I had the opportunity to travel to Sin City and observe the political apathy of my fellow Generation X-ers this past weekend.
I know the stereotype to which we are fixed-lazy underachievers who, in retaliation to our sell-out, baby-boomer parents, refuse to proactively participate in anything-but I always took it as a stereotype and nothing more.
This weekend, however, while watching the Counting Crows (a late ’90s band many of you may remember for the annoyingly overplayed “Mr. Jones”), I realized that the stereotype I had always religiously denounced just might be true after all.
The show drew in a hefty crowd of young professionals and, perhaps, a few nostalgic and dedicated fans like me for a whopping $75.
At each city they visit on tour, the Counting Crows choose several local charities to promote during their shows. They set up a booth and vocally encourage the audience to go and pick up information about these organizations after the show.
This, of course, is not unique to the Counting Crows and is found at most contemporary music festivals and concert tours. At any one of these shows, the script goes as follows: Rock star approaches microphone and yells something “radical” that typically involves an obscenity insulting our fearless leader; crowd cheers with a raised fist clenching a $7 beer; rock star then proceeds to say how pissed off he or she is and suggests that audience should be, too; audience screams, yells and curses in accordance; rock star then feels satisfied that he or she has done his or her part and that he or she can maintain the “radical” image before the band transitions into its radio-friendly single; audience follows by completely forgetting about the booth in the back of the venue or the reason it accidentally spilled some of its $7 beer when it raised its fist to the mutinous plea.
So why doesn’t anything ever happen? I am puzzled when I leave these concerts because I swear I almost heard a revolt. If what I see and hear from Sugar House retail stores dedicated to “radical” T-shirts, stickers on stop signs and Neil Young albums is true, then why doesn’t anything ever happen?
Some say we are lacking organization and leadership; and although I don’t think Counting Crows’ Adam Duritz would be my first pick as leader, he was able to gather 2,000 or more people in one setting and politically rile them up, even if it was a momentary ruse. If we are so disenchanted-enough to spill our outlandishly expensive beers in the name of political unrest-why was the booth in the back vacant?
From what I saw, Generation X has no drive to surpass its stereotype and actually do something. For a moment there, I thought that all 2,000 of us would march down Las Vegas Boulevard and actually put faces and a number to the people who are frightened by what is happening in this country right now.
It is not enough to just scream and yell every time a rock star degrades a politician, or wear a clever T-shirt that uses the likeness of the last name of our president and the first name of our vice president as slang for female and male anatomy. That is just lame and ineffective. As long as we are there, provided the majority of the crowd is like-minded, we should use the sheer force of our numbers to actually say something.
But, I suppose, what happens at that Vegas concert venue stays in that Vegas concert venue.
