ED NOTE: In this commentary, writer, techie and yogi Melanie Feliciano reflects on the Lollapalooza-fueled rage of her youth and the merits of the generations that came before and after her.
I went to Lollapalooza when I was 16. It’s a phrase I like to say the way Baby Boomers like to say they were at Woodstock. It’s stupid. And yet there is a part of me that feels proud to tell people who are younger than me, as if they care, “I went to Lollapalooza when I was 16! Doesn’t get any more GenX than that!”
If my dad let me, I would have also gone to the inaugural Lollapalooza a year before, when I was a baby 15-year-old, to see my favorite band in the whole world, Jane’s Addiction, whose frontman Perry Farrell, hypnotized me with his words, “At this moment you should be with us…feeling like we do,” or “Señores y señoras,
But he Didn’t. Let. Me. GOOOOO! (Volcano eruption/Doc Martens foot stomp) Even though most of us went to the second Lollapalooza to see Red Hot Chili Peppers, it was Rage Against the Machine, led by Mexican-American frontman Zack de la Rocha, that captured us . . . and our entire generation. My most memorable Lollapalooza moment still in my little bratty Latina brain, furious at my cop father who wanted to keep me in his suburban jail for the rest of my life, was screaming with the band:
“Fuck you, I won’t do whatcha told me! Fuck you, I won’t do whatcha told me!”
Over and over, we chanted and raged and pushed each other around, my tiny feet protected by steel toed Doc Martens, all 5’2” of me mosh pitting with angry white boys. I still had so much anger even though daddy caved and let me go to my generation’s seminal event. In hindsight, I should have been chanting, “So grateful for the freedom my dad gave me!”But who says that at 15? No, those are the words of a woman in her 40s, reflecting on her dad’s 79th birthday, after doing a million hours of yoga.
The real question at this point is: Wasn’t dad angry, too? His mother died when he was only 13. His father used to steal his sneakers so he couldn’t go out on the mean streets of the Bronx and Brooklyn and join the white vs black vs Puerto Rican gang wars. He was struggling to raise 4 kids by the time he was only 22.
He could have acted out. Rebelled. Raged against his machine. But he didn’t. Somehow, he always knew things could be worse. Perhaps that’s what poverty does. I was spoiled with everything I ever wanted; he was denied everything he ever wanted. I am annoyed that I have to work for what I want now; he always loved being able to work for what he wanted.
As I watch from the outsidehow my generation is bringing up the next (you know, because like 43% of the women in my generation, I don’t have children), my theory is that the Gen X parents took all that angsty rage to a yoga studio, pushed it out during their water births and are now raising all these kind, grateful kids you see competing on J-Lo’s “World of Dance.” It’s a really cool twist in evolution, although sometimes I worry because I feel these kids should be angrier in order to topple the reign of the Orange Tyrant. But maybe that’s my job. And I’m sure all their moms didn’t push all their Lilith Fair rage out of their systems into the birthing water.
Zack De La Rocha is American. He was born in California.
Thanks!