Callaghan's missing children

Does anyone have a clue what happened to our generation - I'm 26 and so I'm referring roughly to people born during the time Jim Callaghan was prime minister - people somewhere between about 25 and 28 who have left no noticeable mark whatsoever on the planet.

I spent the afternoon thinking about this while slightly bored at work. It's something that has occasionally troubled me before but it started because of trying to think of good records made by people who are roughly my contemporaries. I suppose that almost includes Supergrass but they've not done anything great for years - other than that it's people who make safe genre music like Ash and Coldplay (not being lazily bitchy you understand - just trying to work out any generational characteristics which might help my search).

Anyway, based on my own experience they probably spend a lot of time in pubs and communicating electronically with their friends, or watching rubbish TV and doing an unhealthy amount of lying about and aren't massively bothered by much more than their personal lives (oh and occasional earnest ranting about Bush & Blair). If this is the case I'm both amused and horrified by my contemporary folk. I have a suspicion that such inertia is the result of seeming to have far too many choices in life and of an unprecedented amount of exposure to ironic pop cultural cynicism. Or perhaps I'm just exposing my own personal failings.

If this is not the case and all other people roughly my age are enjoying cultutrally rich and fullfilling lives of trailblazing excitement and creative bravery, would someone let me know where it's happening so I can go and join in (or at least stand at the back with a pint making lazy sarcastic comments)?

Comments

[Peter]

They're sitting in offices doing jobs that they don't really value, 'sleepwalking' their way through the hours of daylight, and wondering exactly how they ended up spending the five years since University doing a whole lot of the same. They're also scratching their heads about the gradual distortion/dissolution of those picture-perfect images of what-it's-all-about that's occurred during the same period. They're still convincing/kidding themselves that there's plenty of time to make a mark (or even just make something beautiful), that time's not running out, that it's OK to be a writer who doesn't write, a singer who doesn't sing, or a poet who doesn't poe. They're also hoping and dreaming about the end of that phase - that necessary but ugly phase - where they've made all their happy/resigned back-up plans in case they never manage to make a mark/something beautiful.

Or that might just be me.

Some of them, like you, have just spent the last few years striving for those ideals/beautiful things. They've gone for 'creative bravery' ahead of the safe-but-banal career they never valued. And, if The Sun Brothers is anything to go by, they're offering moments of 'trailblazing excitement' to, perhaps, only a few people at the moment. But let's hope that word spreads.

[Le Poulet Noir]

Oh no, it's a post-Generation X discussion. Every teenager believes that his age group is different because he can't relate to the generation that preceeded his.
Then, when he grows up and discovers that he can relate to it after all, he has the beginnings of a mid-life crisis. Where (oh where) did all our potential go? We were supposed to be different.
Well, here it is: great achievements (in music, especially) don't happen every three years. If they did, you would have to redefine "great".
And not only have you chosen a cripplingly short time span, but you have an extreme view of what is good. Who would you say is great who is now aged between 29 and 32?

[thesunbrothers]

You certainly make a sensible argument, but it doesn't stick completely to the history of pop music - and more precisely after the start of rock & roll during the 1950s (arguments could be raised for many hours about an exact date). That has (or was until around the turn of the century) largely been a story of many great and important works being made in very short periods of time - and by such small micro generations. It is a medium linked to pop culture and fashion and as such, over a good deal of its history changes in those have been so rapid (if often cyclical) that its history can largely be broken down into such chunks.

You are right that that next three year chunk doesn't leave us with many options either, but the next one along contains, to pick an obvious off the top of head example, Radiohead.

Also I wasn't actually arguing we were supposed to be different - rather I was pondering why we were not more similar.

In reference to my original last line, you're more than welcome to join me in that pint though.

[Imogen]

Me. I'm great and I'm between 29 and 32. The only problem I have is participating on any meaningful level in a semi-intellectual web-based discussion. I'm total rubbish at that.

[cj]

The fact that I could only be bothered searching celebrity birthday websites for about two minutes, dragging up Emma Bunton (born: 21 January 1976) makes your point quite clearly.