Hahaha I think that you could make the "baby boomer" point about nearly any American cultural trend. There has never been such a generation of self important and stubborn aging old shits! Their music, their movies, their politics, their counterculture, their career path...most anyone over the age of 55 believes that these things collectively are and **will forever be** the yardstick and exemplar vis a vis culture. Even as these models degrade, break down, or are carbon-copied so many times as to become just plain boring (John Mayer I'm looking at you!), the baby boomers steadfastly go on believing that they nailed it 40 or 50 years ago, and everybody else should just give up and kiss the ring.
What's *neat* about the "naught" era is that this is the first time in like thirty or forty years that the art, culture, etc being churned out is no longer a response to the suck-hole that is baby boomer culture. I think about "I want my MTV" and "Gen X" (and then Gen Y), and "Dammit Bobby...the boy ain't right"...these are all young ppl in the 80's and 90's pushing back against baby boomer culture, which reaction is still, in its own way, an homage to baby boomer culture. But in the 00's...well you've only got to see the Cialis commercial w/ the grey hair baby boomer literally and metaphorically "getting his truck stuck in the mud" to know their way of doing things carries no more weight, is superfluous, unimportant, impotent, irrelevant.
In short, I agree w/ you 100% :D
I gave you an upvote :D:D Mostly because in '00 I listened to Agaetis Byrjun every night while I fell asleep. It's one of the most important albums to me.
I agree, there will NEVER be another "broadly accessible yet artistically credible" band like Nirvana, but not because music in general has gotten worse, rather because the ideas of broad popularity and artistic credibility are mutually exclusive in today's record industry. Major labels have seen their bottom line get chewed to pieces by piracy, so they can no longer afford to take chances on creative, artistically credible bands, and must stick to generic sure-bets. However, widespread popularity on the scale of Nirvana or Radiohead still depends on major label support. Because there is dissonance between creativity and major label support, there are very few credible artists with widespread popularity, and instead the bands that saturate our culture all sound like a copy of a copy. Still, make no mistake about it, this is a golden age of music. Bands that would never have had a shot 15 years ago can rise to some level of popularity, if not Nirvana level popularity, based not on whether they get signed to a major label, but based solely on whether or not their music *sounds good*. That is an amazing innovation in modern music, and it is something to celebrate, though, as this debate points out, it has its own consequences.
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