In The Sound of Our Town (Commonwealth Editions), Brett Milano surveys half a century’s worth of Boston rock acts and concludes that there’s no such thing as a Boston sound. In a too-brief aside, however, he mentions a distinctive, peculiarly Bostonian rocker’s fetish. Over the years, one (creepy) Boston rocker after another has penned hit tunes about what Milano calls “the intellectual, slightly mysterious rock-and-roll woman.” If you ask me, this point should have been the focus of the entire book.

[A slightly different version of this item originally appeared at the Boston Globe Ideas section's blog, Brainiac, in December 2007.]

Milano’s description puts one in mind of the Fatal Woman who haunted the imaginations of the so-called Decadent writers of the late 19th century. In The Romantic Agony, Mario Praz’s 1930 overview of the Decadent movement, Praz notes that in the writings of Théophile Gautier, Arthur Symons, and others we find a beautiful enchantress who has seen it all before — and whose smile, as a result, is as unfathomable as that of La Gioconda, which is to say Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. I now realize that my favorite Boston rockers, like the Decadents, wrote their lyrics from the perspective of misogynists who put women on a pedestal in order to rage at them, beautiful losers attracted only to elusive women whom they call sirens.

Boston’s rock Gioconda made her first appearance, according to Milano, in “Abigail Beecher,” a 1963 tune by Greater Boston’s first pop star, Revere-born Freddy Cannon. Cannon’s titular character is a guitar-playing, blue sunglasses-wearing educator: “She knows her history from A to Z/She digs the monkey and the Watusi,” he sings. “Whoo! It’s Abigail Beecher, our history teacher.” David Lee “Hot for Teacher” Roth, a childhood resident of Brookline and Swampscott, was no doubt impressed by Cannon’s fervor. Whoo!

After Abigail, the unrequited love of lowbrow Boston rockers for highbrow gals grew more tortured. Scott McLemee, who agrees about Boston rockers’ fatal attraction for remote, world-weary women, notes that the Fatal Woman makes an appearance in “The Ballad of the Hip Death Goddess,” a 1968 tune by the Boston band Ultimate Spinach. According to McLemee:

“The Ballad of the Hip Death Goddess” opens with a very solemn guy describing her from what I hope is a safe distance:

See the glazed eyes
Touch the dead skin
Feel the cold lips
And know the warmth
Of the Hip Death Goddess.

Then a female singer with a rather lovely high voice starts channeling the H.D.G. herself. She invites you to come into her arms. There, she can “keep you safe from all harms.” But don’t believe her for a second, because she did not get that name by accident:

Kiss my lips for they are very nice
Kiss my lips and you will turn to ice.

She has a few other lines, with you ending up dead figuring into most of them. She has cold eyes that will free you from lies, and so forth. Then she disappears for a while and you get lots of guitar and theremin noodling over a sometimes rhythmically challenged bassline. I am not sure, but this may represent purgatory.

Which brings us to 1970, when the seminal protopunk band Modern Lovers was formed in Boston. Prime examples of what I’m calling the Fatal Woman type, notes Milano via email, or what he’d merely call the intellectual, elusive rock scene chick, “would be the women in all the early songs that Jonathan Richman wrote for The Modern Lovers.”

Where else but in this hyper-intellectual environment, demands Milano, “would someone offer a pickup line like ‘Put down your cigarette and drop out of BU!’” That’s the Natick-born Richman’s retort, in the band’s famous early-’70s anthem “Modern World,” to a coed uninterested in dating a guy like him, who barely finished high school. I’ve always loved that line, but now that I think about it, it does sound a tad stalker-ish. I know, Modern Lovers fans, they were one of the greatest bands ever. But just listen to “Dance With Me,” and then try to tell me that Richman isn’t writing from the perspective of a creep stalking stand-offish Boston coeds:

Dance With Me by HILOBROW

Yep, I thought you’d change your mind. Chilling stuff, isn’t it?

“Then, of course, there are all the women in Cars songs,” writes Milano, in an email. Cars frontman Ric Ocasek, who moved to Boston from Ann Arbor in ’72, “seemed to be fascinated with the type.” As evidence, Milano quotes from the Cars’ self-titled 1978 debut album. In “Just What I Needed,” Ocasek sings, scornfully, to a woman: “It doesn’t matter where you’ve been, as long as it was deep, yeah.” And in “Bye Bye Love,” he complains: “You think you’re so illustrious/You call yourself intense.” Ocasek, who the Boston Phoenix named one of the 100 Unsexiest Men in the World, sounds — sorry, Cars fans — like a stalker.

One thing is certain: women in the Boston rock scene are smarter and more sophisticated than their counterparts anywhere else. Male rockers who couldn’t get a date must have gone around the bend when women started picking up guitars. Because when you think of female Boston rockers, they too have “embodied that deep thinking mysterious type,” notes Milano via email, “from Kristin Hersh [Throwing Muses] to Juliana Hatfield [Blake Babies] to Amanda Palmer [Dresden Dolls].”

No wonder Duxfield’s Juliana Hatfield has sung so often about stalkers, whether from the point of view of the Symons-channeling creep (“Can I feel your tragic wrist/And can I have your cherry lips/Can I be born into this/You’re the prettiest girl/You’re the prettiest girl/You’re the prettiest girl in the world/Come on, baby, give me some/Of your precious attention/Your honor I defend/From all the dirty old men”), or from that of his victim (“Get up off me/I want coffee/My stalker is outside my door.”) And no wonder the local music press remains obsessed, after all these years, with the details of Hatfield’s sex life.

You heard it here first: Boston rock is about one thing, and one thing only: stalking smart chicks. Let’s credit Milano with the initial insight, though his book doesn’t push this theory nearly far enough!

So what to make of “Academy Fight Song,” by Clint Conley of Boston’s brilliant post-punk act, Mission of Burma? Received wisdom tells us that the song, released in 1980 on the band’s debut 7″, was Conley’s response to a needy friend. But Conley refuses to confirm or deny this interpretation: “It’s just a big conceit, a metaphor,” is all he’ll say in Michael Azerrad’s Our Band Could Be Your Life.

Here’s my theory: “Academy Fight Song” was written from the point of view of a sophisticated, intellectual young coed who is sick of the obsessive attention paid to her by a would-be boyfriend — perhaps Conley himself! “Stay just as far from me/As me from you/Make sure that you are sure/Of everything I do/’Cause I’m not not not not not not not not/Your academy.” Before Hatfield and other women started speaking for themselves, Mission of Burma’s song was a stern kiss-off to Richman, Ocasek, and every other Boston rocker who wouldn’t take no for an answer. I’d even go so far as to call it a proto-riot grrl song. You go, Clint.

ADDENDUM

Patrick Smith, Salon.com’s “Ask the Pilot” columnist, who grew up in Revere, emails:

You cherry-picked your examples, but there must be something to it. How can there not be, considering the area’s many prestigious high schools and universities, and the music and arts culture that inevitably springs up around such places. After all, this is Boston, not LA. Which reminds me, you left out Gang Green’s song, “Snob.”

Cambridge-based cat writer Clea Simon writes:

I assume you’ve heard the Robyn Hitchcock song, “I Wish I Were a Pretty Girl”? While Hitchcock plays that thought out to the obvious immediate sexual gratification, a male friend who’d heard it commented on the common fantasy — often arising in psychoanalysis — of being the desired object. What also struck me was the constant undercurrent of melancholy he found in the Boston sound. Put those two together…

Brett Milano, meanwhile, thought of some more examples. He emails:

Ultimate Spinach had “Ballad of the Hip Death Goddess.” And there was a Revere band called Dry Ice (whose guitar player later joined the arena band Angel!) whose non-hit single “Mary is Alone” had this uplifting chorus: “Mary is alone and she wants to live/But all she sees is death.” Sounds like the goth movement was way overdue…. Someone quoted [Boston's hit song] “More Than a Feeling” on one of the blogs and I was realizing that sorta fits. ["When I'm tired and thinking cold/I hide in my music, forget the day/And dream of a girl I used to know/I closed my eyes and she slipped away"] And of course, the Pixies! “Is she weird, is she white, is she wedded to the night…”

Readers, got any more examples? Post them here.

In September 2006, Joshua Glenn launched Brainiac, a blog published by the Boston Globe’s Ideas section. He retired from Brainiac in June ’08, to pursue new projects; in February ’09, he cofounded HiLobrow.com. This post is the fifth in a series of ten commemorating Glenn’s brief tenure as a professional blogger.

Members of the generational cohort born from 1944-53 were in their teens and 20s during the Sixties (1964-73, not to be confused with the the 1960s), and in their 20s and 30s during the Seventies (1974-83). Though this cohort is easily distinguished from its immediate juniors (whom I’ve dubbed the Original Generation X, born 1954-63), for some reason the influential middlebrow pop demographers William Strauss and Neil Howe lumped the two cohorts together and called them, collectively, Baby Boomers.

I’m prejudiced against the Boomers, for the usual reasons. But when I think of high-, low-, no-, and hilobrow types born from 1944-53 whom I admire or at least find interesting, it’s a long list! It includes: Alan Moore, Alex Chilton, Andy Kaufman, Art Spiegelman, Bill Murray, Brian Eno, Camille Paglia, Christopher Hitchens, David Bowie, David Byrne, David Lynch, Divine, Donovan, Fran Lebowitz, Gary Panter, Geezer Butler, Genesis P-Orridge, Gil Scott-Heron, Gilda Radner, Gus Van Sant, Hakim Bey, Iggy Pop, Jim Woodring, Joey Ramone, John Bonham, John Carpenter, John Waters, Jonathan Richman, Kathy Acker, Kim Deitch, Larry David, Lemmy, Lester Bangs, Lux Interior, Marc Bolan, Mark Mothersbaugh, Martin Amis, Octavia Butler, Paul Reubens, Philippe Petit, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Reverend Billy, Richard Hell, Slavoj Zizek, Steve Wozniak, Stiv Bators, Suzi Quatro, Syd Barrett, Tom Verlaine, Tony Wilson, and William Gibson.

Still… what’s admirable or interesting about most of these particular Boomers probably stems from their rejection, not of previous generations’ values, but of their own generation’s traits. These Boomers, that is to say, are anti-Boomers. Like a race traitor, who supports attitudes or positions thought to be against the interests or well-being of his or her own race, these “generation traitors” rejected Boomer privilege and identity. The title track of The Voidoids’ 1977 debut album gave a collective moniker to Richard Hell and his fellow generation traitors: the “Blank Generation.”

A reminder of my generational periodization scheme:

1824-33: [Gilded Generation] Post-Romantics
1834-43: [Gilded Generation] Original Decadents
1844-53: [Progressive Generation] Prometheans
1854-63: [Progressive, Missionary Generations] Plutonians
1864-73: [Missionary Generation] Anarcho-Symbolists
1874-83: [Missionary Generation] Psychonauts
1884-93: [Lost Generation] Modernists
1894-1903: [Lost, Greatest/GI Generations] Hardboileds
1904-13: [Greatest/GI Generation] Partisans
1914-23: [Greatest/GI Generation] New Gods
1924-33: [Silent Generation] Postmodernists
1934-43: [Silent Generation] Anti-Anti-Utopians
1944-53: Boomers
1954-63: [Boomers, Late Boomers, Post-Boomers, Generation Jones] OGXers
1964-73: [Generation X, Thirteenth Generation] Reconstructionists
1974-83: [Generations X, Y] Revivalists
1984-93: [Millennial Generation] Throwbacks
1994-2003: [Millennial Generation] TBA

LEARN MORE about this periodization scheme | READ ALL generational articles on HiLobrow.

My generational periodization scheme has been known to rub people the wrong way, particularly when it comes to the Boomers. Here’s the argument I’ve heard: “Boomer is a term used to describe someone born during the demographic post-World War II baby boom, which the United States Census Bureau tells us started in 1946 and ended in 1964. Why do you insist that the Boomer generation (a) begins before WWII ended, and (b) ends a decade before the end of the baby boom? The Census Bureau proves you wrong!”

Last point first: The Census Bureau does not involve itself in defining generations. And when it comes to defining generations, I’m hardly alone in balancing demographics with cultural factors. In fact, even Strauss and Howe’s start and end dates for the Boomer Generation don’t adhere slavishly to the Census Bureau’s birthrate statistics: they claim the Boomers were born from 1943-60. Generational periodization is as much an art as it is a science. ’Nuff said.

The argument over whether the Boomer Generation starts in ’43 or ’44 is tricky. I don’t agree with Strauss and Howe’s start date — which would require us to think of Anti-Anti-Utopian outfits like Monty Python and the Rolling Stones as Boomers. However, in my scheme, years ending in a “3″ or “4″ are generational cusp years. So a few people born in ’43 — e.g., Chevy Chase, Todd Gitlin, David Geffen — are Boomers; meanwhile, a few born in ’44, — e.g., Angela Davis, Sly Stone, Bill Griffith — are Anti-Antis. To be born in a cusp year means to experience a (productively) divided generational consciousness. (George W.S. Trow, author of Within the Context of No Context, every line of which expresses the author’s sense of having been born too late, was born in ’43. And Bill Griffith’s Zippy strip represents its author as a divided consciousness.) Still, the Boomer Generation’s start date is no later than ’44. George Lucas, Lorne Michaels and Steve Martin, Michael Douglas and John Lithgow, and members of second-wave British Invasion bands like Led Zeppelin and Cream were born in ’44 and ’45 — and if they’re not Boomers, then the term is entirely devoid of meaning!

Hermenaut No. 2 (Winter 1992-93), in which I first argued that the Boomer Generation ends in 1953. Since then, this sort of claim has become much less controversial.

Fewer and fewer people, these days, agree with either the Census’ end date for the Boomers (’64) or Strauss and Howe’s end date (’60). I first argued that two distinct generations were born during the demographic birth boom of 1946-64 back in ’92, in the pages of Hermenaut. I’d picked up the idea from older cultural commentators — like the zinester Candi Strecker, who’d dubbed those (like herself) born between the mid-’50s and mid-’60s the “Repo Man Generation.” More recently, a marketing consultant named Jonathan Pontell has persuaded middlebrow journalists that a “Generation Jones” was born from 1954-65. And as you’ll recall, during his election campaign, Barack Obama (born 1961) got pundits debating the Boomer Generation’s parameters when he insisted that he wasn’t a Boomer. So the Boomer Generation ends short of the boom itself; but how short, is the question.

A New York Times illustration making the point that Barack Obama does not regard himself as a Boomer.

According to my absurdist yet correct periodization scheme, the break between the Boomers and the Original Generation X happened in 1953-’54. This accounts for the heightened generational consciousness and anti-Boomer animus of Kurt Andersen and Alex Beam, to name two cuspers born in ’54. But enough, until the next installment of this series, that is, about the Boomers’ juniors. Much as I dislike thinking about the Boomers, I’m now going to say a few words about them.

Pundits — beginning with Christopher Lasch — have described the Boomers as a “narcissistic” generation, but that’s too pejorative. I’d suggest that the most striking feature of this generational cohort is its imaginative suggestibility. I borrow the phrase from psychologists who study “responsivity to suggestion without hypnosis,” which is to say one’s capacity for self-hypnotizing. Imaginative suggestibility arises out of a particular constellation of psychological traits: absorption (the ability to immerse oneself whole-heartedly, and without irony, in whatever it is that one is into, at that moment, only to drop it one day and quickly get absorbed in something else), fantasy-proneness (a marked tendency to frame one’s own life in a mythical register), hysteria-proneness (a tendency towards emotional excess), and empathy (the capacity not merely to understand the pain of others, but feel it). Doesn’t that sound like the Boomers?

Suggestibility isn’t necessarily a good thing: for example, Thomas Frank’s 1997 book, The Conquest of Cool, persuasively argues that even the Boomers’ counterculturalism was inflicted on them by the dominant culture. However, were it not for their suggestibility, the Boomers might not have followed the lead of Anti-Anti-Utopian elders like Gloria Steinem, Abbie Hoffman, Eldridge Cleaver, Ken Kesey, Michael O’Donoghue, Woody Allen, Elvis, Tina Turner, George Clinton, Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan, The Beatles, and The Velvet Underground — thanks to whom, if you ask me, the Boomers’ influence was, briefly, world-historical.

ABSORPTION

1. the anti-war movement
2. social experimentation
3. sexual freedom
4. drug experimentation
5. civil rights movement
6. environmental movement
7. women’s movement
8. anti-nukes movement
9. advocacy of world peace
10. hostility to the authority of government and big business
11. self-awareness/Me Decade

FANTASY-PRONENESS

1. JFK/Camelot
2. The Moon Landing
3. blockbusters: Jaws, E.T., Rocky series, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Star Wars series, Raiders of the Lost Ark series, Back to the Future series, Jurassic Park series, Ghost Busters series
4. most movies about coming of age in the Fifties (1954-63): Animal House, American Graffiti, Grease, Forrest Gump, The Buddy Holly Story, Cry-Baby, Dead Poets Society, Diner, Hoosiers, The Lords of Flatbush, Stand By Me, the Porky’s series, even Superman
5. most, but not all, movies about coming of age in the Sixties (1954-63): Apollo 13, The Doors, Good Morning, Vietnam, Hairspray, Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July, Losin’ It, That Thing You Do!. Perhaps not The Outsiders, Rumble Fish, The Wanderers, or The Warriors; or Apocalypse Now — one tends to associate these movies with writers and directors from previous generations.

The Boomers’ fantasy-proneness explains why they found comic books so engrossing, during their early formative years. As adults, they continued to see themselves as superheroes. The first major superhero feature film was Superman (1978), starring Christopher Reeve (a Boomer); and subsequent comics-inspired movies were also Boomer-oriented: from Tim Burton’s Batman (1989) to Dick Tracy (1990), Batman Returns (1992), and Batman Forever (1995). Jay Cantor’s 1994 novel, Great Neck, perceptively explores the Boomers’ generational proclivity for self-mythologization in a superheroic register.

HYSTERIA-PRONENESS

1. Beatlemania
2. protests and riots
3. Woodstock and Altamont

EMPATHY

1. Third-Worldism
2. Bill Clinton

My notes are sketchy, but that’s because I dislike thinking and writing about the Boomers for very long. As for the punks, nobrow comics, glam rockers, metalheads, and refuseniks mentioned at the beginning of this post, what makes them so admirable is their unsuggestibility. Anti-Boomer Boomers like Alan Moore, Andy Kaufman, David Lynch, Geezer Butler, John Carpenter, John Waters, Kathy Acker, Lester Bangs, Octavia Butler, Reverend Billy, Richard Hell, and Slavoj Zizek made it their life’s mission to warn the rest of us about drinking the Kool-Aid.

Meet the Boomers.

HONORARY BOOMERS (BORN 1943): Chevy Chase (comic, SNL), Todd Gitlin (activist), Don Novello (comic, SNL), Michael Ondaatje (author), Harry Shearer (comic, actor, The Simpsons), Sam Shepard (playwright, actor), John Kerry (antiwar activist, politician), George W.S. Trow (author, social critic), David Denby (middlebrow film critic), Bob Woodward (journalist, Watergate), Linda Wertheimer (middlebrow NPR host), David Geffen (middlebrow tycoon), R. Crumb, George Harrison, Michael Palin, Eric Idle, and H. Rap Brown. Would perhaps also like to add Garrison Keillor (middlebrow NPR host) and film producer Peter Guber, both 1942. On the fence about Martin Scorsese and Michael Eisner (also ’42).

George Lucas and Steven Spielberg

1944: George Lucas (middlebrow director), Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin), Kim Deitch (cartoonist, RAW), Erno Rubik (inventor), Ben Stein (middlebrow game show host, pundit), Lorne Michaels (SNL producer), Richard Ford (novelist), Gary Glitter (musician), Roger Daltrey (The Who), Ray Davies (The Kinks), Jeff Beck (rock guitarist), Carl Bernstein (journalist, Watergate; married to middlebrow Nora Ephron), Diana Ross (singer), Rudy Giuliani (politician), Pattie Boyd (model, married George Harrison and Eric Clapton), Terry Brooks (fantasy author), James Carville (political strategist), Joe Cocker (singer/songwriter), Danny DeVito (actor, The Penguin in Batman Returns), Michael Douglas (middlebrow actor), Sam Elliott (actor), John Entwhistle (The Who), Joe Eszterhas (director), Bobbie Gentry (singer), Lauren Hutton (model), Mick Jones (Foreigner), John Milius (director), Frank Oz (middlebrow puppeteer), Robbie Robertson (The Band), Jeffrey Tambor (actor), Peter Tosh (musician), Alice Walker (middlebrow author), Peter Weir (director), Bobby Womack (singer), Barry White (singer), Bernie Worrell (Parliament-Funkadelic), Nina Totenberg (middlebrow NPR host). HONORARY ANTI-ANTI-UTOPIANS: Angela Davis (activist, scholar), Sly Stone (musician), Martin Jay (intellectual historian), Bill Griffith (cartoonist, Zippy the Pinhead, RAW), Jonathan Demme (director), Patti LaBelle (soul singer-songwriter), Bill Ayers (Weather Underground), maybe Rem Koolhaas (architect).

1945: Steve Martin (comic, actor), Hakim Bey (Peter Lamborn Wilson, author, TAZ), Divine (actor), Rainer Werner Fassbinder (director), Debbie Harry (Blondie), Susan Jacoby (author), Justin Green (cartoonist, RAW), Lemmy (Motorhead), Pete Townshend (The Who), Jerry Bruckheimer (middlebrow TV and film producer), Eric Clapton (middlebrow rock guitarist), Pat Conroy (middlebrow author), Wim Wenders (director), Peter Criss (KISS), Stanley Crouch (jazz critic), Terence Davies (director), Jim Davis (middlebrow cartoonist, Garfield), Annie Dillard (author, lyricist of the quotidian), Barry Lopez (author, lyricist of the quotidian), Mickey Dolenz (Monkees), Davy Jones (Monkees), Mia Farrow (actor), Bryan Ferry (musician), Thomas King Forcade (founded High Times), Goldie Hawn (actor), Douglas Hofstadter (author), Gabe Kaplan (comic), Tracy Kidder (journalist), Dean R. Koontz (horror author), Arthur Lee (Love), John Lithgow (actor), Kurt Loder (MTV journalist), Anni-Frid Lyngstad (ABBA), Björn Ulvaeus (ABBA), Milo Manara (erotic comic book artist), Bob Marley (musician), Don McLean (singer-songwriter), John McVie (Fleetwood Mac), Bette Midler (singer), George Miller (director, Mad Max), Van Morrison (musician), Question Mark (? and the Mysterians), Charlotte Rampling (actor), Tom Selleck (actor), Carly Simon (singer-songwriter), Rod Stewart (singer), Stephen Stills (Crosby, Stills, and Nash), Henry Winkler (middlebrow actor), Neil Young (musician), Adrienne Barbeau (actor, Swamp Thing, voice of Catwoman on Batman: The Animated Series and subsequent Batman cartoon series).

1946: John Waters (nobrow-turned-quatsch director), George W. Bush (US president), Steven Spielberg (middlebrow director), Julian Barnes (author), Syd Barrett (Pink Floyd), Donovan (musician), André the Giant, Lux Interior (The Cramps), Jann Wenner (founder, Rolling Stone), Joanna Lumley (actor, Absolutely Fabulous), David Lynch (director), Robert Mapplethorpe (photographer), Malcolm McLaren (music impresario), Freddie Mercury (Queen), Gram Parsons (Flying Burrito Brothers), Gilda Radner (comic, SNL), Peter Singer (philosopher), Patti Smith (singer), Bill Clinton (US president), Craig Venter (scientist, genome sequencing), Duane Allman (Allman Brothers), Benny Andersson (ABBA), Robert Asprin (SF/Fantasy author), Candice Bergen (actor, Murphy Brown), Jimmy Buffett (middlebrow musician), Richard Carpenter (The Carpenters), Cher (singer, middlebrow actor), Deepak Chopra (middlebrow guru), Andrei Codrescu (middlebrow author, radio personality), Tim Curry (actor), Joe Dante (director), Patty Duke (actor), Marianne Faithfull (musician), Sally Field (middlebrow actor), Bill Forsyth (director), Barry Gibb (Bee Gees), Barry Gifford (author), Danny Glover (actor), Lesley Gore (singer), Al Green (singer), Gregory Hines (dancer), John Paul Jones (Led Zeppelin), Tommy Lee Jones (actor, Two-Face in Batman Forever), Diane Keaton (middlebrow actor), Joe Klein (journalist), Robby Krieger (The Doors), Peggy Lipton (actor), Susan Lucci (actor), Terence McKenna (far-out author), Liza Minnelli (singer), Keith Moon (The Who), Michael Ovitz (middlebrow CEO, Disney), Dolly Parton (musician), Philip Pullman (author), Pat Sajak (game show host), Paul Schrader (director), Sylvester Stallone (action-movie actor), Oliver Stone (director), Donald Trump (businessman, TV personality), Robert Urich (actor), Peter Wolf (J Geils Band), Linda Ronstadt (singer).

1947: Kathy Acker (author), Paul Auster (author), Marc Bolan (T-Rex), David Bowie (musician), Octavia Butler (SF author), Larry David (TV producer, actor, Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm), David Letterman (nobrow talk show host), Martha Nussbaum (philosopher), Camille Paglia (critic), Camille Paglia (musician), Gregg Allman (Allman Brothers), Ian Anderson (Jethro Tull), Andrew Bacevich (middlebrow historian), John Perry Barlow (EFF cofounder, Grateful Dead lyricist), Dave Barry (middlebrow columnist), Ann Bettie (middlebrow author), Hillary Clinton (politician), Albert Brooks (actor), Tom Clancy (thriller author), Glenn Close (actor, The Big Chill), Paulo Coelho (author), Billy Crystal (middlebrow comic), Jane Curtin (actor, SNL), Ted Danson (middlebrow actor), Stephen R. Donaldson (SF/Fantasy author), Richard Dreyfuss (middlebrow actor), Bob Edwards (middlebrow NPR host), Farrah Fawcett (actor), Teri Garr (actor), Arlo Guthrie (singer/songwriter), Mark Helprin (author), Don Henley (middlebrow musician, The Eagles), Michael Ignatieff (author, politician), Elton John (middlebrow musician), Lynn Johnston (middlebrow cartoonist, For Better or Worse), Stephen King (middlebrow horror novelist), Kevin Kline (actor, The Big Chill), Richard Lewis (comic), David Mamet (author), Joe Mantegna (actor), Brian May (Queen), Michael McKean (actor, musician, Spinal Tap), Mitch Mitchell (Jimi Hendrix Experience), Jonathan Pryce (actor), Rob Reiner (middlebrow actor, director, producer), Peter Riegert (actor), Marilynne Robinson (novelist), Salman Rushdie (novelist), Carlos Santana (Santana), John Ralston Saul (essayist), Laura Schlessinger (middlebrow radio personality), Arnold Schwarzenegger (action-movie actor, Mr. Freeze in Batman & Robin, Conan; politician), Robert Siegel (middlebrow NPR host), Jimmie Walker (comic), Joe Walsh (middlebrow musician, Eagles), Peter Weller (actor), Ron Wood (Rolling Stones), James Woods (actor), Warren Zevon (musician), Jon Landau (middlebrow music critic, producer), Dan Quayle (politician), Mitt Romney (politician), Don Felder (middlebrow musican, The Eagles). Also: middlebrow generational periodizer William Strauss.

1948: Brian Eno (music producer, Here Come the Warm Jets), Lester Bangs (critic, Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung), John Bonham (Led Zeppelin), John Woo (director), John Carpenter (director, They Live), Gerald Casale (Devo), Nick Drake (singer/songwriter), Donald Fagen (Steely Dan), William Gibson (SF novelist), Al Gore (Vice President), Christopher Guest (actor, Spinal Tap), Phil Hartman (comic), S.E. Hinton (YA novelist), Ozzy Osbourne (Black Sabbath), Ricky Jay (magician), Ray Kurzweil (inventor), Errol Morris (documentary filmmaker), Robert Plant (Led Zeppelin), Art Spiegelman (cartoonist, editor of RAW), Lewis Black (comic), Glenn Frey (middlebrow musician, Eagles), Lynn Abbey (Fantasy author), Allan Arkush (director, Rock’n'Roll High School), Ron Asheton (The Stooges), Wolf Blitzer (TV journalist), T.C. Boyle (author), Jackson Browne (middlebrow singer/songwriter), Jimmy Cliff (musician), Alice Cooper (musician), Bud Cort (actor), Gerard Depardieu (actor), James Ellroy (crime novelist), Glenn Frey (middlebrow musican, The Eagles), Squeaky Fromme (assassin), Tony Iommi (Black Sabbath), Jeremy Irons (actor), Samuel L. Jackson (actor), Rick James (musician), Bernard-Henri Lévy (author, philosopher), Andrew Lloyd Webber (middlebrow composer), Janet Maslin (middlebrow film critic, dated middlebrows Steven Spielberg and Jon Landau), Ian McEwan (novelist), Jerry Mathers (Beaver in Leave it to Beaver), Michael Medved (traditional values pundit, film critic), Olivia Newton John (singer, actor), Stevie Nicks (singer/songwriter, Fleetwood Mac), Ted Nugent (musician), Bernadette Peters (actor), Kate Pierson (B-52s), Faith Popcorn (trend-spotter), Terry Pratchett (SF novelist), Phylicia Rashad (actor, The Cosby Show), Ruth Reichl (food critic), John Ritter (actor, Three’s Company), Todd Rundgren (musician), Rudolph Schenker (The Scorpions), Cat Stevens (singer/songwriter), Donna Summer (singer), James Taylor (middlebrow singer-songwriter), Eckhart Tolle (middlebrow guru), Garry Trudeau (cartoonist), Steven Tyler (Aerosmith), Ronnie Van Zant (Lynyrd Skynyrd), Steve Winwood (musician).

1949: Andy Kaufman (comic, prankster), Bruce Springsteen (middlebrow rock star), Geezer Butler (Black Sabbath), Martin Amis (novelist), John Belushi (actor, comic, SNL), Graydon Carter (editor, Vanity Fair), Elvira (actor), Christopher Hitchens (journalist), Pam Grier (actor), Richard Hell (musician, Voidoids), Paul Berman (intellectual), Slavoj Zizek (intellectual), Tom Herman (Pere Ubu), Denis Johnson (novelist), Stiv Bators (Dead Boys), Fred “Sonic” Smith (musician), Philippe Petit (funambulist), James Atlas (author), Gil Scott-Heron (poet), Garry Shandling (comic), Tom Verlaine (punk, Television), Wendy O. Williams (Plasmatics), Terry Zwigoff (director, Ghost World), Neal Conan (middlebrow NPR host), Ed Begley Jr. (actor), Jeff Bridges (actor), Lindsey Buckingham (Fleetwood Mac), Shelley Duvall (actor), James Fallows (journalist), Richard Gere (actor), Tom Berenger (actor, The Big Chill), Robin Gibb (Bee Gees), Russell Hitchcock (Air Supply), Billy Joel (middlebrow musician), Don Johnson (actor), Lawrence Kasdan (director, The Big Chill), Jamaica Kincaid (novelist), Mark Knopfler (Dire Straits), Jessica Lange (actor), Jerry Lawler (wrestler), Annie Leibovitz (photographer), Shelley Long (actor), Nick Lowe (musician), John Madden (middlebrow director, Shakespeare in Love), Haruki Murakami (novelist), Bill O’Reilly (talk show host), Ric Ocasek (The Cars), Robert Palmer (singer), Steve Perry (Journey), Daniel Pipes (neocon), Bonnie Raitt (musician), Michael Richards (Kramer, on Seinfeld), Lionel Richie (singer-songwriter), Louis Rossetto (Wired co-founder), Gene Simmons (KISS), Jane Smiley (novelist), Sissy Spacek (actor), Rick Springfield (musician), Meryl Streep (talented middlebrow actor), Dave Thomas (comic), Scott Turow (middlebrow thriller author), Tom Waits (nobrow musician), Sigourney Weaver (actor), Anna Wintour (editor, Vogue), Pedro Almodovar (director)

1950: Mark Mothersbaugh (Devo), Gary Panter (illustrator, designer, cartoonist, Jimbo, Pee-Wee’s Playhouse), Mark Beyer (cartoonist, RAW), Fran Lebowitz (social satirist), Alex Chilton (Big Star), Genesis P-Orridge (Throbbing Gristle, Psychic TV), Bill Murray (actor, comic, SNL), Suzi Quatro (musician), David Johansen (New York Dolls), Tony Wilson (Factory Records), Steve Wozniak (cofounder, Apple), William Hurt (actor, The Big Chill), Agnetha Fältskog (ABBA), Richard Dean Anderson (actor, MacGyver), Martin Short (SNL), Joan Armatrading (singer/songwriter), Walter Becker (Steely Dan), Richard Branson (businessman), Gabriel Byrne (actor), Karen Carpenter (The Carpenters), Jim Carroll (author), David Cassidy (singer), Carolyn Forché (poet), Peter Gabriel (musician, Genesis), Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (scholar), Lani Guinier (scholar), Cathy Guisewite (middlebrow cartoonist, Cathy), Arianna Huffington (columnist), John Hughes (director), Neil Jordan (director), Jeffrey Katzenberg (middlebrow tycoon, Disney, Dreamworks SKG), John Landis (nobrow director, Animal House), Jerry Zucker (nobrow director, Airplane!), Gary Larson (cartoonist, The Far Side), Jay Leno (TV host), William H. Macy (actor), Leonard Maltin (film critic), Ron Perlman (actor, Hellboy), Tom Petty (musician), Joe Queenan (author), James Redfield (novelist, The Celestine Prophecy), John Sayles (director), Cybill Shepherd (director), Billy Squier (musician), Sean Wilentz (historian), Stevie Wonder (musician).

1951: Terry Gross (middlebrow NPR host), Wendy Pini (cartoonist, Elfquest), Joey Ramone (The Ramones), Sue Coe (illustrator, Raw), Johnny Ramone (The Ramones), Jonathan Richman (The Modern Lovers), Zhang Yimou (director), Ben Katchor (cartoonist, RAW), Karen Allen (actress, Animal House, Raiders of the Lost Ark), Morris Albert (middlebrow soft-rock singer/songwriter, “Feelings”), Fred Schneider (B-52s), Rush Limbaugh (pundit), Pedro Almodóvar (director), Pierce Brosnan (actor), Orson Scott Card (SF novelist), Lynda Carter (actor, Wonder Woman), Cicciolina (Italian pornstar and politician), Ben Cohen (Ben & Jerry’s), Jerry Greenfield (Ben & Jerry’s), Bootsy Collins (P-Funk), Phil Collins (middlebrow rock/pop star), Chris Cooper (actor), Christopher Cross (middlebrow singer, “Sailing”), Beverly D’Angelo (actor), Tony Danza (actor), Brad Delp (Boston), Abel Ferrara (director), Lou Ferrigno (actor, The Incredible Hulk), Ace Frehley (KISS), Bob Geldof (Boomtown Rats), Rob Halford (Judas Priest), Mark Hamill (actor, Star Wars), Oscar Hijuelos (author, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love), Tommy Hilfiger (fashion designer), Li Hongzhi (founder, Falun Gong), Anjelica Huston (actor), Chrissie Hynde (The Pretenders), Dean Kamen (inventor, Segway), William Katt (actor, Greatest American Hero), Michael Keaton (actor, Batman), Michael Kinsley (pundit, founding editor of Slate), Rush Limbaugh (pundit), Merrill Markoe (comic), Terry McMillan (middlebrow author), John Cougar Mellencamp (singer/songwriter), Suze Orman (middlebrow self-help author), Kurt Russell (actor), Julian Schnabel (director), Steven Seagal (action movie actor), Sting (middlebrow rock star, The Police), Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. (New York Times publisher), Treat Williams (middlebrow actor), Sven Birkerts (middlebrow intellectual), Brian Grazer (middlebrow film/TV producer), Robin Williams (nobrow-middlebrow comic, actor).

1952: Paul Reubens (actor, Pee-wee Herman), David Byrne (Talking Heads), Douglas Adams (SF novelist, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy), Reverend Billy (activist, church of Stop Shopping), John Lurie (nobrow musician, actor), Gus Van Sant (director), Jim Woodring (cartoonist), Robert Zemeckis (film director, producer, screenwriter), Dan Aykroyd (actor, comic, SNL), Clive Barker (thriller author), Jeff Goldblum (actor, The Big Chill), Christopher Reeve (actor, Superman), Patrick Swayze (action-movie actor), Roseanne Barr (actor), Roberto Benigni (actor), Stewart Copeland (The Police), Michael Cunningham (author), Rita Dove (poet), Maureen Dowd (middlebrow New York Times columnist), Francis Fukuyama (neocon pundit), John Goodman (actor), David Hasselhoff (actor), bell hooks (scholar), Sammo Hung (actor), Bill Kristol (conservative editor, pundit), Louis Menand (critic), Liam Neeson (actor), Laraine Newman (comic, Saturday Night Live), Dee Dee Ramone (The Ramones), Tommy Ramone (The Ramones), Kim Stanley Robinson (SF novelist), Isabella Rossellini (actor), Mickey Rourke (actor), Paul Stanley (KISS), Joe Strummer (The Clash), Mr. T (actor), Amy Tan (middlebrow author), Johnny Thunders (New York Dolls), Harvey Weinstein (middlebrow movie producer), Leon Wieseltier (critic), Mark Sandman (musician).

1953: Tina Brown (middlebrow magazine editor, Vanity Fair and New Yorker), Alan Moore (writer, The Watchmen), Tim Allen (middlebrow actor, Home Improvement), Pat Benatar (musician), Kim Basinger (actor, Batman), Tony Blair (UK prime minister), Michael Bolton (middlebrow singer-songwriter), Michael Chertoff (US Homeland Security Czar), Eve Ensler (playwright), Thomas Friedman (middlebrow New York Times columnist), Mary Harron (director), Carl Hiaasen (author), Ron Jeremy (porn star), Sam Kinison (comic), Paul Krugman (New York Times columnist), Geddy Lee (Rush), John Malkovich (actor), Rick Moranis (actor), Mary Gross (SNL), Howard Schultz (founded Starbucks), Cornel West (scholar), Anne Fadiman (middlebrow writer), Jeffrey Skilling (Enron), Jerry Stahl (screenwriter), Malcolm Young (AC/DC). HONORARY OGXers: Kim Gordon (Sonic Youth), Jim Jarmusch (director), Mark Pauline (Survival Research Labs), John Zorn (avant-garde composer), Cyndi Lauper (pop star), David Thomas (Pere Ubu), Midge Ure (Ultravox).

HONORARY BOOMERS (BORN 1954): Ron Howard (Happy Days actor, middlebrow film director), Oprah Winfrey (middlebrow TV host), Bob Weinstein, (middlebrow film producer), James Cameron (middlebrow SF director, Avatar, Titanic), John Travolta (actor), Louise Erdrich (middlebrow novelist), Anne Lamott (middlebrow author, Operating Instructions), Jim Belushi (middlebrow actor), Stevie Ray Vaughn (musician), Rick Warren (The Purpose-Driven Life).

Charles Schulz's Lucy Van Pelt is a Boomer. She first appears as a toddler in April 1952. This strip, in which she articulates the Boomers' credo, was published in 1962 — i.e., when the oldest Boomers were 18.

This summer, for example, we’re all required to watch blockbuster movies (Star Trek, X-Men) based on TV shows and comics originally created for the amusement of Boomer young adults. We’re also supposed to pony up the big bucks to see Boomers (Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, Elton John, Fleetwood Mac, The Eagles, Jimmy Buffett) and the Boomers’ idols (Paul McCartney, The Rolling Stones, Simon and Garfunkel) wheeze out their golden oldies on much-hyped tours.

Here at HiLobrow.com, we admire and enjoy the pioneering work and activism of a few Boomer low-, high-, no- and hilobrows, including: Neil Young, David Lynch, Freddie Mercury, Iggy Pop, David Bowie, Debbie Harry, Bill Griffith, John Carpenter, Octavia Butler, David Byrne, Andy Kaufman, Jonathan Richman, Joey Ramone, Jim Jarmusch, and Larry David. Standing on the shoulders of their immediate elders, these North American and British Boomers have articulated a lucid critique of what’s wrong with western culture — and they’ve done so in forms that regular folks can appreciate. Their irony is of the fierce and politically engaged variety, and their productions are smart without being (too) pretentious.

But the vast majority of Boomers — generally speaking, the ones who still rake in the dough every time they get out of bed — have never been so unique, bold, or talented. What do George Lucas, Michael Douglas, Don McLean, Alice Walker, Jerry Bruckheimer, Kurt Loder, Eric Clapton, Diane Keaton, Cher, Donald Trump, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Steven Spielberg, Philip Pullman, Dave Barry, Stephen King, James Taylor, Billy Crystal, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen, Jay Leno, Rush Limbaugh, Brian Grazer, Robin Williams, Sting, and Thomas Friedman have in common? They’re the avatars of a middlebrow generation, one that has always insisted upon having its cake and eating it, too. They’re conservative liberals, socialist capitalists, mainstream outsiders, millionaire populists; the increasingly clownish yet supposedly stylish look of a Diane Keaton or an Elton John speaks volumes.

It gets worse. All too many of us now in our late 30s, 40s and early 50s are “Boomer-identified.” We have internalized the values of our generational oppressors. We are every bit as besotted with Bob Dylan as the Boomers were; and we’ve been trained to loathe and pity ourselves because we never did get a ’68 of our own. Nostalgic for the golden years of their own particular youth, the Boomers have mortgaged our collective future. Don’t fall into this trap, readers. Think carefully before you purchase or enjoy a Boomer-produced or -approved product.

Barack Obama: not a Boomer.

How did the Boomers pull off Stockholm Syndrome on a generational scale? In an era marked by de-colonization, the Boomers were savvy, unrepentant generational colonialists. That is, their predominance is due in part to a brilliant, rapacious ability to claim cultural creatives and activists both older (Gloria Steinem, Abbie Hoffman, Eldridge Cleaver, Hunter S. Thompson, Ken Kesey, Don DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon, Woody Allen, Richard Pryor, Elvis, Tina Turner, George Clinton, Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, The Velvet Underground, Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Captain Beefheart, Frank Zappa) and younger (Matt Groening, Seinfeld, Elvis Costello, The Sex Pistols, Joy Division, Michael Moore, Jonathan Franzen, David Foster Wallace) of whom they approve. Only recently, with the candidacy of Barack Obama, who repeatedly denied that he is now, or ever has been a Boomer, has this trend been challenged.

There must be more to Boomer hegemony than colonialism, though. This question demands immediate and prolonged investigation, lest something of a similar nature happen in the future. Never again. HiLobrow.com encourages your comments on this urgent matter.

JONATHAN RICHMAN (born 1951) sings to us exactly as we speak to ourselves. And besides, without him poor Affection would sit there standing in the corner, saying to itself, “I wish someone would give me something to do.”

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Each day, HiLobrow.com pays tribute to one of our favorite high-, low-, no-, or hilobrow heroes on that person’s birthday. Click here for more HiLo Hero shout-outs. To get HiLo Heroes updates via Facebook, click here.

Starting next week, we’ll be structuring these birthday posts differently. Stay tuned!

Rest in peace, BEA ARTHUR (1922–2009). She was intelligent, decent, effortlessly funny, and she was old-school show-biz. We adored her as Maude in her signature smock-vests and slacks: broadcasting suburban liberal values with that trumpet-like voice, one eyebrow skeptically arched. — M.L.

STUDS TERKEL (1912–2008): shovel-ready and irony free. Fifty years from now, who will remind our grandchildren what a progressive looks like? And without another Federal Writer’s Project, who’ll collect oral histories from the survivors of our Depression? — M.L.