The statistics are terrifying. In a few years the generation that tuned in and dropped out, stopped a war and rocked against racism are set to retire. They've already ruined popular culture for the generations that followed them by refusing to let go. The great fear was that they'd take pop to the grave with them. But no, they've done something even worse. They've bequeathed it to their grandchildren. The evil old scum.
Imagine a smiling thirtysomething couple in matching Clash "White Riot" T-shirts, a toddler in an authentic cut-down Grateful Dead 1977 European tour shirt, and a baby in a super cutesy-wutesy Never Mind the Bollocks mini-T. Is this family picture symbolic of rock's maturity? Or a sign that the art form has finally giving up all claim to being the battle cry of inter-generational warfare and instead become the castrated soundtrack of Walton-esque family values?
The front window of Born Yesterday in Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia will either make you go "Aw!" or projectile vomit in horror, that is, if you still believe in the live fast, die young and leave a good-looking corpse (and no bloody kids) essential spirit of rock'n'roll.
One window is full of Rock a Bye Baby CDs featuring lullaby versions of songs by U2, Nirvana, AC/DC, Metallica, Radiohead, the Cure, Tool, Bob Marley, and the Ramones ("gabba gabba goo goo" says the sleeve). The adjacent window is full of symbols of 20th-century youth rebellion, minituarised to fit the well-talcumed torsos of the rug-rats of the 21st-century bourgeoisie. We are talking cute kiddy T-shirts promoting Aerosmith, the Clash, the Sex Pistols and Jimi Hendrix. T-shirts so small they could only fit humans who should surely, in a sane world, be clothed in sailor suits and/or bibs featuring Jemima Puddle-Duck.
Inside Born Yesterday you'll find baby and toddler gear that sports such punk boasts as "rebel", "Ipood" and "C is for Charlie". The woman behind the counter tells me that no, they don't sell sailor suits. And most parents love the rock stuff. It's the grandparents who object.
Which is to say that the punks and the hippies who believed that rock music was something more than just the musical doodlings of shirkers with bad haircuts, have been fooled again - just like the Who said they wouldn't. Their radical revolution rock has been spavined, defenestrated, castrated, de-fanged and declawed, buggered, killed, stuffed and mounted, and used to sell crap to morons. And is now being mashed up and fed to babies along with some warm milk and a rusk. Boy, that must hurt.
Kid rock is Generation X's revenge. "You ruined rock for us, wrinkled vermin, so we're going to ruin it for you by feeding your dangerous drug music to your grandkids in safe, easily digestible dollops."
So what's the solution before rock'n'roll's spirit keels over and dies? Simple! Europe and the US just need to admit millions of immigrants of breeding age so they can...
a) Save our pensions b) Be seduced away from religious fundamentalism with porn, casual sex, booze, drugs and scary guitar music and c) Save rock'n'roll from being something we spoonfeed to drooling baldies at both ends of the age scale.
While the average westerner looks more and more like Keith Richards's scrotum with every day that passes, in the developing world nearly everybody is a teenager. But what's the point? They've got neither the income nor the freedom to enjoy it. So for God's sake, throw open the floodgates of immigration and let's miscegenate like crazy. The alternative is a cultural return to the early-50s only with more rationing, more swearing and less BO. And legions of toddlers in Beatles T-shirts. (A paradise for Morrissey, a living hell for the rest of us.)
I have seen the future: it's a woollen-booted tiny foot bouncing up and down to the lullaby version of Rockaway Beach - for ever.
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