M-m-m-m-y Generation

The Who played Philly on Saturday night.  America may have the greatest rock poets in Dylan and The Boss, but England (Wales strangely absent, Del-Boy....) still has the greatest live rock band in the world. And with support from The Pretenders, I found myself on a `New Wave' nostalgia binge.

What surprised me was the number of young people there.  Now, at 39, I thought I would be at the younger end of the spectrum, but I'm judging that near 40% were teenagers who seemed to know the words better than me (though, in my case, that could be early signs of brain death).  So is the generation gap that great?  The idiom of the sixties-to-eighties still seems to speak to young people today.  Or is it all just clever marketing?  I couldn't help but feel a twinge of pain at the thought that rock has lost something: sixties R and B, seventies Punk, and eighties New Wave had all been about subverting the corrupted establishment.  That vision seemed a long way from the Wachovia Center on Saturday night.

Still, an amazing performance and something for everyone -- inclusing two operas, Del.  You'd have been right at home, boyo.