Greensburg, PA
Last night (September 17, 2017) I was privileged to attend the Adam Ant concert at The Palace Theatre in Greensburg, PA with several old friends and my 26-year-old daughter. The Palace, a once worn and weary venue, has been enjoying a renaissance of vitality through renovation of its original, elaborate facades and an ongoing schedule of nostalgic acts. Much like its renewed “mother city,” Greensburg (and especially The Palace) was the perfect venue choice for the show in Pittsburgh, a small city of architectural bridges and complicated connectors once rusted, dirtied, and abandoned between the wealthy steel-boom and the glittering digital age.
The sparkling opening act was unexpected. Invited to take a month-long turn with the tour, a generous move by an established headliner to link the generation gap between old and new, the band was reminiscent of the “glamorous” David Bowie and Queen, with a grungy Josie Cotten thrown in for melodic feminine balance. At first a bit turned off by the band’s name, Glam Skanks (were they trying too hard?), we were not sure what to expect. But it only took a few chords to realize they were an all-girl power band worth knowing. We were blown away by their compelling and fun “go-go lounge on stimulants” performance. The lead singer’s rock goddess voice merged the tone and power of Scandal’s experienced Patty Smyth with the mystery and intrigue of an ingenue.
Emblematic of the Riot Grrl movement from the early 90s, the Glam Skanks provided a “Gilmore Girls” moment of zen between my generation and the contemporary world into which my daughter was born. It made me want to let my hair go natural and curly like the lead guitarist with a stardusted blue afro (boy, could she play guitar), and set free my inner Bad Bitch — an inclination often still repressed by societal manners and outdated expectations. Their songs also asked us to consider Karma and Whatever Happened to Tube Tops? We were revved up and ready to roll … Vive le Rock!
Adam Ant returned to our lives like an elegant lion who had been estranged from his kingdom. With sly and coy glances he surveyed the pyrexia of his audience, and quickly served up the balm to our fevers. As hoped and expected, he preened and elegantly pranced, often pointing to his tattooed arms like subtle messages to knowing, old friends. It is reported that he is branded with several images, whose messages include “Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes” (a quote by Oscar Wilde). Looking back over the catalog of a career, how does one prove growth without disparaging all that was good within the past?
Adam Ant chose to roar. No longer just a pretty, new wave puss in sexy pirate boots, the 62-year-old (soon to be 63 on November 3, a Scorpion birthdate shared by my daughter) chose to present an edgier, harder rock version of his classic hits. He stood, and delivered over 90 minutes of biting, pulse-pounding anthems fueled by the supportive muscle of double drums and virile guitars.
Giddy like the school children we once were, we danced and laughed and sang along — I reconnected with a youthful stamina and energy I thought I could never feel again. Childhood innocence used to be the magic ingredient to our hope; it has since been replaced by resilience. The Adam Ant concert was an incredibly good time, but this morning we are filled with the pains of middle age and retrospection. Hungover from the excess, we find ourselves asking, on several levels, “My god, what have I done?” More than any other “retro” act we had seen over the past few years, why did we connect so passionately to this one?
As a Generation X kid, I got to experience an evolution of music, culture and technology which occurred over a relatively short period of time. Our parents were products of the “Greatest Generation,” who promised us the “American Dream” if we followed a specific set of rules. But early on, we began to notice signs of an impending disconnect which would lead to our future identity as the “Lost” or “Forgotten” generation, aligning ourselves with literary metaphors such as Peter Pan, handsome young vampires, or “Nomadic” gypsies. The 1991 novel Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture by Douglas Coupland defined us as “listless, cynical and anti-establishment.” The Pew Research Center defined our era similarly in a 2014 study (Generation X: America’s Neglected Middle Child)”:
This overlooked generation currently ranges in age from 34 to 49, which may be one reason they’re so often missing from stories about demographic, social and political change. They’re smack in the middle innings of life, which tend to be short on drama and scant of theme.
It is also said that ours is one of the smallest groups, that we are trapped between huge hordes of invading clans on either side: stuck between the rock and the hard place. The punk movement in Europe was launched on similar dissatisfactions and eventually found us here in America. We responded to it as a way to understand the complex and mixed emotions we were experiencing, the way our parents once reacted to “rock ‘n roll.”
I can’t say for certain how old I was when I first heard his songs or saw an image of Adam Ant, but the revolutionary Music Television ad in which he appeared proclaiming “I want my MTV,” will always stand out. My adolescent psyche responded enthusiastically — passionately — like most others my age, with “I want THAT!” Our generation was much more interested in the sex part of rock and roll than the drugs. We lusted for things just beyond our reach and were told we could eventually get there if we tried hard enough. Adam Ant was a sensory experience, our fairy tales come to life. He bridged our childish dress-up days with the responsibilities and desires of adulthood, embodied the sentiment — the guarantee — that we could truly be anything we wanted to be, no matter how foolish it might seem.
Prince Charming, ridicule is nothing to be scared of …
We matured into a diverse set of adults as poets, artists, scientists, businessmen, humanitarians, etc. We quickly became over-educated and underemployed, making less money than our parents when based against the costs of living and other economic indexes. Our generation has felt the sting of condescension and derision as we have been called “underachievers” and “slackers” in the face of our financial and career “failures.”
Irony and a keen sense of dread are what make Generation X the last great hope, with its belief that, even if you could tell other people what to say and what not to say, even if you could tell them how to live, even if you could enforce those rules through social pressure and public shaming, why would you want to? I mean, it’s just so uncool.
Rich Cohen in his Vanity Fair article this month (Why Generation X Might Be Our Last, Best Hope)
Stand and Deliver, your money or your life …
We grew up struggling to have it all. Our culture has demanded that we sacrifice one for the other, working endless hours to pay the bills — or choosing to live more simply with so much less than we once hoped for or thought we needed. But yet we continue to work each day, ants feeding the middle so necessary to the queen’s global balance along the highway of adulthood.
Despite that gristmill, some say we are also keeping culture and communication alive. The ‘undetected influencers,’ “(we) are the demographic bridge between the predominately white Baby Boomers and more diverse Millennials (Paul Paylor, Pew Research).
“Gen-X stomping grounds of the past — the espresso bar, the record shop, the thrift store — have been resurrected in digital form. The new bohemia is less a place than it is a headspace. It’s flexible enough to bypass all the old binaries. It encompasses mass and class, mainstream and marginal, yuppie and refusenik, gearhead and Luddite. It’s everywhere and nowhere in particular,” he writes. In short, “GenXers are doing the quiet work of keeping America from sucking.”
X Saves the World: How Generation X Got the Shaft But Can Still Keep Everything From Sucking by Jeff Gordinier, as reported in Time magazine, April 16, 2008
Antpeople are the warriors, Antmusic is the banner …
We are banded together not by our ethnicities, but by our circumstances. Generation X is a motley crew of disenchantment and underachievement … despite the “man’s” attempts to drive us apart using the standard “divide and conquer” strategy.
A generation is the creation of shared experiences, the things that happened, the things you all did and listened to and read and went through and, as important, the things that did not happen. We are the last generation to grow up with crappy video games, with actual arcades instead of quality home consoles. If you wanted to play, you had to leave the house and mix it up with the ruffians. That is, we are the last Americans to have the old-time childhood, wherein you were assigned a bully along with a homeroom teacher. Our childhood was closer to those of the 1950s than to whatever they’re doing today. It was coherent, hands-on, dirty, and fun.
Rich Cohen in his Vanity Fair article this month (Why Generation X Might Be Our Last, Best Hope)
We bond over our common struggles and identify by the bold banners we bear — the time-weary wrinkles, tattoos, and scars of a hard-won existence. We dance to the beat of the tribal drums, echoing ghosts of stolen riches and lands. But much like the man himself (our myth, our legend), we may not be able to change our stripes, but we can do the work to freshen them up so that we might rise from our own piles of ashes and stand … still thriving and moving forward. The concert’s hard rock interpretation of singles provided an allegory for the substance of our generation — a strong, solidly-built foundation that proves itself only through endurance, and therefore, finally has value.
The reason the Gen-X sensibility was strong on tolerant values, and evolved so organically and successfully, in Darke’s view, was because it was based on real connections and hard-fought experiences. “You had to put real time and effort into belonging to the scene. Now with the internet and social media it’s too easy, too promiscuous, you can join and leave 20 tribes in an hour,” she says. “No wonder millennials are having a huge identity crisis.”
Whatever Happened to Generation X? by Lindsay Baker, BBC Culture, March 21, 2017
We spend a good portion of our time looking backwards once we reach a certain age, and we never forget our first love. My musical crushes moved on and “matured” to The Police and finally settled on Elvis Costello. However, Adam Ant will always take me back to the exact moment when those sparks first ignited within my young soul. Despite the setbacks, the disappointments, and outright failures of my life, I know who I am. There’s a charming torch that still burns within my aging heart and fuels the desire to keep on living. I have survived. And like a dandy highwayman, I will brush on some colorful warpaint, and keep traveling the long and often lonely road with other kings and queens of the wild frontier.
Enjoy the ride, Baltimore, you’re up next (September 19, 2017)!
— Cathi Gerhard, Department of English, Penn State and Seton Hill Universities
Cathi Gerhard 