Smells like thirtysomething

What happens to the slacker generation ten years on? When the sullen grunge of your mid-twenties slowly creeps through dot-com optimism to millenial resignation? Or did it all just happen when you were watching reruns of the Daily Show?

Teen Beat records, a local indie label, had their tenth anniversary party at the Black Cat last weekend. Many of the Teen Beat bands cropped up from the post-college crowd living in group houses in Arlington. Folks who entered college with late-'80s expectations of easy employment with a liberal arts degree, only to emerge into a world where graduate school barely got you sniffed. That is, if you wanted to go to grad school. Most of us hadn't thought that far ahead, and stumbled around in a scruffy haze that sociologists have now thoughtfully labeled, quarter-life crisis.

The indie rock kids were all around you. They temped in apathetic blue-gray cubicles (see Office Space), and worked in record stores (see High Fidelity). Those lucky enough to be computer geeks in college programmed the world, without a separate work wardrobe, and made fat bank (bastards, we envied you sorely). By night, they recorded in basement studios and played gigs at their local. They gave hope for our indeterminate lives. Oh yeah, we were gonna take over the world, by stealth. If it could happen in Seattle, it could happen here. Wasn't Dave Grohl moving back to the area?

Somewhere between administrations, girlfriends became wives. People moved, bought houses. Had kids. Took the day job to the next level. Started businesses. And then reunited at the Black Cat, as did their friends, families and fans. Us.

Some were older, rounder, slightly receding versions of their twenty-something selves, in larger beat-up t-shirts that looked more like garage-cleaning wear than their original proclamations of social upheaval. Some got the haircut and looked millenially sharp. Some sets sounded like They Might Be Giants demos. Is that cool or tired? Some were more like current Green Day tracks. Some were unapologetically 1993, but with the same raw energy that kept us drinking till 4am. The same reason we still listen to Black Flag and the Clash.

You never see yourself change from day to day; only when you see the before and after snapshots. So what's the pull date on that They Might Be Giants b-side? How did Beck weather it so well? If your edge gets blunted, does that mean you never truly had it to begin with? Who forgot to evolve and why?

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