I appreciate this piece about AC/DC and Malcolm Young’s legacy. I never really cared for them myself. I was on the other side of the punk/metal wars, of course, and screechy vocals always put me off.

I completely understand the spirit of that piece, though, and feel the same way about The Clash, the Velvet Underground, probably others. But there is one telling line in it that says something about the different attitudes of the different sides in those not-really wars. I don’t know, maybe not; but this:

But we thought we were gonna live forever. The music too.

is not how things were for me, for us. We didn’t think we’d live beyond the eighties. The nineties at a pinch As Queen put it, we were the ones who:

grew up tall and proud
Under the shadow of the mushroom cloud.

But so too did the author of the AC/DC piece. He’s a decade older than me, but that still means he experienced the cold war.

Maybe it’s not generation, but location. I lived a few miles from the Faslane naval base, where the Polaris submarines were based (and where the Trident ones are still). We knew we’d be one of the first places to go.

Generations are too abstract, too arbitrary to make sweeping statements about in any case. But I still sometimes find myself surprised to be here, now, in this century.