At the very end of my Why Music Sucks broadside of February 1987 I wrote a paragraph that in retrospect might seem supernaturally prophetic. Whereas now, such a paragraph, with a few of the words changed, would be the common, received wisdom. However, despite almost every sentence of it being right, I think it's fundamentally wrong. But see for yourself:
( People will cluster into cultural 'regions' based not on physical proximity but on mutual attitudes, tastes, hobbies, beliefs, etc. )
[This paragraph was something of an elaboration on a more interesting passage I'd written the previous year for an aborted book on punk rock: "It is a social achievement that parents can't understand their kids' slang or that one child will become a punk and another a Mormon and a third will go into interior design (and discos and cocaine) and none will have much to say to the others. Each incomprehensibility is a kind of vengeance."]
( People will cluster into cultural 'regions' based not on physical proximity but on mutual attitudes, tastes, hobbies, beliefs, etc. )
[This paragraph was something of an elaboration on a more interesting passage I'd written the previous year for an aborted book on punk rock: "It is a social achievement that parents can't understand their kids' slang or that one child will become a punk and another a Mormon and a third will go into interior design (and discos and cocaine) and none will have much to say to the others. Each incomprehensibility is a kind of vengeance."]