While researching for another article, I came across a term I had never heard before–Generation Jones. If you were born between 1955 and 1965, you were more likely to have grown up watching The Brady Bunch rather than Leave It to Beaver. If you remember President Kennedy’s funeral at all, you mostly remember your parents’ reaction to the loss, rather than feeling a loss yourself. You were too young to protest the Vietnam War. You are part of what is being called Generation Jones.
It’s the club for misfits–those who are neither Baby Boomer nor Generation X.
The term itself comes from the word Jonesing, to have a strong need, desire, or craving for something. Really, it was about needing drugs or alcohol. The term originated with heroin users–they used it to describe their withdrawal symptoms.
Jonathan Pontell, who coined the term for this 53 million-member-strong generational segment, describes this generation as stuck “between Woodstock and Lollapalooza.” They didn’t buy into or were too young to understand the Baby Boomer tantrums, yet they were a tad too old to join the Gen-Xers in the mosh pits.
Note: Pontell is way off here. Real Jonesers invented the mosh pit and were active in the Grunge wave created by Nirvana, Sound Garden, The Melvins and Alice in Chains. We still go to see Nine Inch Nails during the work week.
Pontell describes their heritage:
So who are we? We are practical idealists, forged in the fires of social upheaval while too young to play a part. The name “Generation Jones” derives from a number of sources, including our historical anonymity, the ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ competition of our populous birth years, and sensibilities coupling the mainstream with ironic cool. But above all, the name borrows from the slang term ‘jonesin” that we as teens popularized to broadly convey any intense craving.”
Any generation is defined by shared experiences of historical events and cultural influences during the developmental and formative years, and that generations generally span 10 to 12 years. The classification of Baby Boomers as a “generation” based solely on annual birth rates, from 1946 to 1964, was actually a misclassification. The emergence of so-called “late Boomers” as a subgroup of Baby Boomers was a start in correcting the error, and then Pontell’s research further revealed that the second half of the Boomers were different enough from the first half to break away from the classification altogether.
According to Pontell, Boomers and Jonesers share some traits, such as idealism, but they behave differently. Members of Gen Jones tend to be more practical and rational in their approach to change. Their childhood years were inspired by the positive social change brought on by the Baby Boomers, but then sobering events of the 1970s—including Vietnam death tolls on the evening news, Watergate, the oil embargo, rising inflation, and unemployment—forced them to be pragmatic as they entered adulthood.
By the time they became young adults, the Vietnam war had ended and Watergate had started. Unlike their older siblings, they had to look for work during times of high unemployment and rising inflation. The idealist folk music they grew up listening to had been replaced by thumping disco music encouraging escapism from the real world into the world of partying all the time. The film Saturday Night Fever captures this lost, metallic taste in the mouths of kids growing up in the 70s. The television shows they watched as kids did not reflect the Ozzie and Harriet family structure. Instead, The Brady Bunch showed the rising blended family structure. Julia showed how a professional, black, single mother can raise a well-adjusted child.
Of course, this is a gross over-characterization. In many ways, so many Gen Jonesers have more in common with Boomers. Real Generation Jones is an even a smaller, niche sub-category.
Punk and Hip Hop
While Disco is part of the narrative, real Jonesers, such as the full-scale rejection soaked into the film Repo Man, were the first to reject mainstream rock. They hate the Beatles, (as well as Disco), and took this hate and anger to the streets with punk bands like The Clash, Ramones, Sex Pistols, The Damned, The Misfits, and The Dead Boys.
Punk is obvious, but what is less talked about is the birth of Rap and Hip Hop in the 1970’s. Generation Jones is the first to accept Joseph Saddler, or Grandmaster Flash, who is considered to be one of the pioneers of hip-hop DJing, cutting, scratching and mixing. Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007, becoming the first hip-hop act to be honored. In the mid-1970s, he formed Grandmaster Flash & the 3 MCs with Cowboy, Melle Mel, and The Kidd Creole. Cowboy created the term hip-hop while teasing a friend who had just joined the U.S. Army, by scat singing the words “hip/hop/hip/hop” in a way that mimicked the rhythmic cadence of soldiers marching. Cowboy later worked the “hip hop” cadence into a part of his stage performance. (source Wikipedia).
A Futile and Stupid Gesture – There’s no line we won’t cross
National Lampoon sums up Gen Jones–its sensibility and approach to comedy were so different from the previous generation’s. While they liked and appreciated Mad Magazine, it was the Lampoon that they really wanted–mainly because it had lots of tits.
Guys like Doug Kenney, P.J. O’Rourke, Michael O’Donoghue ignored the past, the boomers, and wrote for their generation. They wrote about sex and drugs, and they didn’t care if their parents didn’t get it. They especially didn’t care who they offended.
“You start out with Mad magazine, and you go right through the sort of black humor of Lenny Bruce, Lord Buckley, Mort Sahl, Paul Krassner… If you put Lenny together with Mad magazine and run it through the brain of a college student, you get National Lampoon.” — P. J. O’Rourke. Or as O’Donoghue would say to anyone still listening, “Making people laugh is the lowest form of comedy.”
Like punk, Joneser comedy was a rejection of the older, “Dad” comedy. You know, the kind of jokes your witless uncle, the one that wears white socks to the beach would tell. Instead of Bill Cosby, Bob Hope, Jerry Lewis or even Johnny Carson, they listened to vinyl or 8-track recordings of Richard Pryor, George Carlin or Cheech and Chong (although, there was always a soft spot for Rodney Dangerfield).
Animal House, a raucous tale of a disenfranchised college fraternity that memorably features the late John Belushi imitating a zit, is practically a metaphor for Generation Jones. Dean Wormer, ROTC Niedermeyer, and preppy Greg Marmalard against the Jonesers at Delta House.
“Animal House is fucking funny, and white people are crazy,”- note sent by Richard Pryor to Director John Landis after he had seen a screening, and heard the studio wanted them to cut the roadside bar scene. “It was like a papal blessing,” Landis said.
The original cast of Saturday Night Live, with Bill Murray, speaks for itself.
On Doug Kenney’s suicide/death off a cliff in Hawaii, Harold Ramis, his screenwriting partner on Animal House commented, “Doug probably fell while he was looking for a place to jump.”
Satire and General Disdain…about Everything and for Everyone
Growing up knee deep in their father’s and older brother’s Vietnam blood, no real prospects and with the Sex Pistols lyric “No future for you!” ringing in their ears, real Gen Jonesers are full of satire and dripping with disdain for everything–political parties, voting, and people in general:
The Boss: You know, your satire is not going to get you anywhere in life.
Joneser: Oh, yeah? Well, last year I got a free trip to Rio de Janeiro to compete in the International Satire Competition.
The Boss: Really?
Jonser: No.
Although there is disagreement about exactly when Generation Jones begins and ends (Pontell says 1954 to 1965, while others argue it goes up to 1967), the point is that there was a generation between the Baby Boomers and Generation X that has been lost between the cracks. That’s kind of how they like it though. Cracks…that’s funny.
Couple of things: I’m a Generation Joneser and a musician and I don’t know any other Generation Joneser who hates The Beatles.
The music we rejected was the coked-out Laurel Canyon ’60’s aftermath, The Eagles, Crosby, Stills, and Nash after the first two albums, Santana, that overproduced mellow hippie crap that came after The Beatles. The Beatles were no longer mainstream rock by the time punk came around, they were oldies, their early music was the kind of stripped down music the punks were trying to get back to.
And speaking for me, I didn’t “hate” most of it so much as I reached a point where I found music that spoke better to where I was. “Do you know we’re riding on the Marrakesh Express?” sounded like a rich old hippie having just a great old time with his royalties, but “Down in The Park where the Machmen meet The Machines and play ‘Kill by Numbers'” somehow sounded like a scenario that resonated better with my reality. “In a room with a window in the corner I found truth.”
Also, The National Lampoon was a Woodstock Generation affair. I read it and liked it back when I was in my teens, but by the time I reached adulthood and found my own generational voice, it didn’t speak to me any more. I saw it as frat boy pandering. And the men who founded it were indeed Woodstock Generation fraternity boys.
Note: Well said.
I’m jj & I loved Stripes the most more than the Ceechcong,Caddyshak, frat/sorority weekend cap. Tho I loved Poekeys too. My memory, fucking impossible to get a job, early, new wave, new romantics, hipphop rap & fn cool rap dance, Jimmy Carthair, Ronny Ray gun & Nancy, Maggie, Welcome Back Cotter, Benson, Good Times, Dallas & Magnum PI slowly replacing Hawaii 5oh
As always, I find the Cape Charles Mirror to be about the last bastion of sanity and intellectualism we have on the planet (can you imagine reading an article with this level of intellectual depth this in the staid Washington Post?), and this article is case in point.
Although this stuff about “(A)ny generation is defined by shared experiences of historical events and cultural influences during the developmental and formative years” may be true for these younger generations in the age of instant communications, but not so when I was in my so-called developmental and formative years, which for me was the year I was in Viet Nam, bleeding in the mud precisely so the Generation Jonesers would be forced them to be pragmatic as they entered adulthood.
How is that for a clear-cut case of cosmic synchronicity?
Anyway, I was born right after WWII ended, and I did not have shared experiences of historical events and cultural influences with those who are my same age.
Not hardly.
I was poor and living out in the countryside, so that was my cultural experience.
We had no telephone when I was young, nor did we have a TV, so our connection with the world was through a plastic radio.
Thus, I have memories of such things as the siege of Dien Bien Phu that others my age, especially those who grew up well off don’t have, and as I listen to their memories, frankly I often end up wondering what planet they grew up on, as what they remember as cultural events are completely foreign to me.
We were picking hay and hoeing beans while kids in Philadelphia spent the afternoon dancing on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand and other kids in California got to grow up at Disneyland with Annette and the Mousekateers of the Mickey Mouse Club!
And Jan and Dean and the Beach Boys were driving their woodies and 409 Chevies at Surf City where there were two girls for every boy, YAHOO!
Shared cultural experiences?
Not hardly!
Especially after returning to here from Viet Nam to be spit at by war protestors like Hillary Clinton, unless that is a shared cultural experience between the one doing the spitting and the one getting spit at!
And having “LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT” shouted in your face by somebody with real bad breath if you happened to criticize the Viet Nam war.
I would say the Generation Jonesers should be thankful they came along when they did, so they could miss all of that stuff.
As to National Lampoon, I came across that when I got to here, wherever here might be, from Viet Nam.
I thought it was one of the most serious publications we had in this country at that time – the only place in America where you could find out the truth about the people who were in charge in this country back then.
I actually remember Leave It to Beaver quite well, along with Ozzie and Harriet, and I Remember Mama, with Oscar Homolka, if I remember right, and The Guiding Light, and Bishop Fulton J. Sheehan to give us a heavy dose of moral drama.
I lived in a place that got real cold, and I lived in an old farm house with no insulation and no hot water or central heat, and I used to wonder just where in hell it was that Beaver lived, that he got to live such a soft life as he did.
I never saw Beaver, or Wally for that matter, having to hoe beans or shovel **** or feed animals in a blizzard, or get in firewood every morning so June could keep a fire going all day long like I had to do every day of the winter.
So WTF?
Luck of the draw, I guess.
So it is pretty apparent I wouldn’t connect with the Brady Bunch, either.
As an aside, I think in the true American spirit of be all you can be, Eddie Haskell from Leave It To Beaver, who always seemed able to wrap June Cleaver around his finger, went on from there to become an A-list hard-core porn star if the rumors are right.
And I think that focusing in on the Beatles really misses the mark with respect to the influence of music back then.
YouTube The Beach Boys – Then I kissed Her and listen to that – that music was a much bigger influence on my life than the Beatles ever were, because the Beatles, let us face it, were foreigners and imitators, although very good ones, while the Beach Boys were living the real American Dream we poor country kids could relate to.
She’s real fine, my 409!
Now tell me, really, how much book learning do you need to be able to intellectually relate to that?
It’s visceral, especially when you hear them revving one up on the record!
I got to live the American Dream with a 64 Chevy convertible with a factory tach and four on the floor, out on the road, searching for America.
Top down, no speed limits back then, and cruising with Otis Redding and Dock of the Bay on the radio!
The real musical influences that led to the Beatles, who I saw on the Ed Sullivan “Really Big Shoe” when they first came over here, with an English version of the American music that preceded and influenced them, as it did The Animals and “The House of the Rising Sun!”
In VEET NAM, where we were bleeding in the mud precisely so the Generation Jonesers would be forced them to be pragmatic as they entered adulthood, which is about as clear-cut case of cosmic synchronicity that you are likely to run into in this lifetime, we were singing “We Got To Get Out Of This Place,” not, “she’s just seventeen, you know what I mean?”
Cultural context!
In a combat zone, the Beatles were pretty much worthless as any kind of motivating force.
On that note, and to close this chapter of “Life In Bizarre America,” while I was in Veet Nam, where we had a cheap plastic portable radio in our bunker (yes, we lived down in the ground like moles, at least in the dry season) and we would be coming back in from combat missions (cue “Sky Pilot” by The Animals) and invariably it seemed, when we turned on the radio to pick up AFVN radio (GOOD MORNING, VIET NAM!), these are the words we would hear coming out at us, to wit:
When the moon is in the Seventh House
And Jupiter aligns with Mars
Then peace will guide the planets
And love will steer the stars
This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius
Age of Aquarius
Aquarius
Aquarius
Harmony and understanding
Sympathy and trust abounding
No more falsehoods or derisions
Golden living dreams of visions
Mystic crystal revelation
And the mind’s true liberation
Aquarius
Aquarius
end quotes
Think about it, Jonesers, there is where your cultural context on life came from, not Johnny Rotten or any of that crowd who weren’t making music so much as parodying in a nihilistic way the music of the times that had already been made.
YouTube Chuck Berry – Johnny B. Goode and see what I mean.
Yeah. I call it the “last of the white men” generation, though that reaches through GenX and finally dies out as it hits Xennials. I mean look at that article — the default couldn’t be more thoroughly white and male. There was an entire half the population that thought the Lampoon was gross, because it was, but you couldn’t tell by reading this thing. There are no women in journalism. Black and brown people, absolutely not.
The hate and anger belonged to the *boys*. The young men. The rest of us just stood back as you all got self-destructive, also weird and attacky with the younger kids, said “whatever,” and went to go do our sewing kits and learn Basic or just ride around.
Y’all still don’t think women and dark-skinned people are people, either. It does wear poorly.
Note: Of it was futile and stupid gesture. But, we’re still mocking you.
So what are you prepared to do about it?
Nothing, that is what.
Hell, you can barely formulate a sentence.
La La La La La La La La! Fa La La Fa La La La La La!!!!!
As to your comment “Y’all still don’t think women and dark-skinned people are people,” that’s a toxic mix of horse****, bull**** and pig*****, and it is just plain stupid and ignorant as well.
My mother was a woman and she certainly was people.
My granddaughters are women and they are people.
In fact, all women are people regardless of what color their skin is.
Pull your head out of your *** so you can see the world around you a lot mo9re clearly without all your prejudices blinding you to reality.
The only one in here that thinks women and dark-skinned people are not people is you, and that is because you are a prejudiced, ignorant moron.
Rereading this today…
Damn, you are ignorant.
I don’t relate to all the parameters of Gen Jones as stated, I have always felt that I wasn’t a Boomer or Gen X, but somewhere in between, having been born in 1959.What I do relate to is that there are others that feel the same. I just thought I was weird.
Just curious, but how would you know you were not?
To respond to the sidebar conversation;
Yeah sure my generation wasn’t at all influenced by, enamored of, or imitative of people like Nichelle Nichols, Richard Pryor, Garrett Morris, Nat King Cole, Bill Cosby, Sydney Poitier, and on and on and on……of course, that was before the ever divisive “hyphen” was forced on American culture, and we simply respected and admired these PEOPLE because they were exemplary PEOPLE, within their fields.
Gosh, I do so miss the America that WASN’T ripped apart by a divisive ideology that has a record of failure second to none.