How did Bolling know that only people born the same year as me would read this comic? Brilliant, yet somehow spooky...

Someone should send this comic to Salon's music critic.

1980 really blew chunks, trust me, even at the time. You can look it up and verify it. Movies had ugly people in them, music was dull, and for some unknown reason even rich people ate a lot of beef stroganoff and meatloaf, because it allowed you to pretend you could afford enough meat to feed your family.

Highway 61 Revisted.

Top that, anyone.

Of course, it's not like I even knew who Bob Dylan was at that time.

I was 12 during the height of the Disco Era (some might say Disco Error). So music-wise, there aren't a lot of memories. (I thought of Ring My Bell, but that came out when I was 13.) But Star Wars did come out when I was twelve, so that counts for something.

The worst, all time worst year in American taste!

This is an insightful comic about subjectivity, but it also hits me squarely as I was 12 in 1991. Having followed pop music from an early age - Michael Jackson and MTV reached me early - the Grunge Era was particularly cool to me. I can't say much about other media (only SNL leaps to mind), but I'd put the following groups/albums up in the all-time pantheon:

Nirvana/Nevermind

Tribe Called Quest/Low End Theory

RHCP/Blood Sugar Sex Magik

GNR/Use Your Illusion

U2/Achtung Baby

If I remember anything about middle school, it is music, as in the next couple of years Radiohead, Rage Against the Machine, The Chronic, and other great music would be in vogue. I say with all seriousness and humility that this era was as creative and influential as any period since the mid-60's and the late 70's.

I was 12 in 1995. Fortunately it was in Britain, where 1995 is arguably the last hyper-significant year in music. I guess some stuff happened in other things too.

Thanks Ruben. You made me reminisce, smile, and think at the same time.

We would be well-served to remember this comic whenever we hear anyone opine about anything.

okay, i was also 12 in '91 and dangit, it WAS a better time for music. that's why all these little hood rat 12 year olds i see riding skateboards are still wearing Nirvana t-shirts even though cobain died before they were born. They are still into Green Day, RHCP, Oh man, I feel old.

I was 12 in '91 as well, and I couldn't agree more that it was a great time to be a young music fan. The only album I'd add to your list from that year is the last great work of Metallica: "The Black Album".....

Sometimes when I listen to the local modern rock radio - with all the tuneless, droning post-nu-metal riffs and lead vocalists who think heavy off-key bellowing is what metal is all about - I think how spoilt we were to be able to enjoy artists and bands who could actually write decent MELODIES.

Kurt (RIP) and 'old' Axl....man, I miss those guys. =(

Nearly everything I thought in response to this cartoon has been well articulated by the others of us in the 12 in '91 crowd. I'd include various other albums popular at the time, but would need to verify the dates to fall in the '91 region (well, I was also 12 in '90), so who knows.

Sailing the Seas of Cheese by Primus, is one example. Oh, and Terminator 2 was way rad also.

Back to work.

Try on some 1965 for size:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKoV1yJnqAI

Again it has to be admitted that I actually have no more connection with Bob Dylan in 1965 than a baby born just this morning. But somebody has to stick up for 1965.

for 1972:

Music:

Don McLean - American Pie

The Rolling Stones - Exile on Main Street

Neil Young - Harvest

Charles Mingus - Let My Children Hear Music

Steely Dan - Can't Buy a Thrill

George Harrison - The Concert For Bangla Desh

Nick Drake - Pink Moon

David Bowie - The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars

Randy Newman - Sail Away

Alice Cooper - School's Out

Curtis Mayfield - Superfly

Emerson, Lake & Palmer - Trilogy

Jethro Tull - Living in the Past

Elton John - Madman Across The Water

Film:

The Godfather

Deliverance

The Candidate

Last Tango in Paris

Cabaret

Man of La Mancha

Slaughterhouse-Five

and lets not forget:

Fritz the Cat

Also:

Atari releases Pong

and, well of course, the beginning of Watergate

Then again, my son just turned 12, and um....hmmm. Nope, Tom is right, its definitely when "I" turned 12.

By 1965 everything was going downhill, and it's either because of that or in spite of it that I think Rubber Soul, which was released in December, is the best album by the best band ever. Or maybe I'm just right.

no more ever needs to be said about pop culture.

Dying . . . Patti Page, Sinatra, Eddie Fisher and "Oh, My Papa" aaarrgh!

And then, suddenly . . . Elvis! Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, Little Richard...

...and we never looked back no mo'!

People (including most reviewers) take no account of how much more impressionable they were as kids. I can't remember how many arguments I've been in with otherwise intelligent people who have no idea that the puerile fluff that entertained us enormously in middle school is no better than the dreck aimed at the same market today. There are rivers of brillant material (and oceans of crap, per Sturgeon's Law) being created all the time.

No, Revenge of the Sith did not blow me away as did The Empire Strikes Back. But anyone seeing them both for the first time would find the former meatier in every way. Good luck finding anyone who would publish that opinion, however. (As it happens, I wasn't impressed with a lot of the music when I was 12 [disco] or now [so-called R&B]. I guess I've always been a crank.)

All the crotchety old "Why in MY day..." types would do well to lift a thought from Life After God, by Douglas Coupland:

"I believe that you've had most of your important memories by the time you're thirty. After that, memory becomes water overflowing into an already full cup. New experiences just don't register in the same way or with the same impact. I could be shooting heroin with the Princess of Wales, naked in a crashing jet, and the experience still couldn't top the time the cops chased us after we threw the Taylor's patio furniture into their pool in the eleventh grade. You know what I mean."