...but other than that, I have a hard time accepting the narrative I keep reading here, namely that artists today are so much less talented and creative than the bands of yesteryear.

Mainstream radio sucks of course, but then again it did when I was a teenager in the late 80s too. Haven't seen The Rocker yet but from the reviews I'm reading it sounds a lot like a hair-metal sendup. Come on fellow Gen Xers, admit that the majority of you had a casette of Def Leppard's "Hysteria" on perma rotation in 1987 and played air guitar right along to Whitesnake's "Here I Go Again" and wore your special Motley Crue t-shirt for that first date with the girl from English class.

We Gen Xers can go on and on about how we invented indie music, but the reality is that in the 80s corporate rock sucked every bit as badly as it does today. And with the exception of Nirvana and possibly Pearl Jam, I have a hard time thinking of any "alternative" (oh how I hate that term) bands of the 90s that I can listen to today on the radio without turning the channel.

The really creative stuff since at least 1978 or so has been the below the radar indie bands who do what they do out of love and are happy to break even, let alone sell out stadiums. This is even more true today than it was 20 years ago. With digital music and the internet and satellite radio, there are more venues today for independant music than ever before. This is a good thing.

Have to side with the other old grumps here about emo though. When I hear those whiney bands I just wanna throw up.

Aw, thanks, Klytus. And Gen X kudos for referencing irony in your post! Along with cynicism and sarcasm, it's one of our most necessary generational survival tools!

Like lonewolfy, I too am an X/Y cusper (I'm 30). And I do see the appeal in thinking that rock used to be wilder and more fun without all the mopey overseriousness of today's emo whingers. However, if you actually get to the heart of what a lot of identifiably "Gen X" rock was about (Nirvana, R.E.M., Pearl Jam, U2), you'll see bands that made their biggest splashes MOCKING bloated rockstar antics (e.g., Bono calling the president from the stage of the ZOO TV tour while wearing a rhinestone-encrusted cowboy hat, Kurt Cobain's entire existence as a public figure). Bands like Urge Overkill and the Smashing Pumpkins made their careers by half-kiddingly embracing and skewering rock excess. And all of this anit-rockstar hoopla was done to the tune of VERY SERIOUS MUSIC with VERY SERIOUS LYRICAL CONCERNS. If anything, Gen X rockers (and the socially aware and/or gritty rhymes of N.W.A. and Public Enemy and Tribe Called Quest et al.) created a world wherein the hardcore moping and general no fun zone of rock in the aughts could flourish.

Yeah, yeah -- modern rock sucks but you have to look for "the good stuff." Still, it's not like the good stuff of indie rock or indie-sympathetic major bands like Wilco and Radiohead is a bucket of larfs. Rock is not longer in the "new and exciting" phase that drove it's rapid popularity. It's all about smarts and genre-tweaking now. It's a museum piece. It grew up. And no studio movie parody of rock and roll featuring a sitcom star is going to have anything legitimately smart to say about it.

M.I.A. is cool. She is also hip-hop/rap, not rock.

Electronica / electronica crossovers? Oh please.

MTV tried hard to push for your electronica "revolution" in the late '90s. And while Moby and Prodigy had some hits, the fans of rock largely didn't give a shit.

Your time came and went. Even a loser like Eminem pointed out that "nobody listens to techno".

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If I want something to dance to in a club, electronica's fine.

But please don't call it rock & roll. I don't besmirch your music genre by calling it new disco (even though, well, it is)!

Some of us old fart 20-something (?!?) X-ers and Y-ers actually crave some of the guitar-fueled music you scorn as old and tired.

For us, a good fuckin' melody and a signature riff can never be topped by the same KORG keyboard loop played 1,345,271 times.

Keep your synth-pop, and I'll keep my Les Paul and vacuum-tube Marshall, 'kay?

...has been debated, but tho' those born from 1960 to 1964 were statistically Boomers, they sure aren't demographically. I was born in '64 but was barely out of diapers when anti-war demonstrations and Woodstock were happening. Obama would be considered the first Gen-X POTUS, and folks like Jon Stewart are considered Gen-Xers, if only because the highlights of the whole Boomer experience were long over before people of my age were turning on the radio and hearing Journey and Foreigner and Ozzy Osbourne in full blond-wigged "Blizzard of Oz" mode. This film won't be as good as "Spinal Tap", but there may be some funny '80's poodle-band jokes...

an an almost 40 guy, let me be the first to say all you people saying music/rocker lifestyles were better in the 80's are sounding like our parents did (this also goes to the young people who also voiced this). it just shows that our generation's embrace of rock as the end all be all of youth culture music is so outdated.

maybe what you old foggies need to do is listen to music other than rock and you'll find that missing edge you seem to think is lost today just because you don't know where to look. (it's not in the rock cd racks, grandpa).

look up (and go see live) bands like crystal castles, the klaxons, MIA, etc. it's the electronica/ electronica crossovers that have the same vitality, originality and plain old wildness that our lame 2 guitars 1 bass 1 drum bands from our youth did.

get with the program or at least become aware that your tastes are old hat and that proclaiming that "music was better back in the day" is as stupid sounding a statement as it was 20 years ago (or 20 years before that...).