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Re: It's Twilight Time for the Canadian Generation







How dare you! Who the hell do you think you are? What makes you so special? What gives you the right to criticize others? You are the one who is awful. You are the one who is truly vile. It is you who has nothing to say. You are the one who is so smug. It is you, you are the one with the fifty dollar stereo system and the ten thousand dollar bong. How dare you, how fucking dare you insult Grand Funk Railroad like that!.... And Mark Fartner is taller than you!!

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Replying to:

Whither Canada? Why it's somewhere up North, but the Canadian generation has nothing to do with Canada or Canadians, really. They've never been there and never will go there, and if you asked them to find it on a map they'd probably scratch their balding heads and hesitantly point to Ecuador or the Rand-McNally logo somewhere near the Falkland Islands.




So what, then, is the Canadian Generation and who, pray tell, are these people? And why call them that anyway?




First things first. The Canadian Generation is a strictly American phenomenon. "But CANADA is in America!" Yes, of course it is, but I'm talking about North America south of Canada and north of Mexico. Canada is a lovely country, I know, yet they did supply the U.S. with some dreadful, empty-headed music in the 1970's. Music that was so horrible no one who lived in Canada would actually listen to it. People in Canada are not stupid. But people in the U.S. ARE stupid and the Canadians knew this (because Canadians are not stupid). Hence stupid American youth bought a lot of Canadian music in the 1970's. There may have been good Canadian music in the 1970's but only the Canadians would know about that. Meanwhile in wretched America, a group called the Guess Who started the whole Canadian mind trip with a song that explicitly announced the complete contempt this group (and presumably Canada at large) felt toward their vile neighbors to the south. "American Woman" may have been a rant against the sins of the U.S., but it was even more truly subversive in that the music was absolutely horrible - and American women and men dug it so much that they bought millions upon millions of copies. THEY COULDN'T GET ENOUGH OF SOMEONE REMINDING THEM OF HOW AWFUL THEY THEMSELVES WERE.




Stop right there! Now, let us ask ourselves just who was buying this? Young, middle class white kids, of course. Not black kids, because the Canadians had nothing against American blacks, plus they knew that blacks had far better taste in music than to ever buy a Guess Who record. There is a small irony in that more than 25 years later, an American sap named Lenny Kravitz would have a hit with a cover of "American Woman", but it is truly questionable if Lenny Kravitz is really black; some claim that he is a computer generated hologram and not a real person at all. Certainly his music supports this theory. Even so, it is interesting to point out that the young Americans who bought millions of copies of Lenny Kravitz's "American Woman" JUST COULDN'T GET ENOUGH OF SOMEONE TELLING THEM HOW TRULY VILE THEY ARE. And this time from an American too. Meaning that the Canadian mind trip has receded and mutated over the course of 30 years. Kids today don't need some foreigner to tell them how awful they are - one of their own can do that from now on. Which means what? Why it means that the Canadian victory has been so thorough and complete that it has exceeded the expectations of the original Canadian plan. What began as a rudimentary protest (viz. "I don't need your American war machine, an icy fist up your southern khyber and good riddance, you cast-off limey dogs", etc. etc.) has been so internalized by the American culture at large and handed down to subsequent generations - the very offspring of the Canadian generation, in fact - that Canada itself recedes from the picture, impervious to any and all criticism. Machiavelli would get down on his knees and hail the Canadian masterminds in sheer admiration!




I digress. The Canadian Generation is a specific age group from a specific background. I'd say they were born between 1955-1962 of rather well to do middle class parents. Too young to have experienced the 60's, they inherited the excess but not the idealism. They also bought into the rhetoric but didn't have a clue what it all meant. Or was supposed to mean. They were spoiled brats who got everything they wanted from their parents - easily the most affluent and directionless generation ever. And the music they got into when they came of record buying age was not the "classic" 60's muckety-muck that their older brothers and sisters listened to but rather the new swinging sounds from up north, as well as bad American music that could've and should've been Canadian but wasn't (Grand Funk Railroad being a particularly wretched favorite). What all of this music encouraged was self hatred to the utmost extreme. Now lest you think this is a morally questionable phenomenon, keep in mind that these were truly wretched kids who deserved everything they got. Just remember, no Canadian ever had to put a gun to any of their heads to make them buy anything.




Hence the Canadian Generation. Do you recall the theme song to the Monkees TV program? It went "we're the young generation and we've got something to say". That, however, was the 1960's and a few years down the line the Canadian Generation came of age, bought some bad records and had absolutely NOTHING to say. And if they ever had thought of anything to say, it would've undoubtedly been of such a vile, stupid nature that any sane person would've preferred that they keep their stupid mouths shut.




Now let's fast forward a few years into the mid-1970's. Canadian Generation kids are now rolling about in the expensive cars their parents have purchased for them (anything to get those vile kids out of their house), spending their substantial pocket money on marijuana and import LPs. They've forgotten all about their Canadian origins, having grown older and more hip (so they think), wretchedly assimilating sounds emanating from the record bins of the head shops and stereo emporiums they inhabit. "EMPORIUM? What kind of name is that?" Pretentious, Eph? Why, yes, definitely. Did I mention that the Canadian Generation - raised as spoiled brats, smoking marijuana and listening to wretched music grew up to be the most smug and pretentious pack of twits the world ever laid its eyes on?




Now let us briefly run down the hallmarks of the Canadian Generation:




1) Born into comfortable privilege. Their parents embodied 1950's suburban ideals. Trained as consumers from an early age, they never questioned the notion of consumption-as-life.




2) Assimilated 1960's rhetoric secondhand. Too young to directly participate, they inherited half-asked notions about "rebellion", drug-taking, liberal thought, music as self-identity, daft "occult" ideas, and so on. However questionable/debatable the original ideas may have been, the Canadian Generation had no inkling of the original context and the ideals behind them. What they inherited was a fraying empty suit.




3) The smug self-righteousness which is among the most prominent characteristic of the Canadian Generation surpassed even that of their Republican parents. Keep this point in mind because, as we will soon see, the specter of mom-and-dad authority figures are central to the Canadian Generation mentality.




The high point for the Canadian Generation - the golden years, so to speak - would be roughly 1975-1980. They were young, full of drugs and daddy's money and unthinkingly convinced of their vile righteousness. That these years were spent in a drug-addled stupor was itself seen by the Canadian Generation as virtue. They always did and continue to this day to confuse their mindlessness with moral superiority.




Of course it had to end, but it's been a long and slow and painful decline for the Canadian Generation. Gradually, one by one, they were cut off from mom and dad either through parental impatience or the ravages of time in which mom and dad invariably drop dead. And the Canadian Generation slowly awoke to the fact that the windfall inheritance they expected was next to none, as mom and dad had long since squandered all their savings on funding the rascally adventures of their Canadian spawns' hedonistic golden age circa 1975-80. Now it was payback time in spades: every dumb pleasure of the past five years - that $50 bong, that designer semi-punk dress of 1978, that limited edition, numbered Italian pressing of the collected works of King Crimson, the $10,000 stereo system, the mess that was the failed marriage and quickie divorce at the age of 25 - oh, how they'd pay for it all!




And the Canadian Generation, now past 30, losing their looks and stuck in low paying jobs (they all dropped out of college in their first year), why they cast their eyes around and noticed that there was a younger generation who didn't look twice at them, didn't give a fuck about their import album collection and the glass rock sculptures they acquired.......the Canadian Generation took it all in and instead of rising to the challenge they..........




Broke down and cried. They whined and cursed and screamed at the skies for dead mom and dad to make it all right, to fix things again and make them young and pretty and affluent all over and it's not supposed to be this way and then,




they finally countered it all with.......




DENIAL.




And so they subsist to this day, still in a haze of self-righteousness (which has mainly hardened into bitterness and an even stronger self-hatred) and a truly ludicrous belief that they are more "with it" than ever. Which is why you'll see them dining with their contemporaries. They are easy to spot because they are the only group of 45 year olds who continue to dye what is left of their hair bright green and wear Doc Martens to "keep up with what's happening". Occasionally you'll overhear them crying into their beer, wondering why all three of their marriages have failed and "if only dad had lived things would be OK".




And who will be there, if not to mourn them, at least to note their passing? Aging badly, they'll go out even more quietly. Kicking and screaming, I'm sure, but everyone has long since learned to ignore them. So I guess this testament will have to suffice, my chronicle of the twilight time for the Canadian Generation.








The Rights of a Suffering Man

What gives me the right to insult Grand Funk Railroad is this:




I once worked at a warehouse (for one week) at which, every Friday the workers received their paychecks, ran out to the parking lot to buy beer at the convenience store across the street (Texas Pride and Black Label brand, which - to those who don't know, costs next to nothing and tastes like salt and moldy seltzer), then they would guzzle their horrible beer and play Grand Funk Railroad songs as loud as their car stereos could manage. Now if YOU ever had to witness the sad, sorry spectacle of a bunch of drunken redneck Texans pissed out of their heads on cheap beer and jostling one another, lining up to sing along with "I'm Your Captain" and "We're an American Band" - punctuated with raised fists and shouts of "Wooooooooo!" and "PARTYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!" - not to mention the fact that all of these guys were unabashed Reaganites and four of them proudly displayed swastika tatoos on their forearms (one had a swastika with the words "White Power" written in fake old Germanic script underneath) - why, if you ever had to see such a sorry sight, I'd say that you've damned well earned the right to criticize Grand Funk Railroad (one of the guys in that band is now in a militia group and undoubtedly has a swastika tatoo, which must bring him closer to his audience).

Re: The Rights of a Suffering Man




Ha! Gotcha! You said you only worked there for a week. Perhaps the other Friday nights those "Reganites" as you call them (they are likely "Bushoids" now) sat in a circle holding hands and reading passages from the bible....... ooops, that's just as bad isn't it?............ Get a haircut!!