wasted youth

I recently attended a benefit "punk" show headlined by a band that actually tours the world and has a small, but loyal, global following. This is like a 6th generation punk band - the members were not even born when I was first going to gigs. Hearing their music made me think this genre is rather played out (the band sounds a bit like old Green Day, a 3rd or 4th generation punk band themselves). Then I remembered that it wasn't always the music that kept the kids stoked - it was the message, and these guys were saying a lot. An example from my teenage days was the LA band Wasted Youth. Certainly not one of the more talented punk bands from that era, but the lyric "Reagan's In, We're Gone for Good" was nonetheless a revelation for me at the time - an early political awakening of sorts (this in spite of the fact that most of their lyrics were ludicrous). All that said, I'd rather see kids groove on this kind of music than most of today's popular music.