The 90s concerts seen by Gen X: between matusa and artists who rock

There is a moment in life, for us adults who haven’t started going – or pretending on social media to go – to Annalisa or TonyEffe’s tours, in which you start to attend concerts of idols of the past and, watching them from the audience, you start to ask yourself two questions. The first: how old is he now? Comparing the answer with our age, and starting on the second piece to make calculations like: if that album came out in 1994, and I was 16, how old was he? While you try to open the calculator on your cell phone without being seen, you discover that on the cell phones that get up to film pieces of songs, the neighbor’s Wikipedia – attention: not Google’s Gemini artificial intelligence – appears for a second, set to the artist : yes, he also went looking for age.

The second question arrives towards the middle of the concert: how does he jump like that? Where does it find energy? That’s when the difference between our age and hers really starts to make an impression. That the difference between them, boomers, and us, Generation X, becomes evident. You are in the audience, you are forty or just over, and in front of you there is not Mick Jagger doing cartwheels or Angus Young, out of the competition as aliens, but maybe any Giovanni Lindo Ferretti of CCCP – 70 years old – or Amedeo Pace of Blonde Redhead – 61 in August. The first sings with his hands in his pockets but for two and a half hours straight with a crazy voice, the second jumps tarantulatically on stage with the guitar. And he smiles. It’s at that moment that the smart friend approaches and, having sensed your confusion because it’s also his, pats you on the shoulder and says: «Hey, look at that idiot in the audience…». He tries to console you, but you can see very well that apart from the bikers with beards, tattoos and those over 60, there are also millennials with nail polish, and this panorama doesn’t console you at all.

But above all, the savvy friend doesn’t stop and reels off the second sentence that should explain everything: «Did you see that energy guy? At his age! And she? She doesn’t even drink…”. And while you nod in a daze, the pearl of wisdom arrives: “Oh well, but there’s help…”. And for a moment you mentally go to the thousand interviews you have read of the various rock survivors in which everyone said that yes, in the past ok, some substance or even many substances, but now no, enough now, all green tea, meditation and foods low carb. «No look, I don’t think so… she also has a trained, toned body… she’s in better shape than me», you try to reply. Next door they have heard you and start nodding their heads – no, the one who does it three o’clock from the start of the concert is someone who is trying “the old way”. The concert ends and only one encore is given: the savvy friend says to you smugly: «See? They can’t take it any further.” One of the audience who was struggling until the first second gets pissed off and says: “But damn I paid the babysitter until half past eleven!”. While your knees are on fire and you just think: come on, I can go home again today.