Generation Gap Of Sound

Published in the Desert Valley Times
May 17, 2005

Back in the day, a young man measured his worth using the currency of horsepower.
Your level of “cool” was directly proportional to how fast your car ran.
I would like to say that I was among the elite in this measurement back in the 70s, but there is only so much “cool” to be derived from driving a Pinto station wagon.
(Admittedly, my “cool” quotient rose a few clicks after the news broke about that unique Ford factory accessory known as “the exploding gas tank,” but my potential would always be limited by my four-cylinder engine.)
Guys would get together and compare engine displacements and transmission ratios, convinced that bigger was better for attracting girls.
Little did we know that we were conceptually correct, only mistaken about where size counted.
Most of us were into our late teens before we realized that size indeed mattered, but that the important measurement involved the bulge in our pants.
Specifically, in the right hip pocket, where the size of a guy’s wallet meant a lot more than the size of his hemi.
But that didn’t stop us from doling out machismo in the form of mag wheels and oversized carbs (which had nothing to do with food ingestion and everything to do with fuel injection.)
Today, that foolish notion about “bigger is better” continues with the teen set.
And the standard still revolves around a guy’s car.
However, in this age of nearly three dollars a gallon for high-test gasoline, it’s not about how big your engine might be or how fast you can turn the quarter mile.
It’s a question of decibels.
“Coolness” is now determined by the size of your sub-woofer.
Like kids in the seventies who plowed hard-earned dollars into Hurst shifters and traction bars, today’s macho teen is working like a union apprentice to get the money necessary to pump up the volume in his ride.
They spend hundreds of dollars on amplifiers and bass bins in the quest for testosterone supremacy, which is determined by who has the loudest stereo system.
One of the by-products is today’s kid is every bit as obnoxious in his automotive pursuits as we were in my day.
When you spend that much money on your car, you can’t just quietly ride around the community in silent superiority.
With a tricked-out 300 horsepower Camaro, the only way to get your deserved attention was to gun the engine loudly and squeal wheels at every intersection.
In fact, we used to joke about stop signs as being a permission-giving acronym for “Spin Tires On Pavement.”
Here in the 21st century, the financial investment made by some of these adolescent car enthusiasts absolutely demands that it’s knobs-right on the volume and bass controls as they cruise around town, a musical “look at me.”
I can tell I’m getting old, because I can look back fondly on the traffic-law misadventures of my high school brethren, racing their cars at 60 mph in front of the school (where “school zone” held a different meaning than that intended by our local gendarmes), while staying in a constant state of irritation by the “boom, boom-boom” of today’s sound-barrier-breaking scofflaws.
I’m sure a part of my irritation is a result of the musical generation gap which has probably existed for centuries.
(I figure parents in the 1800’s probably chided their teenagers often with such statements as “Turn down that Chopin crap right now! Beethoven and Mozart, now THAT was music!”)
It seems that booming rap music is the preferred song selection for those with the heavy duty sound gear, even if the driver happens to be a geeky little white kid with taped-up glasses and a pocket protector.
Apparently, the Dixie Chicks and Merle Haggard just don’t make the fillings in your teeth rattle sufficiently when played through these monster systems.
So while these young purveyors of sound pollution continue to do what teens have done for centuries, which is to annoy adults, those of us who grew up in the Mustang and Firebird eras will just have to remember that we were young once, and simply look back fondly on the days when aggravating adults was our own mission in life.