far as we know, Russ Smith’s son hasn’t gotten drunk and changed his name to Celine Dion yet.)