AARP Poll

As an old fart now, I am a proud member of the AARP and in today's email they posted this poll. Choose the ten albums that define the Boomer generation:

[www.aarp.org]

It's an interesting challenge, as there's no way I would choose my ten actual favorite albums from the options in the poll, as I don't really think of Horses or Trout Mask Replica or Never Mind the Bollocks as albums that were particularly embraced by the Boomers, and thus didn't define them.

Of course, though, I guess most of the people who DID champion albums like that at the time would've qualified as Boomers. But the overwhelming majority of the Boomers rejected those albums at the time they came out, as did most of the generation behind the Boomers, since the Boomers told them to. (I was born in 63, so I'm considered on the cusp of Boomers and Gen X, depending on who one asks.)

So when choosing a list that "defines" the Boomer generation, I'm going to do my best to channel Jann Wenner, as in my mind he is the living personification of that particular generation. Thus, I think I'm going with:

Sgt. Pepper's
The White Album
Layla
Highway 61 Revisited
Bridge Over Troubled Water
Sticky Fingers
Hotel California
Tapestry
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
Rumours

This is the only poll in which I would ever assemble that list of 10.

I'd probably have Dark Side of the Moon and Led Zeppelin IV (however you want to designate it) on that list.

Yeah, I'd mulled over those two. And also Born to Run - there's not a more Wenner-approved album in history than that one. But I'm not sure which of the ten I chose I'd have left off in its place. Probably The White Album, I guess. Sgt. Pepper's is the Beatles album that is really the mythic totem for Boomers.

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I don't really think of Horses or Trout Mask Replica or Never Mind the Bollocks as albums that were particularly embraced by the Boomers, and thus didn't define them.

Of course, though, I guess most of the people who DID champion albums like that at the time would've qualified as Boomers. But the overwhelming majority of the Boomers rejected those albums at the time they came out

Defined = Spent Money On?

In that case, doesn't Frampton Comes Alive define a whole era? Despite the fact that you cannot find a single person currently living who'll admit that they ever owned a copy?

Somebody "embraced" that album up the charts.

> ... doesn't Frampton Comes Alive define a whole era? Despite the fact that you cannot find
> a single person currently living who'll admit that they ever owned a copy?

I had a copy. Still do, in fact.