Obviously, this isn’t to insult any individuals, heck I’m even kind of a millennial and kind of a musician depending on how I feel on a given day.

Anyway, I’ve been driving around Florida on the holiday rounds, listening to various radio stations as they fade in and out of reception range. I couldn’t help but notice that “New Rock” stations haven’t changed in the last 10 years. Generation X still rocks.

I wish I were exaggerating but here’s the bands I hear over and over again on “New Rock” radio:

• Nirvana
• Alice in Chains
• Smashing Pumpkins
• Soundgarden
• Metallica
• CandleBox
• Rage Against the Machine
• Tool
• Pearl Jam
• Blur
• Radio Head

Again, I have nothing against it. I grew up on Gen X rock & metal and I love it. But they are not even playing new albums: A lot of these guys are already: dead; middle aged; and/or retired. They’re just replaying the old radio-friendly hits from the 90’s. (What confused me even more was hearing Soundgarden on the “Classic Rock” station hours after hearing it on so many “New Rock” stations.)

But hasn’t anything else been written in the last 10 years? I tried to think of fresh rock but there’s a blank. Either I’m already too old to “get it” at 26 or millie musicians need to start coming up with excuses. I’ve thought of a few:

5. Talented Civic musicians don’t make it to 27  (don’t worry, I’m not that good)
4. We can blame the old folk running the industry and writing the songs (I’m looking at you Lincoln Park)
3. We realized the country is so screwed up that screaming about it won’t help. Aka sidetracked by a poli-sci or econ degree (this is my excuse)
2. Too broke to afford gear at the pawn shop
1. Since we’ll be running the world soon, we wanted to leave something for the coming Artists to do