[https://www.youtube.com/shorts/1t6akz8SYuI]

Here’s a great question. Why do boomers love the blues so much? Is it because it’s soulful? Because it speaks to the human condition? Hell no. It’s because human beings always crave the one thing they do not have. And what boomers collectively missed out on is, of course, struggle. Now, individually, sure, I get it. Everybody’s got their shit. People die, love fades, marriages fail, bills pile up, bodies get old. I’m not saying they didn’t have problems, but as a generation, nobody in the history of our species ever had it any fucking easier. We’re talking about the golden age of unearned comfort. You could graduate high school, get a job at the post office, and overtime pay off a mortgage on a house on a lake in a vacation place in the Keys. Kindergarten teachers, waitresses, secretaries, all homeowners. You could support a family on one income. Take vacations, have a pension, and still have time to bitch about your neighbor’s dog and your teen losing. Boomers trusted everything. The government, the church, the schools. They fed their kids junk food. McDonald’s was a part of the food pyramid and they thought it was genuinely good for you, that it was healthy. They used the TV as a babysitter and call it educational programming and never lost a wink of sleep over it ever. And at the end of a perfect suburban day, they’d crack open a beer, light up a joint with the weakest weed imaginable, sink into a lazy boy that they bought off of the home shopping network, and start grooving to some old black guy whose dad picked cotton for a living that grew up in a shed singing about pain, poverty, and despair. And instead of thinking, “Damn, I’m so lucky.” It’s amazing how this music helps this man carry an impossible burden through the power of catharsis. They thought, “I need a Fender.” They felt inspired to buy a guitar and start bending strings like they had this well of deep pain inside of them, too. And after learning one A minor pentatonic box, they got online and started preaching about minimalism, soul, and feel. Do you know how fucking crazy this is? They had everything. And they were jealous of people who suffered because the way that they cried about it sounded beautiful to them. And so a new form of blues was born. Boomer blues, a grotesque fusion of Mississippi Delta style pain and central air conditioning. They turned the blues into a hobby, into a vibe, a weekend activity like barbecue and golf. in this mountain, mountains of disposable income that they poured on to real blues artists, transformed the whole genre from this exotic wilderness where people go to find connection and solitude into this misery meets Disneyland type place where people go to a safe emotional vacation and consume gear and ribs. And it’s all very, very poetic because what the boomers really gave us is the peak of human absurdity without ever acknowledging how funny it all is. Namaste.